the Anxiety Playbook: 51 Evidence-Based Coping Skills for Panic, Racing Thoughts, and Moments That Feel Like Too Much

In calm, you can read two hundred pages about anxiety. At three in the morning, you can't read three. That's why this book is built around moments, not theory. Fifty-one of them. Each one is a technique drawn from evidence-based therapies - CBT, DBT, ACT - and from established research on breathing, relaxation, and mindfulness, organized by the moment you're in, and explained the way a good clinician would explain it if there were time: what's actually happening in your body, exactly how to do it, why it works, how people get it wrong, and what to do when the standard version isn't possible because you're in a meeting, in bed, or holding a child. Anxiety has structure. So should the response. The techniques follow the structure of anxiety itself, in six sections: - Grounding - when you feel floaty, unreal, or far away- Breathing - when your body is in alarm- Cognitive - when thoughts loop and won't stop- Physical - when tension is trapped in your body- Crisis - when emotions are at a 9 or 10 and nothing ordinary works- Daily & Mindset - for lowering the floor so the spikes have less far to climb >What this book will not do: cure anxiety, replace treatment, or promise that you'll never feel this way again. What it will do is give you a way to answer the alarm - on purpose, with something better than panic or avoidance. That's a smaller promise than a cure. It's also one that can be kept. You don't need all fifty-one. Most people end up with three to five that become theirs. This book helps you find them. From PocketPlaybook Co., makers of the Anxiety Relief Coping Skills card deck.