The author Alby Elias has done extensive research to craft a book that explores how anxiety can be adaptive and why fear isn't inherently negative. It features thoughtful references to thinkers like Nietzsche, Niccolò Machiavelli ('Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth'), Freud, and other intellectual heavyweights.

This is not a light, page-turning read in the style of a YouTube video titled "What the Avoidant is Thinking When You Go No Contact." Instead, it's a serious, academically grounded work.

If you're genuinely interested in topics like evolutionary biology, the neural mechanisms behind fear, or the roles of fearlessness in mania and psychopathy, it's best to approach this book with focus and minimal distractions.

If you want a book that provides the ‘why’ behind anxiety then this is it!

It takes a deep dive into both the negative and positive aspects of anxiety and how, whilst unpleasant, is necessary for survival.

It explores the different subtypes of anxiety and fear - and the difference between them - as well as exploring the difference between normal and expected anxiety and debilitating, morbid anxiety.

This isn’t a self help book, but an exploration of the science behind fear and anxiety and the role evolution has played in the anxiety we experience, and don’t experience, in modern day life and it’s like to other conditions and personality traits.

If you want to understand the core of anxiety, I would highly recommend this book!

It's about time someone wrote a book that outlined the positive as well as the negative effects of fear. I read Gavin de Becker and his book 'the Gift of Fear' also emphasised the positive aspect of fear as a survival mechanism. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this useful and informative book.