Anouchka Grose

I had previously never heard of Anouchka Grose, so I looked her up before I started her book. She ended up being a very interesting person and this made me more interested in reading her book. She was a guitarist for several bands and is a Lacanian psychoanalyst teaching at the centre for Freudian analysis and research.

In her newest book, the topic at hand is eco-anxiety. You can probably tell what that means by the term itself but I will explain anyway. There are people who are concerned about the environment and these people are not just “tree huggers.” Many sensible people are concerned about climate change and things of that nature. People are staying up all night, worried about the future of our planet.

Grouse is clear that there needs to be a balance of perspectives, we don’t want nationwide panic and debilitating anxiety but we also don’t want our heads in the sand when it comes to addressing climate change. She talks about how anxiety can be used for good if we aren’t just viewing anxiety through the lens of anxiety disorder. Generally speaking, everyone experiences anxiety, not everyone has an anxiety disorder.

Grouse makes an interesting point in the first chapter about popular neuroscience. We can sometimes reduce ourselves to merely biological meatbags who need serotonin, while ignoring that your thoughts can have physical effects on your body. The example Grouse uses is imagine if you think there is a burglar in your house. Regardless if there really is one, you’re likely to panic and hide, or to grab a weapon and prepare yourself for confrontation. You don’t act like you would when you didn’t think there was a burglar in your house. Anxiety kinda works the same way. It doesn’t matter if the reason for anxiety is true or false, the fact is the anxiety is there. So even climate skeptics should take the anxiety that many people feel about the environment seriously.

Grouse goes on to talk about how anxiety is treated medically, listing and explaining several takes of medications like SSRIs, SNRIs, and tricyclic antidepressants. She goes through various possible treatment methods that I personally found to be helpful. She cites Freud a bit and makes some funny references to popular culture, in particular some box office successful movies.The humor doesn’t stop there, one thing I admired about her writing is that she was pretty funny throughout, while maintaining a serious outlook on the dangers of climate change on mental health.

Grouse talks about the many levels to this issue, such as talking to your children about these issues, having hope in the face of despair and how to bounce back when you’re taken down by your own mind regarding these issues. Essentially, how you could use your anxiety to push forward positive change in the world instead of crying in your room in the fetal position. Overall, I think it is a very helpful book if you or someone you know is suffering from anxiety related to climate change.

I was given an early copy in exchange for an honest review.… (more)

In her "self-help" book, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love: A Realist's Guide to Romance", Anouchka Grose employs wit, charm, and a fairly comical outlook to aid the reader in his/her search for love and romance in our complicated world.

The author implements various theories into her prose, taking history and mythological characters as examples, taking some difficult subject matter and elaborates on them with relative ease. Instead of being verbose, or even condescending, Grose is empathetic and endearing in her humor - goading the reader only for being too expectant of the idea of romance, and being too hard on oneself.

She tackles Freud and his theories, the lives and actions of Greek Gods, mythological entities and their epic quests, and just the general every day human being - and she handles it all with much grace and charm. In a friendly, simple language Grose manages to coax the reader into pondering, "Why is it that we do the things we do, when in love?". She tries to explain the impulses via which we act when feeling the emotion of love, desire, lust etc.

I received this book as part of a "First Reads" program through Goodreads, and although I am not a fan of "self-help" novels - this book absolutely barreled through my automatic aversion to liking it, and I fell quite in love with it. I loved the humor, the sensibility and the general lack of obtuseness for the sake of sounding like an "expert" on the matters of love. This book is a wonderfully simple and charming read, especially if you are trying to understand your actions, or the actions of others, when in love or when in the pursuit of love/romance. I say, read it - it may not make you an expert on love, but it is sure to make you smile.… (more)