Embracing Anxiety

An in-depth guide for engaging with anxiety—not as an affliction, but as an essential source of foresight, intuition, and energy for completing your tasks and projects. If you're facing anxiety, you've probably got one thing on your mind—how to make it go away. But what if this challenging emotion were actually trying to help? "When we ignore or repress our anxiety,” teaches Karla McLaren, "it can overwhelm us. But when we learn to welcome it with skill, we can access its remarkable gifts." Engaged with wisely, anxiety is your task completion ally—it helps you to focus, plan, take action, and fulfill your goals. With Embracing Anxiety, you'll join this acclaimed educator and researcher to explore: Principles and practices to befriend your anxiety at every level of intensity (before it overwhelms you)Strategies to engage with anxiety as a source of foresight, conscientiousness, and motivationWhy fear, confusion, and panic are not the same as anxiety, and tools to work with each effectivelyHow anxiety blends with anger, depression, and other emotions, and how to clarify these compounded statesUsing McLaren’s Conscious Questioning practice to engage with anxiety and garner its insightsHow to embrace procrastination and get things done "When you identify, listen to, and act on anxiety skillfully, you support its purpose," teaches McLaren, "and allow it to recede naturally until it is needed again." With Embracing Anxiety, you'll learn how to get this powerful emotion on your side.

The coronavirus pandemic has provoked anxiety in all of us. Here's practical help for when cautious concern slides into panic, and fear starts to seem overwhelming. A compassionate look into managing anxiety disorders, simple phobias, panic disorders, and agoraphobia, Embracing the Fear offers effective techniques in visualization, meditation, and inner-dialogue. The book helps us accept and change panic and avoidance responses, and assists us in identifying anxiety triggers.

Unlock anxiety's powerful gifts! It's time to break free from the tight grip of anxiety and live the life you've always wanted. The Four Gifts of Anxiety shows you how to tap into the power of your anxiety and reveal its gifts of resiliency, hope, empathy, and purpose. Filled with exercises, meditations, and reflection prompts, this book teaches you how to access these positive attributes and the inner strengths that have been hiding behind your symptoms. Each chapter illuminates your gifts and helps you better understand your anxious feelings, so that you can take charge of any situation rather than fearing your future. By viewing your worries in this new and empowering perspective, you will find peace and be able to embrace the person you were meant to be. Complete with real-life stories from others who transformed their outlook, The Four Gifts of Anxiety helps you develop a healthier way of thinking, harness your inner power, and finally reclaim your life.

World-renowned neuroscientist and author of Healthy Brain, Happy Life has developed an “absolute game-changer” (Conscious Conversations podcast) for managing unwarranted anxiety and turning it into a powerful asset. We are living in the age of anxiety, a situation that often makes us feel as if we are locked into an endless cycle of stress, sleeplessness, and worry. But what if we had a way to leverage our anxiety to help us solve problems and fortify our well-being? What if, instead of seeing anxiety as a curse, we could recognize it for the unique gift that it is? As a neuroscientist, Dr. Wendy Suzuki has discovered a paradigm-shifting truth about anxiety: yes, it is uncomfortable, but it is also essential for our survival. In fact, anxiety is a key component of our ability to live optimally. Every emotion we experience has an evolutionary purpose, and anxiety is designed to draw our attention to a number of negative emotions. If we simply approach anxiety as something to avoid, get rid of, or dampen, we actually miss an opportunity to not only manage the symptoms of anxiety better but also discover ways to improve our lives. Listening to our worries from a place of curiosity, instead of fear, can actually guide us onto a path that leads to joy. “Suzuki draws on decades of neuroscience, including her own research, and leavens her learning with a little personal storytelling to create a practical, science-backed guidebook for those seeking such a transformation” (The Wall Street Journal).

Picking up where Quiet ended, How to Be Yourself is the best book you’ll ever read about how to conquer social anxiety. “This book is also a groundbreaking road map to finally being your true, authentic self.” —Susan Cain, New York Times, USA Today and nationally bestselling author of Quiet Up to 40% of people consider themselves shy. You might say you’re introverted or awkward, or that you're fine around friends but just can't speak up in a meeting or at a party. Maybe you're usually confident but have recently moved or started a new job, only to feel isolated and unsure. If you get nervous in social situations—meeting your partner's friends, public speaking, standing awkwardly in the elevator with your boss—you've probably been told, “Just be yourself!” But that's easier said than done—especially if you're prone to social anxiety. Weaving together cutting-edge science, concrete tips, and the compelling stories of real people who have risen above their social anxiety, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen proposes a groundbreaking idea: you already have everything you need to succeed in any unfamiliar social situation. As someone who lives with social anxiety, Dr. Hendriksen has devoted her career to helping her clients overcome the same obstacles she has. With familiarity, humor, and authority, Dr. Hendriksen takes the reader through the roots of social anxiety and why it endures, how we can rewire our brains through our behavior, and—at long last—exactly how to quiet your Inner Critic, the pesky voice that whispers, "Everyone will judge you." Using her techniques to develop confidence, think through the buzz of anxiety, and feel comfortable in any situation, you can finally be your true, authentic self.

“Take a wonderful journey through and beyond your fear with Thom Rutledge.” — Melody Beattie, author of Choices “An insightful, moving and gracious book!” — John Shelby Spong, author of A New Christianity For A New World “An insightful and clear guide that shows how to turn fear into a powerful resource in our lives.” — Gavin de Becker, best-selling author of THE GIFT OF FEAR and FEAR LESS

The first new translation of Kierkegaard's masterwork in a generation brings to vivid life this essential work of modern philosophy. Brilliantly synthesizing human insights with Christian dogma, Soren Kierkegaard presented, in 1844, The Concept of Anxiety as a landmark "psychological deliberation," suggesting that our only hope in overcoming anxiety was not through "powder and pills" but by embracing it with open arms. While Kierkegaard's Danish prose is surprisingly rich, previous translations—the most recent in 1980—have marginalized the work with alternately florid or slavishly wooden language. With a vibrancy never seen before in English, Alastair Hannay, the world's foremost Kierkegaard scholar, has finally re-created its natural rhythm, eager that this overlooked classic will be revivified as the seminal work of existentialism and moral psychology that it is. From The Concept of Anxiety: "And no Grand Inquisitor has such frightful torments in readiness as has anxiety, and no secret agent knows as cunningly how to attack the suspect in his weakest moment, or to make so seductive the trap in which he will be snared; and no discerning judge understands how to examine, yes, exanimate the accused as does anxiety, which never lets him go, not in diversion, not in noise, not at work, not by day, not by night."