Lynn Lyons - The Anxiety Audit : Seven Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them

The Anxiety Audit

7 Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them

Lynn Lyons, LICSW, coauthor Auxious Kids, Auxious Parents

Once in a while a book comes along that instantly changes the way you think and act for the better. The Anxiety Audit joins this club. I challenge you to put it down and not move through your day differently. Buy this bookit will guide you along the journey to being the person in relationships, and inside yourself, that you are hoping to become.

Rachel Simmons, bestselling author of Odd Girl Out and Enough As She Is

Todays uncertain world has created an anxiety epidemic! The Anxiety Audit shows us how not to let it get a grip on our lives. Lynn Lyonss down-to-earth advice provides simple solutions to help us recognize whats making it worse, what makes it better, and how to manage our hectic lives and our important relationships. I guarantee youll have page after page of ah-ha moments.

Joan Lunden, journalist and bestselling author

Lynn Lyons is an expert in the anxiety field and a skilled therapist, but she talks about anxiety like the rest of us. The Anxiety Audit is a book full of stories, advice, and humor that will help us get through our busy days, manage our unpredictable world, and improve our most important relationships. Lynn shows us anxiety is part of being human, but it need not define us.

Laura Morton,New York Times bestselling author, creator of Anxious Nation

In The Anxiety Audit, Lynn Lyons writes with clarity, wisdom, and wit. She offers illuminating case examples and practical advice in a sensible, straightforward way. In so doing she provides you with a means of attaining both relief and inspiration. Lynn makes it clear that the goal isnt to cure anxiety. Rather, the far more realistic goal is to learn to manage it skillfully using the insights and strategies she so clearly provides in this wonderful book. Read it, enjoy it, learn from it, and discover for yourself how this audit can yield substantial personal profits!

Michael D. Yapko, PhD, clinical psychologist, author of Breaking the Patterns of Depression and Depression is Contagious

Here is the best gift of The Anxiety Audit: You wont get bogged down in all the little details of change. You can trust that Lynn knowsshe knows!the seven simple shifts in your perspective that release you from anxietys grip. Oh, and all that sage advice youve heard through your life? She debunks it.

Reid Wilson, PhD, founder, anxieties.com

For Zed, Brackett, Brice, Cole, Pearl, Greta, Kate, and Thomas May this next generation fill their lives to the brim with messy, joyful connection.

And for Michael Yapko, who has shaped who I am as a clinician and whose influence is on every page of this book.

A game-changer. That is how people describe the tips and tools that Lynn Lyons gives to those who struggle with any type of anxiety. And I should know. Because she changed my game as a parent and a person.

In the early days of the pandemic, most of us were stuck at home. In the midst of the stress and everyday struggles, many tried to look on the bright side, noting how lucky they were to have a professional chef or baker as a family member. I was fortunate to have an anxiety expert at my disposalLynn Lyons, an esteemed psychotherapist, mom, and educator who happens to be my sister-in-law (as well as my doula during the birth of my children).

Lynn and I noticed an uptick in anxiety from the pandemicwaves and waves of uncertainty cresting upon an already-rising tide of anxiety in our society. We decided to launch a podcast called Flusterclux to share Lynns advice and tools with as many families as possible.

Over the years, Lynn has shared life-changing wisdom with professionals and families in her keynotes and workshops as well as with me at our kitchen table. She has taught me what I should be focusing on as a parent to be on the offensive against anxiety before it arises. At the time, I didnt realize I had a very simplistic understanding of her work in terms of how she helps families with anxious children.

In the process of making our podcast episodes, Ive learned invaluable skills from Lynn that I didnt know I needed. Thats what people say frequently about her work. You may think you know what anxiety is at the start of this book, but Lynn will show you ways anxiety drives your and your familys behavior, casting a much wider net than you realize. Understanding how to identify anxietys hiding places feels like a magic decoder of human behavior.

The Anxiety Audit breaks down these common patterns. And Lynn unpacks each one of them with as much humor and as little psychobabble as possible. These patterns are everywhere. Learn and identify them so that you can recognize when you are engaging in them, your family does them, or your colleagues do them. Believe me, you will have no shortage of practice.

As you become familiar with your anxious patterns, thats where the magic begins.

Lynn outlines a better way to respond. She coaches you how to interrupt them. With practice it gets easier and easier.

My pattern, for example, is catastrophizing. Armed with this new information about myself, I can see the changes I have made. As a catastrophizer, anxiety frequently runs a worst-case-scenario movie in my head.

With practice, I began to think to myself, Oh my gosh! Dont panic, this is just you catastrophizing! In time, I began to greet my pattern without emotion or judgment. Hello, anxiety movie. I see you. And finally, Ive learned to hit pause on the anxiety movie from playing and simply say, Anxiety, I am so bored by your predictable movies. Not today.

But heres the kicker: Lynn explains why eliminating anxiety is not the goal. Youre never going stop being anxious any more than you will stop being angry or sad. So managing our responses is the strongest way to prevent anxiety from controlling our homes. And, conveniently, these skills of managing our emotional responses have broader applications. The work you put into anxiety will reward you with other tricky feelings, too.

You may already think you know your relationship with anxiety, but Lynn explains it in a different way. Anxiety is a big-umbrella term for so many emotions. Be open to new understanding that brings light to the parts of you that you like to keep in the dark. In this book, you will see how universal these struggles are. Take comfort in the fact that everyone is juggling them too.

Every conversation you have while being anxious makes you less capable of authentic connection. Shifting away from anxiety makes room for deeper connection. The results are powerful and nourishing.

This work is life-long. If one only had to read or hear or practice this information once, I would no longer have any anxiety, nor would anyone else in Lynns family. Nor would Lynn, for that matter. Its ongoing and worthwhile work, especially if you tackle it as a family, out in the open, in the light. Everyone wins.

Robin Hutson, cohost, Flusterclux

I share stories. I use them in my sessions with families and when Im speaking and training. I subject my family to them. They were a huge part of parenting when my boys were little. This book is full of stories: stories about the people I have worked with in my thirty years as a therapist, stories about my own experiences with worry and anxiety because they are just like