Clinical psychologist Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., founder and director of the Children’s and Adult Center for OCD and Anxiety, is one of the nation’s leading experts on anxiety disorder. She is also my personal coach on trying to tame my overactive amygdala, the almond-shaped structure inside your brain whose day job is to yell “Run for cover!”
The last few weeks, I’ve walked around the house with her books safeguarded under my arms, as my anxiety has had me in a half-nelson of sorts, making it extremely difficult to accomplish the usual stuff of my day: getting the kids to do things without uttering too many four-letter words, writing blog posts that make sense, not yelling at co-workers for leaving dirty dishes, and so forth. In “Freeing Yourself from Anxiety,” Dr. Chansky offers a four-step method for overcomingworry and changing the story lines in our mind from an R-rated horror picture to a PG humorous flick. They constitute a cheat-sheet for anxiety. Continue reading …
