Writer and journalist Sarah Wilson knows anxiety. She was 12 when she was first diagnosed with childhood anxiety. In the more than three decades since, she has been diagnosed with insomnia, bulimia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, hypomania, and bipolar disorder. All of which, as she writes in her memoir about her journey through anxiety, First, We Make The Beast Beautiful, are “just different flavors” of the same thing.
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health disorders in the United States, affecting about 18% of the population each year. Wilson shares with the Cut in the video above how the condition has profoundly affected her life, and how she has managed to make it, as she says, “beautiful.”
Buy FIRST, WE MAKE THE BEAST BEAUTIFUL here: https://www.amazon.com/First-We-Make-Beast-Beautiful/dp/0062836781/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544111959&sr=8-1&keywords=first+we+make+the+beast+beautiful+book
6. After years of abuse, she had an important epiphany:
7. “Everyone only gets one body in their lifetime. I knew I had to start treating mine differently,” she realized. From that day forward, she resolved to love her body for the rest of her life.
9. As she began to seek a healthier way to deal with her emotions, Rothstein realized that the world tells bodies not to love themselves through all kinds of oppressions.