Overcoming Anxiety by Dr Windy Dryden 

If your life is burdened by anxiety this book is for you. From breathlessness and sighing, to sweating, shaking, feelings of tension, churning stomach or difficulties in sleeping, the many symptoms of anxiety can be difficult to live with.

However, it is possible to banish anxiety. By following Dr Windy Dryden's clear guidelines you will understand what causes your anxiety. Dr Dryden shows you how to identify, challenge and, most importantly, change the beliefs that make you anxious, and following his advice will help you gain control of your life.

Dr Windy Dryden is a psychotherapist who has written many successful books, including the Sheldon Press titles Overcoming Procrastination, Overcoming Anger, Overcoming Guilt, How to Accept Yourself and A Positive Thought for Every Day.

Overcoming Anxiety

Contents

Preface

• The nature of anxiety
• The nature of concern
• Overcoming ego anxiety
• Overcoming non-ego anxiety
• When you have both types of anxiety

Index

Overcoming Anxiety - By Dr Windy Dryden

Preface: This book is part of a developing project of self-help books, each one devoted to a particular emotional problem. Thus, I have written books on overcoming guilt, anger, shame and jealousy and plan to write similar books on overcoming depression, envy and hurt. Without wishing to blow my own trumpet, the books that I have already written for Sheldon Press were fairly easy for me to put together. I would review the most important professional writings in the area, select appropriate client cases from my casebook to discuss (always with their permission and always heavily disguised), develop a sensible structure for the book and get down to the business of putting pen to paper or, to be more accurate, finger to key board. This book on overcoming anxiety has caused me far more trouble, however. I've even been tempted to procrastinate on it, which for me is saying something as I rarely procrastinate on my writings, particularly on my self-help writings for Sheldon Press which I greatly enjoy producing.

So why have I had so much difficulty working on this book Overcoming Anxiety? Is it because I suffer from anxiety myself and I find the material too painful to write about (a commonly held view in my field to explain unplanned delay)? Or is it because I've suddenly become lazy in my old age and enjoy lounging around rather than getting down to the disciplined business of researching, planning, structuring and writing a book? Actually, neither of these explanations for the difficulty I have had writing this book is correct. First. I do not suffer unduly from anxiety and when I do make myself anxious, normally about my health, I fairly quickly make myself unanxious. And second, one of my strengths as a person, namely my self-discipline, is still intact and I still rarely put off things that are in my interest to do. No, the reason that I have had so much difficulty in writing this book on overcoming anxiety is simply that the subject of anxiety and how to overcome it is vast and complex, and I reluctantly had to conclude that within the constraints of a short, accessible self-help book, I couldn't be as comprehensive in my coverage as I would have liked. Once I accepted this grim fact, without of course liking it (which as I will show you in due course is one important way of overcoming anxiety), I was able to focus on what I could do in this book rather than on what I couldn't. - The physician healed himself or, to be strictly accurate, the counsellor counselled himself.

Why am I telling you all this? I am doing so for two reasons: first. I have come to believe in the value of trying to develop a connection with you, my reader, and what better way of doing so than by letting you know something of the trials and tribulations (as well as the joys) of writing; and second, because I hold that one of the keys to overcoming anxiety is being honest with oneself and with others. Attempting to conceal negative features about oneself to oneself and to others, particularly when you try to do this in a desperate way, is likely to lead to anxiety.

Let me tell you, therefore, what I aim to do in this book and what I am not going to do. I have two basic aims in writing this book. My first aim is to discuss the main beliefs that underpin much anxiety and show you how to identify, challenge and, most importantly, change these beliefs to those which will render you far less vulnerable to anxiety. My second aim is to discuss the major ways in which people unwittingly maintain their anxiety, often in subtle ways. I will help you look for your own individual ways of perpetuating your own anxiety and, again most importantly, show you what you can do to tackle these anxiety-maintaining factors.

As I have already mentioned, the field of anxiety is immense and complicated and I will not attempt to do justice to its vast complexity. Thus, I will not discuss the physiology and biochemistry of anxiety. I will not review the evidence concerning to what extent anxiety is inherited and I will not consider the role that medication has in the treatment of anxiety disorders. As with all my books, I am writing this one for those of you who have anxiety which limits your life but does not incapacitate you. If the latter is the case, I strongly suggest that you consult your general practitioner, who will recommend the appropriate course of help which may well be a combination of therapy and medication.

Also, if you have seriously tried to put into practice the principles that I will cover in this book and these have made no difference to you, then again see your GP. It may be that you need some medication to help you to benefit from the ideas presented in this book, or it may be that you need to work face-to-face with a counsellor or therapist who will help you to pinpoint and deal with the individual and specific factors that underpin your anxiety. Self help books like this one can be enormously useful in helping you to understand and deal with anxiety feelings, and you may help yourself considerably by applying the ideas herein to your individual situation, but they have their limits. You cannot interact with a book or ask it questions. And similarly, a self-help book cannot interact with you and ask you questions to help clarify precisely what is going on when you are anxious. So, if you benefit from this book, that's great and I would be delighted, but if you don't benefit, don't despair. It may be that you need more individualized help than I can give you. Again, see your family doctor as the first port of call if this is the case.

A word on terminology: As I have mentioned in several of my books for Sheldon Press, while words for commonly experienced emotions like anxiety are in everyday use and we think that we all understand what they mean, they are in fact used in different ways by different people. In particular, it is a feature of the approach to counselling and psychotherapy that I practise and which forms the basis for this book — Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy — to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy negative emotions. I will follow this tradition in this book and distinguish between anxiety which is largely unhealthy and self-defeating and anxiety which is largely healthy and self-enhancing. I thought about referring to the first type of anxiety as unhealthy anxiety or debilitating anxiety and to the second as healthy anxiety or facilitating anxiety, but this proved to be unwieldy, so I finally settled on the following. When I discuss anxiety which is largely unhealthy and self-defeating, I will call this anxiety and when I discuss anxiety which is largely healthy and self-enhancing I will call this concern. I have no objection if you wish to use your own language to distinguish between the different types of anxiety. Indeed, I encourage you to do so. I sometimes joke with my clients that if they wish to refer to unhealthy anxiety as 'fish' and healthy anxiety as 'chips' that's OK with me. The important thing is you do distinguish between the two types of anxiety and that you make the appropriate translations in your head when you come across my usage of the terms 'anxiety' and 'concern'.

Let me stress one important point at the outset. Concern (or healthy anxiety) is not necessarily a less intense emotion than anxiety (or unhealthy anxiety). It is possible for you to be intensely concerned about something without being anxious about it and without this level of concern interfering with constructive problem-solving and adjustment (depending upon which activity is appropriate to the situation you are facing). Indeed, strong concern will help you in two ways. First, it will alert you to the existence and the nature of the realistic threat you are facing and will help you to deal with it productively. Consequently, when I discuss how you can overcome your (unhealthy) anxiety, I will help you instead to be appropriately (and healthily) concerned about the situations in which you face a realistic threat. Thus, I will not help you to be calm or indifferent about the realistic threats that you will encounter in life. I will not do so because calmness and indifference are not appropriate responses to such threats, in that they do not mobilize you to deal constructively with them. Anxiety mobilizes you, sure enough, but does not do so in ways that are constructive, as I will discuss presently.

Now that I have clarified the terminology that I will be using throughout this book (anxiety vs concern) and that I have set as my goal to help you to be healthily concerned rather than unhealthily anxious when facing threat, let me make one more point before going on to discuss in greater detail the nature of (unhealthy) anxiety in Chapter 1.

Anxiety, not anxiety disorders: In keeping with the general focus of my self-help books for Sheldon Press, I will be writing for those of you whose lives are disadvantaged by anxiety rather than seriously handicapped by it. I will focus on a number of anxiety problems, but I will not deal with situations where these problems are blighting your life — where anxiety has become an anxiety disorder, if you will. This is not to say that if you are suffering from an anxiety disorder then you will not get anything from this book. Far from it. It is just that you need more help than I can give you in the context of a self-help book. So, if your life is handicapped or blighted rather than disadvantaged by anxiety, then please make an appointment to see your doctor, who will arrange appropriate specialist help for you.

Windy Dryden London & East Sussex

About the author: Windy Dryden was born in London in 1950. He has worked in psychotherapy and counselling for over twenty-five years, and is the author or editor of over 120 books, including How to Accept Yourself (Sheldon Press, 1999) and Ten Steps to Positive Living (Sheldon Press, 1994). Dr Dryden is Professor of Counselling at Goldsmiths College, University of London.