The biggest, most positive takeaway I received from this book was a simple reframing of my relationship with anxiety, and for that I am forever grateful.
I am someone who has "struggled" with anxiety since my teens. It has waxed and waned throughout the years, sometimes giving me a break for a string of months on end. But recently, I've dealt with two forms of "stuck" anxiety as the author likes to call it: anxiety ABOUT anxiety and medical/ health anxiety. Super fun, totally recommend.
Most recently, my anxiety about anxiety has revolved around my inability to sleep. So this book really couldn't have come at a better time. Anxiety is a really tricky thing to deal with, something no one genuinely enjoys feeling, and it's hard to know what to do, think, or how to act when it knocks on the door of your brain.
Which is why I really appreciated the reframing of anxiety by the authors as an emotion whose job it is to get you to pay attention and to warn you of potential threats. This alone has helped me to be much more compassionate towards not only anxiety whenever it materializes, but also with myself and how I greet anxiety at the proverbial doorway. It is no longer an enemy I feel the need to vanquish, but a crying toddler who is desperately seeking validation that a monster might be lurking under the bed, and wouldn't I please check?
I also really appreciated the E.A.S.E Approach, although, I couldn't for the life of me remember what each letter stood for, except A which I believe is Acceptance (but don't quote me on that). What I do remember are the smattering of steps one can take when anxiety appears. I started using them even before I finished the book, and have continued to build on them after putting the book away. I think of all the steps I've tried, my favorite has been simply breathing, but not in the normal, prescriptive way of bringing your thoughts to your breath (which definitely helps). The author instead recommends breathing deeply and imaging that your breath is opening up space for you and your anxiety to co-exist without crushing one another. For some reason, this really resonated with me, and I have found it the <i>most</i> helpful piece of advice.
Oh! And there was an entire section dedicated to Core Beliefs that I thoroughly enjoyed. It actually took me about a week after finishing the book and inviting my anxiety in with curiosity instead of fear for me to realize that a false core belief I held (along with some medical news) combined to trigger my latest bout of insomnia followed by anxiety ABOUT anxiety ABOUT falling asleep every night. Again, super fun stuff. BUT, what I learned from reading this book helped me to work through that stuck anxiety, and now I'm on restful-night's-sleeping streak. So, silver lining.
Overall, I felt like this was an informative read and even if not everything struck a chord with me, enough did that I would absolutely recommend this to a fellow anxiety-sufferer.