Daniel Smith - Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety

Advance Praise for
Monkey Mind

Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styrons Darkness Visible did for depression.

AARON T. BECK,
father of cognitive therapy

You dont need a Jewish mother, or a profound sweating problem, to feel Daniel Smiths pain in Monkey Mind . His memoir treats what must be the essential ailment of our timechronic anxietyand it does so with wisdom, honesty, and the kind of belly laughs that can only come from troubles transformed.

CHAD HARBACH,
author of The Art of Fielding

Daniel Smith maps the jagged contours of anxiety with such insight, humor, and compassion that the result is, oddly, calming. There are countless gems in these pages, including a fresh take on the psychopathology of chronic nail biting, an ill-fated mnage troisand the funniest perspiration scene since Albert Brookss sweaty performance in Broadcast News . Read this book. You have nothing to lose but your heart palpitations, and your Xanax habit.

ERIC WEINER,
author of The Geography of Bliss

Daniel Smith has written a wise, funny book, a great mix of startling memoir and fascinating medical and literary history, all of it delivered with humor and a true generosity of spirit.

SAM LIPSYTE,
author of Home Land and The Ask

A nxiety once paralyzed Daniel Smith over a roast beef sandwich, convincing him that a choice between ketchup and barbeque sauce was as dire as that between life and death. It has caused him to chew his cuticles until they bled, wear sweat pads in his armpits, and confess his sexual problems to his psychotherapist mother. It has dogged his days, threatened his sanity, and ruined his relationships.In Monkey Mind, Smith articulates what it is like to live with anxiety, defanging the disease with humor, traveling through its demonic layers, and evocatively expressing its self-destructive absurdities and painful internal coherence. With honesty and wit, he exposes anxiety as a pudgy, weak-willed wizard behind a curtain of dread and tames what has always seemed to him, and to the tens of millions of others who suffer from anxiety, a terrible affliction.Aaron Beck, the most influential doctor in modern psychotherapy, says that Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styrons Darkness Visible did for depression. Neurologist and bestselling writer Oliver Sacks says, I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity.... I broke out into explosive laughter again and again. Here, finally, comes relief and recognition to all those who want someone to put what they feel, or what their loved ones feel, into words.I dont know Daniel Smith, but I do want to give him a hug. His book is so bracingly honest, so hilarious, so sharp, its clear theres one thing he doesnt have to be anxious about: whether or not hes a great writer. A.J. JACOBS, author of Drop Dead Healthy
and The Year of Living Biblically

DANIEL SMITH is the author of Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Hearing Voices and the Borders of Sanity . He has written for numerous publications, including The Atlantic, Granta, n+1, New York, The New York Times Magazine, and Slate, and he has taught at Bryn Mawr and The College of New Rochelle, where he holds the Mary Ellen Donnelly Critchlow Endowed Chair in English.

Visit Daniel Smith at
www.monkeymindchronicles.com .

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COPYRIGHT 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

ALSO BY DANIEL SMITH

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition July 2012

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Designed by Akasha Archer

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Daniel, date.

Monkey mind : a memoir of anxiety / Daniel Smith.

p. cm.

1. Smith, Daniel, dateMental health. 2. Anxiety disorders. 3. Mentally illUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

RC464.S59A3 2012

616.85220092dc23

[B] 2011025971

ISBN 978-1-4391-7730-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-7732-7 (eBook)

Authors note: The events described in this book are as real as I could manage. Certain names and details have been changed to protect me from legal and emotional ramifications, which, trust me, arent fun. Also: memory is unstable. We do our best. If you suspect a passage has been tarted up for dramatic purposes, email me at dansmonkeymind@gmail.com. Ill tell you whether youre right, if I even know myself.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for art on the following pages. : Lion tamer, chromolithograph, Gibson & Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio), published c. 1873.

I dont know what is the matter with him, and the doctors dont know what is the matter with him, and he doesnt know himself what is the matter with him. We all say its on the nerves, and we none of us know what we mean when we say it.Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme.Vladimir Nabokov, Signs and Symbols

For Joanna

contents

monkey mind

why i am qualified to write this book

About ten years ago, when I was living in Boston, I had a therapist whose office was in a clinic across the Charles River, at the top of a tall hill. The therapist, whose name was Brian, had a beard and moustache the color of ripe mangoes, and in his spare time he acted in community theater. Often the productions Brian performed in had historical settings, and he would groom his facial hair accordingly. Brian was the best therapist Ive ever had, compassionate and patient and wise. But his appearance could be unsettling. One month, as opening night for The Secret Garden approached, he trimmed his beard progressively thinner while he grew his moustache thick, extending it down along the sides of his mouth. It was like getting counseling from General Custer.

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