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10 Simple Solutions to Worry
Book

10 Simple Solutions to Worry

How to Calm Your Mind, Relax Your Body & Reclaim Your Life

Kevin L. Gyoerkoe and Pamela S. Wiegartz
New Harbinger, 2006

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8

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Recommendation

You can indeed be free of worry, even if achieving that goal is not quite as simple as the advice in Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 chart-topping song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Anxiety experts Kevin L. Gyoerkoe and Pamela S. Wiegartz explain their well-grounded approach to understanding worry and its impact on your life, including your health, relationships and productivity. Their upbeat little book packs a powerful one-two punch that illuminates and clarifies the basic elements of “productive” and “unproductive” worry, and then gives you specific directions for managing and even eliminating useless fretting from your life. Using “cognitive behavioral therapy” principles, exercises and techniques, you’ll be able to identify and change the negative thoughts that cause worry and begin to lead a more stress-free, balanced life. getAbstract recommends this small gem as a fine resource for working through your worries.

Summary

“10 Simple Solutions to Worry”

Do you suffer from chronic apprehension? Do you agonize over the smallest of molehills, creating large inhibiting mountains in your head? Don’t sweat it. Here are 10 solutions how to manage your worry:

1. “Understand Worry”

Worry has three basic elements: The first is “future orientation.” Most people worry more about what might happen in the future as a result of today’s events than they do about the reality of the event at hand. For example, having a flat tire is trivial compared with worrying about what the repair might cost, missing a crucial meeting or having to cancel a dinner date. The second element of worry, “catastrophizing,” accelerates your fretful future orientation into a doomsday scenario, where you see the future in a “highly negative light.” Worry’s third element is “language-based thoughts.” Healthy, positive thinking includes both words and images, but when you worry, you switch to thinking in words alone. Your mind shuts out images – which may be scary – and lets your “inner voice” repeat drearily monotonous portents of future disaster.

Yet not all worry is bad. “Productive worry” spurs you to take ...

About the Authors

Kevin L. Gyoerkoe, PsyD, is co-director of the Anxiety and Agoraphobia Treatment Center. Pamela S. Wiegartz, PhD, is assistant professor of clinical psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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