The Anxiety Toolkit

January 26, 2015
Boyes, a clinician, mental-health speaker, and Psychology Today blogger, delivers an easy-to-follow, though spare, workbook on understanding and managing anxiety. According to Boyes, while anxiety frequently manifests itself as a form of hyper-aware fear, this emotion is a close cousin to simple conscientiousness, and it is neither advisable, nor possible, to entirely remove it from your life. Regardless, anxiety can still paralyze decision-making or action, and Boyes helps readers identify five common traps—hesitation, ruminating over old thoughts, “paralyzing” perfectionism,” “fear of feedback,” and avoidance—and how to break through them. The book’s chapters are structured around these traps, providing diagnostic tests to evaluate your needs, as well as exercises to address the disordered actions and thoughts produced by anxiety. Boyes’s tone is friendly but never saccharine, and endlessly practical. Her tips and exercises, drawn from cognitive behavioral therapies that she herself has administered, should make a valuable reference for anxiety sufferers, and an ideal companion to readers undergoing psychotherapy themselves. Agent: Giles Anderson, Anderson Literary.