Scott Stossel
Scott Stossel
Scott Hanford Stossel is an American journalist and editor. He is the editor of The Atlantic magazine, and previously served as executive editor of The American Prospect magazine. He is a graduate of Harvard University. He is the son of Anne Hanford and Dr. Thomas P. Stossel, the brother of cartoonist Sage Stossel, and the nephew of TV journalist John Stossel. In 2014, Stossel was awarded the Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth7 August 1969
CountryUnited States of America
I am living on the razor's edge between success and failure, adulation and humiliation - between justifying my existence and revealing my unworthiness to be alive.
Hugh Grant, who several times has announced that he was thinking of retiring from acting, has said that he suffers from panic attacks when the cameras start rolling.
To say that my anxiety is reducible to the ions in my amygdala is as limiting as saying that my personality or my soul is reducible to the molecules that make up my brain cells or to the genes that underwrote them.
I don't want to be in a position that could make me vomit, like air travel. I've purloined airsick bags and stuffed them everywhere, just in case I ever feel the need to throw up. I haven't vomited since 1977, but I think about it all the time. I recognize that it's irrational, but I'd rather jump out of a window than vomit.
During high school, I would purposely lose tennis and squash matches to escape the agony of anxiety that competitive situations would provoke in me.
People who suffer from anxiety are very good at hiding it. That can often be a contributor to the anxiety because the gap between the internal perception and the external impression can feel so large.
There's a book that's critical to understanding anxiety, a 17th-century book, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy,' by Robert Burton. I wanted to write something like that.
To grapple with and understand anxiety is, in some sense, to grapple with and understand the human condition.
Barbra Streisand developed overwhelming performance anxiety at the height of her career; for 27 years she refused to perform for the general public, appearing live only in private clubs and at charity events, where she presumably believed the pressure on her was less intense.
During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse's office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same.
My parents were not perfect, but no one's parents are. As childhoods go, mine was pretty comfortable and good in a lot of ways, and yet I still ended up with anxiety.
An astonishing portion of my life is built around trying to evade vomiting and preparing for the eventuality that I might.
I wanted to put a human face on anxiety disorders. I thought people who suffer from anxiety might recognize themselves and gain some comfort from my story and for those who don't suffer from anxiety disorders gain some understanding.
As recently as 1979, neither panic attacks nor panic disorder officially existed.