All the anxiety that success and money cannot end

A year ago, Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, came out of the anxiety closet with a lengthy first-person article about his lifelong struggles with fear. He wrote, “I am buffeted by worry: about my health and my family members’ health; about finances; about work; about the rattle in my car and the dripping in my basement; about the encroachment of old age and the inevitability of death; about everything and nothing.” This worry often turns into physical problems—“as though I have mononucleosis or the flu.”

He added, “I also suffer from a number of specific fears and phobias, in addition to my public-speaking phobia. To name a few: enclosed spaces (claustrophobia); heights (acrophobia); fainting (asthenophobia); being trapped far from home (a species of agoraphobia); germs (bacillophobia); cheese (turophobia); flying (aerophobia); vomiting (emetophobia); and, naturally, vomiting while flying (aeronausiphobia).”

He’s not alone in suffering from these phobias, but he forgot about one that may be at the base of the others: theophobia. Living apart from God is tough.

Stossel detailed his attempts to overcome the phobias: “Here’s what I’ve tried: individual psychotherapy (three decades of it), family therapy, group therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, rational emotive behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, hypnosis, meditation, role-playing, interoceptive exposure therapy, in vivo exposure therapy, self-help workbooks, massage therapy, prayer, acupuncture, yoga, Stoic philosophy, and audiotapes I ordered off a late-night TV infomercial.”

He’s not alone in such attempts, but what’s missing from the list of what he tried? What about praying the opening of Psalm 51? “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”

If such psychological overkill seems bad enough, he lists the ways he’s tried to deal physically with his traumas: “Medication. Lots of medication. Thorazine. Imipramine. Desipramine. Chlorpheniramine. Nardil. BuSpar. Prozac. Zoloft. Paxil. Wellbutrin. Effexor. Celexa. Lexapro. Cymbalta. Luvox. Trazodone. Levoxyl. Inderal. Tranxene. Serax. Centrax. St. Johnʼs wort. Zolpidem. Valium. Librium. Ativan. Xanax. Klonopin.” And then, of course, there are low-tech attempts: “beer, wine, gin, bourbon, vodka, and scotch.”

The opening section of his article ends with a four-word paragraph: “Here’s what’s worked: nothing.” That’s no surprise. Stossel is a successful professional, and I compliment him on being able to hold it together to succeed in the difficult calling of magazine editor. But from dozens of guys without his talent and perseverance—substance abusers who are now homeless—I’ve heard that same cry: Nothing works. Those who do change almost always give the same reason: They gained faith in Christ.

Later on, Stossel speculates that his curse may be hereditary, and he goes back to his great-grandfather: “I don’t have to look far to find evidence of anxiety as a family trait.” Or maybe it’s due to his psychological environment as a child of fearful and unhappy parents whose marriage ended in divorce.

What about original sin? And what about the anxiety that’s likely to hit any intelligent person when he knows he’s dying, sooner or later, and has no hope for life after death?

Stossel eventually crafts a semi-happy ending by running through famous folks—T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin—whose anxiety may have contributed to their creativity. The last sentence: Anxiety may be “a source of strength and a bestower of certain blessings.”

That conclusion helped him turn his trauma into a book that accumulated some sales: My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind (Knopf, 2014). But it seems to me that Stossel’s account is a tragedy, not a comedy, and if he comforts himself with the semi-happy ending it may be even more tragic. I hope he’ll seek a solution to his fearfulness, not just a fix that doesn’t work, or the whistling past the graveyard that concluded his article.