Overcoming Anxiety For Dummies - Australia / NZ, Australian and New Zealand Edition

Everyone experiences anxiety. After all, life is stressful. But are you too anxious? Is it disrupting your life? If so, this book can help. Overcoming Anxiety For Dummies, Australian & New Zealand Edition is a friendly, plain-English guide to understanding and overcoming intense, excessive anxiety. This book explains the difference between normal everyday anxiety and anxiety that requires attention and treatment. It also includes updated information on treatment and getting help, including organisations in Australia and New Zealand that assist people with anxiety.

• Features practical guidance on treating anxiety with diet, exercise, meditation and more
• Shows you how to identify the factors that trigger your anxiety and how to manage them
• Offers trustworthy advice on whether you can manage your anxiety on your own or need to seek outside help
• Covers local organisations that can help, including beyondblue, Lifeline and Headspace, as well as charities like the Salvation Army and the Smith Family

Packed with practical strategies for feeling better, this handy guide is perfect for anyone who wants to treat their minor anxiety on their own or find out whether they need professional assistance.

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 3

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part I: Understanding Anxiety 5

Chapter 1: Showing How Anxiety Affects Our Lives 7

Anxiety: Everybody’s Doing It 8

Calculating the Costs of Anxiety 9

What does anxiety cost you? 9

Adding up the cost to society 10

Recognising the Symptoms of Anxiety 11

Thinking anxiously 11

Behaving anxiously 12

Finding anxiety in your body 12

Seeking Help for Your Anxiety 13

Matching symptoms and therapies 14

Choosing where to start 16

Finding the right help 18

Chapter 2: Examining Anxiety: What’s Normal, What’s Not 19

Knowing When Anxiety Is a Help and When It’s a Hindrance 20

Presenting the Different Types of Anxiety 21

Generalised anxiety disorder: The common cold of anxiety 21

Social anxiety disorder: Avoiding people 23

Panic disorder: Way beyond everyday anxiety 24

Agoraphobia: Panic’s companion 27

Specific phobias: Spiders, snakes, airplanes and other scary things 28

Post-traumatic stress disorder: Feeling the effects of trauma and terror 30

Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Over and over and over again 32

Seeing How Anxiety Differs from Other Disorders 34

Chapter 3: Sorting Through the Brain and Biology 37

Examining the Anxious Brain 37

Seeing how the brain’s circuits are connected 38

Communicating chemicals 38

Preparing to Fight, Flee or Freeze 39

Mimicking Anxiety: Drugs, Diet and Diseases 42

Exploring anxiety-mimicking drugs 42

Ingesting anxiety from your diet 44

Investigating medical anxiety imposters 46

Chapter 4: Clearing the Roadblocks to Change 49

Looking for Where Your Anxiety Started 49

It’s in my genes! 51

It’s how I was raised! 51

It’s the world’s fault! 52

Finding Self-Acceptance 53

Having Second Thoughts about Change 55

Deciding to Get the Show on the Road 57

Arguing with your arguments 57

Taking things one step at a time 58

Watching Worries Come and Go 60

Following your fears 61

Writing about your worries 62

Reducing Your Sensitivity to Anxiety 64

Getting Help from Others 65

Seeking the right therapies 65

Seeking the right therapist 66

Part II: A Working Model for Your Anxiety 69

Chapter 5: Becoming a Thought Detective 71

Distinguishing Thoughts from Feelings 72

Blocking the blues 72

Getting in touch with your feelings 74

Getting in touch with your thoughts 76

Tracking How Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviour Interact 79

Tackling Your Thoughts: Thought Therapy 81

Weighing the evidence: Thought court 81

Rethinking risk 83

Deconstructing worrying scenarios 85

Cultivating Calm Thinking 90

Considering a ‘friend’s’ perspective 91

Creating calm 92

Stepping back from negative thinking 93

Chapter 6: Watching Out for Worry Words 95

Stacking Sticks into Bonfires of Anxiety 95

Encountering extremist words 96

Misrepresenting with all-or-none, black-or-white words 98

Running into judging words 99

Turning to victim words 100

Tracking Your Worry Words 101

Refuting and Replacing Your Worry Words 102

Exorcising your extremist words 103

Disputing all-or-none 103

Judging the judge 104

Vanquishing victim words 105

Chapter 7: Challenging Your Agitating Assumptions 107

Understanding Agitating Assumptions 108

Sizing Up Agitating Assumptions 109

Recognising schemas 109

Assessing your agitating assumptions 110

Coming Down with a Case of Anxious Schemas 112

Acquiring assumptions in childhood 112

Shattering your reasonable assumptions 113

Unravelling Those Nasty Assumptions: Running a Cost/Benefit Analysis 115

Analysing perfection 116

Rating approval-seeking 118

Reviewing vulnerability 119

Counting up control 120

Debating dependency 121

Unravelling your own agitating assumptions 122

Designing Calm, Balanced Assumptions 123

Tempering perfectionist tendencies 124

Balancing an approval addict 124

Balancing vulnerability 126

Relaxing control 126

Diminishing dependency 127

Above All: Be Kind to Yourself! 128

Chapter 8: Facing Fear One Step at a Time 129

Exposure: Going Head-to-Head With Your Fears 129

Getting ready by relaxing 130

Understanding your fears 133

Constructing a staircase of fear135

Imagining the worst 137

Facing your fears138

Tackling All Types of Fears 140

Waging war on worry: GAD 141

Fighting specific and social phobias 142

Pushing through panic and agoraphobia 144

Processing post-traumatic stress disorder 146

Reversing obsessive-compulsive disorder 148

Chapter 9: Considering Medications and Other Physical Treatment Options 153

Taking Advice About Medications 154

The downside of medications 155

The upside of medications155

Understanding Medication Options 156

Antidepressants 157

Benzodiazepines 161

Miscellaneous tranquillisers 163

Beta-blockers 164

Atypical antipsychotics 164

Mood stabilisers 166

A few intriguing medication options 166

Searching for Supplements 167

Viva vitamins! 169

Sifting through the slew of supplements 169

Stimulating the Brain 172

Deep brain stimulation 172

Transcranial magnetic stimulation 172

Part III: Seeing Anxiety as a Part of Life 173

Chapter 10: Looking at Lifestyle 175

Friends and Family — Can’t Live with ’em, Can’t Live without ’em 175

Staying connected with others 176

Delegating creates extra time 177

Just saying ‘no’ 178

Ready … Exorcise! 179

Don’t wait for willpower — just do it! 180

Working in your workout 181

The ABCs of Getting Good Sleep 182

Creating a sleep haven 183

Following a few relaxing routines 184

What to do when sleep just won’t come 186

Designing Calm Diets 187

Enjoying small, frequent portions 187

Following nutritional common sense 188

Chapter 11: Relaxation: The Five-Minute Solution 189

Breathing Anxiety Away 190

Discovering your natural breathing pattern 191

Breathing like a baby 192

Using panic breathing in high-stress situations 194

Relaxing Your Whole Body 194

Knowing what to expect 195

Discovering the progressive muscle technique 196

Applying Relaxation in Tense Situations 198

Relaxing through Your Senses 199

Sounds to soothe the savage beast 199

Only the nose knows for sure 200

Massaging away stress 201

Chapter 12: Calming the Mind 203

Letting Your Imagination Roam 204

Imagining touch 205

Recalling sounds 206

Remembering tastes 207

Conjuring up smells 207

Painting pictures in your mind 208

Full Sensory Imaging 210

Relaxing at the beach 210

A rainforest fantasy 211

Customising Your Own Images 212

Chapter 13: Mindful Acceptance 213

Accepting Anxiety? Hey, That’s a Switch! 214

Taking a calm, dispassionate view 214

Tolerating uncertainty 216

Being patient with yourself 217

Letting Go of Ego 218

Inflating and deflating the self-esteem balloon 219

Appreciating your imperfections 220

Connecting with the Here and Now 222

Making contact with the present 224

Putting worries about the future to rest 226

Mindfully meditating 226

Accepting Mindfulness into Your Life 229

Building on Your Values 229

Part IV: Zeroing In on Specific Worries 231

Chapter 14: Facing a Career Crisis and Financial Woes 233

Meeting Job Worries Head-On 234

Updating your resume 234

Finding flexibility in your career view 235

Considering careers with stability 237

Keeping the right focus 238

Taking Stock of Your Resources 239

Tallying up your financial balance sheet 239

Knowing your personal assets and liabilities 240

Committing to a New Game Plan 241

Setting short-term goals 241

Planning for the long haul 242

Chapter 15: Keeping Steady When the World Is Shaking 245

Assessing Your Risks 246

Looking at the likelihood of dying from a natural disaster 246

Thinking sensibly about your personal risks 248

Preparing a Plan for Risk Management 248

Imagining and Dealing with the Worst 251

Rethinking uncertainty and anxiety 252

Rethinking your ability to cope 252

Facing, not avoiding, your worries 254

Doing Your Part to Improve the World 256

Helping the environment 256

Volunteering in disasters 257

Chapter 16: Staying Healthy 259

Examining the Connection between Worry and Health 259

Recalculating the Costs and Benefits of Health Worry 261

Reviewing the Risks of the Modern World 263

Examining the evolving realities of diseases and treatments 263

Weighing local versus global health risks 265

Watching out for exaggerated claims 266

Taking an Inventory of Your Personal Health 267

Checking out your lifestyle 267

Accepting your genetic risks 268

Designing a Health Action Plan 268

Chapter 17: Knowing Your ‘High Risk’ Situations 271

Evaluating Your Actual, Personal Risks 271

Maximising Your Preparedness 272

Taking charge of personal safety 273

Avoiding unnecessary risks 273

Dealing with Trauma 274

Thinking through what happened 276

Exposing yourself to the incident 277

Learning to Tolerate Uncertainty 278

Choosing to put yourself in high-risk situations 278

Experiencing danger in everyday places 279

Part V: Helping Others with Anxiety 283

Chapter 18: When a Family Member or Friend Suffers from Anxiety 285

Discovering Whether Your Loved One Suffers from Anxiety 286

Talking Together about Anxiety 288

Communicating with empathy 289

Avoiding blame 290

When help turns into harm 290

Guiding the Way 292

Coaching the right way 293

Looking at a coach in action 296

Teaming Up against Anxiety 298

Accepting Anxiety with Love 299

Chapter 19: Recognising Anxiety in Children 301

Separating Normal from Abnormal 301

Inspecting the Most Common Childhood Anxiety Disorders 304

Leaving parents: Separation anxiety disorder 305

Worrying all the time: Generalised anxiety disorder 307

Focusing on phobias: Specific phobias 307

Connecting with others: Social anxiety disorder 307

Anxious repetition: Obsessive-compulsive disorder 308

Rare anxieties among children 309

Chapter 20: Helping Anxious Children and Adolescents 311

Nipping Anxiety in the Bud 311

Early mastery experiences 312

Fine-tuning emotions 313

Inoculating against anxiety 314

Taking precautions via parenting style 315

Helping Already Anxious Children 318

Helping yourself first 319

Modelling calmness 319

Leading children through anxiety 320

Relaxing to reduce anxiety 322

Reducing anxiety through activity 325

Practising strategies and skills 327

Getting Help from Others 329

Who to turn to for help 329

What to expect at the first session 330

What happens in therapy? 331

Part VI: The Part of Tens 333

Chapter 21: Ten Ways to Stop Anxiety Quickly 335

Breathing Out Your Anxiety 335

Talking with a Friend 336

Exercising Aerobically 336

Soothing the Body 336

Drinking Tea 337

Challenging Your Anxious Thinking 337

Listening to Music 338

Finding Distractions 338

Having Sex 338

Staying with the Moment 339

Chapter 22: Ten (Or So) Signs That You Need Professional Help 341

Having Suicidal Thoughts or Plans 342

Feeling Hopeless 342

Experiencing Anxiety and Depression Symptoms 342

Trying to No Avail 343

Struggling at Home 343

Having Major Problems at Work 343

Suffering from Severe Obsessions or Compulsions 344

Struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 344

Going through Sleepless Nights 344

Getting High 345

How to Get the Help You Need 345

Appendix: Resources for You 347

Index 353

Christopher Mogan, PhD, is the director of an Intensive Outpatient Program for OCD and related disorders at The Anxiety Clinic in Melbourne. Charles H. Elliott, PhD, and Laura L. Smith, PhD, are clinical psychologists who specialise in the treatment of anxiety and mood disorders.