Coral Gables
Table of Contents
Anxiety vs. Anxiety Bon Voyage
Chapter 5
Exposure Is Your Anxiety Bulldozer
Chapter 6
Stop Believin’
Chapter 7
The Panic Attack Comeback
Chapter 8
Having a Phobia is No Utopia
Chapter 9
I Hear Ye OCD, But I’m Not Listening
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 Craig April
Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.
Cover and Interior Design: Jermaine Lau
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The Anxiety Getaway: How to Outsmart Your Brain’s False Fear Messages and Claim Your Calm Using CBT Techniques
LCCN: 2020933912
ISBNs: (p) 978-1-64250-057-8 (e) 978-1-64250-058-5
BIBSAC: SEL036000—SELF-HELP / Anxieties & Phobias
Printed in the United States of America
The patients described in this book are composites of patients I’ve had during the course of over twenty years in practice. They do not address individuals. In my work and the work of all psychologists, confidentiality is paramount. Therefore, I’ve taken careful steps to ensure patient privacy, such as providing fictitious names and removing any other identifiable features. All patient cases have either been combined or altered to protect privacy. Any resemblance to any actual person is entirely coincidental.
Welcome to the first step toward your anxiety getaway! The fact that you’re reading this suggests you’d like to overcome the difficult, limiting, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright terrifying experience you call anxiety.
But are you sick and tired of it? I hope so. Why do I ask? Because that emotional state is a good catalyst for great change! How do you know if you’re both “sick” and “tired” of anxiety? Well, you sort of know it when you feel it. But rather than risk being vague, I’ve got an easy test for you to determine if you’re there. If you answer “yes” to at least three of the questions below, you will be crowned as “sick and tired of anxiety.” Here it goes:
1.Do you dislike that your anxiety disrupts or interferes with your life?
2.Are you annoyed that anxiety inhibits you in some way?
3.Do you miss a time in the past when you didn’t struggle with your current symptoms?
4.Do you feel like anxiety is your unwelcome companion, accompanying you to places or situations where it doesn’t belong?
5.Do you envy those you believe do not “have anxiety”?
6.Do you dislike that you sometimes feel ashamed or embarrassed by your anxiety symptoms?
7.Are you troubled by a belief that anxiety reflects who you are?
8.Are you upset by the belief that people might see you as weak or incapable in some way?
9.Do you sometimes see yourself as weak or incapable for struggling with anxiety?
Answering “yes” to just three of these items means that you’re ready to take on what’s in these pages in order to claim your calm!
Now, this may or may not come as a surprise, but when you read on, you’ll soon learn you can’t defeat anxiety without… your lucky t-shirt. Wait! Scratch that. I meant without facing fear, of course. Hence, the subject of fear runs through the veins of this book (I was going to say arteries, but that didn’t have the intensity I was looking for). To overcome your anxiety symptoms, it makes sense to see your anxiety as an expression of your “fear.” So on your journey you’ll move toward not only overcoming anxiety, but also that which you fear. More importantly, you’ll learn how to outsmart your brain’s false “fear messages.”
I’m often asked by patients if I’ve ever personally struggled with anxiety. I usually smile and say very few people can become experts in anything without firsthand experience. Frankly, I’ve had just about every anxiety issue under the sun. There are few things in life that are quite profound. Defeating anxiety by facing and overcoming fear is one. Few experiences can simultaneously release, empower,