The Worry Solution

Our brains are hardwired for worry. While our ancient ancestors had a legitimate use for the fight-or-flight instinct, today what was once a matter of survival has become the stuff of sleepless nights and anxiety-filled days. At its best, worry is a way for us to turn over and solve a problem in our minds. But for many, worry becomes a negative cycle of unnecessary suffering. Now, based on cutting-edge brain science, Dr. Martin Rossman has developed a program to help you break the worry cycle—and transform worry into a positive force.

In The Worry Solution, Dr. Rossman gives you an easy-to-follow plan for taking control of your reactions to stress and anxiety. Using proven clinical techniques that harness the very power of imagination that creates worry and stress, you will learn the five basic skills that will help you to clarify your worries, sort them into those you can and cannot do something about, and tap the wisdom buried deep within you to help solve problems creatively. At the heart of the program is the use of guided imagery and creative visualization, techniques that invigorate the emotional and intuitive parts of the brain to add to and enhance logical intelligence.

Not only can you start to see a change in your stress levels immediately, but with regular practice, you may literally alter the worry pathways in your brain—and “hardwire” yourself for calmness and clarity. Grounded in cutting-edge science and wonderfully accessible, The Worry Solution is a powerful and practical guide to living your best life—healthier, happier, and free from unnecessary stress.

The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just flick a switch and make your shyness go away? No more worrying about what others think about you, no more embarrassment in front of other people. You could just relax and feel comfortable and confident, the way you probably think everyone else feels.

If you struggle with shyness, you’re all too familiar with the feeling of not knowing what to do or say, and you’ll do anything to avoid feeling that way. But, most likely, you also know that you’re missing out on a lot—friendships, potential relationships, and fun. You’ve chosen this book because you’re ready to stop hiding behind your shyness and start enjoying everything life has to offer.

The worksheets and exercises in The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens will help you learn to handle awkward social situations with grace and confidence, so you can make real connections with people you want to get to know. Based in proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the skills you learn will also help you speak up for yourself when you need to and stop dreading class projects that put you on the spot. Actually, there’s no aspect of your life that this workbook won’t help. So why let shyness rule your life one day longer? Let this workbook guide the way to a more confident, outgoing you.

Take Control of OCD

Take Control of OCD: The Ultimate Guide for Kids With OCD is a unique guide just for kids ages 10–16 with obsessive compulsive disorder to help them take control of their disorder and find success in school and in life. Using a cognitive-behavioral therapy method to challenge obsessive thinking patterns and promote gradual exposure, the book takes kids step-by-step through a ladder-based process to conquer their fears and demolish their worries.

Focusing on helping kids change their obsessive thoughts, tolerate uncertainty, develop positive self-talk and stress management, advocate for their needs in school, find successful relaxation procedures, and face their fears, the book includes workbook-style pages for kids to complete. Along with sharing the thoughts and worries of real-life kids with OCD, the author also provides tons of advice, information, and ideas perfect for kids and teens wanting to overcome OCD. This handy guidebook is sure to help children with OCD change their behaviors and conquer their worries, discovering a sense of accomplishment and achievement.

Monkey Mind

Daniel Smith’s Monkey Mind is the stunning articulation of what it is like to live with anxiety. As he travels through anxiety’s demonic layers, Smith defangs the disorder with great humor and evocatively expresses its self-destructive absurdities and painful internal coherence. Aaron Beck, the most influential doctor in modern psychotherapy, says that “Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron’s Darkness Visible did for depression.” Neurologist and bestselling writer Oliver Sacks says, “I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity… I broke out into explosive laughter again and again.” Here, finally, comes relief and recognition to all those who want someone to put what they feel, or what their loved ones feel, into words.

The Many Faces of Anxiety

Real-world examples abound in this resource that provides a basic context for understanding how anxiety affects people and those around them. The author shares 12 cases of various clients with whom she has worked and paints detailed, clear pictures of the many reasons people become anxious and the disguises anxiety takes in their lives. Tools and techniques for reducing anxiety are interspersed throughout each section. The dozen stories in this book are told in layman’s language with a great deal of humor and compassion and will aid sufferers, families, and friends in bringing patience and awareness to the process of identifying, understanding, and healing from panic and anxiety.

The Healing Power of the Breath

Here’s a drug-free, side-effect free solution to common stress and mood problems—developed by two physicians. Millions of Americans suffer from mood problems and stress-related issues including anxiety, depression, insomnia, and trauma-induced emotions and behaviors; and most would prefer not to take medication for their conditions due to troublesome side effects, withdrawal symptoms, and disappointing success rates.

Drs. Richard P. Brown and Patricia L. Gerbarg provide a drug-free alternative that works through a range of simple breathing techniques drawn from yoga, Buddhist meditation, the Chinese practice of qigong, Orthodox Christian monks, and other sources. These methods have been scientifically shown to be effective in alleviating specific stress and mood challenges such as anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and many others. The authors explain how breathing practices activate communication pathways between the mind and the body, positively impacting the brain and calming the stress response. The enclosed audio program guides readers through the techniques and helps make these breathing practices an ongoing part of daily life.

This book and CD set includes breathing techniques to relieve

• anxiety and depression
• trauma-related emotions and behaviors
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• insomnia
• addiction-related behaviors

It also offers breathing techniques to enhance concentration, peak performance, and personal relationships.

Yoga for Anxiety

Many of us face daily demands and overwhelming difficulties that cause seemingly uncontrollable feelings of anxiety and fear. When you feel this way, it’s healing to calm yourself and to reclaim your sense of innate goodness and well-being. For centuries, yoga has offered a quiet retreat away from life’s pressures and has enabled us to reconnect to our inner wisdom and peace.

Regular yoga practice has been proven to calm stress, enhance concentration, and reduce the symptoms of anxiety. This book offers meditations, mindfulness practices, self-inquiry exercises, and yoga poses that soothe anxious feelings and develop mental clarity. Before long, you’ll free yourself from the anxiety and fears that hold you back and learn to live with a more open heart and resilient mind. Just as yoga helps you feel more at home in your body, the mental and physical practices in Yoga for Anxiety help you increase your sense of contentment in life.

My Age of Anxiety

As recently as thirty-five years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood.

Drawing on his own long-standing battle with anxiety, Stossel presents an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand the condition from medical, cultural, philosophical, and experiential perspectives. He ranges from the earliest medical reports of Galen and Hippocrates, through later observations by Robert Burton and Søren Kierkegaard, to the investigations by great nineteenth-century scientists, such as Charles Darwin, William James, and Sigmund Freud, as they began to explore its sources and causes, to the latest research by neuroscientists and geneticists. Stossel reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as on the afflicted generations of his own family. His portrait of anxiety reveals not only the emotion’s myriad manifestations and the anguish anxiety produces but also the countless psychotherapies, medications, and other (often outlandish) treatments that have been developed to counteract it. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll—its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze—while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it.

My Age of Anxiety is learned and empathetic, humorous and inspirational, offering the reader great insight into the biological, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction.