The Narrowing: A Journey Through Anxiety and the Body - Hardcover

Shaker, Dr Alexandra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593493400 ISBN 13: 9780593493403

Publisher: Viking, 2025

Synopsis

An exploration of the connection between anxiety and the body by a clinical psychologist, drawing from the latest research alongside historical and cultural insights, arguing that only through understanding anxiety's grasp on us can we transform it into resilience

Most of us are intimately familiar with anxiety, and with its increasing hold on our minds, our hopes and plans, and our bodies. But how well do we really understand it, and what can we do to transform it into something new--into resilience, or courage, or creativity?

In this extraordinary book, Dr. Alexandra Shaker, a clinical psychologist, takes us on a journey through the body--from brain to blood to heart to guts--to examine the connections between our emotional, psychological, and physical lives. She unravels what the body can teach us about anxiety, and what we can learn from our long cultural history of the anxious impulse.

Melding psychology, neuroscience, history, and literature, she considers why--despite all the checklists and scientific advancements--we are still struggling to outrun our oldest terrors, and how a new approach focused on accepting anxiety as part of the human condition can help revolutionise our relationship with it.

About this title

About the Author

Alexandra Shaker, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist with a background across inpatient and outpatient treatment settings. She has experience in research, teaching, and clinical practice. Dr. Shaker's writing is an interdisciplinary exploration of the human condition: she integrates psychology, literature, history, anthropology, and language to speak to the meaning and vitality we find in the stories we tell one another and ourselves. Dr. Shaker received her PhD in clinical psychology from The New School for Social Research and conducted her doctoral research at the Brief Psychotherapy Research Program at Mount Sinai Beth Israel. She completed her clinical training at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Shaker also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in perinatal mental health at The Motherhood Center of New York, where she held a position as a clinical psychologist and is now a clinical consultant.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593493400
• ISBN 13: 9780593493403
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288