SCOTT STOSSEL

Some people say that in stressful situations I can seem unflappable, and I think that's partly because I'm always kind of internally flapped.

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.

An astonishing portion of my life is built around trying to evade vomiting and preparing for the eventuality that I might.

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.

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.

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.

As recently as 1979, neither panic attacks nor panic disorder officially existed.

During high school, I would purposely lose tennis and squash matches to escape the agony of anxiety that competitive situations would provoke in me.

There's a vast encyclopedia of fears and phobias, and pretty much any object, experience, situation you can think of, there is someone who has a phobia of it.

One challenge is trying to extend access to more poorly served communities in rural areas and in the inner city. Sometimes you have kids who are suffering from trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, and they have no way of getting access to the remedies that are available to them.

Many nights, I would begin the evening fueled by caffeine and nicotine, which I needed to propel me out of torpor and hopelessness - only to overshoot into quaking, quivering anxiety.

Carly Simon abandoned the stage for seven years after collapsing from nerves before a concert in Pittsburgh in 1981. When she resumed performing, she would sometimes ask members of her band to spank her before she went onstage, to distract her from her anxiety.

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.

Even though my mom herself was anxious, I think she didn't know how to deal with it in her kid, and my dad just had no conception of what this was about, and sort of didn't even want to acknowledge it.

I have, since the age of about 2, been a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears, and neuroses. And I have, since the age of 10, when I was first taken to a mental hospital for evaluation and then referred to a psychiatrist for treatment, tried in various ways to overcome my anxiety.

There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn't want to give up. It allows you to have foresight. I may not be as empathetic. It's hard to figure out the difference between pathology and personality.

I had no trouble with strangers finding out about my anxiety. It was my friends and colleagues I was concerned about.

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.

When I was 5 and my sister was 3, we went on a family trip, and she ate cheese off the floor at an airport. My mother, a germaphobe, got very upset. My sister, of course, got a stomach virus, and ever since then, I have an aversion to cheese.

Generally speaking, the anxiety will pass, which is easy for me to say when I'm not in the middle of an anxiety attack. When you're in the throes of one, it's hard to feel anything other than utter misery and terror.

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.

Even as economic and political freedoms have advanced enormously and generated huge benefits for humanity, they've also created a great deal of anxiety because every time you have to make a choice, there's anxiety about making the wrong one.

Anxiety has afflicted me all my life.

There are lots of things, including changing the kind of inner dialog, that can mitigate anxiety. And yes, there are people who have the glass half full and glass half empty, and I'm afraid the glass is going to break and I'll cut myself on the shards.