The Anxiety Toolkit Quotes

“Your goals don’t need to be of the “become so rich I get to hang out with celebrities” variety. Nor do they need an approval stamp from anyone who’s not directly involved. What they do need to be is personally meaningful for you.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“The more closely individuals monitor their symptoms, the more stressed out by them they become. When people make reducing anxiety their primary focus, they usually do a lot of checking in with themselves about how anxious they feel at any given moment and what anxiety-provoking situations they have coming up. They might wake up in the morning and immediately ask, “How anxious do I feel today?” Overall, this tends to make their anxious feelings worse.
Have you ever had a situation in which focusing on your anxiety symptoms has caused them to increase?
People sometimes think they need to reduce their anxiety before they start thinking about other goals. However, because overfocusing on anxiety isn’t helpful, that’s the wrong way around. You need to have your goals clearly in mind first, and then think about how you can pursue them without getting derailed by anxiety.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“When people’s anxiety is less severe, they might not worry that they’re going crazy. Instead, they’ll often feel like their anxiety is holding them back. If they’re not making as much progress with their goals as they’d like, they’ll wonder if they’re a fundamentally weak or incompetent person. Some people believe their anxiety makes them broken and unlovable. They might question if they’re ever going to have satisfying connections with other people or if they’re destined for a life of rejection and loneliness.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“People often develop routines or rituals to try to keep a lid on their anxiety. These can range from avoiding “forbidden foods,” to going to only certain places or doing only certain activities with someone else, to washing their hands for a minimum number of seconds. Again, these routines help relieve anxiety in the short term but increase it in the long term, and suck away self-confidence. The goods new is that cognitive behavioral strategies are very effective for preventing anxiety from spiraling out of control and fear for reversing this process once it has occurred.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Let’s consider a less severe example: Bridget feels anxious about fixing the computer and emailing the accountant so she asks her partner, Steve, to do these things for her. The more people rely on their loved ones to do things for them when they feel anxious, the more their anxiety is likely to grow. Over time, they will feel less and less competent. They’ll increasingly doubt their ability to cope with situations that provoke anxiety. More and more situations will set off their self-doubt. Their relationships are also likely to suffer.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Trying to Eliminate Anxiety Can Cause More Anxiety

When anxiety becomes a major problem for someone, it’s usually because the person has become stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle where the things he or she does to reduce anxiety in the short term cause it to multiply in the long term. Let me explain how this works.
Let’s take someone who gets panic attacks. Because these are so unpleasant, the person logically avoids situations that might trigger an attack. The person might start out avoiding a few situations, such as public speaking or going to the mall on weekends. Paradoxically, the more the person avoids particular situations, the more their anxiety about having another panic attack increases. An increasing number of situations start to trigger their anxiety. The person starts to avoid more and more. The problem snowballs. Avoiding things due to anxiety is termed avoidance coping. It’s one of the main mechanisms that causes anxiety to grow and persist.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“The more time and energy people spend managing their anxiety, the more it sucks the oxygen out of the rest of their life. In this chapter, I’ll explain how focusing on your anxiety causes it to escalate. You’ll then learn how reducing your anxiety requires discovering or rediscovering goals that are more important to you than avoiding anxiety. I’ll show you how you can reconnect with your goals and increase your resiliency.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“The more time and energy people spend managing their anxiety, the more it sucks the oxygen out of the rest of their life.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Strong personality traits can sometimes give you a huge competitive advantage over other people—they can help you achieve things others don’t. However, the trick is moderating these personality traits so that they don’t dominate your nature. For example, being extremely persistent—which anxious, high achievers often are—can have a huge upside. However, if you’re very persistent but can’t moderate it, it can be difficult to take a break in situations in which you need one. You might find it hard to step away when you’re stuck on a task and not getting anywhere or when you’re involved in an argument that’s going nowhere and only getting more heated. The more extreme a trait is, the more likely it is to be a double-edged sword—sometimes useful and sometimes not.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Counterproductive Types of Care and Caution

The same careful and cautious tendencies that can be helpful in some situations can become paralyzing in others. You might hold back from opportunities or get caught up in minutia while leaving bigger issues unattended. Very cautious tendencies can also cause people to hold back from attempting to form relationships—whether they be friendships or romantic, business, or collegial relationships. There’s always some level of vulnerability that comes along with developing any type of close relationship. Therefore, in some cases, anxiety-based instincts to be self-protective can leave people feeling isolated and alone. Anxious people will sometimes avoid feeling vulnerable at all costs, even if it means feeling lonely or their isolation from peers thwarts their career success.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Conscientiousness

Not every anxious person is conscientious, but because you’re reading a CBT-based self-help book, there’s a good chance you’re at least moderately high in conscientiousness—a personality trait associated with having a strong work ethic and a thorough, orderly approach to tasks. People high in conscientiousness often get particularly great results from learning cognitive behavioral principles and skills. Why? They tend to like the systematic nature of a cognitive behavioral approach. They do well because they work hard to understand themselves and are diligent in applying their learning to their lives. Anxious people sometimes underestimate how conscientious they are, so make sure you give yourself enough credit for your conscientiousness.
It’s important to understand that conscientiousness is not the same thing as perfectionism. For example, perfectionists might spend so long trying to make something “just right” that they don’t have any willpower left over for other important tasks. Perfectionism and conscientiousness tend to be associated with opposite outcomes. For example, in a study of older adults, perfectionism was associated with an increased risk or mortality. Conscientiousness was associated with a decreased risk. There are big advantages to reducing perfectionism but retaining your conscientiousness!”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“If you’re anxious and agreeable, you may find yourself over-committing to things because you overestimate the potential negative consequences of saying no. More generally, you may hold back from saying things you want to say because of anxiety about how you’ll be perceived. The skills you’ll learn in this book will help you balance your goal of being well liked with other priorities—like managing your schedule and speaking your mind.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“The Agreeable vs. the Disagreeable Anxious Person

Earlier I mentioned people being agreeable or disagreeable. Being generally agreeable or disagreeable has been identified as one of the fundamental dimensions of personality. Just like anyone else, anxious people can be either agreeable or disagreeable. It pays to know which you are. People who are agreeable tend to prioritize getting along with others. They may not be willing to make waves when they can see problems with other people’s ideas or plans. In contrast, people who are naturally disagreeable may underestimate the importance of getting along with others and not invest enough in relationship building.
Once you recognize whatever tendencies you have, you can keep them in mind and modify your responses as you see fit. For example, if you’re anxious and disagreeable, you may say no more than you should. After all, your nature has you on the lookout for things that could go wrong.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Processing Change

One of the ways people fundamentally differ from one another is that individuals vary in how much emotional energy it takes for them to process change or the idea of change. For example, some people may find it incredibly jarring when they have to deal with last-minute changes in plans or they have to work with different people from those they usually work with. People who need time and psychological space to adjust to change won’t necessarily be anxious. However, they’ll tend to develop anxiety if they aren’t allowed, or don’t allow themselves, the time they need to adjust to change, or if they don’t have any emotional energy in their tank to cope with small changes in plans.
Are folks who require more energy to process change always rigid and unadaptable? No. They can still be very good at adapting—if they have the self-knowledge to navigate changes in a way that works for their nature. They will generally function best if they have habits, routines, and relationships in their life that give them a base level of consistency and familiarity. This could be as simple as eating the same thing for breakfast every day, having stable long-term relationships, or having particular routines for what they like to do on the weekend. Having some stable, familiar elements to life can help people tolerate changes in other areas.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Prevention vs. Promotion Focus

Anxiety is often associated with having a prevention focus. This means being focused on preventing bad things from happening. In contrast, promotion focus means being focused on reaching for new opportunities and rewards. While most people have a dominant focus, it’s possible to be high in both types, meaning you’re naturally very concerned both with avoiding mistakes and harm and with reaching for opportunities. This can result in a constant sense of pushing forward and pulling back.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“The Highly Sensitive Person

Sometimes qualities that get lumped together as part of introversion or anxiety are more closely related to a concept known in psychology as high sensitivity. Some of the typical characteristics of a highly sensitive person (HSP) include tendencies to:

--Process things deeply
--Get easily overwhelmed by too many things to do
--Get their feelings hurt easily
--Be sensitive to other people’s moods
--Find negative news very upsetting, even if it’s about people they don’t know well
--Find it difficult to hide their true feelings, such as when they lack interest in a topic
--Find it difficult to filter out particular types of stimulation, such as being easily irritated by background noise or scratchy textured clothing

People who have a lot of these tendencies aren’t necessarily anxious. However, they will often become anxious if they’re forced into environments that overwhelm their capacity to filter excess stimulation.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Many anxious people have had a lifetime of people telling them “Don’t worry,” “Don’t stress,” “Don’t over-think it.” As a result of constantly being told to just relax more and chill out, anxious people often end up feeling like there is something fundamentally wrong with their natural self. The “Don’t worry, be happy” message ignores research showing that there are benefits to both optimism and what’s termed defensive pessimism.
Successfully navigating anxiety involves learning how to accept, like, and work with your nature rather than fighting against it. Personally, I like my nature, even though I’m anxiety-prone. If you don’t already, I hope you’ll come to understand and like your natural self too. Once anxiety isn’t impeding you, this will be easier to accomplish. If you take nothing else away from this book, understand that there’s nothing wrong with having a predisposition to anxiety. It’s fine to be someone who likes to mull things over and consider things that could go wrong. If you’re not spontaneous or happy-go-lucky by nature, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that either. It’s fine to consider potential negative outcomes . . . as long as you also:
--Consider potential positive outcomes.
--Recognize that a possible negative outcome isn’t necessarily a reason not to do something.
--Recognize your innate capacity to cope with things that don’t go according to plan.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Reducing your anxiety to zero isn’t possible or useful. Anxiety itself isn’t the problem. The problem occurs when anxiety gets to the point that it’s paralyzing, and you become stuck. I think of these bottlenecks as anxiety traps. We’re going to work on managing your responses to five anxiety traps: excessively hesitating before taking action, ruminating and worrying, paralyzing perfectionism, fear of feedback and criticism, and avoidance (including procrastination).
The reason I’ve chosen to focus on these particular five traps is that I’ve found them to be the common threads that affect virtually all of the anxious clients I’ve worked with. The traps are self-perpetuating because they generate additional stress. For example, someone hesitates so much that she misses important opportunities, and this leads to being financially worse off. Or someone avoids feedback and then isn’t alerted to real problems that could have been rectified earlier. When people are caught in any of the five anxiety traps, they often fail to see the big picture and don’t problem-solve in effective ways. Learning how to navigate these bottlenecks will allow you to manage your anxious tendencies so that you can pursue your goals in life, whatever those goals may be.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“People feel anxious when they step outside their comfort zone. Avoiding stepping outside your comfort zone would lead to living life less fully.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“The Four Components of Anxiety
Behavioral component
--The urge to put off important but anxiety-provoking tasks
--The urge to keep seeking information rather than act
--The urge to wait for a go signal from someone else before acting

Emotional component
--Feeling nervous, worried, or apprehensive

Physical component
--Increased heart rate, sick feelings in your stomach

Thought component
--Fear of failure
--Mentally replaying events when you’re worried about how other people might have perceived you”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points

“Although anxiety can sometimes seem like a flaw, it’s actually an evolutionary advantage, a hypervigilance system that causes us to pause and scan the environment. Feeling anxious triggers us to start looking out for potential threats. If you detect a potential danger, it’s not supposed to be easy for you to stop thinking about that threat. While that’s great when you’re a caveman worried about protecting your family, it’s not as great when you’re an employee convinced you’re getting fired.
For many of us who suffer from anxiety, our anxiety alarms fire too often when there isn’t a good reason to be excessively cautious. Why does this happen? We may have more sensitive anxiety systems. Or we may have been doing things to decrease our anxiety in the short term, such as avoiding things that make us feel anxious, that have actually increased it in the long term.
Having some false anxiety alarms—where you see threats that don’t exist or worry about things that don’t eventuate—isn’t a defect in your system. Think of it in caveman terms: In a life-and-death sense, failing to notice a real threat (termed a false negative) is more of a problem than registering a potential danger that doesn’t happen (termed a false positive). Therefore, having some false anxiety alarms is a built-in part of the system, to err on the side of caution.”
― Alice Boyes, The Anxiety Toolkit: Strategies for Fine-Tuning Your Mind and Moving Past Your Stuck Points