Although this book is insanely repetitive (to the point that it almost became annoying enough for me to give it 3 stars rather than 4), it was incredibly helpful in figuring out why I get so anxious for no reason and in finding a way to try and work through that anxiety.

I would recommend a read through if you find that you are anxious about random events in life and feel like you need a way to release some of that anxiety.

It didn't hold my interest. Wasn't appropriate for what I was looking for. I have found better books for easier reading. Found it too scientific.

I found this book so helpful on so many different levels. First, it helped me immensely in understanding myself better. Second, it was reassuring to know that I am not alone and that there are others that suffer from the same issues and anxieties. And finally, that it's not all about getting the the heart of the problem but also implementing small behaviour changes over time to improve my situation. Highly recommend this book.

As a clinician, this book is incredibly helpful to explain anticipatory anxiety. This book is a great resource for clinicians, patients, and loved ones supporting those with this form of anxiety.

This would be a great book for anyone with an interest in psychology, CBT or if you are having anticipatory anxiety.

In our current world, anticipatory anxiety is quite common. With the approaches in this book, the reader is guided through simple and effective method to overcome this hurdle.

It’s a simple and easy to understand book. Would recommend to everyone to read it and practise it.

Anticipatory Anxiety is such a tough trap to get out of. Seif and Winston did great work with this book. I truly found it life changing. I am not too anxious day to day but dang, I sure to anticipate the worst. I found the DANCE model to be so helpful. Here are the basics. Discern your anticipatory anxiety, Accept doubts and discomfort, No struggling or avoiding, Commit to proceed and Embrace the present as it is, so you can get on with your life.

Like it says in the title this book is about anticipatory anxiety. This is the fear of something to come and avoiding it. By actually avoiding something, you're not dealing with the fear, you only have a reprieve and the fear will be back and worse than before.

I like the more specific books on anxiety, Anxiety isn't just one size fits all, it occurs because of a multitude of reasons and having a book geared toward your particular form of anxiety is helpful.

This books uses CBT approaches, which is the most common therapy available. It is also the one best suited to self help books. This book is easy to follow and the tips are quite helpful.

If you are effected by anticipatory anxiety I suggest giving this book a read.

I received an arc of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

If you experience anxiety, this is the book for you! "Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety: A CBT Guide for Moving Past Chronic Indecisiveness, Avoidance, and Catastrophic Thinking" is an excellent guidebook for those struggling with anxiety. The authors, Martin Self and Sally Winston, describe anticipatory anxiety as "the anxiety you experience in anticipation of events or situations that you expect will make you anxious or uncomfortable." This book centers around the difficulties of allowing your imagination to overthink the "what ifs" and how you can circumvent that. This book includes many helpful tips and was fairly easy to read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

What makes this book different? You not only get a full and easy to understand explanation of what anticipatory anxiety is and how it is affecting your mind, body, and life with on par examples from patients, but you also get a step by step guide to what needs to be done in order for you to put this anxiety behind you. Highly recommend!

This was a very well done and well rounded novel. I really enjoyed the characters and the development of the plot throughout.

I generally really love self help books, specifically those with some sort of psychology basis. This one especially seemed interesting to me because I have been dealing with some pretty extreme anxiety and panic over the course of the past year or so, and within reading just a few pages I knew this was going to be a fantastic and impactful read.

The first part of the book explains anticipatory anxiety in detail and the many ways it can manifest in an individual’s life. These are feelings I have been dealing with in some way since I was a little girl, and to have names put to the feelings I felt so crazy for having was really a validating experience for me as a reader.

Chapters 7 and beyond focus on shifting our mindset from trying to stop or control our anxious thoughts, to one of acceptance when these feelings do occur. By allowing these thoughts to happen and naturally pass through the mind, we actually can decrease our overall anxiety and the likelihood that the thoughts will reoccur in the future. I really liked learning about the DANCE strategy for dealing with anticipatory anxiety when it arises, and will absolutely apply it the next time I have these feelings.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the author for my e-copy to read and honestly review!

I wanted to take my time reading this because it is relevant to me because I have anxiety issues. I like that the authors describe what is and that there are different degrees but it is a combination of other factors too. I like the different scenarios of real people and there is objective, sensitive advice offered. Obviously this book is not a substitute for professional help but it can be used as a tool with that help.

Highly recommended. I already purchased a print copy for myself.

Thanks to Netgalley, Martin N Seif, Sally M Winston, and New Harbinger Publishing Inc for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Already Available!

I received this eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book made me even more anxious. It was very wordy. The situations it presented in the book were good, but reading this very wordy book made me more anxious. I don’t think I’m any better after reading.

CBT is a very popular and effective form of psychological treatment. The author of this title looks at how cognitive behavioral therapy can help anxious people to better cope and understand this (often overwhelming) emotion.

Anticipatory anxiety is discussed in a first chapter that describes this mindset as “bleeding before you are cut.” Readers will sense if this sounds true for them If it does, read on. Learn how indecisiveness and avoidance factor in. Find out more about how perfectionism contributes to the problem. Finally, get some help. I especially liked the chapter titled Common Questions Answered. These feel like situations that readers might wish that they had written to an advice columnist.

One important takeaway from this title is to remember that making change requires time, patience, practice and learning not to be too unforgiving of the human mistakes and emotions that we all feel. I believe that this book will help readers in doing exactly that.

Many thanks to NetGalley and New Harbinger Publications for this title. All opinions are my own.

Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety is a well-researched and practical guide on how to move away from crippling anticipatory anxiety. The authors delve into great detail on what exactly anticipatory anxiety is, what the different causes are, and how it can show up in different people. This includes both anxious thinking as well as chronic indecisiveness, both of which are very closely related. After providing the necessary knowledge base, the authors describe how to change your perspective to not let your life be inhibited by anticipatory anxiety.

I found this book incredibly helpful and approachable. I think even if you don't have a background in psychological or therapeutical methodologies, and you're tired of your anticipatory anxiety ruling your life, this book is understandable and provides a practical method on how to life with your anticipatory anxiety, rather than try to 'fix' it or 'remove' it. The first part of the book goes through different examples of anticipatory anxiety and it was really helpful to see myself in the examples, and understand the background as to why and how those thoughts show up. I have always been a very science-minded person, and I think having the first half or so of the book really explaining what is going on in your body (both mentally and physically) when experiencing anticipatory anxiety helped my understanding of myself. The authors make it clear that the goal is not to 'fix' yourself or remove your anxiety, but learn how to shift your perspective so that you can acknowledge the anxieties that you do have, and learn how to not let it control your life. I will be trying to implement this perspective shift and see if it can help me!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a great read for those of us who are afflicted by anxious internal thoughts. Would buy as a gift!

This has been an invaluable resource for me in working through anticipatory anxiety! I will refer back to it often. The writing is accessible and informative.

As someone who has been anxious for as long as I remember, I was intrigued by this book. I found it had practical and real life application, and was glad I took the time to read it.

I picked Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety by Sally M. Winston and Martin N. Seif as a volume to add to my cart purchases because I have two teenagers that were severely affected by the pandemic since these last two years and mental health is of great concern for us at this time. Upon seeing their anxiety increase exponentially, I thought looking into this book to see if it could help might be a good idea. After reading this I realize a better understanding of the sources and effects of anxiety are key to my being able to help or at least support them. The book made for a very informative read and I will purchase it to give to my eldest at this time. I think that understanding what is happening within oneself when the anxiety attacks come on is key to coping is the best take away from the book. I was not disappointed by this download and gives many tools that would serve an anxiety sufferer to change their relationship with their condition. This review was given on the ARC copy received from the Publisher via NetGalley in return for my opinion.

Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety by Sally M. Winston and Martin N. Seif uses a cognitive behaviour therapy approach to help readers deal with chronic indecisiveness, avoidance, and catastrophic thinking.

The book begins by explaining anticipatory anxiety, which is the expectation of distress and the push towards avoidance that occurs before you encounter the situation you fear in real life. The authors refer to it as the “third layer” of fear—it’s being afraid of being afraid of being afraid. They explain that sometimes people will refer to this as “free-floating anxiety” when they’re not actually aware of what they’re anticipating.

The book describes how anticipatory anxiety shows up in anxiety disorders and OCD, as well as other conditions like PTSD, mood disorders, and substance use disorders. In generalized anxiety disorder, anticipatory anxiety is the initial what if, which is then followed by thoughts to try to make that anticipatory anxiety go away; however, those subsequent thoughts actually end up reinforcing the anxiety. In OCD, anticipatory anxiety drives the performance of compulsive behaviours. In anxiety disorders and OCD, anticipatory anxiety often sticks around the longest during people’s recovery journeys.

One of the topics covered is chronic indecisiveness, which is presented as a behaviour that can be changed rather than a personality trait. There’s a not-so-fun mental loop where people have anticipatory anxiety so they try to avoid making decisions (the book describes strategies like procrastination and convenient forgetting), but indecision increases anticipatory anxiety. The book explores several issues that can feed into indecisiveness, like FOMO, feeling the need to make the best/right choice, fear of regret, and perfectionism.

There’s a chapter devoted to how anxiety works in our minds and bodies. The authors explain how the amygdala works and why it sends out a lot of false alarms (way back in the day, that would have helped save you from getting eaten). There are also personality traits that people can be genetically predisposed to that make anxiety more of an issue. Because of the way the brain is set up, the feelings you get are basically the same when you’re actually in danger vs. when you’re anxious. I thought the authors did a really good job of explaining this in a way that validated why people feel the way they feel but at the same time giving a solid alternative way of evaluating those feelings.

The book also explores avoidance, pointing out that this removes the possibility of new learning to teach your brain that your catastrophizing isn’t accurate. Also, the more effort you put into trying to remove unwanted thoughts and feelings, the more they stick around.

“Surrender and commit” is presented as the antidote to avoidance. This includes “attending to what is instead of what if,” disentangling yourself from your thinking, and committing to proceeding with either action or choice. I quite liked this line: “problems related to too much thinking are not solved with more thinking.”

The book closes with a chapter on troubleshooting and a chapter that explores what recovery might look like (and what it won’t look like).

I liked this book. I thought the explanations were really effective at conveying why our minds work the way they do. Another thing I liked was that the authors seemed very realistic. There were no flowery promises about strategies that will have you feeling better lickety-split. CBT-based books sometimes annoy me by being overly certain, but this book didn’t have that feel to it. The focus on anticipatory anxiety isn’t something I’ve encountered in other books on anxiety that I’ve read. Overall, I thought it was quite well done.


I received a reviewer copy from the publisher through Netgalley.