Title: Monkey Mind: A Memoir of
Anxiety
Author: Daniel
SmithAuthor Website: http://monkeymindchronicles.com
Genre: Nonfiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7730-3
Grade: 4/5 stars
Review by Jessica Brant, Blog Writer and Freelance Writer for the Tonawanda News
‘Monkey
Mind’ author proves that through self-deprecating humor and with a little bit of
faith, anxiety is manageable
If the American
Psychiatric Association ever decided to conduct a search for the new face of
anxiety, then Daniel Smith could be their poster child.
The author of
‘Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety’ details every pang of anxiety ever felt
throughout his young adult life. During the most arbitrary of day-to-day
decision-making, such as what condiments to put on his roast beef sandwich, to
more high-risk situations such as when he lost his virginity and left for
college in Boston, Smith describes each instance with great finesse, prescribing
the reader with just the right dosage of research and wit.
According to
Smith, there are two types of anxiety sufferers in the world: stiflers and
chaotics. A stifler will throw a smile to the public, but throw back a bottle of
gin in private. As a chaotic anxiety sufferer desperately trying to remain a
stifler, however, Smith operates by throwing everything onto the table: emotion,
sometimes in the form of physical discomfort and outbursts, and also his sanity.
It is his
candidness and willingness to tell-all that makes Smith an easy character to
sympathize with. His explanation of the term “monkey mind,” whose origins lie in
the practice of Buddhism, offers insight into the inner workings of many anxiety
sufferers’ minds. An individual
with a “monkey mind” has an uncontrollable consciousness, where thoughts jump,
flip, and swing in every direction. Buddhist practices, Smith writes, are
designed to tame these “monkeys of the mind.”
Throughout the
novel, Smith discovers the triggers of his anxiety, such as the implications
that the freedom of choice brings. Another is his mother, “Hurricane Marilyn,”
who, ironically, is a psychotherapist suffering from anxiety herself, whose
cliental consists mainly of individuals suffering from it too. As a young Smith
presses one ear to the central-air vent in his parents’ bedroom listening in on
his mother’s sessions, he realizes that the mother who raised him was not the
unafflicted woman he heard in that room, who was able to turn her anxiety off
for the time-being. Smith only wished he had that much control.
Quirky
characters provide Smith’s story with life. The reader encounters Esther, the
curvaceous, provocative twenty-something-year-old who worked with Smith at a
bookstore when he was 15 and took his virginity by engaging him in a ménage a
trois. And Joanna, Smith’s first love, the woman who made him realize that he
hit rock-bottom. The reader finally meets Brian near the end of his story, the
no-nonsense therapist who forced him to get a grip.
Although
Smith’s life is, for the most part, muddled by fear and doubt, his writing has
not been. Bold comparisons and attempts at self-mockery turn woes into comic
relief—like when he describes his awkward nail biting habit and extreme armpit
sweating dilemma--and make his venting sessions entertaining—like when he
comically discusses his fear of contracting HIV on his way to a therapy session.
The book is sure to put a smile on more than one face.
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