STARRED Book Review: Solving the Anxiety Equation

Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

Unpack your anxiety and banish it forever with this honest & actionable recovery strategy.

When Wendy Leeds was diagnosed with breast cancer, her anxiety became unbearable. She had always been a worrier, but that diagnosis snowballed her emotions out of control. Someone gifting her a book on anxiety was the first step toward taking that control back. Soon, she was reading everything she could on the topic. Now, she is a licensed psychotherapist with a whole slew of tools to keep her anxiety in check and live the life that she always wanted. In Solving the Anxiety Equation, she shares these many tools with you.

Solving the Anxiety Equation is a fully personalized plan to help you overcome the debilitating fears that prevent you from living a full and happy life. Part workbook and part advice manual, it takes readers on a journey to discover how their own form of anxiety shapes their world and what steps they can take to overcome it. 

This book does a phenomenal job of unpacking the different types of anxieties that inflict us and how to address each of them. There are questionnaires throughout the chapters focused on discovering each reader’s particular idiosyncrasies and how best to work to them. 

Initially, Solving the Anxiety Equation digs into the root causes of our fears. It unpacks the biological aspects of anxiety as well as exploring individual reasons. The workbook segments are fantastic for anyone who has just started looking into their mental health. Whether you are self-aware about your fears or uncertain, the questionnaires will be a crucial asset to your recovery.

Solving the Anxiety Equation is a fantastic guide to supporting your mental health journey, but it is also something that asks you to put in the work. As there is no one-size-fits-all model for anxiety, merely reading this book won’t yield results. The book requires you to put in the self-reflection, time, and thought needed to understand your individual needs and then address them. Much of this will be dependent on how your fears manifest. 

Leeds divides anxiety into three categories, self-doubt, fear of change, and physical anxiety. For each of these categories, there is a set of tools to help manage the fear. As she points out, not all of these tools will work for you. It’s up to you to find the ones that do and work them into your life.

This is a clear, concise, and gentle guide to working through anxiety. It balances personal anecdotes with actionable questionnaires and researched approaches to change. Solving the Anxiety Equation keeps things simple enough that taking steps toward a more peaceful life feels achievable no matter how stressful the world might be. It also has a comprehensive list of references, so there is a wealth of further information for anyone seeking it. This book is a rare breed—excellent for beginners and for those have been struggling to overcome their anxieties for some time. You won’t regret taking a chance on this one.

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