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Beyond Anxiety: What To Expect On Your Path To Freedom
There is life beyond anxiety …
You know the struggle. The unconscious part of you fights to keep anxiety alive while your conscious mind becomes more and more curious about what lies beyond anxiety. The question is, which one of these parts will succeed? If familiarity wins, so will anxiety, but if curiosity and a new approach toward uncertainty succeed, your true divine-self will begin to rise from beyond the shadows.
This book will give you a glimpse into what to expect along your anxiety-healing journey and how to thrive post-anxiety disorder. With this knowledge, you will become more open-minded, understanding, and compassionate toward your new inner and outer experiences and develop deep self-acceptance and peace.
It’s time to move beyond the addiction to suffering; it’s time to prepare for your anxiety-healing journey and all that comes with it.
— Dennis Simsek
You know the struggle. The unconscious part of you fights to keep anxiety alive while your conscious mind becomes more and more curious about what lies beyond anxiety. The question is, which one of these parts will succeed? If familiarity wins, so will anxiety, but if curiosity and a new approach toward uncertainty succeed, your true divine-self will begin to rise from beyond the shadows.
This book will give you a glimpse into what to expect along your anxiety-healing journey and how to thrive post-anxiety disorder. With this knowledge, you will become more open-minded, understanding, and compassionate toward your new inner and outer experiences and develop deep self-acceptance and peace.
It’s time to move beyond the addiction to suffering; it’s time to prepare for your anxiety-healing journey and all that comes with it.
— Dennis Simsek
155 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 28, 2021
24 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
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April 11, 2023
'Anxiety Guy' Dennis Simsek describes Beyond Anxiety as a book about the afterlife - not life after death, but "life after the life we thought was real for us". His book fills an important gap in the literature on anxiety - one which many others don't acknowledge at all. That a life beyond anxiety is actually possible. Simsek's book gives us insight into what such a life can look like.
Beyond Anxiety will primarily appeal to two types of reader: those nearing the end of their journey with anxiety and wondering what's on the other side, and those who have just moved beyond it and are wondering what's next. Readers still in the process of dealing with anxiety (rather than being at the stage of what Simsek calls "unconscious competence") may have a rather different reading experience, and I've tried to keep this in mind.
The book opens with a chapter on how we can view having come through anxiety as a blessing. While this may seem incredible to anyone in the thick of it, Simsek lays out a persuasive case for how recovering from anxiety increases our appreciation for life, adding creativity, laughter, anger, tonality, and congruence. He convinces the reader that time "wasted" with anxiety was not wasted at all - provided we learn from it.
Following chapters deal with a number of experiences people may have moving beyond anxiety, including dealing with disconnection and separation, finding your own God, altering the past, making peace with silence, and learning to not only tolerate but to love uncertainty. Many chapters contrast life during and beyond anxiety, as we move from stagnating to creating, competing to cooperating, and from a focus on results to a focus on process. I found these chapters particularly strong, especially as they draw upon Simsek's experience as a competitive athlete. While his background is, in many respects, quite different to my own (in research academia), I found these sections highly relatable and useful.
In the final chapter, Simsek explains that many who have moved beyond anxiety may feel drawn to helping others, perhaps by writing their own book, perhaps by simply being, without uttering a single word. Personally, I don't feel a need to 'reinvent the wheel' - Simsek's books, combined with his podcasts, videos and websites, are incredibly comprehensive. However, rather than remaining totally silent, I did feel moved to review a few parts of this book in particular for the more skeptical reader.
If you already know and love Simsek's approach, then I have full confidence you will find this book immensely valuable, especially if you don't mind a smattering of new-age thinking. If you are of a more critical mindset (by which I mean discerning rather than negative), please read on.
I found Simsek's approach to spirituality in Chapter 6, Finding Your Own God highly commendable. He describes it as "the shortest chapter, but one of the most necessary in this book. Short because this path you are on will reveal the answers you seek: therefore, there is no need to hear them from me".
I wish the author had taken a similar approach in Chapter 10, Beyond the Physical.
In ch. 6, Simsek recognises the many different beliefs individuals have, and rather than prescribing any one religion, he simply encourages the reader to seek their own answers rather than emulate those of their parents or other authority figures.
By contrast, in ch. 10, Simsek recognises the many different life experiences individuals have, but then goes on to describe specific "laws" and give esoteric definitions. Rather than encouraging the reader to seek their own answers, here, the author seems keen for you to adopt his beliefs, including the belief that one must comb one's body to remove "stagnant energy" stuck in the head, and wash one's hands in saltwater for "proper energy hygiene". While harmless, these pseudo scientific recommendations draw focus somewhat from the sensible and valuable advice about the relationship between breathing methods and muscle tightness, and the problems with surrounding yourself with anxiety-related quotes and conversations.
The "laws" of vibration, relativity, cause and effect, polarity, gestation, rhythm, and transmutation are repeated in ch. 10 (they also appear in ch. 5), and while I have no issue with most of them in philosophical terms (indeed, some may be very useful thinking aids), some of the way these ideas are discussed could do with further expansion or more careful wording, especially for readers still suffering anxiety.
For example, in ch. 5 we are told that the law of cause and effect means that you "ultimately created the reality you live in today". This sort of oversimplification is not only unfortunate in that it can lead victims to place too much blame upon themselves, but it also seems to stand in direct contrast with Simsek's assertion that we are "co-creators" of our lives along with God (which we might view as a recognition of the role of chance), and his emphasis on cooperation with others (which we might view as a recognition of the limitations of our individual agency).
Much of the content of these "laws" can be traced back to the New Thought/Law of Attraction movement which misunderstands/misuses scientific concepts and has been criticised for blaming individuals for the misfortunes that befall them. Indeed, the very first "law" Simsek lists, the Law of Vibration, that everything/everyone has a frequency that attracts what is in harmony with it, he says is "just another way of talking about the law of attraction".
I have no issue with a weak formulation of this "law" - it makes sense, for example, for us to be attracted to people who seem on a similar "wavelength" to us - whether that be positive or negative, and for us to affect and be affected by those we spend time with. It makes sense, for example, for us to have greater "luck" at a job interview when we feel confident rather than incompetent. But what I have presented here is an oversimplification too, an explanation that's missing a step.
There is no evidence to suggest that it's any form of energy field causing these effects. Rather, our positive (or negative) attitude affects how we speak, what we focus on when listening to others, and this in turn affects how others respond to us and how we respond to them. We do not attract a new job or promotion by what the IT Crowd so accurately calls "wishy thinking", but rather, our confidence shines through not in terms of energetic waves, but in the way we walk into the room, hold our body sitting in the interview, shake hands, our tone of voice, and the self-assured nature of our answers - all aspects of confidence that Simsek explains so eloquently elsewhere.
There is no need to theorise undetectable energy and vibrations when there are observable behaviours which perfectly explain observed results.
My concern isn't simply that these explanations are unnecessary - it's that they can lead people to give up on the more practical methods Simsek outlines which really do give results.
Simsek even goes as far as to redefine anxiety, calling it "an energetic imbalance". This seems to be a significant departure from how The Anxiety Guy materials usually describe anxiety, as a form of oversensitisation and a misinterpretation of symptoms, a bundle of changable habits - a definition I prefer, as it is far more actionable in my view. We can train ourselves to be less sensitised and to reframe our symptoms using the tried and tested techniques Simsek describes in his other books, but an "energetic imbalance" can only be addressed through pseudoscientific ritual.
Other overgeneralisations include the repeated theme that "if someone is emotionally healthy, they will be physically healthy". While there are undoubtedly important connections between mental and physical stress (which are frequently underestimated by mainstream medicine), it is certainly not the case that poor physical health is exclusively caused by poor emotional health, and to suggest so has been shown to cause people who suffer ill health even more stress.
Simsek also asserts that "In Eastern traditions, people live through their hearts; in the West, they live through their minds. We sense what is right in the West, but we are afraid to reveal and act on it, whereas in the East, there is more purity and less roboticness in general". Having lived in different parts of Asia for much of my life, and as a scholar of Eastern languages and cultures, this strikes me as an extremely broad generalisation. While there are certainly differences between "East" and "West", there are also many differences within Eastern traditions and within Western traditions, not to mention the existence of many cultures and ideas which do not fit into either box. Saying that those in the West live through their minds, unlike those in the East, dismisses the many scientific and technical contributions Eastern scholars have made to the world, as well as the many contributions Western thinkers and artists have made to the way people across the globe feel.
The idea that there is less "roboticness" in the East is particularly surprising to me - in Japan and Korea, for example, death from overwork is so common it has a special name, and this phenomenon is commonly attributed to the exploitation of workers who robotically adhere to workplace hierarchies.
The notion of levels of "purity" is even more problematic, invoking considerations of moral relativism which really aren't relevant to a book on anxiety. While these debates are interesting, I find these stereotypes add little to the book's value, and may alienate some readers who might otherwise benefit from the book's more useful sections.
Despite the sprinkling of pseudoscience throughout (a little more than in Simsek's other books), most of Beyond Anxiety's content is inspiring, useful, or most often, some combination of the two. This is an impressive feat given Beyond Anxiety is Simsek's fourth book, yet it really is substantially different to anything he's written before - and, I would even say, substantially different to anything anyone else has written that I've come across.
I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who has read Simsek's previous books or followed his podcast/YouTube series, with the following suggestions:
1) if you're still grappling with anxiety, you may find it better to leave reading this one for a little while. Beyond Anxiety is best read when you are feeling confident in yourself and your own ideas. Save this book as a reward for coming through your journey with anxiety.
2) if you find claims like those outlined here off-putting, consider skipping ch. 10. If you live with a chronic illness or disability, you may wish to do the same with ch. 6.
That being said, I don't wish to suggest that being open-minded is a bad thing - on the contrary, some level of open-mindedness is almost certainly necessary to overcome anxiety. But this does not mean that we should uncritically accept the ideas that are presented to us - even when the person presenting them has the best of intentions and has helped many people.
So many Anxiety Guy materials highlight the problems with uncritically adopting the ideas of mainstream society regarding work, health, etc. It is only fair that we apply the same level of critical thinking to ideas outside the mainstream, rather than letting the fact that something is called a "law" or is attributed to someone describing themselves as a "doctor" or "scientist" influence us (neither of which Simsek does, though some of those he cites do).
I offer these reflections on Beyond Anxiety in a spirit of true gratitude for the many good outcomes I have experience as a result of engaging with not only this book, but the whole range of Anxiety Guy materials. They truly are life-changing.
Writing this review, I have two hopes: to convince those who might be put off by some of the elements I found disappointing to keep reading and obtain value from the other parts of the book, and to offer some hopefully constructive feedback.
Although Simsek writes that criticism usually comes from a place of unresolved anger with an unrelated person (a parent, teacher, etc.) I believe this is far from always the case. While it may be true in some instances - and we should certainly avoid being swayed by people lashing out when they're actually upset about something else - there are definitely healthy forms of criticism motivated by a genuine respect for a person's work, and a genuine desire to see it improve even beyond its current form. This is the impetus for my review.
I am genuinely grateful for Simsek's body of work, culminating in Beyond Anxiety (my average score for his books stands at 4.5 stars) and I believe that with a few small changes, it could touch the lives of even more people.
Beyond Anxiety will primarily appeal to two types of reader: those nearing the end of their journey with anxiety and wondering what's on the other side, and those who have just moved beyond it and are wondering what's next. Readers still in the process of dealing with anxiety (rather than being at the stage of what Simsek calls "unconscious competence") may have a rather different reading experience, and I've tried to keep this in mind.
The book opens with a chapter on how we can view having come through anxiety as a blessing. While this may seem incredible to anyone in the thick of it, Simsek lays out a persuasive case for how recovering from anxiety increases our appreciation for life, adding creativity, laughter, anger, tonality, and congruence. He convinces the reader that time "wasted" with anxiety was not wasted at all - provided we learn from it.
Following chapters deal with a number of experiences people may have moving beyond anxiety, including dealing with disconnection and separation, finding your own God, altering the past, making peace with silence, and learning to not only tolerate but to love uncertainty. Many chapters contrast life during and beyond anxiety, as we move from stagnating to creating, competing to cooperating, and from a focus on results to a focus on process. I found these chapters particularly strong, especially as they draw upon Simsek's experience as a competitive athlete. While his background is, in many respects, quite different to my own (in research academia), I found these sections highly relatable and useful.
In the final chapter, Simsek explains that many who have moved beyond anxiety may feel drawn to helping others, perhaps by writing their own book, perhaps by simply being, without uttering a single word. Personally, I don't feel a need to 'reinvent the wheel' - Simsek's books, combined with his podcasts, videos and websites, are incredibly comprehensive. However, rather than remaining totally silent, I did feel moved to review a few parts of this book in particular for the more skeptical reader.
If you already know and love Simsek's approach, then I have full confidence you will find this book immensely valuable, especially if you don't mind a smattering of new-age thinking. If you are of a more critical mindset (by which I mean discerning rather than negative), please read on.
I found Simsek's approach to spirituality in Chapter 6, Finding Your Own God highly commendable. He describes it as "the shortest chapter, but one of the most necessary in this book. Short because this path you are on will reveal the answers you seek: therefore, there is no need to hear them from me".
I wish the author had taken a similar approach in Chapter 10, Beyond the Physical.
In ch. 6, Simsek recognises the many different beliefs individuals have, and rather than prescribing any one religion, he simply encourages the reader to seek their own answers rather than emulate those of their parents or other authority figures.
By contrast, in ch. 10, Simsek recognises the many different life experiences individuals have, but then goes on to describe specific "laws" and give esoteric definitions. Rather than encouraging the reader to seek their own answers, here, the author seems keen for you to adopt his beliefs, including the belief that one must comb one's body to remove "stagnant energy" stuck in the head, and wash one's hands in saltwater for "proper energy hygiene". While harmless, these pseudo scientific recommendations draw focus somewhat from the sensible and valuable advice about the relationship between breathing methods and muscle tightness, and the problems with surrounding yourself with anxiety-related quotes and conversations.
The "laws" of vibration, relativity, cause and effect, polarity, gestation, rhythm, and transmutation are repeated in ch. 10 (they also appear in ch. 5), and while I have no issue with most of them in philosophical terms (indeed, some may be very useful thinking aids), some of the way these ideas are discussed could do with further expansion or more careful wording, especially for readers still suffering anxiety.
For example, in ch. 5 we are told that the law of cause and effect means that you "ultimately created the reality you live in today". This sort of oversimplification is not only unfortunate in that it can lead victims to place too much blame upon themselves, but it also seems to stand in direct contrast with Simsek's assertion that we are "co-creators" of our lives along with God (which we might view as a recognition of the role of chance), and his emphasis on cooperation with others (which we might view as a recognition of the limitations of our individual agency).
Much of the content of these "laws" can be traced back to the New Thought/Law of Attraction movement which misunderstands/misuses scientific concepts and has been criticised for blaming individuals for the misfortunes that befall them. Indeed, the very first "law" Simsek lists, the Law of Vibration, that everything/everyone has a frequency that attracts what is in harmony with it, he says is "just another way of talking about the law of attraction".
I have no issue with a weak formulation of this "law" - it makes sense, for example, for us to be attracted to people who seem on a similar "wavelength" to us - whether that be positive or negative, and for us to affect and be affected by those we spend time with. It makes sense, for example, for us to have greater "luck" at a job interview when we feel confident rather than incompetent. But what I have presented here is an oversimplification too, an explanation that's missing a step.
There is no evidence to suggest that it's any form of energy field causing these effects. Rather, our positive (or negative) attitude affects how we speak, what we focus on when listening to others, and this in turn affects how others respond to us and how we respond to them. We do not attract a new job or promotion by what the IT Crowd so accurately calls "wishy thinking", but rather, our confidence shines through not in terms of energetic waves, but in the way we walk into the room, hold our body sitting in the interview, shake hands, our tone of voice, and the self-assured nature of our answers - all aspects of confidence that Simsek explains so eloquently elsewhere.
There is no need to theorise undetectable energy and vibrations when there are observable behaviours which perfectly explain observed results.
My concern isn't simply that these explanations are unnecessary - it's that they can lead people to give up on the more practical methods Simsek outlines which really do give results.
Simsek even goes as far as to redefine anxiety, calling it "an energetic imbalance". This seems to be a significant departure from how The Anxiety Guy materials usually describe anxiety, as a form of oversensitisation and a misinterpretation of symptoms, a bundle of changable habits - a definition I prefer, as it is far more actionable in my view. We can train ourselves to be less sensitised and to reframe our symptoms using the tried and tested techniques Simsek describes in his other books, but an "energetic imbalance" can only be addressed through pseudoscientific ritual.
Other overgeneralisations include the repeated theme that "if someone is emotionally healthy, they will be physically healthy". While there are undoubtedly important connections between mental and physical stress (which are frequently underestimated by mainstream medicine), it is certainly not the case that poor physical health is exclusively caused by poor emotional health, and to suggest so has been shown to cause people who suffer ill health even more stress.
Simsek also asserts that "In Eastern traditions, people live through their hearts; in the West, they live through their minds. We sense what is right in the West, but we are afraid to reveal and act on it, whereas in the East, there is more purity and less roboticness in general". Having lived in different parts of Asia for much of my life, and as a scholar of Eastern languages and cultures, this strikes me as an extremely broad generalisation. While there are certainly differences between "East" and "West", there are also many differences within Eastern traditions and within Western traditions, not to mention the existence of many cultures and ideas which do not fit into either box. Saying that those in the West live through their minds, unlike those in the East, dismisses the many scientific and technical contributions Eastern scholars have made to the world, as well as the many contributions Western thinkers and artists have made to the way people across the globe feel.
The idea that there is less "roboticness" in the East is particularly surprising to me - in Japan and Korea, for example, death from overwork is so common it has a special name, and this phenomenon is commonly attributed to the exploitation of workers who robotically adhere to workplace hierarchies.
The notion of levels of "purity" is even more problematic, invoking considerations of moral relativism which really aren't relevant to a book on anxiety. While these debates are interesting, I find these stereotypes add little to the book's value, and may alienate some readers who might otherwise benefit from the book's more useful sections.
Despite the sprinkling of pseudoscience throughout (a little more than in Simsek's other books), most of Beyond Anxiety's content is inspiring, useful, or most often, some combination of the two. This is an impressive feat given Beyond Anxiety is Simsek's fourth book, yet it really is substantially different to anything he's written before - and, I would even say, substantially different to anything anyone else has written that I've come across.
I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who has read Simsek's previous books or followed his podcast/YouTube series, with the following suggestions:
1) if you're still grappling with anxiety, you may find it better to leave reading this one for a little while. Beyond Anxiety is best read when you are feeling confident in yourself and your own ideas. Save this book as a reward for coming through your journey with anxiety.
2) if you find claims like those outlined here off-putting, consider skipping ch. 10. If you live with a chronic illness or disability, you may wish to do the same with ch. 6.
That being said, I don't wish to suggest that being open-minded is a bad thing - on the contrary, some level of open-mindedness is almost certainly necessary to overcome anxiety. But this does not mean that we should uncritically accept the ideas that are presented to us - even when the person presenting them has the best of intentions and has helped many people.
So many Anxiety Guy materials highlight the problems with uncritically adopting the ideas of mainstream society regarding work, health, etc. It is only fair that we apply the same level of critical thinking to ideas outside the mainstream, rather than letting the fact that something is called a "law" or is attributed to someone describing themselves as a "doctor" or "scientist" influence us (neither of which Simsek does, though some of those he cites do).
I offer these reflections on Beyond Anxiety in a spirit of true gratitude for the many good outcomes I have experience as a result of engaging with not only this book, but the whole range of Anxiety Guy materials. They truly are life-changing.
Writing this review, I have two hopes: to convince those who might be put off by some of the elements I found disappointing to keep reading and obtain value from the other parts of the book, and to offer some hopefully constructive feedback.
Although Simsek writes that criticism usually comes from a place of unresolved anger with an unrelated person (a parent, teacher, etc.) I believe this is far from always the case. While it may be true in some instances - and we should certainly avoid being swayed by people lashing out when they're actually upset about something else - there are definitely healthy forms of criticism motivated by a genuine respect for a person's work, and a genuine desire to see it improve even beyond its current form. This is the impetus for my review.
I am genuinely grateful for Simsek's body of work, culminating in Beyond Anxiety (my average score for his books stands at 4.5 stars) and I believe that with a few small changes, it could touch the lives of even more people.
September 12, 2022
Wow, beautifully written. The ending chapter brought tears of love and happiness to my eyes.
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