Book Review: “The Art of Calm” by Roger Hutchison
The Aftermath of Anxiety
This may come as a surprise to many of my readers, but I’ve been known to suffer from anxiety from time to time. This is something that hasn’t been diagnosed professionally and I’m generally doing better these days by trying to have a more optimistic outlook, but there was a time in my life when going to the bathroom to vomit or dry heave into the toilet was the first thing I did after waking up in the morning. This still happens from time to time, but I’m getting better at being comfortable in my skin and facing every dawn with a changed mindset. Thus, I was curious when The Art of Calm, an upcoming book release from a publisher I’ve never heard of, caught my attention, given the subject matter and how it might relate to my occasional problem with the early-morning jitters. I was simply looking for books to review on the Edelweiss+ publishing platform where I pick up a lot of my new releases, and this volume was simply there for the taking. No need to contact the publisher and convince them to give me access to an electronic galley; the file to download was already available. It was as though I was meant to read this book. Well, I can say that The Art of Calm has its assets and its liabilities, like any book. The book’s usefulness to the reader is going to come down to whether the fact that author Roger Hutchison is a fellow sufferer of general anxiety disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is appealing or if you wanted to hear from someone holding a doctorate in psychology.
Still, the book may be helpful to some. What Hutchison does is use more than 30 words as a springboard for a chapter — words such as “hope,” “anger,” and “beginning” — and then he tells a personal story about each one of them. He then invites readers to take part in an activity, such as drawing a still life without one’s pen or pencil leaving the paper or eyes focused on anything but the object being drawn, and then asks readers a series of questions to reflect on that activity. From there, Hutchison — who is church director in Houston, Texas, when he’s not writing books for children or adults — offers a simple prayer that he’s invented that reflects further on the word that has been chosen. While the author is a Christian, his intent (according to the book) was to write something that anyone could pick up. As such, this guide is probably best suited for small group discussions, as people can meet in a communal space and discuss it a chapter at a time and perhaps do some of the activities.
One of the great things about a book on anxiety written by someone who may not be an expert, per se, is that it affords a springboard to talk about things that may be personal and uncomfortable about the disorder, giving it a bit of an everyman tone. Hutchison discusses having a panic attack in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 that ruined his house (and insurance wouldn’t cover the damages) and how that led him to the emergency room at a hospital. He talks about the things — such as his love for art and especially photography — that gave him a baseline of normalcy to cling onto when the world went topsy-turvy again with COVID in 2020. In a sense, the author is right when he says we need a book on how to deal with anxiety more than ever in the post-Trump era. One of the sobering aspects of this read — and one thing that wasn’t delved into enough, I felt — is how pathetic it is to obtain help if you have a mental health disorder and live in the United States. Hutchison briefly relays just how frustrating getting help was for him, which, to his credit, means that the last part of the book is taken up with a generous smattering of resources people can turn to for assistance if they need to.
Overall, I am on the fence about The Art of Calm. I think there are some really good activities tucked away in between the covers and I enjoyed hearing personal stories from the author, which made him all the more human and relatable. I suppose, though, I wanted to hear from a qualified therapist — but that’s just me. Some may find the book inspiring and I found the prayers that Hutchison has provided here have an almost meditative-like quality to them. If you were to press me, I would recommend trying to hunt down a copy of the book once it’s published and reading a chapter or two in your favourite bookstore or library. From three, you might be able to get a sense and a flavour as to whether this is the book for you or not. I can be charitable and say that this self-help guide doesn’t wear out its welcome, being fairly brief. And you can’t knock a book too badly when it’s a tome that includes a recipe for cookies at the very end! While I don’t think reading The Art of Calm isn’t going to help me with my now occasional vomiting issue in a sense, it contains some practical activities to try out. As with anything written by the layman for the layman, my ultimate recommendation — at the risk of repeating myself — is that you just might want to try before you buy this one.
Roger Hutchison’s The Art of Calm: Spiritual Exercises for the Anxious Soul will be published by Morehouse Publishing on April 18, 2023.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
