In this week's podcast, I talked with Lynn Lyons about her new book, The Anxiety Audit (7 Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them). We discuss:  How repetitive negative thinking disguises itself as problem-solving  How catastrophic thinking makes the world a dangerous place and demands you react accordingly  How big conclusions and an all-or-nothing approach make the world smaller and harder to navigate.  How a fear of judgment isolates and disconnects us from people  How being busy and overscheduled both adds and masquerade anxiety and stress  How we blame others when we are irritable How self-care becomes not self-care at all Transcript This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it is created. Kimberley Quinlan: Okay, good. Well, welcome, Lynn Lyons. I am so thrilled to have you on the show today. Okay, so very exciting. Lynn Lyons: Oh well, thanks for having me. Kimberley Quinlan: You just wrote another book. I will say another book. It's amazing. Please tell me before we get started. Why did you choose that as the title? Lynn Lyons:  Well, what happened was we have a podcast called flusterclux. And I do that with my sister-in-law Robin; she's married to my brother. And during the pandemic, one of the courses we created together, she called it the anxiety on it because we wanted to go through the patterns that maybe people were experiencing and they didn't, they didn't have words to them, they didn't know what was going on. And so we did this course, and we put it out there, and then my publisher said, Do you want to write a book? And I said, “Oh, okay”. And Robin and I said, Well, why don't you just make the course we did into a book? It'll be easy because she's never written a book before. Um, so that sort of was the genesis of it. So the publisher like the title, the anxiety on it. So the book ended up being much more expanded than the original course, but the title was from Robin. And the course we did for the podcast. Kimberley Quinlan: Right. And I loved it because there is a degree of going through your book. We're going to talk today about the seven sneaky ways anxiety takes hold and how to escape that, but I love how it is. It feels like an audit, right? You're kind of auditing through these sneaky ways anxiety can take hold. So, I love that. So, let's go through today's those seven points, and then we will go deeper if we have time. Can you tell me a little about this first main concept of how repetitive thinking disguises itself as the problem? Lynn Lyons: Yeah, it disguises itself as problem-solving. So when you are doing repetitive negative thinking,… Kimberley Quinlan:  Aha. Lynn Lyons is just the lingo we use to describe worrying and ruminating. We generally distinguish between worrying and ruminating in which direction and time they head. So if you are a worrier, you tend to worry about things that haven't happened yet. And if you're a ruminator, you're going back over things, which tends to be both. It can feel pretty obsessive. A ruminator will go back over things and ask those questions. And did I say the right thing? Did I do the right thing? Did I buy the right refrigerator? Did I make the right decision? Lynn Lyons:  Repetitive Negative thinking. The problem with it is that the thinking feels like the solution. Remember, anxiety seeks that certainty.  If I just go over it, if I just think about it, if I just talk about it, if I just ask people about it, if I just get more information about it, that will lead me to a solution. But what we know is that the thinking is actually the problem because when you overthink, Lynn Lyons: You're caught in that repetitive cycle. You're seeking that certainty. So you don't move forward, and you don't take action. It just feels like you're doing something productive. But unfortunately, you're when people go to therapy, if they