An A-to-Z Tour of an Anxious Life

What if you tried to organize all of your anxieties, one letter at a time, from A to Z?

That's exactly what Justine Cadwell did in The ABCs of My Neuroses: Tales from an Anxious Life. It's a daringly honest, deeply relatable, and often very funny memoir about living with anxiety, with every chapter arranged alphabetically, one neurosis at a time.

There's something both clever and poignant about that structure. Anxiety rarely feels orderly from the inside. It spills into everything: relationships, parenting, body image, spending, and the endless search for approval. By sorting her experiences into an alphabet, Cadwell brings a sense of order to a life that often felt chaotic, and she invites readers to see how anxiety shows up in so many different corners of everyday life.

Cadwell, a Midwestern millennial, weaves in extracts from her own journals, love letters, and text message conversations. Those real documents give the book remarkable intimacy. Readers get to see anxious thoughts unfolding in real time, the private journal entries, the over-analyzed texts, the love letters full of hope and worry. Anyone who has ever reread a message five times before sending it will feel instantly understood.

One of the book's most interesting threads is the blurry line between an endearing quirk and something more serious. Everyone has little worries and habits. Where does a personality trait end and a mental health condition begin? Cadwell explores that question with honesty and nuance, showing how anxiety can start as something that seems harmless, or even charming, and gradually grow into something that controls how a person lives.

If you recognize yourself in that description, you're far from alone. Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health conditions in the United States, affecting tens of millions of adults every year. Yet many people struggle quietly, assuming they're just "worriers" or that everyone feels this way. Books like this one help break that silence. By sharing her own experiences so openly, Cadwell helps readers feel less alone, and may help some recognize that what they're experiencing has a name, and that support is available.

But this isn't only a book about mental illness. It's also about surviving modern life. Cadwell explores universal topics with refreshing candor: sex and body image hang-ups, parenting woes, and the slippery slope from needing external validation to consumerism and codependency. These are pressures many people feel in a world of social media, constant comparison, and endless noise. Her humor keeps even the heaviest topics approachable, and her honesty makes them resonate.

Cadwell's writing has appeared in The Collapsar and other literary publications, and her voice is sharp, self-aware, and warm. She manages to laugh at herself without ever dismissing the real pain of anxiety, a balance that makes the book both entertaining and genuinely meaningful.

The ABCs of My Neuroses is a must-read for anyone who lives with anxiety, loves someone who does, or simply wants to better understand the many faces of mental health. It's an exploration, a conversation, and ultimately a celebration of resilience in the face of a very anxious world.

The ABCs of My Neuroses: Tales from an Anxious Life by Justine Cadwell is available now in paperback and hardcover.