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Barnes and Noble says books on anxiety are soaring
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y agoPolitical and environmental turmoil make it hard not to be anxious in these times.
- mythrwy 8y agoSo what's different :) ?
- the_new_guy_29 8y agoIn comparison to what?
- WalterBright 8y agoThe Cuban Missile Crisis? The Cold War?
- qubax 8y agoDuring the cuban missile crisis, wasn't there only 3 networks on TV and they broadcast news once or twice a day? You really can't compare that with today's 24/7 cable news and media barrage.
- digitalsushi 8y agoWe're experiencing the effect of the Earth's medical doctor saying "Hrm, that doesn't look good" over the past decade, in slow motion. Each person is free to talk about it endlessly, or stick their head in the sand, but all of us are in some way expressing anxiety over the situation we're increasingly realizing we're in. Oh, but how lovely it would be to learn we're just dopes and nothing was wrong at all!
- Maven911 8y agoSpeaking of which, any suggestions on any good books on anxiety from the HN crowd?
- mmanfrin 8y agoFour Agreements by Don Ruiz and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
- codeafin 8y agoMeditations by Marcus Aurelius, definitely.
- rthomas6 8y agoAlso Seneca's Moral letters to Lucilius. The great thing about this and Meditations is that they're freely available online! Meditations: http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.2.two.html http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.2.two.html Seneca's Moral Letters: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius
- lsalvatore 8y agoanything by Eckhart Tolle
- rthomas6 8y agoI greatly prefer The Power of Now over his other books. IMO he does not practice what he preaches as much as he used to, and that influences his writing in small ways. Just my unenlightened opinion, though.
- lsalvatore 8y agoAlan Watts was an alcoholic. We're all human and prone to temptation and addiction, and even the ego. Curious about the flaws of Eckhart, or maybe not..
- 8y ago
- basementcat 8y agoSales of books on anxiety are only increasing in places like California and New York. In other parts of the country, sales of such books are decreasing. https://www.mysanantonio.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Barnes-Noble-says-books-about-anxiety-are-13123563.php https://www.mysanantonio.com/technology/businessinsider/arti...
- megaman22 8y agoLike most things, trends in those states can juice the absolute numbers enough to move the entire country statistically.
- simmanian 8y agoI wonder if this means that there's something unique about California and New York, or that these two states are trend setters and other states will soon follow suit.
- ralusek 8y agoI just think it's where the country's highest earners are. Higher paid positions usually have higher levels of responsibility, higher levels of responsibility cause higher levels of stress.
- bpicolo 8y agoNew York is not on that list - it only specifies CA, MI, and MA as "top risers"
- meaniehusker 8y agourbanization, city life. look at tokyo. mental health and anxiety increases in these highly crowded areas.
- horsecaptin 8y agoCompetition, both perceived and real increases as density goes up. We're not wired well to handle it. Especially since so many lack the deep roots to feel truly secure.
- zomg 8y agoOh yeah, Barnes and Noble!
- modells 8y agoPack more people closer together, damage the earth more and more and reduced resources, life for the average person will be a greater and greater struggle: depression and anxiety will likely be the norm, not the exception. Likely explains the emotional aspects of the opioid crisis as well. I humbly suggest having a homestead somewhere like Oregon and alternate two weeks of telecommuting, if just to release anxieties about the future, microfarming and gardening are more satisfying than one can imagine.
- poulsbohemian 8y ago>I humbly suggest having a homestead somewhere like Oregon and alternate two weeks of telecommuting, if just to release anxieties about the future, microfarming and gardening are more satisfying than one can imagine. SHHHHH!!! This basically what my family has; don't tell the world, we like the quiet!!!!
- martythemaniak 8y agoThis advice is about finding some exception on the edges of society. It won't change anything and certainly doesn't scale past single digit percentages. It's basically the non-drug version of "Turn on, tune in, drop out"
- jstarfish 8y agoMoving to Oregon and telecommuting is not an option for most people. Nobody with real problems gives a damn about density or the environment. They're too busy trying to cope with the anxieties of losing their job to automation, whether or not they can afford healthcare, and where they are going to live in artificially heated market (while getting reamed over monthly rent). Oh, and we're expected to have saved millions of dollars by the time we're 65, since Social Security may or may not be around. It is a time of many uncertainties, all of which fuel anxiety. Life is hard and unclear if you aren't privileged.
- WalterBright 8y ago> It is a time of many uncertainties, all of which fuel anxiety. Life is hard and unclear if you aren't privileged. When and where was that never the case? Life in America, relative to history, is currently very, very good. For example, there's no famine. Childhood diseases are a thing of the past. Polio was defeated. No armies ravaging the countryside. No cold war. Health care is better than it ever was before. People grow tall and healthy. Best of all, there is no caste or nobility system. People can, and often do, rise from nothing to wealth.
- bena 8y agoRomanticized mental disorders probably also have something to do with this. Claiming to have some anxiety and depression is pretty much par for course these days. What's more ironic is that the trend is to suggest that you're secretly depressed and anxious with suicidal thoughts and hiding it with humor by... pretty much telling people that you're secretly depressed and anxious with suicidal thoughts and hide it with humor. Which is kind of contradictory. But then again, it's kind of a dick move to question anyone's mental state in such a manner. Because you don't know what's actually going on for the most part. You won't have the whole story most of the time. So if someone says they're anxious or depressed or a third thing, accept it, let them have it. Worst case scenario, they're putting on airs and they get the attention and validation they're craving. Big deal. If this leads to less stigmatization about mental health in general and people who genuinely need help, get it, I don't care if only 0.01% of people who claim it have it. Not to mention, even if you aren't afflicted to the degree that it negatively impacts your life, learning how to manage anxiety can't be a bad thing.
- drb91 8y agoIt seems to me you’re painting people with a broad brush. Many people who talk about anxiety (or depression) talk about it because they are dealing with it, successfully or no—awareness does not imply inaction. Why would you question them? If you think they have more capacity to handle life than they think they do, this would probably be a reassuring and helpful thing to state. This assumption that people would prefer a comfortable self conception to addressing their problems is a dangerous slope to go down. People are not this simple in aggregate or individually.
- bena 8y agoEither I know far more depressed and anxious people than is statistically likely or there is some degree of over-reporting going on. And I think I explicitly said that I don't question them. I keep it to myself, because if I'm right to question them, the rewards are minimal, but if I'm wrong, then the risks are greater. I also think you're reading me wrong. It's not "You're stronger than you think you are." It's more like a child over-selling their accident for attention. I don't believe that it's as serious as being made out. And where did I say anyone is simple in the aggregate or individually? I noted certain trends, that's all. And while people are not simple in aggregate or individually, statistics can't be beat.
- CM30 8y agoGiven the status of the media and political discourse right now, can you blame anyone for being anxious? If you went on what the former say about Trump (or randoms on social media sites say about anything) you'd think we were on the verge of World War 3. See another articles and internet posters screaming about how the 'other side' will destroy the world and all you hold dear, and well, I'd want a few books on anxiety too.
- pmart123 8y agoSlightly off topic, but given Amazon is off conquering the world, does anyone else feel as though Barnes & Noble could put together a data driven blog regarding trending books, topics, how different books are read, etc. much like OkCupid did for dating a while back? It might not be as sexy of a topic, but it could captivate an audience to think about Barnes & Noble when you buy a book?
- swagasaurus-rex 8y agoThey could make a dating app that pairs you with people of similar literary taste. It'd probably be a better match than those ok cupid algorithms, and an instant ice breaker.
- conanbatt 8y agoThat was an actual hackathon project at Scribd. Instead, I wanted to do reading-sentiment showing which parts of the book were exciting by measuring engagement, to learn years later porn-sites had been doing that successfully for a long time. I guess Freud had a point.
- imcoconut 8y agoThis is a very good idea.
- rc_bhg 8y agoTrump effect?
- seatdrummer 8y agoCould be. Could also be the people that are bombarding the average citizen with all of the atrocities committed by trump, from how many scoops of ice cream he gets to the trade war. People love to hate trump, but it also becomes tiresome and stressful when people are constantly bombarded with analysis of tweets, off hand comments, and other decreasingly trivial things, and then finally mix in all of the instability of global politics.
- r00fus 8y agoSpending 2+ weeks abroad on vacation reduced my anxiety levels significantly - partly due to the fact that noone talked about Trump much at all (and when they did I simply ignored or changed the subject). Very refreshing.
- justcorrect 8y agoNot a surprise with what the media has been doing. They've done it for every (R) President, but it gets worse every time. They protested Reagan, worried he was going to start a nuclear war with Soviet Russia. Worried he was going to take away rights from women. Worried what he was going to do in Central America. They called Bush 43 worse then Bin Laden, the worlds greatest terrorist. Hollywood commissioned movies like Fahrenheit 9/11 to try and conflate national tragedies with certain political views. Now with Trump, you have straight out suppression of certain viewpoints, implicit acceptance of violence against those in power, implicit acceptance of 'acceptable' racism, and constant ratcheting up of rhetoric by those who lost. I remember what Jon Stewart said on the Daily Show in 2012, to Republicans. "You LOST, it's SUPPOSED to taste like a shit sandwich!"
- chess19 8y agoDoes anyone else think technology has a lot to do with this? Recall the experiment where a rat is placed in a cage with a "pleasure button" that stimulates reward centers in its brain. The rat proceeds to never stop pressing the button. I believe that things like social media act in the same way. Not to mention smartphones, "clickbait", video games. Machine learning algorithms that increase a service's abilities as a pleasure button. The philosophy behind HN is that popular community websites have lower quality content. In my view, this is simply a "regression towards the mean" of people wanting a dopamine rush.
- Kagerjay 8y agoOfftopic but I recently went to a Barnes and Noble after 5+ years of never going to one. They sell toys and legos now. Things you would have found at Toys R Us. Maybe this isn't new and I'm just slightly out of date on these things
- bena 8y agoNot entirely new. Bookstores have been slowly expanding their ancillary offerings. I think it has to do a lot with tie-ins. Now bookstores sell movies and music as well. So a book gets adapted into a movie, you can sell the book, the movie, the soundtrack, the tie-in collectibles, etc.
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