Book of the Month June 2018 - My Anxiety Handbook

My Anxiety Handbook: Getting Back on Track

S Knowles, B Gallagher and P McEwen (2018)
Published by Jessica Kingsley
 
This supportive book is an encouraging, accessible manual to share with a teenager (12-18 yr old) who is struggling with anxiety. It is however, in my opinion, written back to front.


​
​With a literate, engaged and motivated young person I would start at Chapter 12 and meet the key people who have had personal experience of anxiety and contributed to the book.

It is then helpful to consider good sleep hygiene (chapter 8) and develop some mindfulness (chapter 6) and other regulatory activities into your routine so that your stress response system is in a good a place as possible to access the core part of this book – the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy approach to managing, challenging and adapting unhelpful thought processes.
 
Written personally with ‘we’ and ‘you’ the book engages the reader and normalises anxiety as a regular part of our emotional repertoire. It looks at catching and evaluating thoughts, looking at common thinking errors and has some useful strategies to support their approach including protected worry time and creating a self-soothe box.

A teenager would need a coach or mentor to help write their ‘survival plan’ (chapter 13) and share this handbook with. It would be a useful addition to a family looking to support a teenager where anxiety is the main barrier to their development.
 
With anxiety more prevalent in our young people, this book offers reassurance, support and practical strategies to manage and master anxiety provoking life events.
 
(If your child is 8-12 years old then ‘What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety’ by D Huebner is a book combining narrative and CBT approaches to support anxiety).

Intensive Therapeutic Service Team
Clackmannanshire Educational Psychology Service

---