Sarah Wilson has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.

In her new book, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, she directs her intense focus and fierce investigatory skills onto this lifetime companion of hers, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism of her own experiences.

Sarah pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction, a state of yearning that will lead us closer to what really matters.

Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world’s most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.

Sarah Wilson is a New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur. Her career as a journalist spanned 20 years, across television, radio, magazines, newspapers and online. She’s the former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and was the host of the first series of MasterChef Australia, the highest-rating show in Australian history. Sarah is the author of the international bestsellers I Quit Sugar, I Quit Sugar For Life and Simplicious and is director and founder of IQuitSugar.com. Her 8-Week Program has seen more than 1.2 million people quit sugar worldwide.

Sarah blogs on philosophy, anxiety, minimalism, toxin-free living and anti-consumerism at sarahwilson.com, lives in Sydney, rides a bike everywhere, is a compulsive hiker and is eternally curious.

First We make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson is available now from Dymocks. Click here to learn more.