The Anxiety Toolbox: Techniques for Managing Difficult Emotions

By Janice McWilliams

Anxiety is one of the most difficult human emotions, and the way we’re primarily told to deal with our anxiety is generally ineffective. It’s common to treat anxiety as a flaw, something that must be gotten rid of — and the ultimate result is even more stress.

Licensed therapist Janice McWilliams wants to take a different approach in The Anxiety Toolbox, an audio course from Scribd Coach. McWilliams begins with the premise that the right move is to change your relationship with anxiety rather than trying to get rid of it outright. From there, she offers a number of practicable tips for dealing with anxiety in a time of crisis: scheduling your worry, managing difficult thoughts, feeling your feelings at their depth, and much more.

If you’re interested in a fresh, clinical perspective on anxiety management, you’ve come to the right place: Janice McWilliams and her years of experience are here to help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribd Coach
• Release date: Sep 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094425566

Janice McWilliams

Janice McWilliams is a licensed clinical professional counselor and spiritual director with a primary interest in couples counseling and Enneagram work. She holds a Master of Science in Pastoral Counseling from Loyola University and a Master of Divinity from Howard University, and has completed advanced counseling training, including with masters of counseling for generalized anxiety, panic disorder, and OCD. You can find McWilliams on Thinkific, or at her website, janicemcwilliams.com.

Book preview

The Anxiety Toolbox

The Anxiety Toolbox

Essential Skills for Dealing with Your Anxiety

Janice McWilliams

SCRIBD COACH

Copyright © 2021 by Janice McWilliams

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781094425566

First e-book edition: September 2021

Scribd, Inc.

San Francisco, California

Scribd.com

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About Scribd Coach

This ebook is brought to you by Scribd Coach, a new imprint from Scribd dedicated to short-form, inclusive, and insightful personal and professional growth courses written by recognized experts.

Each Scribd Coach course is available in audiobook format or as an ebook transcribed from the audio course — like the book you’re about to read. If you’re interested in the audio edition of this course, or if you’d like to read more personal growth content from Scribd Coach, check out the Scribd Coach imprint page. 

You can share your thoughts on this title by rating and leaving a review on the book page. Thanks for reading — enjoy!

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to The Anxiety Toolbox, a course from Scribd Coach. I’m Janice McWilliams, and I’ll be your guide through this journey.

Everyone has anxious thoughts at one point or another. Anxiety is, after all, a normal, human experience that we have to help us keep us safe. The fight, flight, or freeze response that sometimes happens when we get anxious or scared helps us survive when we are in danger. But sometimes, anxiety, and sometimes extreme anxiety, comes up when we aren’t actually in danger or we don’t need it. That’s what we call disordered anxiety. Anxiety disorders can get in the way of living the life that you want to live. This is usually when people seek out help or treatment for their anxiety.

In my work as a therapist, I often greet people who say quite plainly in our first session that they want me to make their anxiety GO AWAY. An interesting conversation always follows. I have to tell them just like I need to tell you that as long as trying to make anxiety go away is your goal, it will keep being a problem for you. What I’ll endeavor to do in this course is to help you change your relationship with anxiety; to become less afraid of it, avoid it less, and to know what to do when it comes up. By the end of this course, you will have a toolbox of resources all set for you.

I want to be clear that this course is not therapy and does not take the place of therapy. What I’m offering here is a collection of tools that can be found in books, on websites, and in workshops that can change the way you relate to your anxiety and potentially make it a much smaller problem. So, this course is for everyone who deals with anxiety, whether they have a diagnosis or not.

In this course, I’ll be offering tools in a series of units. At the end of each unit, there will be exercises to help you put what we’ve talked about into practice and go deeper with it. I suggest using a journal or dedicated notebook or a note page in your phone for these exercises. Give yourself ample time and space to complete these. Doing the personal work is what helps this course become specialized to you and your needs.

I also want to encourage you to take your time. If you listen through all of the segments without stopping, it might be worth going back and listening to them again. Do the personal work — that will help you get into the nuances of these practices and how they work for you.

Also, try to have compassion

Reviews for The Anxiety Toolbox

[Janinah · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book on handling anxiety! Highly recommend it as has easy insights that can be applied right away. I've already applied a few of them already (read the book within a couple of hours) and feel much better in myself and confident that I can better handle the challenges I'm currently facing. Not to mention I made a copious amount of notes for me to refer back to in future as the book has so many golden nuggets!!

[Nancy StJohn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Janice McWilliams has written a real gem. I read The Anxiety Toolbox in one sitting and straight away began doing and teaching her exercises with great results. Janet weaves the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) throughout this book and has created a practical and compassionate guide on how to experience anxiety without letting it take over your life. FABULOUS!!!