The Anxiety Toolkit:  Strategies For Fine-Tuning Your Mind And Moving Past Your Stuck Points, by Alice Boyes

As someone who has dealt with anxiety for a long time, I find myself deeply interested in reading books about anxiety, and I find in general that most such books come in one of two types.  Either the book comes at anxiety from a particularly cerebral approach (as this one does), or the book comes at it from a pro-Buddhist and New Age approach.  While I must admit that my ideal approach in a book would be neither of these, since the choice is generally between these two I prefer the cerebral approach, namely the Cognitive-Behavioral Approach, and this book delivers sound insights even if it can be a bit emotionally tone-deaf at times.  This author shows no particular interest in the etiology of anxiety but is only interested in helping someone recognize the level of their struggle and nature of their struggle against anxiety and to encourage some tips on how anxiety can be coped with.  That is the extent of the author’s interest in the subject, and if you are amenable to such an approach this book is definitely one I can recommend warmly.

This book is about 200 pages long and is divided into three parts and 11 chapters.  The author begins by urging the reader to understand oneself and one’s anxiety (I), with chapters on how anxiety works (1), understanding one’s multiple dimensions (2), and stating one’s goals openly (3).  After that the author provides the titular anxiety toolkit for how to get beyond one’s stuck points (II), with chapters on overcoming the problems of hesitancy (4), rumination (5), perfectionism (6), fear of feedback and criticism (7), and avoidance (8).  Finally, the author discusses what one does next after coping better with anxiety (III), with chapters on living one’s life rather than merely coping (9), areas where people get tripped up (10), and liking as opposed to tolerating one’s natural self (11).  None of what is discussed is particularly unusual or rare and the book includes a lot of multiple choice questions to help the reader engage in self-diagnosis.  The book then ends with a conclusion, acknowledgements, references, notes and in index.  By and large this is not a book that takes a long time to read and nothing in the book should be a surprise to someone who is even remotely familiar with the treatment of anxiety.

Even where this book delves into a recommendation of meditation, the author is quick to remind the reader that even slow and rhythmic breathing counts as meditation when it comes to the health benefits that one gets from reduced anxiety, and this is a far better way of addressing the subject than to promote dodgy Eastern religious practices in the name of health and completely ignore the biblical tradition of prayer and meditation that could easily be discussed.  Of course, the author does not discuss such matters from a Christian point of view either, but rather from the point of view of a psychologist.  The author even brings a bit of spice to her discussion, calling out at least some readers for reading a lot of self-help books without putting any of the insights into practice, which is a bit more fierce of an approach than would be the norm for a book like this which encourages the reader to adopt a proactive approach to better coping with anxiety.  Not everyone is going to appreciate this sort of book, but if one wants a very clinical book with a tough love approach there is much to commend itself here, and that is enough for me as a reader.