Eric Goodman - Your Anxiety Beast and You: A Compassionate Guide to Living in an Increasingly Anxious World

Dedication

To the anxiety beast in all of us.

Even though you are mistaken most of the time,

you are always trying to help. Those times you get it right are key to our survival.

Thank you for your vigilant watch.

Authors note

Therapists tools of the trade include wielding powerful metaphors to label a problem or issue. Often these metaphors are used to rally a person to overcome an antagonist, such as, anxiety is a bully!, villain!, trickster! or competitor!

I was trained in the use of antagonistic metaphors to describe anxiety. In my early days as a therapist, I often described anxiety as a liar, competitor and even as Darth Vader. Then I had the good fortune to attend a training seminar with Dr Paul Gilbert, the founder of compassion-focused therapy (CFT), who helped me to realize that by shifting the metaphor to a more compassionate one, you could help people shift from their threat system (Im in danger!), or their drive system (I need an adrenaline boost to vanquish my enemy!), to the soothing system (My anxiety means well; it is trying to help me. I dont need to fight it.).

I began integrating compassion-focused therapy into my clinical work and my own inner life. Shifting from antagonistic anxiety metaphors to compassionate anxiety metaphors helped my therapy clients (and myself) cope more adaptively with the reality of anxiety. This gave birth to the anxiety beast. Using the term beast may initially sound antagonistic, but it was taken from the fairytale Beauty and the Beast where superficial looks can be greatly deceiving.

This book is designed to be a workbook. It is less helpful to passively read this book than to actively engage with the exercises in the order they are presented. The cases (unless they are specifically about my own experiences) are not about specific clients of mine, but representations of the types of challenges and issues that I typically see in my therapy practice, where I specialize in the treatment of anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Finally, in order to avoid tossing visual roadblocks throughout this book, references and recommended readings are placed at the end of the book.

I wish you well on your journey ahead.

INTRODUCTION:

YOU HAVE AN ANXIETY BEAST INSIDE OF YOU

Beauty and the Beast is a fairytale about a young woman terrorized by a ferocious beast. Early in the tale, the Beast appears to be the dastardly villain of the story; however, over time, the Beauty begins to see the Beast for what he truly is an imperfect hero.

Now on his good days, the Beast still stinks like a wet dog. He still howls obnoxiously at the full moon and scratches himself at inappropriate times. But he is a hero, nonetheless, although one with many flaws. Upon meeting the Beast, the Beauty is repulsed by his roaring and stomping. She doesnt see that behind his monstrous appearance and blustery demeanor he has a good heart and that he means well.

Anxiety also feels beastly at times, roaring loudly in your mind and through your body, but it is also greatly misunderstood. When you look beyond your gut instinct to run from it, youll see that it isnt the malevolent force that it sometimes appears to be. In the end, your anxiety beast is designed to help and protect you.

At some point in our lives, most of us have had the experience of anxiety roaring like a ferocious beast in our minds. Yet, todays culture places Zen peacefulness as the ideal to strive for. Anxiety is made out to be a beastly villain in your lifes story.

Noticing that you feel anxious at times, while buying into societys message that anxiety is abnormal, can bring with it a sense of failure or shame. This only serves to add suffering to your experience of anxiety.

People then often try to run from their anxiety beast. They may hide behind an online distraction or two. They may numb out or escape by using a variety of easily obtainable substances. Or they may seek relief by avoiding anxiety-provoking activities, such as dating, public speaking, flying or any number of things we humans misperceive as a threat.

But the beast always finds its way back always there, hidden inside your mind, waiting to roar. But is it really the villain of the story?

In this book, youll learn about why anxiety is so often misperceived as the antagonist. Youll then be re-introduced to your anxiety in a whole new light and see that anxiety is not the villain, but the flawed hero.

Anxiety is necessary for human survival. Rather than jumping on the cultural bandwagon that you can and must vanquish this normal and necessary emotion, this book focuses on changing your relationship with your inner anxiety beast. Rather than treating anxiety like your enemy (and getting that whole shame-suffering thing), youll learn to see it as your inner hero your loud, smelly, hyperactive, not-too-bright, hero who always means well.

This book uses strategies from science-based therapies, such as cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), compassion-focused therapy (CFT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), to present a hands-on manual for having a better relationship with your inner anxiety beast. This new relationship is based upon being kinder and more compassionate with your inner anxiety experience and actively training it to be a better beastly companion.

If you wish to continue to hate your anxiety beast, struggle with it, and ultimately scheme to do away with it altogether, then you may find this book, especially , to be downright appalling. Id set this book down and quickly walk away if I were you.

If, however, you are ready to skip to the second half of the fairytale, where you realize that your anxiety beast isnt so bad after all, and then move forward with the challenging yet rewarding work of befriending and then training your little beast, then read on.

Im a child riding in the car with my father who is driving us on the freeway way too fast, like always.

Its very early in the morning and the sun has yet to rise. Im drifting in and out of sleep while my father is spacing out to the blackness ahead.

Slumber is once again about to overtake me when I see something in the road in front of us.

Wake up Danger!, my anxiety thunders within my nervous system.

I am jolted awake. Adrenaline is racing through my body and my heart is furiously pulsing blood and oxygen to my muscles. I am wide awake and laser-focused.

Look out! Stop the car! I shout to my father.

Suddenly alert, he immediately slams on the brakes and we skid to a halt, narrowly missing the semi-truck which has jack-knifed across the freeway just in front of us.

We live.

CHAPTER 1:

SOCIETYS MESSAGE ABOUT ANXIETY IS ALL WRONG

AND ITS MAKING YOU SUFFER

Anxiety can feel like a voracious beast howling loudly when you are trying to sleep. It growls about danger in situations that you know are quite safe. Its bellowing distracts you when you want to focus. It warns you to stay away from living the life you want to live. And it can make you hurt.

It can be so difficult to live with an emotion that you just want gone. Its natural to want to evict your anxiety beast and try to force it to pack up and move out of your head permanently!