Written by Carolyn Daitch and Lissah Lorberbaum, two experts on anxiety disorders, Anxious in Love offers easy-to-use techniques for calming anxieties and strengthening communication in your relationship. With this book, you will learn to stay centered when faced with conflict, understand your partner’s perspective, and become more independent. By changing the way you react to triggers and stress, you will be able to focus on enjoying time with the one you love, without anxiety getting in the way.

Available for preorder at Anxiety Solutions Online and in electronic form for the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

Advance acclaim for Anxious in Love

“Anxiety is, without doubt, the greatest enemy faced by couples, and its regulation is the most challenging and important achievement in marital happiness. The authors describe this crucial dilemma with deep and profound clarity and its resolution in clear instructions and exercises. Every couple who follows this path will end up in the kingdom of marital bliss. As the authors say, practice leads to permanence. I recommend this book not only to all couples, but also to all couples therapists. It will make their work with couples less anxious!”

—Harville Hendrix, PhD, author of Getting the Love You Want and coauthor of Receiving Love with Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD

“Anxious in Love expands our understanding of anxiety by insightfully acknowledging that no person is an anxious island: anxiety inevitably affects and is affected by others. With lots of compassion, sensible perspective, helpful skill-building exercises, and practical advice, Daitch and Lorberbaum provide readers with the key tools they’ll need to manage their anxiety, as well as their relationships, skillfully.”

—Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist and author of Depression is Contagious and Mindfulness and Hypnosis

“Anxious in Love brings help for anxiety disorders into new territory, revealing how it can affect both partners in a relationship and endanger the well-being of their connection. In a compassionate, step-by-step strategy, the anxiety disorder is first managed, and then mastered using both behavioral and psychological tools. Ultimately these practices are woven into an effective program for couples to use—one that empowers both partners to calm the inner and outer effects of anxiety on their relationship and maintain a quality connection. Anxious in Love is an invaluable resource and guide for anyone suffering from an anxiety disorder or anyone in a relationship with someone who suffers from anxiety.”

—Eleanor Payson, LMSW, author of The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists

“Anxiety, phobias, compulsions, and social avoidance can erode and even destroy relationships. Anxious in Love gives you the tools to decrease, manage, and even eliminate your excessive anxiety (or to understand your anxious partner). After reading the simple but powerful methods in the book, I am confident you’ll be anxious to try them and will feel better right away.”

—Bill O’Hanlon, author of The Change Your Life Book and Rewriting Love Stories

“Above all, therapists should not overlook the great advantage of prescribing Anxious in Love as a workbook for patients to use in tandem with ongoing psychotherapy. Its use will help patients get more out of their therapy by promoting self-awareness and self-reliance, as well as expanding self-care for stabilization, boundary development, and affect management.”

—Claire Frederick, MD, coauthor of Inner Strengths and Healing the Divided Self

“This book is written primarily for people suffering from anxiety, but also for their partners. . . . There is a wide range of specific exercises for readers to try, so they can find what works best to reduce the overall anxiety level, recognize emotional and physical triggering experiences so the anxious reaction can be prevented, and perhaps most importantly, to learn to be calm, not merely avoiding the anxiety. . . . The authors bring multiple human examples from their decades of clinical experience, simple assessments, and many practical exercises. They create a light and reassuring mood with a genuine concern to assist healing. . . . Anyone suffering from the potentially crippling fallout from any of the potentially crippling experiences of anxiety is likely to have significant benefit from actively engaging with this book.”

—Robert B. McNeilly, MBBS, CET, director of the Milton H. Erickson Institute of Tasmania

“The survey results make sense when you consider that women play multiple roles — employee, homemaker and caretaker, often for both children and parents,” stated Carolyn Daitch, Director of the Center for the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders. “Having ready access to a resource, such as a pharmacist who can provide guidance and tools for self-care and practical, easy-to-implement recommendations for a healthy lifestyle, can be very valuable in helping to manage diabetes.”

Half of the women who reported being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes (50%) said they feel overwhelmed when it comes to living with diabetes, while less than one-third of men (31%) reported similar feelings. And just more than half of women (53%) admitted to feeling in control of their diabetes, compared with more than two-thirds (68%) of men.

To support those managing diabetes, Rite Aid and WebMD have partnered to provide online lifestyle management tools. This includes a Personal Diabetes Work Plan, customized for each individual member with a daily glucose tracker, a weekly workout log, recipes and meal planning tips, and monthly lifestyle summary reports. WebMD’s Diabetes head2toe also provides comprehensive health-and-wellness information about living with diabetes.

As the primary researcher explained:

“Under stress, we have a variety of bodily reactions; how we interpret these reactions predicts whether we will choke or thrive under pressure,” [Sian] Beilock said.

“If a student interprets their physiological response as a sign they are about to fail, they will. And, when taking a math test, students anxious about math are likely to do this. But the same physiological response can also be linked to success if a student’s outlook is positive,” she further explained.

This shows again the importance of handling test anxiety before ever starting the test. It is not enough to avoid panic attacks; a student must be confident before ever sitting for the test. 

For assistance with test-taking and anxiety, click here to see our special test-taking products.

However, advances are made constantly in treating both cancer and the anxiety brought on by cancer. There is preliminary evidence that, in particular, music is very effective in lowering anxiety in cancer patients.  In the words of the author:

“During the past 2 decades, there has been an increasing interest and a growth of research on the effects of music and music therapy for medical patients, which encompassed a variety of specialty areas, note the authors. For example, music has been used to lessen anxiety for both adults and children before or during surgical procedures and to decrease tension during chemotherapy or radiation therapy. It has also been used to reduce the adverse effects of treatment, to improve mood, to enhance pain management, to boost immune system functioning, and to improve quality of life.”

Music, especially peaceful music, is a wonderful way to enjoy yourself while also dealing with the anxiety of modern life. That it is especially effective for those struggling with cancer is extremely good news.

For more on dealing with the anxiety of cancer, please click here to see our audio files. 

The research is still preliminary, and more work will need to be done. Moreover, only social phobias were seen as a result of self-medication. However, it is clear that self-medication is not an effective coping strategy for anxiety. For natural coping methods that work, please visit our “anxiety” page and check out our audio files. We also have pages for dealing with trauma and insomnia.

Towards the end, it gives some concrete steps that parents can take to decrease the anxiety of back to school. Most of these strategies involve time-tested techniques of cognitive therapy and normalization, and parents will find them of value for standard child anxiety. For children who have full-blown anxiety disorders, however, it may be more helpful to seek some form of natural therapy, such as that provided here.

However, some people suffer from excessive anxiety in a way that can make it more difficult to get through daily life. Jason Eric Schiffman put together a slideshow at the Huffington Post to demonstrate the characteristics of anxiety disorder that differentiate it from ordinary anxiety. It is worth a read in full if you are at all concerned, but in short the five signs are:

1) Constant anxiety

2) Anxiety in non-dangerous situations

3) Avoidance

4) Inability to Work

5) Poor Social Life

If these seem to apply to you, it may be helpful to seek out more information. You may wish to sign up for our newsletter here, or look through our anxiety audio files here.

However, for those with chronic anxiety, being told to simply “fake it” often provides little help. This is because chronic anxiety can end up compounding, particularly if there are specific, known “triggers” for it. This can often lead to phobophobia, or anxiety about feeling anxiety, in which the mere thought of the upcoming anxiety itself can trigger a panic attack. In such cases, no amount of “faking it” can get one through the layers of built up anxiety. Instead, work must be done at the base to allow a person to “make it.” 

Fortunately, there are many tools to help a person with anxiety disorders. Our audio CD, Dialing Down Anxiety, can be found here!

Other studies have also found that omega-3′s lower depression. It is increasingly clear that proper nutrition is essential to proper mental well-being. Carolyn Daitch, PhD., covers much of the current research in her book, Anxiety Disorders: The Go-To Guide for Clients and Therapists, and includes useful tips for maintaining a diet that helps to minimize anxiety. She also covers the connections among diet, insomnia, and anxiety.

One impediment to getting proper nutrition for mental well-being can be “emotional eating”. This occurs when anxiety causes a person to eat “comfort foods,” which in many cases are low in necessary nutrients. This can thus cause an unhealthy cycle. Dr. Catherine Herzog discusses this in her audio CD, Overcoming Emotional Eating: Breaking the Cycle of Stress and Anxiety Based Eating.

For more information about Dr. Daitch’s book, click here. For help with diet, and particularly “emotional eating,” click here.