It gives me great pleasure to introduce this book. When I first got to see the manuscript, I became so excited that I wanted to start recommending it to most of my patients and virtually all the therapists I know even before it was printed. There is an ever-expanding variety of self-help books out there to choose among, but this is one that should not be overlooked. This is something radically original. There are so many little gems. Dr. Carbonell has a way of saying things that just makes you stop and reconsider long-held beliefs and practices. And who would expect that a book about worry could actually be fun to read? But chapter after chapter contains examples and descriptions of thought processes and typical absurd worry scenarios that evoke a gentle smile of recognition. The foibles of the typical anxious mind are described so astutely and so kindly that you just keep reading. And then he describes how to get out of worry loops in a way that is both counterintuitive and makes all the sense in the world.
Who should read this book? People who worry too much, people who worry about their worrying, people who love people who worry, people who treat people who worry. This book is for people who have never before considered reading a self-help book, and for people who have a stack of them on their night tables. It is for people who have never been in therapy, people who are in therapy now, and people who have tried therapy and been disappointed. Even people who have tried cognitive behavioral therapy and medication and found both somewhat helpful will find something new and liberating here.
In the history of psychotherapy, there have been many approaches to worry, all derived from the psychological theories of the day. For decades, therapy for worriers was a search for insight into “why” people were anxious about whatever they worried about, with the expectation that finding the causes of the worrying would make it melt away. But while many people learned a great deal about themselves, often the worry continued unabated. Another school of therapy suggested that since worry is essentially negative irrational thought, pointing out thinking mistakes and changing these thoughts to more rational or positive thoughts would work to relieve it. However, often people do actually know what the “right” things to think are, but the worries creep back and continue to create misery. Then people worry even more about what is wrong with them, so that they cannot listen to their own best advice during endless internal debates.
Dr. Carbonell shifts the conversation about worry from efforts to analyze or banish it to changing one’s relationship to it, so that the presence of doubt or worry thoughts causes minimal distress. He puts an end to the internal fight by refusing to fight; if you refuse to dignify the contents of worry with concern and attention, you deprive your worries of what they need to grow and thrive. He illustrates how a shift in attitude can liberate joy and other emotions that have been overtaken. Worry thoughts are treated not as signals or messages or news or calls to urgent action, but as unanswerable questions not worth engaging with. Learning to distinguish between thoughts that lead to helpful action and the “nagging” of an anxious brain is the first task he teaches. From there, he takes the reader on a step-by-step journey to recovery.
Dr. Carbonell is a wise and nonjudgmental observer of the human mind, and all of us can benefit from his teachings. Having the courage to pick up this book was the first step. Take this journey at your own pace, and you will find yourself offering the book to others even before you have finished reading it.
—Sally Winston, PsyD