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“Every age thinks of itself as the most anxious”

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The Atlantic magazine editor suffers from a litany of fears most readers have never heard about.

Published: Fri 14 Feb 2014, 12:44 PM

Updated: Fri 3 Apr 2015, 9:20 PM

  • By
  • (Reuters)

A lot. The Atlantic magazine editor suffers from a litany of fears most readers have never heard about. Turophobia? That’s fear of cheese and he’s got it. Bacillophobia? Fear of germs and that’s a check. Emetophobia? Fear of vomiting, yes, he’s a sufferer too. Add to those more extreme phobias such reliable chestnuts as claustrophobia and fear of public speaking, and it’s clear that Stossel spends much of his time consumed with anxiety.

His struggle to control these varied neuroses and disorders is documented in his new book, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind. It’s a memoir, psychological study and historical examination all rolled into one. It’s also funny, exhaustively researched and deeply moving. Unsurprisingly, Stossel says Hollywood has shown an interest in adapting his acclaimed work — something that both shocks and excites him.

In his search for a cure, the 44-year old speaks frankly about how he has turned to a litany of treatments, from psychotropic drugs to talk therapy to even a disastrous form of avoidance therapy involving consuming ipecac.

Stossel speaks about his decision to go public with his mental illness, how people have responded to it over the years and why his problems both helps and hinders his work.

You have so many fears and phobias. Why did you decide to go into a profession like journalism that is so deadline-driven?

It’s possible that I would have been better suited to being a penguin keeper. Starting out, I thought being a writer would enable me to work in isolation. Maybe my life would be less of a misery if I weren’t in a deadline-driven profession, but I don’t tend to worry about those things as much. I’m more concerned with neurotic, irrational phobias. Actual deadlines stress me out, but I’m better at handling those than neurotic anxieties.

What was the biggest surprise from your research into the causes and history of anxiety?

I was expecting that by looking at anxiety through the ages, I’d find we live in the most anxious time of all. But you look back and each successive era finds physicians and commentators arguing that their age is the most anxious ever — the Gilded Age, the Industrial Revolution, even 2nd century Rome had Galen the physician saying there has never been such anxiety. This is a condition that is part of the human condition. Every age presumes to think of itself as the most anxious.

Even some historical figures such as Charles Darwin appear to have suffered from anxiety.

Well, Darwin was incapacitated for much of his life and stuck in his house with stress-related illnesses. But it’s possible that history would be different had he not be able to do anything other than spend decades writing The Origin of the Species.

Are you ever concerned that a cure for anxiety could erase aspects of your personality?

There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn’t want to give up. It allows you to have foresight. It’s hard to figure out the difference between pathology and personality. How much of a temperament can we medicate away? There’s no answer.



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