Summary of Dr. David D. Burns's When Panic Attacks

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Anxiety comes in many different forms. You may be afraid of needles, blood, heights, elevators, driving, flying, water, spiders, snakes, dogs, storms, bridges, or getting trapped in closed spaces.

#2 If you’re lonely and struggling with shyness, what would it be worth to you if I could show you how to overcome them. Imagine that you could go to bed tonight without that knot in your stomach, feeling confident and relaxed.

#3 The four theories of the cause and cure of anxiety are the Cognitive Model, the Exposure Model, the Hidden Emotion Model, and the Biological Model. They all have their advocates, and it’s not an either/or situation. If you and your doctor feel that medications are necessary, or if you strongly prefer to be treated with an antidepressant, you can use a combination of drugs and psychotherapy.

#4 The Cognitive Model is based on three simple ideas: you feel the way you think, when you’re anxious, you’re fooling yourself, and when you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669393566

IRB Media

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Insights on David D. Burns and M.D.'s When Panic Attacks

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Anxiety comes in many different forms. You may be afraid of needles, blood, heights, elevators, driving, flying, water, spiders, snakes, dogs, storms, bridges, or getting trapped in closed spaces.

#2

If you’re lonely and struggling with shyness, what would it be worth to you if I could show you how to overcome them. Imagine that you could go to bed tonight without that knot in your stomach, feeling confident and relaxed.

#3

The four theories of the cause and cure of anxiety are the Cognitive Model, the Exposure Model, the Hidden Emotion Model, and the Biological Model. They all have their advocates, and it’s not an either/or situation. If you and your doctor feel that medications are necessary, or if you strongly prefer to be treated with an antidepressant, you can use a combination of drugs and psychotherapy.

#4

The Cognitive Model is based on three simple ideas: you feel the way you think, when you’re anxious, you’re fooling yourself, and when you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel.

#5

When you feel anxious, your negative thoughts and feelings reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. The thoughts that trigger these feelings are not distorted, but they are not related to any real threat.

#6

The way you think can make you feel anxious. You can change the way you feel by changing the way you think. When you put the lie to your distorted thoughts, your fears will disappear.

#7

All-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, mental filter, discounting the positive, jumping to conclusions, and emotional reasoning are all examples of black-and-white thinking.

#8

The What-If Technique can help you identify the beliefs and fantasies that trigger your fears. It involves imagining the worst-case scenario and seeing how you would react to it. For example, Jeffrey imagined himself sitting on the sidewalk, begging for spare change as a group of attorneys he’d beaten in court walked by in their $2,000 suits.

#9

The Self-Defeating Beliefs that Jeffrey and I identified were: Performance Perfectionism, Appraoch Addiction, Fear of Rejection, Perceived Narcissism, and Brushfire Fallacy.

#10

The experiment that Jeffrey tried to do was to tell his colleagues that he’d lost a case in court. He was shocked by the results, which showed that his colleagues did not turn against him, but instead poured their hearts out to him.

#11

The Acceptance Paradox is the idea that your weakness is your strength. It’s a Cognitive Therapy technique that’s also central to most spiritual traditions. It means that although you might feel weak, your weakness actually is your greatest strength.

#12

When you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel. The Exposure Model works differently. When you’re anxious, you’re always avoiding something that you fear. When you confront the monster you fear the most, you’ll defeat your fears.

#13

I had stumbled across a technique known as Flooding. Instead of avoiding the thing you fear, you intentionally expose yourself to it and flood yourself with anxiety. You don’t fight the anxiety or try to control it, you just surrender to it. Eventually the anxiety burns itself out and you’re cured.

#14

The Hidden Emotion Model is based on the idea that niceness is