While this book does a good job of explaining why cognitive approaches alone are not enough, it really misses a huge opportunity to help people to heal as it suggests that Exposure Therapy is the only effective therapy to deal with triggers. This is simply not true. The authors state "There's no way to change the circuitry the lateral nucleus has created without giving the amygdala new experiences with <trigger> and, as a consequence, creating some anxiety.", and this is not at all true. Methods like EMDR and EFT have shown that if you process memories of past exposure to triggers calmly and carefully, you can get the hippocampus in the brain to process the memory and put it in the past without causing any anxiety. The authors don't even talk about the role of the hippocampus in permanently decoupling the amygdala's association with danger for a particular trigger, which is a major omission. Any book talking about neuroscience and anxiety that doesn't look at the newer methods like EFT and EMDR is really selling the readers short. You do not have to experience anxiety in order to recover from it (the fact that I've disabled masses of triggers as a result of past sexual abuse despite not remembering the individual events of abuse, using EFT, without producing anxiety is evidence of this). While this book covers the cognitive aspects of anxiety well, which is an important component, it is very limited in it's approach for calming the amygdala. I recommend reading The Tapping Solution: A Revolutionary System for Stress-Free Living by Nick Ortner to learn a simple method to shift the causes of the anxiety without having to go through exposure therapy and get anxious as part of the recovery process.

Deciding how to treat anxiety can be simple: breathing, exercise, talking, support groups. But not all anxiety is the same nor should they be treated equally. A patient with brain damage revealed how there are alternate pathways anxiety travels depending upon types. The “language of the amygdala” is how to treat one type, isolated by the amnesia patient who was not aware of her unconscious conditioning.

Though somewhat repetitive, this book is easy to read and clearly explains the basic neurobiology of fear, worry, anxiety, panic, and related conditions such as PTSD and OCD. Drawing on research by Joseph Ledoux and others, the book highlights the central role of the amygdala (the brain's primitive and subconscious 'fear center'), which receives surprisingly scant attention in many other books on this topic. In my opinion, understanding the underlying biology is very helpful, if not essential. The book also provides helpful evidence-based guidance on techniques to prevent or reduce the intensity of anxiety and related conditions. The key techniques are: - Get good sleep, aerobically exercise daily, and eat a healthy diet. - Breathe from the diaphragm/belly, which apparently activates the parasympathetic nervous system and thus counters activation of the sympathetic nervous system resulting from fear. - Remind yourself that thoughts and images are not reality and may be mistaken. - Disrupt problematic thoughts and images via distractions, play, music, and positive thoughts and images. - Mindfully 'defuse' from problematic thoughts, images, and sensations, and instead just 'be' in the present moment, calmly observing all that is happening without any need to interpret or respond in any way. - Meditate, including mindful meditation. - Deliberately and repeatedly expose yourself to the situations which generate unwarranted fear, in order to rewire the amygdala to no longer subconsciously associate those situations with fear. This can be an uncomfortable experience, but accept the discomfort and know that it will pass, and absolutely do not flee from the situations, because doing so will strengthen the fear. I highly recommend this book to anyone dealing with excessive worry, fear, anxiety, and related conditions.

I got this book for my daughter who has anxiety and depression. I have bought her two books from here and they have been approved by her therapist. Great book and she loves reading it.

I really enjoyed the book and just from reading it, my anxiety has lessened some. Before practicing the methods recommended. While some of the concepts were more difficult to understand, overall the book was written quite well and easy to understand considering the subject matter.

I learned a lot from this book and it helped me better understand my reactions and tendencies when I’m faced with fearful stimuli. I plan to re-read my highlighted parts whenever I need a refresher. In the beginning, I wished the information about the different parts of the brain had been shorter because what I really wanted were the coping techniques. But overall, this was a very helpful book and one that I would recommend to others. 4.8 stars.

Very Insightful on how anxiety is formed in the brain and how the information is processed by your cortex and amygdal. (Dont be afraid of the terminology, the book is broken down nice and understandably). Then, some really great coping strategies to deal with anxiety after the reading gives you a nice understanding of how everything works. Good job author!

This book is great, it gives really good pointers on what to do with anxiety and how to manage it. Also helps you understand it. It’s also a quick read.