Anxiety can control your life with a tight grip. Get yourself free with these exercises and worksheets designed to help you identify, manage, and ultimately calm your anxiety, be it stress that ebbs and flows or constant, chronic panic. Work through this book either by itself or as a companion to Dr. Faith G. Harper's bestselling Unfuck Your Anxiety. Figure out the history of your anxiety and how and when it makes itself known, and learn basic tools for surviving moments of panic as well as longer-term problem solving.
Our brains are doing our best to help us out, but they can be real assholes sometimes. Sometimes it seems like your own brain is out to get you—melting down in the middle of the grocery store, picking fights with your date, getting you addicted to something, or shutting down completely at the worst possible moments. You already told your brain firmly that it isn't good to do these things. But your brain has a mind of its own. That's where this book comes in. With humor, patience, and lots of swearing, Dr. Faith shows you the science behind what's going on in your skull and talks you through the process of retraining your brain to respond appropriately to the non-emergencies of everyday life. If you're working to deal with old traumas, or if you just want to have a more measured and chill response to situations you face all the time, this book can help you put the pieces of the puzzle together and get your life and brain back.Here's an excerpt from the book:Knowing what’s going on up in your brain is HUGE. So much of how we interact with the world around us is a completely normal response when we take into account our past experiences and how our brains work. • Freaking the fuck out • Avoiding important shit we need to take care of • Feeling pissed off all the time • Being a dick to people we care about • Putting shit in our bodies that we know isn’t good for us • Doing shit we know is dumb or pointlessNone of these things are fucking helpful. But they all make sense.Your brain has adapted to the circumstances in your life and started doing things to protect you, bless it. It’s not TRYING to fuck you over (even though it totally is, at times).As we navigate the world, nasty shit happens. The brain stores info about the nasty shit to try to avoid it in the future. Sometimes these responses are helpful. Sometimes the responses become a bigger problem than the actual problem was. It’s called a trauma reaction.And even if you aren’t dealing with a specific trauma? Adaptive coping strategies, bad habits, and funky behaviors all wire in similar ways. And research is showing that these issues are actually some of the easier ones to treat in therapy … if we address what’s really going on, rather than just the symptoms.
Want to keep track of your appointments, tasks, and moods while also working through the mental health stuff that's holding you back? Unfucking your year doesn't have to start in January. Take control of your life with this unplanner at any point in the year, and fill in the months and days as you plan your weeks and work through the exercises month by month. Unfuck Your Year is a perpetual planner with themed months to help you unfuck your life. Features weekly activities in Dr. Faith Harper's frank style to address a different topic each month, including anxiety, addiction, anger, depression and more. Also includes mood and period trackers, and space for you to set monthly goals along with plenty of achievable suggestions to get you on the right track.
Boundaries are the ways we communicate our needs. They are what allow us to feel safe among strangers, in everyday interactions, and in our closest relationships. When we have healthy boundaries, we have a strong foundation in an uncertain world. And when someone crosses your boundaries, or you cross someone else's, the results range from unsettling to catastrophic. In this book, bestselling author Dr. Faith Harper offers a full understanding of issues of boundaries and consent, how we can communicate and listen more effectively, and how to survive and move on from situations where our boundaries are violated. Along the way, you'll learn when and how to effectively say "no" (and "yes"), troubleshoot conflict, recognize abuse, and respect your own and others' boundaries like a pro. You'll be amazed at how much these skills improve your relationships with friends, strangers, coworkers, and loved ones.
Our brains do their best to help us out, but every so often they can be real assholes - having melt downs, getting addicted to things, or shutting down completely at the worst possible moments. Your brain knows it's not good to do these things, but it can't help it sometimes - especially if it's obsessing about trauma it can't overcome. That's where this life-changing book comes in. With humour, patience, science, and lots of good-ole swearing, Dr. Faith explains what's going on in your skull, and talks you through the process of retraining your brain.
Untangle your emotions and expectations about money so that you can live your best financial life. Without fear and shame holding you back, it's more possible to move past all those social barriers to actualizing whatever your money aspirations are, whether that's getting a raise, getting out of debt, having honest conversations about money with your family, raising your kids to be savers, or wherever your values lead you. Dr. Faith, author of the bestselling Unf*ck Your Brain and Unf*ck Your Intimacy, tackles one of the toughest emotional topics there is with her trademark mix of neuroscience, gentle encouragement, and no-nonsense language. This book isn't about getting rich quick (or necessarily at all)—it's about figuring out your own economic values and baggage, and learning to be the person in the world you know you have it in you to be.
Don’t let anxiety and depression keep you from living life to the fullest. If you suffer from co-occurring anxiety and depression, you may experience an overwhelming urge to avoid difficult emotions and emotional experiences. The last thing you want to do is kick the hornet’s nest you carry around with you. However, the latest research in psychology emphasizes the importance of approaching—rather than avoiding—your emotions. Avoiding emotions works in the short term, but in the long term it only teaches you to believe you can’t handle your feelings. What you need is a solid set of tools that will allow you to feel a full range of emotions with confidence. This book will provide just the tool set you require. In this workbook, psychologist Michael Tompkins offers evidence-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) skills to help you target and tear down the emotional avoidance barriers that drive your anxiety and depression. By engaging with the emotions you’ve been seeking to avoid, you’ll learn, “I can handle this feeling.” You’ll also find strategies to help you stay calm during emotional situations; and discover relaxation and mindfulness techniques to deal effectively with difficult thoughts and feelings, and improve your mood and well-being. The tools in this workbook help you learn this important lesson: You can handle emotions, even unpleasant ones. When you believe you can handle feeling anxious and depressed, you’re less likely to avoid those feelings, creating space for you to be more willing to do the things that you want to do in your life.
A common thread through much self-help and therapy and trauma healing is to focus on what's misfiring in the brain and learn coping skills to fix it. But what if it's the world that's broken, not you? What if your brain is doing exactly what it's designed to do in response to your experiences with abuse, neglect, oppression, displacement, violence, or upheaval? With this workbook, learn to see your strength and resilience, look at what's happening outside as well as inside yourself, and frame your trauma recovery in new, empowering terms using the groundbreaking new Power Threat Meaning framework.
Do you freak out at small things? Do you yell at people when you don't mean to? Do you cry or get scared and you aren't sure why? Does it feel like your feelings control you? All of these feelings are a normal part of life for everybody, but sometimes they're just too much and it seems like you're the only one on the planet that feels them. Our brains are doing their best to help us out, but sometimes we get hurt instead. And sometimes we hurt people we love, too, because we just don't know what to do with all of our feelings. With humor and patience, Dr. Faith G. Harper shows you the science behind why your brain is acting up and ideas for new ways to respond when you're feeling scared, sad, anxious, or angry. You can train your brain to be your friend and help you live a happy, calm, and healthy life. If you have experienced trauma or if you have a hard time feeling good and getting along with other people, this book can help. This is an adaptation of Dr. Faith's bestselling book (which has an R-rated title), written for tweens, teens, and the adults trying to help them navigate it all.
Forget for a moment the prevailing notion that you can only manage your anxiety through endless visits to your therapist's office and daily cocktails of psychiatric medication - what if you could put yourself back in the equation?What if you could learn to manage your fear better by changing your thoughts and beliefs about it? What if you could turn down the firehose of overwhelm you experience so often? You can.More than 17% of Americans fill at least one psychiatric drug prescription each year. This would be just fine if medication were actually solving mental illness, but it seems that's not the case. Medication is just one potential piece of the puzzle; we can't keep discounting our ability to influence our own conditions.Through the latest research, personal anecdotes, and a heavy dose of practicality, this book discusses that influence and teaches you:-Where anxiety comes from and how to stop perpetuating it-10 crucial steps for mitigating anxiety during stressful situations-How to leverage fear into a vehicle for personal growth-How to stop fighting yourself and start living again
