Book review: Beyond Anxiety - How to interrupt the dance between anxiety and loneliness
- Phil McAuliffe
- Nov 16, 2025
- 6 min read
Anxiety and loneliness often go hand in hand.
Martha Beck’s Beyond Anxiety shows how curiosity, creativity, and connection can us bring calm, purpose, and meaning.
Hello my friend
This is one of those reviews where I feel that I could copy out quotes verbatim and say something as insightful as, “How cool is this?!”
I’ve resisted that temptation and want to share just two with you from Dr Martha Beck’s Beyond Anxiety.
The first quote is:
‘Three words: anxiety isn’t fear… Fear is like being hunted… Anxiety, on the other hand, is more like being haunted.’ (p. 4)
And the second is what sets this book apart from others I’ve read:
‘I tell you this story as a fair warning. I’ve read many, many books and articles about how to overcome anxiety, but they all stopped at the point of achieving calm. To me, this is like bailing out a sinking boat without plugging the leaks: a good first step but not the best long-term solution – and a sad place to stop when we’re in easy reach of a much, much more joyful way of life. Just dispelling anxiety means constantly bailing, working against the pull of our brain’s negativity bias and the pressures of our anxious society. Move further into the right hemisphere means sailing off on thrilling adventures.’ (pp. 109-110)
If those passages weren’t compelling enough, I’ll give you three reasons why you need to read Martha Beck’s Beyond Anxiety.
Let’s go through these one at a time.
A blueprint for overcoming anxiety and finding calm
Dr Beck’s book offers an empowering, and simple, way through anxiety: curiosity and creativity.
Dr Beck explains how anxiety is the by-product of a mind that has spent a significant amount of time in its left hemisphere. Our left hemisphere is ‘responsible for analytical, logical and verbal thinking, while the right hemisphere is more attuned to sense perceptions, emotions and intuition’ (p. 12). We also live in a world designed by left hemispheres, where things need to make sense, existences justified and reason is always sought. The anxiety we experience isn’t our fault, but a by-product of living in this society that is anxious to its core.
The impact of this is that we get stuck in the left hemisphere, always hustling to prove worth and worthiness through endless doing because that’s how things are done.
True to this article’s second opening quote, Dr Beck gives us a way to spend less time in our left hemispheres and their constant need for us to do to prove our worth and value, and more time in our right hemisphere. That right hemisphere allows us to simply be who we are in any given moment.
She shares ways that we can incorporate the values of calmness, clarity, confidence, curiosity, courage, compassion, connectedness, and creativity into our daily lives to help us spend more time in our right hemispheres simply allowing our authentic selves to be.
In reading this book, you’ll get some outstanding exercises that Dr Beck explains and leads you through. You’ll become familiar with the importance of ‘Chasing your squirrels’ (as a way to incorporate play in your days), ‘Hiring the Kind Detective’ (as a way to work through times when you feel uneasy) and of ‘Trusting Your Chicken’ (trusting that part of your brain that generates ideas when you’re distracted doing something else). For me, Dr Beck’s work is both informative, well researched, and laugh out loud entertaining.
I spent happy hours on a flight and in coffee shops re-reading this book to prepare for this article. I got so lost in the words and concepts that my chuckles and chortles drew the bemused attention of my fellow passengers and caffeine fiends on a few occasions...
The link between anxiety and social disconnection (including loneliness)
Beyond Anxiety is a book about anxiety, but social (dis)connection is baked into its foundations.
Loneliness often has a symbiotic relationship with anxiety. This means that loneliness – left unacknowledged and untended – can develop into social anxiety at a later time and that an earlier experience of social anxiety can be a predictor of loneliness at a later time (source and source (p. 16)).
Does that knowledge surprise you?
It’s interesting to me how we can be more open to admitting experiencing social anxiety but can be reluctant to talk about the loneliness that it dances with.
But understanding this symbiotic relationship provides a way in to interrupt their dance.
Address anxiety and we can address loneliness and other feelings of social disconnection.
As much as I try to avoid doing my own research and self-diagnosing myself (it makes me anxious because I always land on the worst option), Dr Beck’s book helped me understand that I’ve experienced anxiety for as long as I can recall. There’s been this omnipresent sense of doom within me that Beyond Anxiety helped me acknowledge and understand.
The tools and techniques Dr Beck describes helped me understand and come to terms with the anxious creature within me (it’s a fluffy kitten. It’ll make sense once you read the chapter ‘Anxious creatures in an anxious culture’) and take steps to step into my creativity and curiosity. These forays into my right hemisphere have the benefit of helping me feel more meaningfully connected to my authentic self, to those most important to me, and to my communities.
And it’s this kind of meaningful connection that is the antidote to loneliness. Which then calmed the omnipresent sense of doom.
See how that works? It feeds a positive spiral.
Applying Beck’s insights: using anxiety tools to reduce loneliness and improve connection
Following from the previous point, I loved how Dr Beck framed and wrote Beyond Anxiety. I found myself marvelling at her skills and insights.
Indeed, on more than a few occasions, I mentally substituted ‘loneliness’ for ‘anxiety’ and ‘connection’ for ‘calm’ and found that Dr Beck perfectly summarises and describes what we do at HUMANS:CONNECTING to help humans – including you – feel more meaningfully connected.
I found this book to be extremely informative, instructive and entertaining. It’s a powerful combination. I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.
And Dr Beck, should you ever read this review, I want to thank you for your work and how you are in the world. I'd love to connect!
Where you can find Beyond Anxiety
You can find it in your local bookstore or preferred online book retailer.
Get more great advice and support
For more ideas and perspectives on social connection and the loneliness we experience when we feel disconnected, check out all our content at HUMANS:CONNECTING.
Our blog articles and podcast episodes (listen or watch on YouTube) are full of wisdom, advice, and support for you and all the humans you love.
Closing invitation
If this article resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Send it directly, post it on your socials, or pass it along in your networks.
Connection Starter Course
Meaningful connection is the antidote to loneliness.
We understand that it’s tough to know what kind of connection is meaningful for you, so that’s why we created the Connection Starter Course: to help you explore what meaningful connection looks like for you.
The Connection Starter Course walks you through how you can feel connected to your authentic self, those most important to you, and to your wider community.
This understanding helps you develop your personal Connection Plan, your roadmap to becoming, and staying, meaningfully connected.
That’s where we’ll leave it for now
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Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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