Have you ever experienced anxiety? Of course you have. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing; numerous studies have shown that moderate anxiety enhances performance. But for millions of Americans, anxiety is persistent and excessive, and significantly impacts daily life. In the 12 fascinating and action-oriented lectures of Treating Anxiety, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen describes the causes and symptoms of numerous anxiety disorders and will give you many, many tools and exercises you can employ immediately to help treat your own anxiety.
Treating Anxiety
Learn how to identify anxiety in your everyday life and discover the techniques you can use to address your anxious thoughts and behaviors.
Overview
About
Ellen Hendriksen is a clinical psychologist who serves on the faculty at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. She earned her PhD at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise above Social Anxiety. Her scientifically based, zero-judgment approach has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC News, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and elsewhere.
Trailer
01: Where Anxiety Comes from and Why It Persists
Have you ever considered that you just might owe your life to anxiety? Learn how evolution favored those with a healthy amount of anxiety, including your personal ancestors. But yes, you can have too much of a good thing. Explore the boundary between everyday anxiety and the clinically significant anxiety that is experienced by about one-third of the population in their lifetime.
27 min
02: Understanding and Challenging Anxiety
What exactly is anxiety? Discover the numerous relationships between the three elements of anxiety: thoughts, physiological sensations, and behavior. As you’ll see, anxiety can start with any of these three elements and amplify from there. But what if your anxiety didn’t hold you back? What could you accomplish? Learn the difference between goals and values, and how to create your own personal Challenge List.
26 min
03: Your Anxious Thoughts: Overcoming Worry
Worry that feels uncontrollable and physical tension are the two pillars of a very common anxiety diagnosis called general anxiety disorder. Explore why we all worry from time to time and the difference between worry and general thinking. Most important, you’ll learn about the four cornerstone tools from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that can help you start to decrease your worry load today.
31 min
04: Your Body: Tools for Anxiety and Panic
Explore the causes of the physiological symptoms of anxiety from blushing to shortness of breath to trembling hands. And how does potentially helpful anxiety turn into its most extreme form—panic? Learn about the panic cycle, why our avoidance behaviors do more long-term harm than good, and the simple physiological and cognitive tools you can use to make a very real difference today.
31 min
05: Your Actions: Living a Valued Life
Of the three components of anxiety, behavior is the factor we can best control. Participate in an exercise to identify your values and then learn how those values drive your behavior and affect your anxiety. Explore Choice Point, a mental-health tool that can help you assess behaviors. Are your behaviors moving you toward or away from your personal values?
25 min
06: Rise above Social Anxiety
Because we are social animals living our lives in social situations, social anxiety can have a significant affect on our ability to attain our goals. Learn why this type of anxiety is all about our fear that people will find something deficient about us that we would rather hide—our “fatal flaw.” Explore two skills—task-focused attention and giving yourself some structure—that can help you get around social anxiety and its fears.
28 min
07: Live Well with OCD
Learn about the many different types of obsessions—the uncontrollable, recurring, and distressing thoughts, images, or urges—and the actions people feel they must take in response. Explore the tools of cognitive defusion and acceptance, tools that don’t strive to get rid of the distressing thoughts but can change the relationship with the obsession to allow for a more peaceful life.
28 min
08: From Perfectionism to Flexibility
Learn about perfectionism—not a diagnosis, but a mindset that drives many different types of anxiety. While you’re probably familiar with the term, it is commonly thought to mean striving to be perfect. Instead, perfectionism, with its two pillars of over-evaluation and self-criticism, is actually about a cycle of never feeling good enough. Explore several tools that can help you change the rigid thinking of perfectionism to a more flexible, peaceful way of existing.
26 min
09: From Self-Criticism to Self-Compassion
Self-criticism is a normal part of existence and without it, we wouldn’t survive. In evolutionary terms, it helps keep us safely ensconced in our tribe, increasing our chance to see another day. But with anxiety, self-criticism can get in our way. Explore the characteristics of pathological self-criticism and the nine needs it fulfills in us. Nine? No wonder it’s so difficult to let go. But you will discover methods that do work. In this case, put behavior first, and your beliefs will catch up.
27 min
10: Make Decisions and Get Things Done
Explore the anxiety manifestations of indecision and procrastination, both of which are rooted in avoidance (of uncertainty and negative emotions) and keep us from moving forward in our lives. Discover tools to help you address the uncertainty-causing indecision, and tools to help you manage the emotions you’re avoiding with procrastination. You’ll also learn several ways to find a one-on-one therapist or a support group.
27 min
11: Seeking Treatment: Medication
Medication can be a powerful and effective tool in the treatment of anxiety. But to choose a medication that is right for your body, your life, and your anxiety, you’ll need to become an informed consumer. Learn about anxiety medication from psychiatrist Dr. Christopher Miller of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He answers questions about the types of anxiety medication, their effects on the brain, their efficacy, and so much more.
45 min
12: Sleep and Anxiety
A recent study synthesizing more than 50 years of sleep research showed that even short periods of sleep loss resulted in increased anxiety symptoms. Meet Dr. Jade Wu, a board-certified sleep psychologist who answers questions about the complex relationship between sleep and anxiety. You’ll learn about the most common sleep problems for people with anxiety: why our brains won’t “turn off” at night; the pros and cons of melatonin, supplements, and sleep medications; and much more.
36 min
