The Anxiety Sisters' Survival Guide

Book excerpt: A warm and practical guide to coping with anxiety—and finding ways to laugh anyway. Got anxiety? Join the club. More specifically, join the Anxiety Sisterhood. Abs and Mags, aka the Anxiety Sisters, have spent the past thirty years figuring out how to outsmart their anxiety-ridden brains, and the last five years sharing what they’ve learned with a growing online community of like-minded sufferers who are looking for ways to cope better every day. Whether you’re looking to better understand and manage panic, worry, grief, stress, or phobias, or just want to pause the endless spin cycle in your head, you’ll find real-world, research-based techniques, exercises, and insights—without the clinical, confusing, one-size-fits-all approach that isn’t so helpful when your mind is racing, your triggers are in overdrive, and you just want to get back to feeling normal . . . ish. Most of all, this is a handbook for fighting Shrinking World Syndrome—that isolating, lonely feeling that comes from letting your anxiety run the show. The stories and suggestions in this book will remind you that you’re not alone. You don’t have to eliminate anxiety from your life in order to feel okay . . . and, yes, even happy.