Anxious Attachment

All psychiatric diagnoses have their socio-historical moments (currently in vogue: ADHD), but the two that most of us face at some point in our lives are depression and anxiety. As a therapist, I often discuss the latter as a response to other emotions — like anger and sadness — that have difficulty finding expression. Or as David A. Robertson writes in All the Little Monsters, “It can make you feel anything and everything and often several symptoms at once. Anxiety can be an onslaught.”

Countless books have emerged in the last decade on the proliferation of mental health challenges. Some are pop psychology, others are academic, and many more blend cultural criticism, medical writing, and personal essay. (At the same time, the rise of autofiction reveals another kind of anxious narrative, one that jettisons plot in favour of an obsessive consideration of the day-to-day.) This work sits somewhere between self-help and artist’s memoir. A two‑time winner of Governor General’s Literary Awards, Robertson is prolific; he works across genres, including literary fiction, children’s books, graphic novels, and non-fiction, often exploring his Cree heritage. Drawing on both anecdotes and research, he looks directly at how severe anxiety has shaped every aspect of his life.

The prologue, “The Monster Speaks,” finds Robertson at a writers’ festival in Calgary in 2019, struggling to make his way to a panel about mental health. After nervously pacing back and forth in his hotel room, he started walking toward the event with his co-panellists Alicia Elliott and Shelagh Rogers (who penned the introduction to this book). “As we passed a restaurant,” he remembers, “a panic attack hit me with the force of a truck.” In documenting this experience — which he shared with the two and with the audience — he explains that his project is an attempt to make sense of a story fuelled by irrational fear. “Writing this book has become a necessity,” he confesses.

In nine chapters, the Manitoba author charts the way his anxiety has mutated over time and how he has adapted to those changes. He attributes this lifelong condition to his fear of death —“the unknowable chasm of infinity”— which took root in childhood after he watched his grandfather die of ALS. During adolescence, Robertson began experiencing irregular heartbeats. In the aughts, after a game of ultimate frisbee, he had an episode of arrhythmia that required cardioversion and eventually an operation. An early chapter describes the onset of hypochondria, revealing that his health-related worries have brought him to the emergency room on many occasions. “If I’d been right before,” he says of the circular logic of confirmation bias, “I would be right again.”

All the Little Monsters is well crafted, full of shifting tones that reflect the author’s changing moods. Some passages consist of clauses that restlessly tumble into one another, while others flow at the intimate pace of a raconteur. Between digressions into difficult memories, Robertson alludes to wider discourses about trauma, including the increasing evidence that it can create visible genetic markers across generations. He also details a difficult period in the fall of 2010 that unfortunately coincided with some literary success. “You would not be able to tell,” he says, describing a book launch in Winnipeg, “that I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown.” To this day, he regrets not being able to enjoy what “should’ve been an amazing night”— one that he views as a symbol of “stolen joy, stolen moments, stolen time.” To further understand the decline, which also impacted his ability to parent, he sought professional help.

Broadly, there are two talk therapy routes: cognitive and somatic. The former is what we typically think of as counselling, while the latter includes physical treatments such as EMDR, which “asks that you move your eyes in a certain way while you process traumatic experiences.” It isn’t clear if the author, who benefited from both, continues to see a therapist. “The difficult thing for me was choosing the right support,” he admits, “because it’s far too easy to confuse a crutch and support.”

The same might be said about the medications he has taken over the years. Robertson mentions metoprolol (a beta blocker used to slow heart rate) and bupropion (an antidepressant). He raises concerns about the long-term use of alprazolam, commonly referred to by the brand name Xanax. While this class of drugs quickly reduces panic attack symptoms, he cautions against their addictive nature. He confesses to leaning on them, much as he once leaned on alcohol, to avoid pain. “By far the most effective treatment for my mental health challenges,” he writes, “has been sharing with others.”

With All the Little Monsters, Robertson offers the reader a bare image of himself along with his open-ended thoughts on how to endure emotional turbulence. “I want you to feel as if we’ve sat together,” he says. In the final chapter, he invokes a fable of two wolves living inside one person. The tale is a simple metaphor for internal conflict: whichever wolf you feed — depression or hope — will become stronger. As someone familiar with both sides of the therapist-client relationship, I admire Robertson’s vulnerability and distilled advice for living alongside your weaknesses. Accepting “those pesky creatures” on your shoulders, he suggests, is an important step in telling your story.