The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It

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The thing is, we all go through life as if we know what to expect. Chances are tomorrow will be as regular and forgettable as the vast majority of other days in your life. A worry-free mind knows this. So if a doubt arises, it’ll leave just as easily. Another thing is stop thinking about the "what if's" to a certain extent. Sometimes it's good to think of the possible what ifs but not alllll the time where it takes over your livelihood and you're constantly paranoid. To me, this book could be greatly improved if the prolonged repetition were edited. For example, it seems the first seven chapters could easily be pruned into only two. (Later insert: **But see my wondering about this in the next paragraph, as well as the first comment to this review.)

Stand in front of a mirror, and read the worry out loud, 25 times. Eat one of the Tic Tacs each time, to make your counting conscious and deliberate. Think about it. What do you do when you start to worry? When you have that first sneaking feeling of doubt? Because your brain interprets it as danger, your first reaction is to try to stop it. This ends up with you arguing with yourself, and when you argue with yourself you can never win.

How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It

The delivery of the audiobook couldn't be any better, either. The narration is perfect for driving certain points home, and the acting / singing stints were executed nicely. Chronic worry redirects much of your time, attention, and energy to worry rather than life. It leads you to spend more and more time “in your head,” in your internal world, trying to get your thoughts arranged the way you think they should be, always struggling and fussing with worry rather than getting out into your external world and living, doing whatever it takes to be the good parent, good friend, good employee, good neighbor, or good whoever you always wanted to be. It leads you to invest your time and energy in worry, and struggles with worry, rather than in being the person you wanted to be and living the life you hoped for. The Fear of Failure: The book explores how the fear of failure can triggers our brain’s worry center, leading to increased anxiety and stress. Carbonell offers strategies for reframing our thinking about failure and developing a growth mindset. Some readers may find the book’s focus on cognitive-behavioral therapy to be too narrow, as other therapeutic approaches may also be effective in managing worry and anxiety. If you’re like a large proportion of people, worry is a problem. You can’t stop it, you can’t control it, and no matter how many times you’re told to “just stop worrying,” it won’t go away. It’s a losing battle.

This book taught me that the most important thing to do with worry is to break the cycle. And the best approach to take is a counter-intuitive one, which is why many people continue to struggle with worry. The way to solve it is not how you would think! Carbonell helps the reader learn these less-obvious approaches. What does the “what if” clause actually tell you? Say you’re thinking: “What if I’m in a car accident?” That’s not something you think at the moment that an accident happens. There’s no “what if” about it – it’s happening.

The Benefits of Seeking Support: The book highlights the benefits of seeking support from friends, family, and mental health professionals in managing worry and anxiety. Carbonell provides practical tips for finding and utilizing support systems. Dr. Carbonell has a way of saying things that just makes you stop and reconsider long-held beliefs and practices. And who would expect that a book about worry could actually be fun to read? The foibles of the typical anxious mind are described so astutely and so kindly that you just keep reading. And then he describes how to get out of worry loops in a way that is both counter-intuitive and makes all the sense in the world. I can say that after reading this book, I have taken away a more insightful approach to my worry and why it happens, and I have started to use techniques that are helping me handle it so that it doesn't consume me. And also that I am having less of the same worrisome thoughts over and over. To say that this book has changed my life would be too much, but it certainly did show me new horizons when dealing with my own anxieties. And it gave me a push to be braver to read more about this topic, which a year ago would have been a huge trigger for me.

Obviously, this is easier said than done, especially if you’ve spent a long time going with the intuitive but unhelpful response of fighting with your worry. I am a worrier, and I have been for most of my life. As a teenager, my mom always used to tell me 'not to make mountains out of mole hills' because my worries were often over insignificant things. Finally, someone has written a book about worry that I can give to my clients that I'm certain will be helpful to them as they struggle to better understand and deal with their constant worrying. So very many of my clients worry constantly and have searched in vain for tools and techniques to help them, but now Dave Carbonell has given them what they were looking for--a treasure chest of tips and ideas for handling worry. This is an eminently readable book that I'm sure I will recommend to many of my clients for years to come."The author offers practical strategies for managing worry and anxiety that are grounded in cognitive-behavioral therapy. If you find yourself forgetting to breathe properly, use common signals from the world around you as reminders – a car horn or a phone notification, for example. Who should read this book? People who worry too much, people who worry about their worrying, people who love people who worry, people who treat people who worry. It made me understand why CBT hasn’t worked for me, and it gave me ideas for other schools of therapy that could work better for my kind of thoughts and anxious mind.

The Power of Mindfulness: The book emphasizes the importance of mindfulness in managing worry and anxiety. Carbonell provides practical tips for cultivating mindfulness, such as focusing on the present moment, observing our thoughts without judgment, and engaging in physical activities that promote mindfulness.

Third and finally, develop a daily habit of mindfulness meditation. This process of passively observing thoughts is quite popular, with plenty of resources to get started. If you’ve never tried it before, here’s your first lesson.