Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius of This Vital Emotion

by Karla McLaren

Overview

An in-depth guide for engaging with anxiety—not as an affliction, but as an essential source of foresight, intuition, and energy for completing your tasks and projects.

If you're facing anxiety, you've probably got one thing on your mind—how to make it go away. But what if this challenging emotion were actually trying to help?

"When we ignore or repress our anxiety,” teaches Karla McLaren, "it can overwhelm us. But when we learn to welcome it with skill, we can access its remarkable gifts."

Engaged with wisely, anxiety is your task completion ally—it helps you to focus, plan, take action, and fulfill your goals. With Embracing Anxiety, you'll join this acclaimed educator and researcher to explore:

• Principles and practices to befriend your anxiety at every level of intensity (before it overwhelms you)
• Strategies to engage with anxiety as a source of foresight, conscientiousness, and motivation
• Why fear, confusion, and panic are not the same as anxiety, and tools to work with each effectively
• How anxiety blends with anger, depression, and other emotions, and how to clarify these compounded states
• Using McLaren’s Conscious Questioning practice to engage with anxiety and garner its insights
• How to embrace procrastination and get things done

"When you identify, listen to, and act on anxiety skillfully, you support its purpose," teaches McLaren, "and allow it to recede naturally until it is needed again." With Embracing Anxiety, you'll learn how to get this powerful emotion on your side.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683644415
Publisher:	Sounds True, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/30/2020
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	1,089,620
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Karla McLaren, M.Ed., is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and empathy pioneer. Her work focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. She is the CEO of Emotion Dynamics LLC and the developer of the Empathy Academy online learning site.

Karla is the author of Embracing Anxiety, The Dynamic Emotional Integration Workbook, The Art of Empathy, The Language of Emotions, and the multimedia online course Emotional Flow: Becoming Fluent in the Language of Emotions.

Table of Contents

Introducing My Friend Anxiety 1

Part I Refraining Anxiety

1 Embracing the Foresight and Focus of Anxiety 11

2 Meeting Your Four Emotion Families 35

3 Mindfulness Practices for Nurturing Your Emotional Genius 55

4 The Power of Consciously Questioning Your Anxiety 79

Part II When Anxiety Teams Up with Other Emotions

5 The Difference Between Fear, Confusion, Panic, and Anxiety 95

6 Attending to Panic and Anxiety 115

7 Setting Clear Boundaries with Anger and Anxiety 131

8 Doing Your Best Work with Shame and Anxiety 141

9 The Surprising Genius of Depression and Anxiety 153

10 Balancing the Happiness Family and Anxiety 165

Part III Supporting Your Anxiety in the World

11 When Anxiety Is a Vital Tool in Your Career (and Your Life) 185

12 Self-Care in Anxious Times 197

Acknowledgments 207

Appendix: Helping Children Embrace Their Anxiety 209

Notes 213

Recommended Resources 223

Index 227

About the Author 249

Editorial Reviews

Embracing Anxiety is a kind and empathetic, practical and reality-based approach to managing emotions, useful for anyone and everyone.” —Mark Bertin, MD, author of How Children Thrive

“Karla McLaren’s breakthrough approach provides the missing link for those who want to finally get off the merry-go-round of anxiety, shame, and self-judgment. Embracing Anxiety has become a permanent fixture in my toolbox.” —Dr. Samantha Brody, author of Overcoming Overwhelm

From the Publisher