Book Reviews

Anxiety as an Ally: How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend

Anxiety as an Ally: How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend

Anxiety as an Ally: How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend

After experiencing his first panic attack on New Year’s Day of 2003, Dan Ryckert began a 12-year process of learning how to channel panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder until they became driving forces in his life. Using anxiety as his ally, he was able to land dream jobs within the video game industry and vastly improve the quality of his personal life.

In this candid recollection, you’ll learn about how he went from having panic attacks during college roll calls to speaking i

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3 thoughts on “Anxiety as an Ally: How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend

  • 38 of 41 people found the following review helpful
    3.0 out of 5 stars
    I thought it might be a good read. This book isn’t revolutionary, April 21, 2015
    By 

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    This review is from: Anxiety as an Ally: How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend (Paperback)
    I’m a big fan of Game Informer and Giant Bomb. As someone that also struggles with anxiety and panic disorders, I thought it might be a good read. This book isn’t revolutionary, by any means. He mentions exercise, yoga and meditation as various means for coping. He also gives a chronological order as to when he experienced his anxiety. This book just doesn’t feel very personal or intimate, to me, which is what I was looking for. Dan is more of a technical writer than an emotional writer. Other audiences might enjoy this, but it didn’t do anything for me.
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars
    A great help in understanding a friend’s struggle., October 10, 2016
    By 
    David V. Campbell (San Diego, CA United States) –
    (REAL NAME)
      

    Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
    This review is from: Anxiety as an Ally: How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend (Paperback)
    I read this because I have a friend who suffers from chronic anxiety. I’m also a fan of GiantBomb.com and heard about this book via that website. This was an easy read that I feel gave me insight into what it feels like to deal with anxiety. My friend isn’t great about articulating how she feels when it comes to her anxiety. So, I’ve looked to wikipedia articles and some summaries on medical websites about anxiety and I got clinical definitions, but didn’t understand the experience of dealing with anxiety. After reading Dan’s personal experience I feel more able to empathize with my friend. Granted, everyone will deal with anxiety differently, but reading about at least one personal experience gave me that much more insight into this condition and I believe enabled me be a little bit of a better friend.

    Why 4 instead of 5 stars? Only because Dan’s remedy of choice that worked for him included yoga and meditation. He makes it very clear that these things won’t work for everyone, but he does spend a lot of time talking about them. For my own situation, I know these are 2 things that are simply not options for my friend as they are in conflict with some personally held beliefs. So, in my specific situation, these pages were not helpful.

  • Anonymous
    2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    I love this book, April 14, 2015
    By 
    Timothy

    Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
    This review is from: Anxiety as an Ally: How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend (Paperback)
    I want to preface this review with a full disclosure: I do not struggle with anxiety and that’s not why I bought this book. I bought this book because of the author. I have been following Dan Ryckert since 2009 when he began working at Game Informer. The man is one of the silliest, most entertaining, and unique individuals I “know”. If you are at all familiar with Dan then you are most likely already aware of this fact. Dan has written books before. He has authored novels about wrestling, gators who fly aircraft, as well as dedicating a whole book to mocking a “fictional” former professional athlete. Despite all of this, his latest book tackled a much more serious subject: anxiety.

    Anxiety as an Ally is honest, down to earth, and extremely personal. Even though I’ve followed Dan’s antics since 2009, this book revealed a lot of new information that I (and most people) was never aware of. It turns out that Dan has struggled with some very severe anxiety issues, which started in his college years. Dan has become an internet personality. He is very active on sites such as Twitter and is not afraid to get out there and speak his mind about something, no matter how dumb it might be. Anxiety is never something that he has opened up about with his followers. In fact, only select people in his personal life have been aware of his struggles until he wrote this book.

    I found the book to be a real page turner. Even though I don’t have problems with anxiety myself, I enjoyed Dan’s story of how he has battled it and has gotten as far as he is today. (Spoiler: he’s doing better than ever). It’s very inspiring and I think people can learn and take away some good life lessons from it. Much of what he has to say can be applied to many life situations and not just with anxiety. If you follow Dan, are interested in learning more about him, and want some inspiration, you should definitely give this a read. And if you do have anxiety issues, it’s just going to be even more helpful.

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