Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide

This is an honest and insiteful investigation into our existential underpinnings and a bulwark against the superficiality of modern culture and judgment.

Insightful

The author’s heartfelt personal reflections on anxiety help weave together the philosophical insights of existentialists like Kierkegaard and Sartre with the wisdom tradition from Buddhism. The result is a clear and engaging book that rewards reading and reflection.

This is a fascinating book that covers several disparate interests neatly -- Buddhism and existentialism, for example, and how they both handle the inherent anxiety in being human.

Reflective, introspective, deep dive into the ways we might actually look to our anxieties for deeper understanding about ourselves and the meanings of our lives

I highly recommend Samir Chopra’s short, insightful book, Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide, especially if, like me and Dr. Chopra himself, you struggle with fairly serious anxiety issues, and perhaps also if you have a deeply thoughtful, caring, curious, erudite mind like this delicious man. I kept wanting to remind him of how wonderful and helpful he is, and wanting him to lighten up—maybe because that’s what everyone tells me. (They also remind me that I’m definitely somewhere on “the OK spectrum” haha. Oh well.Like Dr. Chopra, I’ve spent most of my challenging life (after an also difficult youth) probing into the what’s and the why’s of…sigh…everything…? I found Dr. Chopra’s breadth of knowledge and experience, and his generous wisdom, very…calming. And what a well-organized, articulate, rational, poetic writer he is! Each sentence Is Illuminating. And delightful.Dr. Chopra reintroduced me to longtime friends Tillich, Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Freud and the Buddha—sharing their interesting, different perspectives on anxiety. And he also befriended me with fellow-fretters Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Herbert Marcuse. I also want to thank him for his openness and vulnerability in so warmly sharing his own highly relevant personal story/ies,I think Dr. Chopra lives simultaneously in the two wondrous worlds of small details and cosmic wholes; he summarizes and he exemplifies…clearly. He brings so many different fields together—philosophy yes, but also psychology, sociology, comparative political and cultural and ethical approaches oh my.I would definitely benefit from re-reading this lovely short book, but alas, many more books await, although few so enjoyable that I hang on them.Dr. Chopra, in my own life, my anxieties have responded to both Stoicism and to A Course in Miracles as a poetic metaphor—but maybe that’s just me.Thank you for writing, and for helping me get over…myself; my musts and shoulds and oughts; my coulda wouldas shouldas, maybe relax a little; maybe like myself better, maybe learn to live more lightly in the present.Btw, I like the saying: Be who you are, do what you can, have what you have. (I think it might be a Unitarian Universalist thing, dunno.)Dr. Chopra, you are a peach! 🍑🍑🍑

Samir offers hope for humanity. If we are alive, we will experience anxiety. How we relate to this issue is the issue. He philosophizes that we must “quit being anxious about being anxious.” A simple approach to dealing with a complex feeling derived from past experiences or anticipating future ones. Filled with reason and heart.

LIke many people I have struggled with anxiety– at times severely. I have read many books on the topic and learned as much as I could. This book is different. I not only enjoyed it immensely, as it’s written with such eloquence but also found it extremely enlightening and helpful. It’s a philosophical guide. It’s compelling, poignant, deep and thought-provoking. I particularly enjoyed the author’s personal stories, which are quite moving and relatable for me, personally.After reading this book I felt seen, validated, and changed my mind about anxiety. We don’t have to be anxious about being anxious. Embracing our anxiety can be a portal to self-discovery and freedom.

I would like to edit my previous comment. With time to reflect, I did get a something out of this book. Anxiety is not a foreign object that invades people, rather it is a natural, baked-in, ubiquitous and potentially useful companion. Realizing that actions taken to reduce anxiety, will ultimately arrive at more anxiety, helps me feel more comfortable in my present situation, and gives me more space to consider a wider range of responses; including, don't do anything.[I guess it was a reasonable review of philosophical thinking around anxiety. Hard to read and I was hoping I would eventually reach something that was interesting and thought provoking. Something I would enjoy sharing with someone else. I didn't find it]