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.

Anxiety Disorders: The Caregivers

Given the terrors of the time we live in, it should not surprise us that according to the World Health Organization anxiety disorders and depression are the fastest growing mental health problems in the world. In spite of this unfortunate trend there have been few resources available to the support persons of those afflicted with anxiety disorders. Everyone dealing with these difficult disorders should welcome the expanded third edition of this book, which is specifically designed to help the caregivers of anxiety neurotics. The book begins with clear and detailed explanations of the causes, symptoms and treatments currently available for generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, agoraphobia, depression etc. It then offers hundreds of suggestions, many based on personal experiences, to help those caring for anxious people. The book focuses on ideas to help support persons to maintain a well-balanced perspective in order to avoid being overwhelmed by their difficult situations. The end of the book provides excellent descriptions of organizations and Internet sites for those seeking information on help for those with anxiety disorders.

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.

Rock and Water

An integrated resource for greater happiness, Rock & Water will keep you moving peacefully through the unpredictable ups and downs of life.

Just as a stream seamlessly wanders through the natural world over, around, or surrounded by rocks, the purpose of Rock and Water is to provide access to basic skills to help us enhance our happiness in the midst of the meanderings of our everyday lives, regardless of the obstacles (in particular the emotional strain of modern living). These skills are based primarily on current research and practice in the fields of cognitive-behavioral psychology and mindfulness/acceptance, two disciplines that have mostly been isolated from each other. Rock and Water is research-based and practical, while also being philosophical and personal; and includes several narratives from the life experiences of a wide variety of prominent people in history (Viktor Frankl, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Audrey Hepburn, Mohandas Gandhi and many others)

Spent

Today, Americans are saving less, carrying larger debt loads, losing their homes to foreclosure, and filing bankruptcy in record numbers. People are spending more than they can afford, and many feel guilty, anxious, and overwhelmed as a result.

Moving beyond the advice of financial planners who only treat the symptoms of overspending, in Spent Sally Palaian offers proven plans for taking on a range of personal issues with money by examining those underlying emotional, familial, and societal factors that trigger spending behaviors.

Spent teaches readers to control shopping, pay off debt, develop budgets, and become financially competent through:

• Easy-to-use assessment tools designed to pinpoint the severity of a problem
• Questionnaires that facilitate the exploration of the root causes of unhealthy financial behaviors
• User-friendly exercises created to influence change from within

Palaian’s system for financial recovery is designed to not only help excessive spenders overcome their spending habits, but also to help hoarders, financial codependents, and underachievers let go of fears, take responsibility for their actions, and break unhealthy cycles. Spent empowers people in every financial predicament to disentangle their financial messes to achieve lasting, positive change and a healthy view of one’s true value in life.

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.

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.

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.