Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #473968 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Useful Stories to Enlighten and Encourage
If you suffer from any panic or anxiety disorder, often times you feel very alone in your plight. Many times, you wonder if you'll ever 'see' your old self again. It's a scary place to be, because I've been there.

In these true stories from folks spanning the spectrum of life, you quickly discover that all the feelings associated with anxiety and panic have been felt by countless others. A critical element to this book are the commentaries after each story by Dr. Paul Foxman. He treats each person's story on an individual basis, offering insight to the root of the disorder, and the very clear hope for overcoming it.

In each of the contributing author's stories, I am certain anyone suffering from panic or anxiety- perhaps both, will find comfort in knowing there's someone out there who made it through a very dark, lonely place to the bright side of living a full and enriching life.

This book is not intimidating with technical/medical jargon- rather, it's a book that's easily digested and leaves its mark by teaching someone suffering the power of hope and healing they hold within themselves. Highly recommended.

An engaging and motivating set of success stories
Compiled and edited by Jenna Glatzner (Editor-in-Chief of Absolute Write - a website for aspiring writers), and supported with commentaries by Paul Foxman (Director of the Center for Anxiety Disorders in Burlington, Vermont), Conquering Panic and Anxiety Disorders: Success Stories, Strategies, And Other Good News is an impressive collection of thirty-one true and inspiring stories of men and women who have confronted and overcome panic, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress, and more. An engaging and motivating set of success stories blazing a positive series of examples filled with hope for a better present and future, Conquering Panic and Anxiety Disorders is especially recommended reading for anyone struggling to cope with their own emotional stresses and predilections.

I Lived It
Paul Foxman, Ph.D. and Director of the Center for Anxiety Disorders in Vermont, offers an introduction in which he introduces himself as one who has suffered from anxiety and offers commentaries at the end of each essay. He says "These stories are full of hope and promise for anxiety recovery. May they fulfill their mission to spread the word and inspire many others to conquer their anxieties."

Each chapter is a story and is shown on the Content's page. In addition, Glatzer has organized the topics addressed to make disorders, therapies and feelings very easy to find.

The chapters average about 5 pages each but some are just a couple of pages and a few are 7 or 8 pages in length. The essays are presented as written by the authors so it was not Glatzer's intention to edit them down or "tweak" them.

Glatzer's hope is that people realize they are not alone while reading these 31 essays describing very personal situations and feelings. The authors have opened themselves up to the world. You will find a couple of professional writers, you will read stories by people who just like to write, and others who perhaps never intended to see their story in print.

I found that more often than not most of the authors used some of Foxman's approaches even if they didn't know they were. I like Foxman's commentaries a lot. I like the fact that not only does he explain in a professional way what often times the authors do not do because they are telling their story, but he also talks about how the various conditions came to be (perhaps multiple stresses). He also talks about physical symptoms, which are an important part of this book for people who are seeking help or seeking to understand if they need help.

The book is listed under psychology/self-help on the cover and I would imagine it being used in classrooms. Rarely will a student or an onlooker have a look into what panic and anxiety is like from a first-hand perspective with no clinical jargon or going back to one's childhood to find out the answers to why it happened. Some authors do attempt to figure out the whys, but for many, the whys are much less important than the "what can I do and who will help me" questions.

How do I know this? I am an author in this book. I am not reviewing it to sell it, however. My bottom line is that this is a book of hope and of wanting not only to be heard but also to have others get some relief from their suffering. I wish I had been handed it 20 years ago.