Anchored

I don't feel like I can adequately review this book, I simply don't have the education necessary to ascertain the quality of the information presented here. As someone with no background beyond a strong interest in health and someone with at least a moderate dose of natural skepticism, it's really difficult for me to make a recommendation on whether anyone else should read this book one way or another.

With that caveat out of the way, I will say that a lot of this book seemed reasonable, there's a lot of very specific technical information presented about how our nervous system works, what drives the responses we get from it and how that then has a profound impact on how we feel, both physically and emotionally. It sounds quite legitimate, well understood and technically informative, right up until the author starts talking about “energy,” at which point pseudoscience alarms started going off in earnest.

Part of the problem is that I listened to the audiobook, I didn't read it, so where I'd normally look at how well sourced the arguments are and how valid they themselves seem was unavailable. Unfortunately, Audible/Amazon reviews were zero help in categorizing accuracy, shocking, right?

Ultimately, I think there is value here, I do think there's a lot of potentially informative material here and some that might still be helpful as a thought exercise even if it isn't accurate. It also was very motivating to continue researching the topic further, hopefully with better material that didn't happen to be one of the few options available from my library's Libby catalogue.

If you’re interested, read it, but do so with a skeptical eye toward the science presented.