Freiya Benson

The Anxiety Book for Trans People is a self help guide written by a trans person for trans people. The author has her own experiences with anxiety, giving this book a very authentic tone. The advice is good, but the thing I took most from this book was simply the validation of another trans person speaking candidly about anxiety.

The book is written in a friendly, down to earth way, and the explanations of anxiety are engaging and easy to understand. The book includes sections where different trans people, including nonbinary people, talk about their own experiences with anxiety. I think reading this will definitely help trans people to feel less alone. Sometimes it can feel like you're the only person who is anxious about certain things, and that everyone around you has their life together, but this book shows that we're all dealing with this together.

It's really nice to see advice for anxiety specifically targeting trans people because so often our experiences are ignored in more general advice. As Benson writes, being trans can add another layer to the more general anxieties that most people experience. It can be hard to pull apart what is just anxiety and what are genuine fears due to being trans in a transphobic world. This book is a starting point for dealing with that, and includes some practical ideas of how to deal with anxiety.

This is a good book that I think any trans person who experiences anxiety will find validating and helpful.… (mere)