list of self-help books

I'm pretty sure I've talked about all of these books before in other posts, but I thought it might be helpful to have them all listed in one place.

If you're not able to get any of these, please check out this post where I linked to some great free websites that help guide you through anxiety-fighting techniques.

1) The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook - Edmund J. Bourne

If you can only buy one book from this list, this should be the one you get. In my opinion, it is the best book on anxiety out there. It covers so many different skills, techniques, and exercises. It has information on all the different anxiety disorders, anxiety-related research, types of medication, good nutrition and exercise habits, etc.

The only downfall is that if you're in the middle of an anxiety crisis, the amount of information it contains can be a little overwhelming. If you are feeling overwhelmed, I wouldn't sit down and read through the entire book all at once. It is more manageable one chapter at a time. Each one gives you so much to think about that it is probably better to take breaks anyway, just to let it all sink in.

2) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook for Dummies - Rhena Branch and Rob Willson

This book was very helpful for me. I was new to trying any kind of CBT work, and it lays out the methods in simple, easy to understand ways. It has tons of exercises to work through (charts to fill out, questions to answer) to understand the faulty/irrational ways you think/act and to help you correct those thoughts and behaviors. It also includes chapters on using CBT to help with depression, low self-esteem, maintaining relationships. I skipped most of that and only worked through the anxiety-focused chapters.

3) Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life - Steven C. Hayes and Spencer Smith

I've been meaning to take a second look at this one. I really didn't care for it when I started working through it the first time. It focuses on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and I am a much bigger fan of CBT than ACT. ACT teaches that rather than trying to control your thoughts, you should just accept them and learn to live your life with the anxiety (or other unpleasant emotional pain), still doing everything you want to despite the problems you have.

For one thing, I feel it is possible to control your thoughts and change your behaviors. It's extremely difficult, but I have seen it happen in small ways with myself. For another thing, when it comes to emetophobia, I get confused as to how you can just accept it the way it is and push yourself to live your life. But I don't think I got far enough in the book to be able to say I fully understand their method.

4) Living with Emetophobia: Coping with Extreme Fear of Vomiting - Nicolette Heaton-Harris

I wrote a detailed post about this book after I read it. To summarize, I feel it is a helpful book if you are looking for validation of your issue, a detailed description of your problem and everything you have to deal with, or if you want someone else to understand and you are looking for a book to explain emetophobia to them. The book is about the author's experience of living with emetophobia, and if you have emetophobia too, it's likely you'll relate to most of it. It's also likely that there are some anxiety thoughts that the author has but you don't have, and the book could be triggering in that sense. You could end up acquiring new anxiety thoughts/behaviors, so I would be careful when reading this one, if you decide to.

5) The Miracle of Mindfulness - Thich Nhat Hanh

This book is an in-depth look at meditation and mindfulness, two techniques that can be helpful in fighting anxiety. There is also a lot of Buddhism in the book. I'm not a very religious or spiritual person. But you can skim past those parts. I would say probably the best part of the book is near the end, the section called "Exercises in Mindfulness". There is also a section after that called "Selection of Buddhist Sutras" - both of these sections can give you ideas to help with meditation or mindfulness.

6) Overcoming Health Anxiety - Rob Willson and David Veale

This book is similar to the CBT workbook for dummies. It walks you through CBT techniques and exercises, only in this book it specifically applies them to health anxiety. I have a lot of general health anxiety on top of emetophobia, so I found it really helpful.

The book also contains a chapter dedicated to emetophobia. I didn't think that chapter was as helpful as the rest of the book. I would say the same thing about it as the Living with Emetophobia book described above - it is a good description of emetophobia, but it could be triggering and give you more things to worry about that you hadn't been worrying about before. It had that effect on me, but luckily, by now I think I've forgotten all the new worries it gave me. If I was reading the book over now, I would just skip that chapter. The exercises in the rest of the book can be applied to emetophobia as well as any other health anxiety.

7) Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Jonathan Grayson

I don't have OCD, but during the time period where my anxiety was the worst, I started having a bunch of horrible intrusive thoughts/obsessions that bothered me even more than my emetophobia. I bought this to try to figure out how to deal with those, and it is an amazing book. I would actually recommend it to anyone with an anxiety problem, even if it's not OCD.

The premise of the book is that for people with OCD (and I would say any anxiety disorder), their main problem is that they are unable to accept uncertainty in life. This is so true for me, and it's something I've thought about frequently ever since reading this. So if I was worrying I was sick, instead of telling myself that it is extremely unlikely that I will get sick and in CBT-fashion using logic to try to prove that, I would tell myself "you might get sick, and you should deal with that possibility because the alternative of not being able to deal with it is ruining your life." I suppose it might be similar to ACT (acceptance of anxiety versus fighting it), but the way the author related it all to the fear of uncertainty made so much more sense to me. The book also focuses on exposure and response prevention, or exposing yourself to your fears and then preventing yourself from engaging in irrational behaviors as a result.

Just a warning, a large chunk of the book deals with specific OCD problems, like checking, counting, etc., and if you don't have those issues, there is probably no need for you to read any of that. I felt the rest of it was worth getting through those (for me) unnecessary sections.                

tired of panic attacks

I had a panic attack tonight during what was supposed to be a five minute trip to the grocery store. It was pretty shocking to me, and I don't really know why. There has been so much going on over the past month - the panic attack I had at the movies that I talked about in my last post, Thanksgiving, people visiting, holiday parties to attend, holiday gifts to buy, etc. I know I've been stressing more than usual, so it's not that surprising that this would happen.

Still, it seemed like it came out of nowhere. I left my house feeling absolutely fine. When I walked into the store, I noticed I was beginning to feel kind of weird and unwell, and I thought "well, that sucks, but oh well, I'll only be here about five minutes, no big deal." I only needed to get five things. I got the first item and was on my way to get the second when I started feeling what I interpreted as waves of nausea, although they might have been waves of panic. They were really intense, and after the third or fourth one, I was convinced I had gotten sick and was going to vomit in the store. Sometimes I think about how if this ever actually happened to me, I would have to explain to the people around me, "I know I should have noticed what was happening, but I have this phobia, so I try to ignore sick feelings" and how they wouldn't get it at all. Which is a terrible thought and only makes me more panicked, but whenever I get to that point where I really start to believe what's happening is real and not anxiety, it pops into my head.

Anyway, I immediately walked out of the store, leaving my basket with my one item in it on the floor somewhere along the way. I went back to the car and sat in it, trying to calm down enough to go back inside. I was determined not to leave. I sat there for probably ten to fifteen minutes, thinking things like, "you are going to go back inside. If you don't go back inside, I will be so pissed."

(By the way, word of advice: don't be as hard on yourself as I am. It's definitely not helpful.)

I wasn't feeling much better though, and I couldn't convince myself to get out of the car again. I finally gave up and drove back home. I took my temperature, even though I knew what the outcome would be - as usual, no fever, nothing wrong with me, all in my head. I knew because of how much better I felt as soon as I walked in the house. It restored my confidence, and I then drove back to the store and had the quick uneventful shopping trip I had originally been expecting.

Well, that's not entirely true. When I got in the checkout line, the person in front of me was buying a green pepper, and the cashier couldn't figure out how much it cost. The confusion went on for a while, and I was on edge and wanting to get out of there as soon as possible to avoid anything else bad happening. Not knowing exactly how much longer I was going to have to stand there, I experienced another wave of panic/nausea. But there was no way I could leave the store then without having people notice and question me, because I had already put my items on the belt. So I mustered up every bit of thought-control ability I have and willed myself not to think anything related to being trapped there or possibly being sick or anxiety or how much longer it would be. I stared at magazines and tried to clear my mind as much as possible. I wasn't entirely successful at doing so, but I kept myself calm enough to get through the next few minutes until I could leave.

As awful as it all was, I did feel very proud walking out of the store with my bags of food, almost deliriously victorious. It was like anxiety was an external opponent I had beaten, and I felt like laughing (in its face) or shouting "HA!" or something like that. "I got what I needed, what are you gonna do about it now?"

I'm tired of this though, really tired. It might be time to start doing daily meditation again, at least for a while.         

self-healing rituals

Most people have heard of the placebo effect. A person is given a fake cure for some ailment, but it actually does make them feel better, because they believe it will work. Usually the person receiving the placebo doesn't know it's a placebo. They think they are getting real medicine (or surgery).

But some studies have shown that placebos can work even on people who know they are taking a placebo. This article from NPR gives more information. The theory as to why this works is that taking the medicine or having the surgery creates a "self-healing ritual" - which is just another way of saying that you're taking action to fix the problem. Your mind is aware of that, and then both your mind and body "expect" that this action will have good results. So it does.

A.J. Jacobs talks about this effect in his book Drop Dead Healthy:

"You could view placebos as depressing, I suppose. So much of medicine is a sham. Your brain is a three-card monte dealer running cons on the rest of your body. But I don't see it that way. I find placebos uplifting and exhilarating. It means that taking action - no matter what that action is - might help you feel better. The key is just to get your aching butt off the couch."

I'm not saying placebos are all you ever need to be healthy. When it comes to more serious illnesses, actual medicine would be necessary (although optimism - believing you will get better - is always a good thing). But for something like emetophobia, or any other kind of health anxiety, or even problems like IBS or chronic pain syndrome (that have been shown to improve using psychological treatment), I think self-healing rituals are extremely important.

I remember that when I started having those horrible panic attacks two years ago, I felt anxious almost constantly. It was like my brain was full of it, like I was always on the verge of hysteria - except when:

• I went to the hospital. On the drive there, in the waiting room, explaining how I felt to various doctors. I felt calmer this entire time - still not normal, but much better. I trusted that they would make me feel better. (It's been said that even seeing the usual attire of a doctor creates a placebo effect.)
• I went to the doctor to discuss trying psychiatric medication.
• I went to the pharmacy to pick up the medication. This one I remember the most. Even now, whenever I drive by that particular pharmacy, I feel my spirits lift a little, remembering how it was a beacon of hope for me at that moment. Even though I hated the medication and didn't continue taking it, I was so relieved at that time to have it as an option. I can see why many people believe medication is a quick fix. I told myself over and over that this wasn't true, but your desperation overshadows what you know.

Once all this was behind me, I realized there would be no quick fix, and I would need to keep working very hard on my own. I kept creating my own self-healing rituals: meditating every day for a certain amount of time, writing out affirmations over and over in a little notebook, and (my favorite, in terms of making me feel more hopeful) flipping through The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook and reminding myself that there were more things to try if what I was doing didn't work - that there was even the possibility that combining certain approaches would work best, which meant there were almost unlimited options.

So I am in total agreement with A.J. Jacobs when he says that taking any action can help - and that this concept is extremely uplifting. Anxiety can feel like it is paralyzing you, but taking steps, even small steps, to conquer it can be a powerful "weapon" in itself.

new year's resolutions

I know I'm overshooting here (and yet still falling short of what I actually want to be doing), but these are my health-related goals for the new year:

1) Eat four servings of fruit / vegetables a day.

2) Do yoga twice a week.

3) Exercise three days a week.

4) Get check-up / physical.

5) Limit taking temperature to once a month.

6) Limit taking anti-nausea meds or anti-emetics to once a week (except for Tums).

7) Limit asking my wife if I am sick to once a day.

8) Meditate or work with affirmations or deep breathing once a week.

9) Do actual written CBT work once a week.

10) Do something outside the house that makes me anxious at least twice a month.

class

I went to my first class the other night. I sat through the entire thing, and I guess because of that I can call it a success, but I still feel disappointed in myself. I don't feel like I handled my anxiety well. I felt "nauseous" through the first half of the class, and since I was in a more stressful situation than I normally am, the "nausea" felt more intense. It was so overwhelming that I kept forgetting to attempt to use the affirmations and mindfulness techniques, and when I did, I didn't find them as helpful.

I fell back to using old "tricks" that I came up with years ago. Planning out the fastest way I could escape the situation if necessary. Asking myself "if I was home right now, would I feel this way?" or "if I was home right now, would feeling this way be bothering me as much?" It's not like these techniques are horrible, but they're not recovery-focused - they only help in the current moment.

Even using those methods didn't make my stomach feel better, but they did allow me to keep convincing myself to stay. Eventually I calmed down just from time passing, and I was then able to concentrate on and enjoy some of the class. I am happy that I went and that I got through it, because obviously I'll need to force myself through these first unpleasant experiences in order to get to the point where they become pleasant.

I plan on being more prepared for the next class though. I am going to eliminate any other stressful things I have planned for that day, because I think this one big event is all I can handle for now. I am going to engage in some form of deep relaxation beforehand, maybe listen to a guided meditation CD. My wife also suggested coming up with some class-specific affirmations, and maybe I will write them down somewhere so that I don't have to worry about forgetting them because of being anxious.