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 Broken Mirror

In a world obsessed with appearances, it is not surprising that body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD, has manifested itself as a troubling and relatively common problem for many individuals. In The Broken Mirror, the first and most definitive book on BDD, Dr. Katharine Phillips draws on years of clinical practice, scientific research, and professional evaluations of over 700 patients to bring readers her expertise and experience with this often debilitating illness.

BDD causes sufferers to be obsessed by perceived flaws in their appearance and may afflict as much as two percent of the population, or nearly five million people. Many sufferers are able to function well in society, but remain secretly obsessed by their “hideous acne” or “horrible nose,” sneaking constant peeks at a pocket mirror, or spending hours at a time redoing makeup. Others find their lives disintegrate because of their appearance obsessions. It is not an uncommon disorder, simply a hidden one, since sufferers are often embarrassed to tell even their closest friends about their concerns. The author presents the stories and interviews of over 200 individuals to show the many different behaviors and symptoms of BDD, and includes a quick self-assessment questionnaire. Four new chapters provide updated information on treatment of BDD, frequently obtained treatments to be avoided, and more detailed advice for family members and friends on how to cope with the disorder.

Left untreated, the torment of BDD can lead to psychiatric hospitalization and sometimes suicide. With treatment, many sufferers are able to lead normal lives. The Broken Mirror is literally a lifesaving handbook for sufferers, their families, and their doctors.

Check Mates

Check Mates is an original collection of fiction and poetry written about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by the people who know best – Obsessive-Compulsives. Split between ‘realism’ and stories of the ‘beyond’, there is a diverse range of styles and genres, and a mix of rage, frustration, tears, violence, pain, heartache, subversion,love, strength, metaphysics, philosophy, friendship, hope, and even a bit of humour. And maybe – just maybe – it will knock away a few stereotypes.

The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Overcoming Anxiety

Anxiety is not your fault. There are many factors that contribute to developing a mind that is prone to intense anxiety, and if you have such a mind, there are many things you can do to change the way it works. Research has shown that practicing kindness and compassion soothes experiences of fear, while self-critical thoughts tend to intensify them. If you become frustrated with your anxious reactions or consistently try to talk yourself out of your anxiety, it may be time to try a different approach.

The compassion-focused therapy (CFT) based program in The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Overcoming Anxiety will help you learn to be kinder to yourself while you soothe your anxious impulses. Complete with worksheets, exercises, and meditation practices, this book includes everything you need to learn mindfulness and compassion-focused skills for redirecting your anxious thoughts and allowing yourself to enjoy a more peaceful life.

By learning to be a compassionate witness to your own pain, you will also learn to be fully present in the moment, and develop healthier, more fluid ways of responding to life’s struggles. This resourceful guide aims to help you understand the nature of your anxiety, the best ways of dealing with it, and how your mind can help you cope with it.

The Anxious Thoughts Workbook

Are your thoughts getting in the way of living your life? Based in cutting-edge neuroscience and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this important workbook will help you regain control from unwanted thoughts and get back to the things that matter.

Do you have unwanted, disturbing, upsetting, or weird thoughts that you just can’t seem to shake? Violent or sexual thoughts that cause you to feel ashamed, anxious, or depressed? Maybe you think they mean something about you—and that thought scares you even more. While you may not be able to shut your thoughts off permanently, you can gain distance from them and improve your life. This step-by-step guide will show you how.

In The Anxious Thoughts Workbook, renowned psychologist David A. Clark presents a targeted, transdiagnostic approach to help you move past unwanted mental intrusions. You’ll learn how to change the destructive patterns responsible for the persistence of anxious and depressive thinking, and strip these upsetting thoughts of their meaning—a process Clark refers to as “detoxing.” Finally, you’ll learn to manage the feelings of shame that can accompany these thoughts.

Are you ready to move past your thoughts and start focusing on more important things? If so, the proven-effective techniques in this workbook will help you get started.

Healing Walks for Hard Times

Sometimes life’s hurdles literally stop us in our tracks, sapping vitality and preventing us from participating fully in our own lives and the lives of those we love. Carolyn Scott Kortge recognizes that a key to joyous re-engagement with the world can be—just as literally—to get moving again. With a focus on walking for wellness, Kortge outlines a compassionate, practical program for navigating your way through life’s physical, emotional, and spiritual hard times.

Within the supportive framework of this eight-week walking program you set your own pace, taking steps that restore a sense of balance and order, even if you’re weighed down by the lethargy and loss of control that often accompany illness, depression, or trauma. Discover how to link mental focus with physical movement to create healing periods of stress release. Learn to match your steps with meditation in a way that clears a path through confusion. Move forward, literally, both in good times and in tough ones, with mental and physical steps that lead you away from fear or stress and guide you toward wellness and peace. Engage in a path to recovery that attends to not just the physical, but also acknowledges healing as an emotional, spiritual, and mental journey—a journey of survivorship.

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.

Freedom from Anxiety

This book presents hundreds of safe, practical, and effective tools and techniques to alleviate anxiety, an epidemic that affects nearly 20 percent of Americans. Author and seasoned physician Marcey Shapiro, MD, shares how her personal struggle with this widespread syndrome led her to discover that there is not one treatment program that works for everyone and provides a wide range of integrative methods that will help readers find real and transformative relief.

Dr. Shapiro grappled with anxiety on her own path to greater health and wholeness and observed, through her personal experience and that of treating numerous patients who suffer from the heartache and despair that anxiety causes, that finding peace involves a spiritual journey of self-awareness and self-acceptance. She has successfully helped herself and her patients bring ease and peace of mind back into their lives using a diverse assortment of complementary techniques, including dietary changes, visualizations, shifting thoughts, breathing techniques, nutritional supplements, herbs, homeopathy, bodywork, aromatherapy, flower essences, and acupuncture, as well as more commonplace Western techniques such as medication and therapy, when appropriate.

Offering a variety of nondogmatic, empowering tools for enhancing personal growth, Freedom from Anxiety will help anxiety sufferers find ways, many of them free or very low cost, to achieve immediate relief as well as long term care and treatment. It can be read from cover to cover or perused for specific problems or solutions. Readers are able to take advantage of Dr. Shapiro’s vast knowledge and research as well as her engaging personal anecdotes and those from her decades of clinical practice.