Unlearn Your Anxiety and Depression really was excellent, wasn't it, Ellen?
There are four books that I tend to think of when I think about books that are specifically about anxiety.
- Unlearn Your Anxiety and Depression is the only one that is specifically focused on Anxiety and refers it to a form of what we would call TMS. I found it to be more scientific than how-to, which made it fascinating, but may make it less helpful. As always, I have terrific respect for Dr. Schubiner's credentials. He is currently helping to run a $2 million government grant to study the power of expressive writing in helping people with Fibromyalgia and he has done the only randomized controlled trial (the gold standard in medicine) in which part of the treatment was reading a book by Dr. Sarno.
- Self-help for Fear and Anger, The Recovery Method is a $1 ebook by Robert Courtade. The Recovery Method was started by a Chicago doctor named Abraham Low, who used peer support to help people manage their fear and anger. He started a nonprofit, Recovery International, which is one of the models that we base our own peer support nonprofit on. (Speaking of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), Recovery International has used RCTs to undeniably prove that their programs help people.) Robert Courtade is a veteran who was hugely helped by Recovery International's programs, and his book includes many ideas taught by the nonprofit. It is based on a series of aphorisms. I'm inspired that he sells it for so little.
- Claire Weekes' books, such as Hope and Help For Your Nerves are absolute classics. We have an in depth article about her ideas that I'm still trying to find the time to post. If anyone wants to twist my arm on that, I'd be happy to post it earlier.
- Finally, another book which I suspect is excellent is The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook. It consistently tops the bestseller list for the subject of anxiety and has terrific reviews.
In terms of comparing and contrasting, I would read Schubiner's book if your motivation is curiosity and your interest is science. Courtade's book is full of no-nonsense, time-tested tips for dealing with powerful emotions and not having them disrupt relationships. Weekes' book tends to focus on managing attacks of panic, but doesn't talk about managing the fears that bring the panic on. For that, the
Anxiety and Phobia Workbook might be best in that it gives you a nice structure to argue with the beliefs which may be fueling the sources of your anxiety. Just as we might use the 12 daily reminders to argue with our anxiety about our pain symptoms, the Anxiety and Phobia Workbook would give general tools for arguing with beliefs that lead to anxiety. Finally, if you are trying all of that and still having help getting along, Courtade offers time-tested tips to help de-escalate when that's what you need to do so that you can get on with your life.
All excellent books!
The original post I made can be found here:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/anxiety-especially-health-anxiety.5591/#post-33212
That
entire thread is excellent for anyone interested in anxiety, a perennial topic in TMS.
Finally, I found the thread by searching for all topics that I had written that had the word anxiety in them. I realized that this is a valuable skill. For example, you could use it to see all of the posts that Steve Ozanich or Alan Gordon have written about anxiety.
@JanAtheCPA is a great writer on anxiety, so you could find all of the posts she has written about Claire Weekes.
I made a tutorial to show you how. Only 69 seconds long!
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/how-to-find-all-posts-about-a-topic-by-a-specific-person.6740/
