Book SummaryThe Master Guides: Understand and Overcome Anxiety, by Shortform

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Master Guides: Understand and Overcome Anxiety

If you've ever suffered from anxiety, you know how disruptive it can be to your peace of mind, relationships, and day-to-day activities.

In this Master Guide, we’ll examine what causes anxiety and how it affects your physical health, impairs rational thinking, and fuels unhealthy habits. We’ll also provide practical advice for preventing and overcoming anxiety. Our guide compiles research and methods from a...

The Master Guides: Understand and Overcome Anxiety Summary Part 1: Understanding Your Anxiety

To effectively overcome anxiety, it’s helpful to understand it: what it is, what causes it, and how it affects your mental and physical health. Let’s first explore how different experts define anxiety.

According to psychologist Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence), anxiety is chronic worrying—and while the point of worry is to help you anticipate problems, in anxiety, the worry spins out of control and you either worry about everything or nothing in particular.

Goleman says that anxiety is generally either cognitive—consisting mostly of worrying thoughts—or somatic—consisting mostly of bodily symptoms. He says that chronic anxiety tends to be fear-based (meaning you fixate on a specific situation), obsession-based (meaning you fixate on preventing certain situations), or panic-based (meaning you have panic attacks—episodes where you think you’re dying and experience symptoms similar to those of a heart attack).

In contrast, psychiatrist and...

The Master Guides: Understand and Overcome Anxiety Summary Part 2: Strategies for Overcoming Anxiety

Many experts argue that though the effects of anxiety can feel overwhelming, they’re surmountable: You can break the cycle that creates and reinforces anxious tendencies. In this part of the guide, we’ll explore approaches for disrupting the cycle, covering how to:

1. Adopt a positive mindset to curb anxious tendencies.
2. Anticipate and preempt anxiety-inducing triggers.
3. Implement healthy stress-relief strategies.
4. Analyze and challenge anxious thoughts.
5. Reflect and learn from anxious experiences.

Strategy 1) Adopt a Positive Attitude to Curb Anxious Tendencies

Carnegie argues that your attitude determines how you perceive and react to your circumstances. The more negative your attitude and the more pessimistically you approach life, the more anxiety you feel: You perceive small issues as large concerns, react by worrying incessantly, and focus on what you don’t have. On the other hand, the more positive your attitude and the more optimistically you approach life, the less power anxiety has over you: You find it easier to ignore small...

The Master Guides: Understand and Overcome Anxiety Summary Shortform Resources

For more advice on overcoming anxiety, see the following Shortform guides:

• Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins
• Burnout, Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski
• Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman *...

Shortform Exercise: Analyze Your Anxiety and Strategize Solutions

Experts suggest that analyzing anxiety helps generate solutions for alleviating it. In this exercise, try pinpointing the cause of your anxiety and then explore what you can do to resolve it.

Reflect on an issue that you’re feeling anxious about. Write down at least one thing that’s good about it. (For example, you're anxious about driving in heavy traffic, but you can acknowledge that having a car gives you the flexibility to travel wherever you need, whenever you want.)