A Helpful Anxiety Read

I've almost been off my anti depressants three months now, and boy has it been a journey of ups and downs. I recently finished a book though that I want to recommend to ANYONE who has anxiety. 

The Worry Trick by David A. Carbonell

I've started a LOT of books about anxiety. And I've never finished any of them. They all either lost my attention, or caused me more stress and anxiety by giving lots and lots of case studies about people and the situations in their lives that caused them anxiety. I understand that many of these are to show people who might not have realized they have anxiety yet the situations in their lives where it's presenting itself, but they just gave me more things to stress about. I'd just started my first grown up job, and I hadn't even thought to worry about a lot of those things, but now that they mentioned it, I was worried about it.

This book has some examples, but not too many. The chapters are short and easy to follow, and there is a summary at the end of each of them. Some anxiety books give quite a few exercises to do, but this one has much less, and each of them were very effective for me. Since there weren't a million, I had time to sit down and do them. 

I've done therapy before, I've tried mindfulness, I've done research, but there were a few key points from this book that have seriously changed my life and the way that I look at it. Here are a few:

1.  There is an explanation about how the amygdala works and functions. I've always known that the amygdala is the fear center of the brain, and is in charge of pumping adrenaline. Otherwise, that was it. To give a quick summary of what I learned, the amygdala is also in charge of our fight or flight response. That response can save your life by getting you to react in seconds without thinking. Because of this, the amygdala can only send messages to the 'logic' center of the brain, it can't receive them. This is so if you're about to be hit by a bus, your amygdala can take over and get you to run out of the way. If that connection was a two way street, your logic center might fight your amygdala and say, are we really going to get hit? It's not going that fast. Should I go right or left?

In a life or death situation, you don't want your logic center getting in the way, you want to move. 

Because of this, you can't logic yourself out of anxiety. Telling yourself that your fears are unrealistic, or that everything is going to be fine, is NOT GOING TO WORK. Those two parts of the brain are not talking to each other. 

The amygdala also learns from association. So, if you have a panic attack in a McDonalds, that's why every time you pass one afterwards, you start to feel a little nervous. Your fear center is putting McDonald's and panic attacks together, and is wary. The amygdala also only learns while it is activated. That's why exposure therapy is so affective. You have to get yourself in a state of fear or nervousness and learn that spiders are okay in that state, before you can move on. To tame your anxiety, you're going to have to do it while you're feeling it. 

2.  If you're actively worrying, then you are not in immediate danger. The fact that you have the brain space to be worrying about every situation imaginable means that you're alright. If you were in immediate danger, your brain and senses would be focused on other things. 

3. Trying not to think about something doesn't help. Trying to push down bothersome thoughts and feelings only makes them come back stronger. You wouldn't be reading the book if that strategy was working for you, so you have to try the opposite of everything you've been doing.

 One exercise has you think of your worst fear EVER. Then repeat that fear out loud twenty five times. Exaggerate it. For example, I might say, I'm going to vomit so hard all of my guts come out and then I'm going to die alone and rot in hell. When I say that twenty five times, that particular thought loses power. It really works, I promise. I've used it during a few panic attacks. 

4. There's one exercise that I have taped on my wall. It says that thoughts are ideas. Feelings are emotions. Thoughts can be true of false. Emotional responses don't involve true or false. 

Instead of I feel like I'm in danger, the truth is that I think I'm in danger, and I feel fear. 

There were so many other things in the book that have helped me and hit home. The author looks at why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy CBT doesn't always work with anxiety. That section really hit home for me, and was put so well I could never summarize it with justice. There are so many things in there, and anxiety is such a crazy animal that what helped me isn't going to help one person, but I'm sure that a section I thought was boring is exactly what someone else needs. I have been recommending this book to everyone I know. If you read it, let me know what you think!