Anxiety For Dummies

Introduction 1 About This Book 1 Foolish Assumptions 2 Icons Used in This Book 2 Beyond the Book 3 Where to Go from Here 3 Part 1: Detecting and Exposing Anxiety 5 Chapter 1: Analyzing and Attacking Anxiety 7 Anxiety: Everybody’s Doing It 8 Tabulating the Costs of Anxiety 9 What does anxiety cost you? 10 The cost to society 10 Recognizing the Symptoms of Anxiety 11 Thinking anxiously 11 Behaving anxiously 11 Finding anxiety in your body 12 Seeking Help for Your Anxiety 14 Matching symptoms and therapies 14 Finding the right help 16 Chapter 2: Examining What Anxiety is All About 17 Anxiety: Help or Hindrance? 18 What Anxiety Looks Like 20 Worrywarts 20 Avoiding people 22 Beyond everyday anxiety 24 Panic’s companion 26 Phobias: Spiders, snakes, airplanes, and other scary things 27 Rare symptoms of anxiety in adults 29 How Anxiety Differs from Other Emotional Disorders 30 Chapter 3: Investigating the Brain and Biology 33 Examining the Anxious Brain 33 How the brain’s circuits connect 34 Neurotransmitters 35 Preparing to Fight or Flee 36 Mimicking Anxiety: Drugs, Diet, and Diseases 39 Exploring anxiety-mimicking drugs 39 Ingesting calmness into your diet 41 Investigating medical anxiety imposters 42 Chapter 4: Clearing the Roadblocks to Change 45 Digging Out the Roots of Anxiety 46 It’s in my genes! 47 It’s how I was raised! 47 It’s the world’s fault! 48 Finding Self-Acceptance 49 Having Second Thoughts about Change 51 Deciding to Get the Show on the Road 53 Arguing with your arguments 53 Taking baby steps 54 Watching Worries Come and Go 57 Following your fears 57 Writing about your worries 59 Getting Help from Others 60 Seeking the right therapies 60 Seeking the right therapist 61 Part 2: Battling Anxiety 63 Chapter 5: Understanding Feelings 65 What Do You Feel and Why? 66 Feelings are sensational! 67 Feelings tell you what to do 68 Feelings often arise from your thoughts 68 Distinguishing Thoughts from Feelings 69 Blocking the blues 69 Getting in touch with your feelings 70 Getting in touch with your thoughts 73 Looking at the Feeling Cycle in Action 76 Chapter 6: Rethinking Your Thoughts 79 Tackling Your Thoughts 80 Weighing the evidence 81 Rethinking risk 83 Deconstructing worrisome scenarios 85 Cultivating Calm Thinking 91 Considering a “friend’s” perspective 91 Creating calm 92 Watching Out for Worry Words 94 Stacking sticks into bonfires of anxiety 94 Encountering extremist words 95 Misrepresenting with all-or-none, black-or-white words 96 Running into judging words 97 Turning to victim words 98 Refuting and Replacing Your Worry Words 98 Exorcising your extremist words 99 Disputing all-or-none 100 Judging the judge 100 Vanquishing victim words 101 Chapter 7: Busting Up Your Anxious Assumptions 103 Understanding Anxious Assumptions 104 Sizing Up Anxious Assumptions 105 Recognizing anxious assumptions 105 Assessing your anxious assumptions 106 Coming Down with a Case of Anxious Assumptions 108 Acquiring assumptions in childhood 109 Shattering your reasonable assumptions 109 Challenging Those Nasty Assumptions: Running a Cost/Benefit Analysis 110 Analyzing perfection 111 Tabulating approval 113 Reviewing vulnerability 113 Counting up control 114 Debating dependency 115 Challenging your anxious assumptions 116 Designing Calm, Balanced Assumptions 116 Tempering perfectionist tendencies 117 Balancing an approval addict 118 Balancing vulnerability 119 Relaxing control 120 Diminishing dependency 120 Above All: Be Kind to Yourself! 121 Chapter 8: Mindful Acceptance 123 Accepting Anxiety? Hey, That’s a Switch! 124 Taking a calm, dispassionate view 124 Tolerating uncertainty 126 Being patient with yourself 127 Appreciating your imperfections 128 Connecting with the Here and Now 130 Making contact with the present 132 Putting worries about the future to rest 133 Being tolerant and flexible 134 Accepting Mindfulness into Your Life 134 Savoring Spirituality 135 Chapter 9: Facing Fear 137 All About Avoidance 137 Avoiding emotions 138 Breaking the avoidance cycle 140 Accepting discomfort and distress 141 Exposure: Coming to Grips with Your Fears 142 Understanding your fears 143 Constructing an exposure list 145 Facing your fears (gulp) 146 Conquering Different Types of Fears 148 Waging war on worry 148 Fighting phobias 150 Pushing through panic 151 Expecting the Impossible 153 Chapter 10: Medications and Other Biological Options 155 Making Up Your Mind About Medications 156 The downside of medications 156 The upside of medications 157 Understanding Medication Options 158 Antidepressants 159 Benzodiazepines 162 Miscellaneous tranquilizers 163 Beta blockers 163 Mood stabilizers 164 Medical marijuana 165 Searching for Vitamins and Supplements 165 Viva vitamins! 168 Sifting through the slew of supplements 168 Stimulating the Brain 170 Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) 170 Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) 171 Part 3: Letting Go of the Battle 173 Chapter 11: Looking at Lifestyle 175 Friends and Family — Can’t Live with ’em, Can’t Live without ’em 175 Staying connected to others 176 Delegating for extra time 177 Just saying “no” 177 Ready Exorcise! 178 Don’t wait for willpower — Just do it! 180 Working in your workout 181 The ABCs of Getting Your Zs 182 Creating a sleep haven 183 Following a few relaxing routines 184 Taking action when sleep just won’t come 186 Designing Calm Diets 187 Enjoying small, frequent portions 188 Following nutritional common sense 188 Chapter 12: Meditating as Part of a Healthy Lifestyle 189 Meditation Basics 190 What’s So Good About Meditating? 191 Meditation Methods 192 Breathing meditation 192 Body scan meditation 193 Tasting meditation 194 Walking meditation 195 More meditation methods 196 Discovering Other Meditation Resources 197 Buyer Beware: Meditation Myths 197 Part 4: Zeroing in on Specific Worries 199 Chapter 13: Emotional Preparedness During a Pandemic 201 Pushing Through Pandemic-Related Anxiety and Stress 202 Accepting emotions 203 Distinguishing between useful and useless pandemicrelated anxiety 204 Gathering emergency supplies 206 Setting daily goals 207 Staying connected 208 Figuring out Fact versus Fiction 209 Is this the end of the world? 211 Is it safe to leave your house? 211 Chapter 14: Facing a Career Crisis and Financial Woes 213 Meeting Job Worries Head-On 214 Shoring up your resume 214 Finding flexibility in your career view 215 Considering careers with stability 216 Keeping the right focus 217 Taking Stock of Your Resources 218 Tallying up your financial balance sheet 218 Knowing your personal assets and liabilities 220 Committing to a New Game Plan 221 Setting short-term goals 221 Planning for the long haul 223 Chapter 15: Keeping Steady When the World is Shaking 225 Assessing Your Risks 226 Looking at the likelihood of dying from a natural disaster 226 Tabulating your personal risks 228 Assessing risks from climate change 229 Preparing a Plan for Realistic Worries 230 Imagining and Dealing with the Worst 232 Rethinking uncertainty and anxiety 233 Rethinking your ability to cope 233 Going right at your worries 235 Doing Your Part to Improve the World 236 Helping the environment 237 Volunteering in disasters 237 Chapter 16: Racism and Anxiety 239 Racism: The Elephant in the Room and the Snake in the Grass 240 Structural racism 241 Interpersonal racism 243 Internalized racism 245 How Racism Leads to Anxiety 246 Coping with Racism 248 Finding empowerment 249 Staying connected 249 Accepting emotion 250 Taking care of yourself 251 Fighting Racism 251 Becoming an ally 251 Educating yourself 252 Speaking up 252 Teaching your children well 253 Exploring the unfamiliar 253 Chapter 17: Keeping Out of Danger 255 Evaluating Your Actual, Personal Risks 255 Avoiding Unnecessary Risks 257 Actions for keeping health risks low 257 Actions for keeping daily life risks low 258 Dealing with Trauma-Related Anxiety 259 Thinking through what happened 260 Exposing yourself to the incident 261 Accepting a Certain Degree of Uncertainty 261 Choosing to put yourself in high-risk situations 261 Experiencing danger in everyday places 262 Part 5: Helping Others with Anxiety 265 Chapter 18: When a Family Member or Friend Suffers from Anxiety 267 When Your Loved One Suffers from Anxiety 268 Talking Together about Anxiety 270 Helping without owning the albatross 271 Avoiding blame 271 Giving reassurance: When help turns into harm 271 Guiding the Way 274 Coaching the right way 274 Looking at a coach in action 276 Teaming Up against Anxiety 278 Accepting Anxiety with Love 279 Chapter 19: Recognizing Anxiety in Kids 281 Separating Normal from Abnormal 282 Reviewing the Most Common Anxieties in Children 284 Separation anxiety 284 Constant worry 286 Phobias 286 Problems connecting with others 288 Silent anxiety 289 Chapter 20: Helping Kids Conquer Anxiety 291 Nipping Anxiety in the Bud 292 Early mastery experiences 292 Fine-tuning emotions 293 Inoculating against anxiety 294 Resisting the desire to comfort and reassure 295 Taking precautions via parenting style 296 Helping Already Anxious Children 298 Helping yourself first 298 Modeling mellow 299 Leading children through anxiety 300 Exorcizing anxiety through exercise 301 Getting Help from Others 303 Who to get help from 303 What to expect at the first session 304 What happens in therapy? 304 Part 6: The Part of Tens 307 Chapter 21: Ten Approaches That Just Don’t Work 309 Avoiding What Makes You Anxious 309 Whining and Complaining 310 Seeking Comfort 310 Looking for a Quick Fix 310 Sipping Herbal Tea 311 Drowning Your Sorrows 311 Trying Too Hard 311 Hoping for Miracles 311 Taking Medication as a Solution 312 Getting Help on the Couch 312 Chapter 22: Ten Ways to Deal with Relapse 313 Expecting Anxiety 313 Counting the Swallows 314 Checking Out Why Anxiety Returned 314 Seeing a Doctor 314 Revisiting What Worked Before 315 Doing Something Different 315 Getting Support 315 Considering Booster Sessions 316 Doubling Down on Exposure 316 Accepting Anxiety 317 Chapter 23: Ten Signs That You Need Professional Help 319 Having Suicidal Thoughts or Plans 319 Feeling Hopeless 320 Handling Anxiety and Depression 320 Trying to No Avail 321 Struggling at Home 321 Dealing with Major Problems at Work 321 Suffering from Severe Obsessions or Compulsions 321 Understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 322 Going through Sleepless Nights 322 Getting High 322 Finding Help 323 Appendix: Resources For You 325 Index 329