Books for self-healing anxiety

If you want to rely on reading to relieve anxiety, don’t follow the “top 10 must-read” books on the Internet, and don’t drink unnutritious chicken soup for emotions. Books that have been clinically verified and suitable for most ordinary people’s anxiety scenarios are mainly divided into three categories – practical reference books of the cognitive behavioral genre, enlightening books of existential orientation, and neuroscience popular science books. There is no so-called “best book”, only the best choice to suit your current anxiety type.

When I was volunteering at a psychological assistance hotline last year, I met no less than 20 visitors. The first thing I said was, "Can you recommend some books to treat anxiety?" I have almost 3G of books stored in the online disk, and the more I read, the more panicked I become. I always feel that everyone else will be fine after reading it, but I am of no use." This situation is so common that many people regard "reading books for healing" as another anxiety KPI that needs to be completed, completely misunderstanding the core.

Let me first talk about the most widely read reference book of the cognitive behavioral school. The most typical one is "Burns' New Emotional Therapy". At least a dozen people around me relied on it to get out of the short-term anxiety dead end. There used to be a little girl who worked in Internet operations. She worried about being laid off every day for three months because she couldn't complete her KPIs. She couldn't eat or sleep. She read a lot of chicken soup articles to no avail. I asked her to try the "three-column method" exercise in this book. She found it troublesome at first, saying, "I'm almost dying of anxiety and I still have to fill out a form?" ”Later, with the mentality of treating a dead horse as a living horse, I broke down the idea of ​​​​"I will definitely be laid off" into two sides of evidence, and listed the pros and cons. After writing it, I found out: I exceeded the KPI three times last year, and department layoffs never touched the top 30% of people in performance. That night she slept for the first time in half a month. Of course, many people complain that this kind of book is "too much like doing homework", and even call it "spiritual PUA" - it is obviously being squeezed by the company and there are environmental problems, but do you want me to change my mind? This is really true. If your anxiety comes from a long-term suppressed intimate relationship or severe overtime work exploitation, changing the environment first is 100 times more effective than changing your mind. This type of book is only suitable for scenarios where "there are no big problems with the objective environment and it is purely catastrophic thinking that cannot be avoided."

If your anxiety is not about a specific thing at all, but you always feel that "living is boring", "worse than others" and "can't find meaning", then cognitive behavioral reference books will most likely not be able to help you. It is better to turn to existential-oriented inspirational readings. I know a college teacher who has been evaluating deputy high school students for three years. His classmates have either been promoted to professors or started their own businesses and made a lot of money. He sits in his office every day and stares at the ceiling in a daze. He feels that his life is useless. Watching "Burns" is completely useless - after all, it is an objective fact that the professional title is not evaluated, not that there is a problem with his ideas. Later, he read half of Alain de Botton's "Status Anxiety" and read in it, "Modern society has completely tied up 'whether you are good' and 'whether you are worthy of being loved'. Our anxiety is never that we are not good enough, but because we are afraid of not being recognized by the outside world." That day, he made an appointment with his friends to climb a mountain. After he came back, he never compared his professional title progress with others. Of course, the shortcomings of this kind of book are also obvious: it is too "floating", and I feel so happy after reading it. When I turn around and see the mortgage and car loan bills, and the unread messages from my boss, I should panic or panic. What it solves is the fundamental mental internal friction. It cannot solve the PPT you have to hand in tomorrow. It works best when used in conjunction with it.

Oh, by the way, there is also a group of people whose anxiety has been accompanied by obvious physiological reactions - such as palpitation, insomnia, uncontrollable thoughts, and even intrusive thoughts like "Am I going to hurt my child?" A mother who was anxious about postpartum came to me before and said that she was afraid of touching the fruit knife at home because she was always afraid of accidentally hurting her baby. She thought she was "crazy." I recommended "Brain Repair" to her. After reading it, she realized that such strange thoughts were not her real thoughts at all. They were a normal reaction of postpartum hormone fluctuations and long-term sleep deprivation leading to overexcitation of the amygdala. By following the book and doing box breathing for three minutes, those terrible thoughts rarely appeared in about half a month. Of course, some people don't like to read this kind of book, saying that it breaks down all emotions into hormones and neurotransmitters, which is too cold and completely ignores the grievances and pain experienced by people. This is also true. If your anxiety has a clear trigger of trauma, it is more useful to see a professional psychological counselor first than reading ten books.

Two years ago, I was working on an industry report. I was so stuck on the deadline that I slept three hours a day for half a month. I was so anxious that I felt sick when I saw a Word document. At that time, I read a mixture of three types of books, and didn’t care about my “reading plan”: I would read two pages of Burns when I got up in the morning, and read the words “I will definitely be laughed at by the industry if I don’t finish it.” My head was torn apart, and I flipped through a few pages of "Status Anxiety" while eating takeout for lunch, telling myself, "Even if I fail in writing the report, it doesn't mean that I am useless as a person." I flipped through two pages of "Self-Help for Anxiety Disorders" before going to bed at night, and followed it with 2 minutes of breathing adjustment. I knew that my nausea and vomiting was just because my nerves were too tight, and it was not a real physical problem, so I got over it. If I had been obsessed with a certain book at that time and stipulated that I must read it within a week, I would have probably collapsed long ago.

Really, don’t buy books with titles like “Break Anxiety in 3 Days” and “One Book to Cure Your Depression”. 99% of them are just pieced together chicken soup. Really useful books won’t give such guarantees at all – after all, anxiety is a self-protection mechanism evolved by human beings, and the complete absence of anxiety is the real problem.

In the final analysis, reading books to heal anxiety is not about finding a once-and-for-all antidote. It is about finding someone who is on the same page as you and can say to you across the page, "Oh, you are also experiencing this. It's normal. Let's take it slow." The best book that can catch your current emotions is yours.