Retrain Your Anxious Brain: Practical and Effective Tools to Conquer Anxiety - Softcover

Tsilimparis, John; Schwartz, Daylle Deanna

 
9780373892914: Retrain Your Anxious Brain: Practical and Effective Tools to Conquer Anxiety
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373892918 ISBN 13: 9780373892914
Verlag: Harlequin Nonfiction, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Control Anxiety Before it Begins 

Trouble sleeping, panic attacks, knots in your stomach, excessive worry, doubts, phobias—anxiety comes in many shapes and sizes, and affects millions of people. But you don't have to suffer anymore. In Retrain Your Anxious Brain, renowned therapist and anxiety expert John Tsilimparis, MFT, shares the groundbreaking program he's created to help hundreds of people (himself included) free themselves from crippling anxiety and live healthier, happier lives. 

Rather than just treating or masking symptoms, Tsilimparis's innovative approach helps you identify and short-circuit anxiety triggers, so that you can stop anxiety before it starts. This customizable plan teaches you how to: 

• Alter the fixed thoughts that can cause anxiety 

• Adjust your existing personal belief systems 

• Challenge the idea of consensus reality 

• Balance your dualistic mind 

• Consciously create your own reality

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

John Tsilimparis, MFT, is a leading authority on the dynamics of anxiety and an addictions specialist. He is a former staff clinician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. John is also a former adjunct professor at Pepperdine University and UCLA Extension. He also published a memoir, Mortal Bonds, in 2011. Besides working in private practice, John is the host of the popular podcast Mindfulness for the Soul and his YouTube channel, Psych It Up!


Daylle Deanna Schwartz, MS, was the author of many books, including All Men Are Jerks―Until Proven Otherwise and Nice Girls Can Finish First. She appeared on Oprah and Good Morning America and was also the founder of The Self-Love Movement.

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UNDERSTANDING ANXIETY

"Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity."

—T.S. Eliot

Anxiety is one of the most misunderstood conditions of the human mind. Yet anxiety disorders are the most common of mental illnesses in the United States. It's estimated that about 18% of the population suffers from some form of anxiety. Anxiety disorders are real, not something that fragile people bring on themselves. In this chapter I will help you to understand the myths and truths about anxiety so that you can do more to take charge of yours, or so you can help someone you care about who suffers from it.

WHY ANXIETY IS OFTEN KEPT QUIET

Even though anxiety is so prevalent, studies show that many people who suffer from it often remain in what I refer to as the "angst" closet for years before reaching out for professional help. Many anxiety sufferers feel different levels of shame or they are scared people will ridicule them if their secret is discovered. I used to feel that way when my mother refused to acknowledge my problem as real. After all, how could I share it with others if my own mother acted like I had no problem and it was all in my head? It's a common response from people who don't understand anxiety. We've come a long way in terms of lowering the stigma of having anxiety and other mental health conditions as a whole in more recent years, but a lot of work still needs to be done.

It's still painfully apparent, and at times shocking, that in this day and age, anxiety, which is often an unbearable condition involving the mind, continues to be viewed by many as an affliction that only affects inferior people. Perhaps there is sanity in numbers. For example, when was the last time you heard someone being judged or ridiculed for having some kind of physiological condition? Apparently, over time, there is a rational and collective acceptance about any human condition that has evidence showing that multitudes of ordinary people are stricken with it every year. But it's very different for illnesses of the mind, including anxiety.

How can this be changed? The more anxiety is discussed as a legitimate condition that people don't bring on themselves, the more people will have empathy, not negative reactions, to someone struggling with it. If people from all walks of life—from college students to seasoned professionals, from blue-collar workers to white-collar executives—admit to suffering from anxiety and getting help for it, the more the average person will accept it like they do other conditions.

My hope is that this chapter and the entire book itself will help shed a more positive light on anxiety and help to validate the seriousness of this condition. If having anxiety becomes accepted like other conditions are, future generations will finally receive the long-awaited recognition that anxiety affects many average people and that it's merely a genetic and environmentally influenced variant of being human. And, there's help available to allow you to manage it.

THE BENEFITS OF ANXIETY

To understand the many aspects of anxiety, you must first recognize some of its benefits. Anxiety is an adaptive function of the human body that exists for the purpose of protecting us from harm.

Anxiety is part of an evolutionary response mechanism developed slowly over many millennia. If primitive humans had no internal alarm system when the dangers of ferocious animals lurked outside their cave looking for their next meal, they wouldn't have survived.

Their life-preserving arousal mechanism, better known as the fightor-flight response system (also called the fightor-flightor-freeze response system), is a biochemical reaction that was developed to help the body sense and respond quickly to danger. We could have become extinct had this system not been part of our makeup. But thanks to our hairy, cave-dwelling ancestors, generations have inherited this fundamental impulse. It's not needed today the way it used to be, but it's wired into us. Some people's systems are more sensitive than those of others.

In essence, anxiety is a response or a reaction to something that the brain perceives as dangerous or threatening. Without anxiety, you might walk through life and go about your business naively, in a blissful state, and be oblivious to simple dangers. A car may strike you because you're not paying attention while crossing the street. Or you may become a negligent parent by not safeguarding your home properly if you have young children. Or you may underperform at work because you are not worried about losing your job. A tendency to feel anxious in speciic situations does help keep you on your toes when it comes to protecting yourself and your loved ones.

Many artistic people, such as writers, actors, dancers and other artists, have credited the feeling of being anxious about their work and the pressure to perform well as triggers that spark their creative ires. Even great intellectuals and inventors throughout history have professed to having been indirectly inspired by the fear of failure or, most commonly, the fear of humiliation or ruin. Being anxious at times means you care about your life and the meaningful people in your life. It means you're a responsible person who wants to succeed and provide for yourself and your family.

Without anxiety, reaching goals and conquering risks wouldn't be so valuable to you. In a sense, anxiety gives you purpose and drive.

It keeps you on the right path and helps you appreciate the good you have. But for the 18% of us who suffer from excessive amounts of it, this organic boost of angst can be very incapacitating. Too much anxiety can cause so much distress that you can't function properly. That can lead you to fail at fulfilling major role obligations in your life that most people take for granted, such as taking care of your children properly, going to work every day and attending school. Anxiety can be so distressing that sufferers would give anything to be rid of all anxious feelings for good. But when you can understand and appreciate its positive efects better over time and learn how to harness its returns, it can seem less like something that only works against you.

UNDERSTANDING THE FIGHT-

OR-FLIGHT-OR-FREEZE RESPONSE

The fightor-flight response is an automatic inner alarm system that physically prepares the body to attack and defend itself (fight), or to run away and protect itself (flight). The freeze aspect describes the paralyzing efect that some people experience when they're so scared that they feel frozen in terror. It also refers to the body's instinct of staying still or "playing dead" in order to ward off a predator. When you experience something that feels dangerous or threatening, a warning bell is triggered. Neurotransmitters are released in the brain and send messages to the adrenal glands, which produce powerful hormones such as cortisol, which is called the "stress hormone" because it's found abundantly in the bloodstream of anxious individuals. What follows as a result of these hormones surging through the body are highly disquieting physical responses that don't feel good. They can also be very scary, which adds to the anxiety that's already working overtime. The typical symptoms that you might experience from this looding of hormones can be very troubling if you don't understand them. You may suddenly experience a rapid heart rate, shallow and labored breathing, sweating, and your mind can start to race uncontrollably, scanning the horizon for seen or other unforeseen dangers.

The rapid heart rate caused by the fightor-flight response produces an increase in the strength of the heartbeat for good reason. It's critical in your body's preparation for ightor-light. Its purpose is to...

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Verlag
Harlequin Nonfiction
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373892918
ISBN 13 
9780373892914
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
HarperCollins Publishers Ireland
enquiries@harpercollins.ie

Macken House 39/40 Mayor Street Upper
Dublin
D01 C9W8
Irland

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