CALM THE F*CK DOWN by Sarah Knight

Only pick this one up if you’re looking to kill some time and read some very generic chapters on anxiety management based solely on Knight’s own experience.

Otherwise, I could spare you the time just by listing below the main recommendations of the book:

• Don’t minimise the size of your problem in order to make yourself feel better.

• Avoiding your problems won’t make them go away.

• You may not have control over a certain situation but you do have control on how you react to it.

• Accept the things you can’t change and be brave enough to change those that you can.

• Don’t worry about the “what-ifs” , they may not happen.

• Understand that not everything is under your control.

In other words, the author attempts to fight anxiety with logic. I can see how that could work for mild day to day anxieties where you can still apply your common sense and manage the situation rationally.

All in all, I would have liked more depth of content but as it turned out, the only promising thing for me was the title.

“To survive and thrive in these moments, you need to ACKNOWLEDGE what’s happened, ACCEPT the parts you can’t control, and ADDRESS the parts you can.”