It is a nuance of the human condition that we can be full of contradictions, with each apparent discrepancy equally true. We can be as strong as we are fragile, as connected as we are lonely and as joyful as we are despairing.
So it goes then that the definition of one thing can be many. Mental "illness" can be both a blessing and a curse and it can move us as much as it can hinder us.
![Making the beast beautiful: Sarah Wilson.](/web/20170311004316im_/http://www.watoday.com.au/content/dam/images/g/p/n/v/9/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guvk4i.png/1489191694099.jpg)
This has been the case for Sarah Wilson who, like one in four Australians, experiences anxiety.
"I'm ever vigilant with ensuring I keep it stable and it doesn't spin out, but then equally I live in fear of it erupting," says Wilson, media personality and author of the best-selling I Quit Sugar.
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When it has erupted it has left Wilson "incapacitated", and led to freefall "spirals" where she has grappled with self-harm in an attempt to self-soothe, instances she describes in her new book exploring anxiety, First, We Make The Beast Beautiful.
They are also instances that have been picked up in isolation by other media publications and run lasciviously in a way Wilson describes as "incredibly irresponsible and dangerous".
Describing such instances out of context not only paints mental health issues in a one-dimensional light, it sensationalises a subject that is already shrouded in stigma.
Besides, it misses the point of the 42-year-old's book and her experience of it.
"It is, at a bare minimum, a relentless background buzz but, as an everyday thing I carry anxiety around with me. I'm constantly aware of it, I'm constantly having to avoid situations that could set me off but mostly protecting the people around me from being affected by it or knowing about it," Wilson says.
"Then on the flip side, only with hindsight can I look back and join the dots, and see that it has led me – either directly or not – to some of my most satisfying, rich encounters in life. So without a doubt all the wonderful, great things that happen in my life have stemmed from my anxious journey."
It is a journey that has led her to understand anxiety – something she has experienced since she was a seven-year-old – differently and to explore her connection with herself and others on a deeper level.
"My anxiety is the thing that sees me with an urge to connect, to reach out for more people to go 'no, there is more'. It is the thing that has driven my yearning to explore deeper and deeper," she explains, admitting that anxiety is "contradictory" and "clusterf---y".
"It's not like it's just this manic energy, it's a yearning for meaningfulness and that's a big thing I explore in the book – this spiritual or philosophical realm to anxiety."
The title of her book was taken from a Chinese proverb, described in Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness.
"The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful," Redfield Jamison writes. "In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous."
In her work, Redfield Jamison explores the various artists, poets, novelists, and composers who exhibited the symptoms of mood disorders including Byron, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe.
Research shows that anxiety is an adaptive trait that can be advantageous; driving the pursuit of excellence and vigilance.
This notion that anxiety or bipolar, which Wilson was diagnosed with as a 21-year-old, might serve creativity and deep thinking, resonated with her and provided comfort: it did not, and does not, have to cripple you.
The idea sparked a "relentless exploration", Wilson says, and a realisation.
"It has led me to the point where I go 'yeah, you know what, anxiety plays a very purposeful role in our life and throughout history and throughout human evolution and everyone who has anxiety and are not necessarily disordered, you know they're onto something'," she says.
"That's not to say that it doesn't become a medical problem and the particulars of the condition do mean that it blows out.
"So my book is two-fold in that on the one hand we have to modulate to ensure it doesn't blow out and ensure that we can maintain stability so that we don't tip over but on the other hand I go we don't need to block it out, we don't need to shut it, don't with drugs, or discussion of eliminating it or curing. We have to embrace it and see it as a beautiful thing."
As Redfield Jamison quotes Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Theodore Roethke, who said of his mental health: "The edge is what I have."
Wilson's tips for keeping anxiety in check
– Meditate: even though it's harder when you're anxious
– Have a morning routine: making fewer decisions (wearing the same outfit, having the same breakfast) sets you up to be less anxious
– Walk, preferably out in nature
Sarah Wilson's book First, We Make The Beast Beautiful, is out now (Macmillan, $34.99)
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