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1-Page Summary of Reasons to Stay Alive
Overview
What would you do if your mind started failing you, and you could no longer make sense of the world? What if this happened suddenly?
When Matt Haig was twenty-two, he had a panic attack so severe that he couldn’t leave the house. He then realized that he needed to figure out how to embrace his discomfort and feel it fully.
Haig developed a method of fighting fear with fear. He refused to hide in his comfort zone, and books helped him learn how to understand his experiences.
Here are the key points of this article:
Abraham Lincoln was a great leader because he was depressed.
Running and meditation can make us feel better about ourselves, while also helping us to be more productive at work.
Men die by suicide more often than women do because they don’t know how to communicate their feelings with others or seek help when needed.
Big Idea #1: Matt Haig suddenly began to experience intense anxiety, and it affected every aspect of his life.
Matt Haig was 24 years old and living in Ibiza, Spain. He worked at a nightclub over the summer with his girlfriend. One day he had an intense panic attack that kept him from getting out of bed.
Haig could not sleep for three days. He was constantly panicked and worried he would die from his panic attacks.
The main point here is that Matt Haig began to experience anxiety, and it affected his life.
Haig once felt so desperate that he considered suicide. He went to the edge of a cliff near his home and almost jumped off it, but then he thought about how much pain it would cause his family if he did.
Haig’s girlfriend, Andrea, was understandably worried. They visited the doctor who prescribed some tranquilizers to help Haig relax and get back home in the United Kingdom. His parents were waiting for him when he arrived there. He seemed fine to them but on the inside, his thoughts were anything but peaceful and calm. He was depressed which made him feel worthless and futureless while at the same time being anxious about everything that could go wrong in his life.
Even going to the corner store was a hassle. Haig would begin having trouble breathing and hallucinate that demons were taunting him as soon as he left his house. He’d have visions of something terrible happening, or see things that weren’t there.
When he walked into the shop, his anxiety would get worse. He’d feel overwhelmed by all the products with their bright labels and couldn’t find the milk. When he finally found it, he still had to interact with the cashier who wouldn’t know what was going on in his head.
Big Idea #2: There were warning signs that could have alerted Haig to the coming breakdown.
Can anxiety and depression really strike like a bolt from the blue? It can feel that way, but it’s not. People who have these feelings experience them for a long time before they reach their full intensity.
The key message in this paragraph is that there were signs of trouble ahead for Haig. He remembers being anxious as a child and fearing the worst when his parents went out at night. His anxiety increased during adolescence, when he suffered from separation anxiety while camping with other boys. One time, he was so anxious that he punched his arm through a barn window while sleeping.
Haig’s anxiety didn’t go away when he went to college, either. In fact, it was just as bad. He tried drinking alcohol but that only dulled his anxiety for a little while. There was no way to avoid speaking in public, even though Haig really wanted to hide and hyperventilate instead of presenting his ideas in class. The pressure became too much for him and he started feeling detached from reality and seeing himself from the outside looking in on himself.
