There are many forms of anxiety that affect different people differently. If your anxiety and stress-related issues affect your performance at the office and don’t allow you to live a normal life, then you’re not alone. Anxiety is one of the most common mental health issues. One study suggests that more than 40 million American adults suffer one or another form of anxiety.
Meditation, positive thoughts, exercise can really help you manage your anxiety. Self-help books can also be a good help for those who wrestle with anxiety and self-doubt every day. The list has the 20 best books on anxiety that help you learn important techniques to improve your mindset.
1. Be Calm
Learn about the causes of different types of anxiety and their physical and psychological effects. Then learn how to implement effective, practical strategies to help you control even the most acute symptoms, from social anxiety to insomnia to panic attacks. Now when you find yourself in anxiety-producing situations, you’ll always be prepared.
2. A Liberated Mind
Beginning with the epiphany Steven Hayes had during a panic attack, this book is a powerful narrative of scientific discovery filled with moving stories as well as advice for how we can put flexibility skills to work immediately. Hayes shows how allowing ourselves to feel fully and think freely moves us toward commitment to what truly matters to us. Finally, we can live lives that reflect the qualities we choose.
3. Under Pressure
In the engaging, anecdotal style and reassuring tone that won over thousands of readers of her first book, Untangled, Damour starts by addressing the facts about psychological pressure. She explains the surprising and underappreciated value of stress and anxiety: that stress can helpfully stretch us beyond our comfort zones, and anxiety can play a key role in keeping girls safe. When we emphasize the benefits of stress and anxiety, we can help our daughters take them in stride.
4. Don’t Feed the Monkey Mind
The very things we do to control anxiety can make anxiety worse. This unique guide offers a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based approach to help you recognize the constant chatter of your anxious “monkey mind,” stop feeding anxious thoughts, and find the personal peace you crave.
5. Negative Self-Talk and How to Change It
Negative Self-Talk and How to Change It is an immediately helpful, life-changing handbook of how to deal with negative self-talk –– for yourself, or anyone in your life. Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D., the best-selling author of more than twenty books, is the leading authority in the field of self-talk today. In this ’60-Minute’ Book™ written for today’s reader, Dr. Helmstetter gives you all of the important information you need to change negative self-talk forever, in a short, easy-to-read, and condensed format.Also included is a special “Guide to Changing Your Self-Talk” from The Self-Talk Institute.
6. Brave New Girl
Brave New Girl reveals how everyone can follow their path to confidence. Renowned clinical hypnotherapist and anxiety expert Chloe Brotheridge has helped hundreds of clients with anxiety and low self-confidence, and in this book will use her own stories, scientific research, and the experiences of other women.
7. How to Fail
Inspired by her hugely popular podcast, How To Fail is Elizabeth Day’s brilliantly funny, painfully honest and insightful celebration of things going wrong. This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it’s a book for everyone. If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood.
8. Discomfort Zone
Honest, witty and insightful’ Emma Gannon’A brilliant, useful book’ Dawn O’Porter’Farrah has written a book about the things no one wants to talk about: failure, discomfort, and how to deal with both’ Sophia Amoruso, author of #GirlbossWhile it is human nature to shy away from things that are outside of our comfort zone, it is only by spending time in our discomfort zone that we can grow, and improve, and realise our full potential.
9. Notes on a Nervous Planet
Notes on a Nervous Planet collects his observations, taking a look at how the various social, commercial and technological “advancements” that have created the world we now live in can actually hinder our happiness. Haig examines everything from broader phenomena like inequality, social media, and the news; to things closer to our daily lives, like how we sleep, how we exercise, and even the distinction we draw between our minds and our bodies.
10. Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life
Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life tackles head on the bona fide pressure cooker of social comparison and unreachable levels of perfection that social media has created in our modern world.
11. The Perfectionism Workbook
Whether you suffer from anxiety and phobias yourself, or are a professional working with this population, this book will provide the latest treatment solutions for overcoming the fears that stand in the way of living a full, happy life. This workbook can be used on its own or as a supplement to therapy.
12. The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook
The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook broke new ground when it was first published in 1980, detailing easy, step-by-step techniques for calming the body and mind in an increasingly overstimulated world. Now in its sixth edition, this workbook, highly regarded by therapists and their clients, remains the go-to source for stress reduction strategies that can be incorporated into even the busiest lives.
13. The Stress-Proof Brain
The Stress-Proof Brain offers powerful, comprehensive tools based in mindfulness, neuroscience, and positive psychology to help you put a stop to unhealthy responses to stress—such as avoidance, tunnel vision, negative thinking, self-criticism, fixed mindset, and fear. Instead, you’ll discover unique exercises that provide a recipe for resilience, empowering you to master your emotional responses, overcome negative thinking, and create a more tolerant, stress-proof brain.
14. The Highly Sensitive Person
Most of us feel overstimulated every once in a while, but for the highly sensitive person, it’s a way of life. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a highly sensitive person herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations.
15. Better than Perfect
Timely and transformative, Better than Perfect by Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo offers step-by-step instructions for perfectionists to find balance and freedom. The book defines perfectionism in easy-to-understand terms, offers simple assessment tools, and shares case studies of Lombardo’s patients to highlight the condition. Also included are practical exercises and suggestions for behavioral changes, including seven ways to overcome perfectionism that range from choosing passion over perfection to remembering you’re more than what you do.
16. Getting Over OCD
Thoroughly updated based on the latest science, this empowering workbook gives you the skills to overcome obsessional thoughts and compulsive behaviors–and live a freer, happier life. Leading OCD specialist Dr. Jonathan Abramowitz presents a step-by-step program grounded in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), the most effective treatment for the disorder.
17. Worry Trick
Anxiety is a powerful force. It makes us question ourselves and our decisions, causes us to worry about the future, and fills our days with dread and emotional turbulence. Based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this book is designed to help you break the cycle of worry.
18. Full Catastrophe Living
Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health if we let it, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease.
19. Hardcore Self Help: F**k Anxiety
Hardcore Self Help: F**k Anxiety is for those of us that find the prospect of reading a traditional self help book to be way too boring. How are you supposed to make positive change in your life if the book itself feels like a chore? This book is definitely not a chore. In Hardcore Self Help: F**k Anxiety, I talk to you like a friend. There is lots of swearing and humor and also loads of helpful and actionable information. You learn about anxiety and how to find the weapons within yourself to slay it for good.
20. My Age of Anxiety
Drawing on his own longstanding battle with anxiety, Scott Stossel presents a moving and revelatory account of a condition that affects some 40 million Americans. Stossel offers an intimate and authoritative history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand anxiety.
