The Anxiety Toolkit

Do you overthink before taking action? Are you prone to making negative predictions? Do you worry about the worst that could happen? Do you take negative feedback very hard? Are you self-critical? Does anything less than perfect performance feel like failure? If any of these issues resonate with you, you're probably suffering from some degree of anxiety, and you're not alone. The good news: while reducing your anxiety level to zero isn't possible or useful (anxiety can actually be helpful!), you can learn to successfully manage symptoms - such as excessive rumination, hesitation, fear of criticism and paralysing perfection. In The Anxiety Toolkit , Dr. Alice Boyes translates powerful, evidence-based tools used in therapy clinics into tips and tricks you can employ in everyday life. Whether you have an anxiety disorder, or are just anxiety-prone by nature, you'll discover how anxiety works, strategies to help you cope with common anxiety 'stuck' points and a confidence that - anxious or not - you have all the tools you need to succeed in life and work.

ldquo;The Anxiety Toolkit provides quick, simple and practical tips that the anxious person can use now.”
—Robert L. Leahy, Ph.D., Director, American Institute for Cognitive Therapy

“In this innovative handbook, Dr. Boyes identifies common habits that underlie different types of anxiety.  She then offers clear strategies to drop the fight and become more gentle with ourselves. If anxiety has limited your life in any way, this book is an excellent place to start the healing process.”
—Christopher Germer, PhD, Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School; Co-editor, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy; author, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion
 
“The Anxiety Toolkit is an investment in wellness. Based on years of clinical practice and research, Dr. Alice Boyes has written a real-world roadmap for all of us who struggle with making decisions and feeling stuck.”
—Chris Guillebeau, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness of Pursuit and The $100 Startup

“Buying self-help books is much like buying furniture that requires assembly---the picture on the cover always looks great but what really matters is the clarity and usability of the instructions inside. Alice Boyes' mastery at breaking down psychological concepts and strategies into easy-to-understand clear steps anyone can apply, the many self-assessment quizzes she provides, and the overall thoroughness of her approach makes The Anxiety Toolkit an incredibly useful and practical book. If you suffer from anxiety or think you might and are serious about changing how it impacts your life, this is the book for you!”
---Guy Winch, Ph.D., author of Emotional First Aid and The Squeaky Wheel

“I have read many books on how to manage and work with anxiety. This might be the most powerful and accessible. Why? Because every strategy in here is based on the best scientific evidence available. Many readers will improve the quality of their lives with this toolkit.”
---Dr. Todd B. Kashdan, author of OK: The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why being your whole self - not just your “good” self - drives success and fulfillment

"An easy-to-follow...workbook on understanding and managing anxiety...Boyes’s tone is friendly but never saccharine, and endlessly practical. Her tips and exercises, drawn from cognitive behavioral therapies that she herself has administered, should make a valuable reference for anxiety sufferers, and an ideal companion to readers undergoing psychotherapy themselves."
---*Publishers Weekly
*

"Therapist Boyes' "toolkit" is filled with "nuts-and-bolts" remedies for combating anxiety-driven inertia. Boyes, who claims that she, too, has been "anxiety-prone," begins by explaining that anxiety itself isn't the problem. It can actually be beneficial by making us more cautious and methodical in our tasks. The problem lies in how we become trapped by our real or perceived fears and are unable to act. Boyes concentrates on five areas—hesitancy, rumination and worry, perfectionism, fear of feedback, and avoidance—where anxiety can lead to bottlenecks. She begins each chapter with a quiz, allowing readers to gauge their needs, and then offers "experiments" suggesting specific, safe breakthrough techniques such as visualizing positive alternative outcomes or remembering successes. The therapist takes care to suggest nonthreatening options and to remind readers that working with their tendencies, not against them, delivers greater results. Far from the pat "don't worry, be happy" approach, Boyes' practical, easy-to-follow methods will be reassuring and useful to a wide range of readers."
---Booklist 

Auteur
Dr. Alice Boyes is an emotions expert and a popular blogger for Psychology Today. Her research has been published by The American Psychological Association.

Échantillon de lecture

PART 1

Understanding Yourself and Your Anxiety

CHAPTER 1

How Anxiety Works

Does any of this sound familiar?

   • You overthink before taking action.
   • You’re prone to making negative predictions.
   • You worry about the worst that could happen.
   • You take negative feedback very hard.
   • You’re self-critical.
   • Anything less than extraordinary performance feels like failure.

If yes, you’re not alone, and you’re probably suffering from some degree of anxiety. Anxiety is an emotional state characterized by feelings of worry, nervousness, and unease. Anxiety disorders affect 40 million Americans over the age of 18, and “everyday anxiety” affects a far greater number.1

Based on research, we know that similar psychological mechanisms underlie all types and degrees of anxiety, even if forms of anxiety can look very different on the surface. No matter how your anxiety manifests itself, you’ll find the information you’re about to read relevant and useful, whether you have an anxiety disorder or are, like me, just anxiety-prone by nature.

How Anxiety Works

Anxiety shows up as a variety of symptoms, from behavioral and emotional to physical and cognitive (which just means thoughts). No anxious person has the exact same set of symptoms, but everyone has some of each type. See the table on the next page for examples of each component.

Although anxiety can sometimes seem like a flaw, it’s actually an evolutionary advantage, a hypervigilance system that causes us to pause and scan the environment. Feeling anxious triggers us to start looking out for potential threats. If you detect a potential danger, it’s not supposed to be easy for you to stop thinking about that threat. While that’s great when you’re a caveman worried about protecting your family, it’s not as great when you’re an employee convinced you’re getting fired.

For many of us who suffer from anxiety, our anxiety alarms fire too often when there isn’t a good reason to be excessively cautious. Why does this happen? We may have more sensitive anxiety systems. Or we may have been doing things to decrease our anxiety in the short term, such as avoiding things that make us feel anxious, that have actually increased it in the long term.

Having some false anxiety alarms—where you see threats that don’t exist or worry about things that don’t eventuate—isn’t a defect in your system. Think of it in caveman terms: In a life-and-death sense, failing to notice a real threat (termed a false negative) is more of a problem than register…