A Review of the Book "Looking Anxiety in the Face" by Herbert Brokering

Title: Looking Anxiety in the Face

Author: Herbert Brokering

Publisher: Augsburg Fortress

Year: 2009

96 pages

I am an anxious person. While not diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, I am fully aware that I panic at the unknown, talk myself out of doing new things, and am scared to speak up in meetings. And I am not alone. Many people have anxiety and live life in such a way that, at least outwardly, they seem perfectly fine. Usually, we need help to learn this ability.

My learning tends to come with reading so I have gathered a handful of books on anxiety that I will hopefully work my way through in a relatively short amount of time. "Looking Anxiety in the Face" was the first book I came across in my pile.

According to the first chapter of the book, Herbert Brokering wrote this short piece as a way to help readers "name the triggers of anxiety" as he feels doing so "takes some of their power away."

Each chapter of the book, and there are 23 of them aside from the introductory chapter, names a different anxiety that people could suffer from. Such things as fear, tiredness, anticipation, and even God. Brokering begins each chapter with a vignette about the named anxiety, sometimes including some poetry and almost always bringing forth a piece of biblical scripture or prayer to God. At the end of the each chapter, Brokering provides the reader with an idea of how to practice overcoming the titled anxiety. He encourages the reader to track their experiences in a notebook.

This is not a book you read cover to cover in a single sitting. It is meant to be taken in slowly and to actually make use of the suggestion at each chapter's end. There are some good vignettes and good ideas in the book that are worth trying.

If you expect to read this book and be cured of your anxiety, you will be sorely disappointed. If you want a new way to look at your anxieties and be given some hints as to how you can work your way through them using prayer, experience, and possibly journaling, then this book will be a good start to that work.