Martin N. Seif

Written by a team of mental health experts, Intrusive Thoughts Toolkit provides fast-acting techniques for overcoming persistent, painful, and intrusive thoughts. With this take-anywhere guide, readers will learn on-the-spot, proven-effective tips to get unstuck from negative thoughts and feelings, adopt healthier thinking habits, and increase overall well-being. Quiet your noisy mind-and find peace of mind-with fast-acting, on-the-spot relief for persistent, painful, and intrusive thoughts. Do you have unwanted, repetitive, negative, or intrusive thoughts that are getting in the way of your life, keeping you up at night, or making you downright miserable? If so, you need quick tools you can use right now-whenever and wherever you are-to soothe the disruption of intrusive thoughts. This emergency toolkit has you covered. Written by a team of mental health experts and grounded in evidence-based therapy, Intrusive Thoughts Toolkit provides fast-acting tools for soothing distressing thoughts in the moments when you need it most. With this take-anywhere guide, you'll learn proven techniques to get unstuck from negative thoughts and feelings, adopt healthier thinking habits, and increase overall well-being. You'll also find easy and doable ways to help you press pause on spiraling thinking, and in-the-moment interventions to help you quiet your mind before your thoughts get out of control. If you're looking for quick solutions to help you move beyond intrusive thoughts and improve your mental health, this powerfully effective pocket guide has everything you need to find lasting peace of mind.

Get ahead of your anticipatory anxiety, and start living with flexibility and peace of mind. Do you automatically assume the worst-case-scenario when faced with difficulty? Do you stress about situations that haven’t happened yet, or find yourself anticipating disaster around every corner? Does the prospect of making a decision leave you feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed? From subtle avoidance behaviors to the most nightmarish terrors, anticipatory anxiety is the engine that drives it all. Understanding how this hidden enemy tricks you, and, most importantly, how to overcome it, will liberate you to live a more flexible and joyful life. In Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety, two anxiety experts team up to teach you how to manage your overactive imagination, limit future-based thinking, face your fears, make decisions, and live with more freedom and joy. This must-have guide is grounded in the authors’ DEAF model—four easy-to-remember mindfulness steps to: Distinguish negative feelings, Embrace uncertainty, Avoid avoidance, and Float above your discomfort, so you can get on with your life. You’ll also learn how to shift your attitude and stop convincing yourself that bad things will happen, so you can turn your focus to what is actually important. It’s time to stop worrying about what might happen, start facing your fears, rein in your self-defeating imagination, and live fully in the moment. Get this book and discover the motivation and skillsneeded to take charge of your anticipatory anxiety.

A quick-relief guide for calming anxiety and stress right now-during the COVID-19 pandemic If you're feeling unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety right now, please know that you aren't alone. In these extreme and uncertain times, it's natural to be in a constant state of mental and physical strain. Whether you're dealing with job loss, a sick loved one, or just feeling the weight of the world during your 2 a.m. doomscroll-you need quick tools you can use right now, whenever and wherever you are, to lower stress and soothe anxiety. This emergency kit has you covered. Written by a dream team of mental health experts and grounded in evidence-based therapy, The Anxiety First Aid Kit offers powerful tools for triaging stress and anxiety in the moments when you need it most. You'll find easy and doable ways to help you press pause on panic, and find your calm spot right away. You'll discover in-the-moment interventions to help you relax before your anxiety and stress go into overdrive. And finally, you'll learn how to make healthy and workable lifestyle changes to improve your mental health and increase resilience, so you can effectively deal with stressful situations in the future-no matter what life throws at you. Between pandemic-related economic fears, the frustrations of social distancing, indoor confinement, work and household double duties (now including homeschooling!), and the looming threat of serious illness, is it any wonder you're feeling completely stressed out and anxious? If you need immediate relief, The Anxiety First Aid Kit has everything you need to manage stress and anxiety-right now.

Powerful skills based in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help you break free from the fear of uncertainty and put a stop to compulsive checking and reassurance seeking." How do I know I made the right decision?" "What if I'm wrong?" "I need to know for sure." Do you have thoughts like these-thoughts that cause you to second-guess yourself, and lead to anxiety, stress, and worry? Do you find yourself repeatedly checking your email for no reason, asking others for their opinions about something again and again, or lying awake at night overgrazing and planning ahead in an attempt to feel less anxious? If so, you probably have a problem with compulsive reassurance seeking. The good news is that you can break free fromthis "reassurance trap"-this book will show you how. In this unique guide, you'll find proven-effective tips and tools using CBT to help you tolerate uncertainty, face specific worrying scenarios, and gradually reduce the compulsion to incessantly seek reassurance. Most importantly, you'll learn to deal with those pesky "doubt attacks" and trust your own judgement. Asking for reassurance is a self-reinforcing behaviour-if you do it, you're less likely to handle stressful situations without needing further reassurance. And so the cycle continues. The CBT skills in this book will help you break this exhausting and painful pattern, so you can build self-confidence and improve your life.

You are not your thoughts! In this powerful book, two anxiety experts offer proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills to help you get unstuck from disturbing thoughts, overcome the shame these thoughts can bring, and reduce your anxiety. If you suffer from unwanted, intrusive, frightening, or even disturbing thoughts, you might worry about what these thoughts mean about you. Thoughts can seem like messages-are they trying to tell you something? But the truth is that they are just thoughts, and they don't necessarily mean anything. Sane and good people have them. If you are someone who is plagued by thoughts you don't want-thoughts that scare you, or thoughts you can't tell anyone-this book may change your life. In this compassionate guide, you'll discover the different kinds of disturbing thoughts, myths that surround your thoughts, and how your brain has a tendency to get "stuck" in a cycle of unwanted rumination. You'll also learn why common techniques to get rid of these thoughts can backfire. And finally, you'll learn powerful cognitive behavioral skills to help you cope with and move beyond your thoughts, so you can focus on living the life you want. Your thoughts will still occur, but you will be better able to cope with them-without dread, guilt, or shame. If you have unwanted thoughts, you should remember that you aren't alone. In fact, there are millions of people just like you-good people who have awful thoughts, gentle people with violent thoughts, and sane people with "crazy" thoughts. This book will show you how to move past your thoughts so you can reclaim your life!

What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders is an integrated and practical approach to treating anxiety disorders for general psychotherapists. What is new and exciting is its focus on changing a patient’s relationship to anxiety in order to enable enduring recovery rather than merely offering a menu of techniques for controlling symptoms. Neither a CBT manual nor an academic text nor a self-help book, What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders offers page after page of key insights into ways to help patients suffering from phobias, panic attacks, unwanted intrusive thoughts, compulsions and worries. The authors offer a rich array of therapist-patient vignettes, case examples, stories, and metaphors that will complement the work of trainees and experienced clinicians of every orientation. Readers will come away from the book with a new framework for understanding some of the most frustrating clinical challenges in anxiety disorders, including "reassurance junkies," endless obsessional loops, and the paradoxical effects of effort.

What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders is an integrated and practical approach to treating anxiety disorders for general psychotherapists. What is new and exciting is its focus on changing a patient’s relationship to anxiety in order to enable enduring recovery rather than merely offering a menu of techniques for controlling symptoms. Neither a CBT manual nor an academic text nor a self-help book, What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders offers page after page of key insights into ways to help patients suffering from phobias, panic attacks, unwanted intrusive thoughts, compulsions and worries. The authors offer a rich array of therapist-patient vignettes, case examples, stories, and metaphors that will complement the work of trainees and experienced clinicians of every orientation. Readers will come away from the book with a new framework for understanding some of the most frustrating clinical challenges in anxiety disorders, including "reassurance junkies," endless obsessional loops, and the paradoxical effects of effort.