Anxiety is a powerful force. It makes us question ourselves and our decisions, causes us to worry about the future, and fills our days with dread and emotional turbulence. Based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), this book is designed to help you break the cycle of worry.

The catastrophe clause could be any hypothetical scenario, so it just becomes a game of Mad Libs. When you ignore the “what if” clause and focus on whatever unlikely drama is filling the catastrophe clause, you have a steady stream of what feel like legitimate concerns. This book started out slow. I saw myself in many of the examples the author gave of his past clients and their worries. The first half just didn't do it for me. While some of the strategies he listed may help others, I found most of what he was suggesting quite boring, having almost DNF'ed the book. But I pushed through and I was glad I did. By the time I read through the second half I had highlighted and noted so many passages I might as well have just made a huge note of the whole book. I couldn't put it down because everything he said described me so well and all of the suggestions he gave to counter the anxious thoughts and chronic worries I could see myself doing. Once I had finished I felt relieved that someone finally understood some of the toxic thought processes I was trapped in. To me, this book could be greatly improved if the prolonged repetition were edited. For example, it seems the first seven chapters could easily be pruned into only two. (Later insert: **But see my wondering about this in the next paragraph, as well as the first comment to this review.) Debra Kissen, PhD, MHSA, clinical director at Light on Anxiety Treatment Center, and coauthor of The Panic Workbook for Teens The goal? You’ll no longer be in the bad habit of automatically ignoring or distracting yourself from your worries. When you’re not distracted, you can catch the “what if’s” and start seeing them for the game of “let’s pretend” that they really are. Take the time to humor your worries

As with everything in your life, you have some sort of relationship with your worry. And just like anything else – work, alcohol, your partner – this relationship can be healthy or unhealthy. Moreover, when you interact with the external world, you get more involved with realistic rules of thumb. When you’re in your head, by contrast, you can imagine anything. This is why anticipatory worry is almost always worse than anything that actually happens in real life—there are no rules in your head, anything seems possible! In the external world, the rules of reality apply.” something bad happens and I hadn’t worried about it, I’ll feel guilty. This belief leads you to treat worry as a duty, or maybe even a beneficial activity. If you shirk your duty, bad things will happen and they’ll be your fault.” How about you’re driving along and you realize you accidentally ran a red light? A car accident definitely could happen at this stage, but you’re still not thinking “What if I have a car accident?” Your instincts are taking over, and you’re trying to stop that accident happening. The book was easy, funny when necessary, and full of advices and practical behaviours. I related to what it described and I was like : "what? Me too!!"

The book spent WAY too much time giving examples of HOW people worry. My wife didn't even make it to the solutions part of the book (the final third) without getting anxiety. Whenever you notice a “what if” thought, eat one of those Tic Tacs. This is how you will count your worries. After a week, you’ll be much better at noticing these thoughts, and start observing them passively.By publishing your document, the content will be optimally indexed by Google via AI and sorted into the right category for over 500 million ePaper readers on YUMPU.