One Less Thing to Worry About

Book excerpt: When it comes to having anxiety, women outnumber men two to one. Fluctuations in levels of estrogen and other hormones, as well as physiological factors unique to women, seem to cause us not only to experience anxiety differently at different times in our lives, but also to worry about different things in different ways. Now a pioneer in the field presents a new perspective on the way women worry, showing that anxiety isn’t something that just happens to us, but rather something that involves action and reaction–something with which we have a relationship–and that we can learn to manage. Anxiety can be friend or foe: it can keep us out of trouble or keep us chronically on edge. Normal, healthy worry reminds us to pay our taxes, see a doctor when we’re feeling sick, and lock the doors at night. But when worry escalates into chronic anxiety, keeping us from fully living our lives, it’s time to assess the kind of relationship we have with our anxiety and take action to change it. In this practical and lively guide, Jerilyn Ross presents stories of women who did just that and introduces the Ross Prescription–a set of innovative tools and techniques that you can use to do it, too. It includes • questionnaires to help you determine whether what you’re experiencing is normal, everyday worry or if it is perhaps symptomatic of an anxiety disorder • strategies for identifying how you relate to your anxiety: Do you act impulsively to ease it? Adhere to regimens of obsessive behavior to control it? Or avoid and run away from it? • tips for locating your position on the anxiety spectrum: Is your worry healthy and helpful, or is it toxic? • cutting-edge research into the ways hormones affect when and how a woman experiences and deals with anxiety • the Eight Points, a set of reliable techniques to help you control anxiety, worry, and stress in the moment and liberate you from their grip With this book in hand and the Ross Prescription in mind, you will learn to identify, modify, and redefine your relationship with worry and anxiety and master simple, effective ways to regain control of your life.