Overcome Anxiety Guide

あなたの不安の性質、それにどう対処するかを理解する。

When we experience disappointment, fear, or loss, we naturally tend to look for support and guidance from those we care about and who care about us. We turn to them for their acceptance, their understanding, and their love. Indeed, the evolution of human behavior demonstrates how this tendency has emerged in the life cycle and how we’ve become able to keenly detect threats in our environment while at the same time abiding in a state of calm through our experience of the support and loving-kindness of those around us.

Research has shown that, from the day we’re born and throughout our lives, the kindness of others will have a huge impact on how our brains mature, on how our bodies work, and on our emotions and general well-being.1 It has also been shown that treating ourselves with compassion has a huge impact on the quality of our lives and how we deal with difficulties, such as anxiety.

It makes sense that we’re calmed by a connection to people who are warm and compassionate toward us. It also makes sense that we can develop healthier ways of responding to life’s struggles by directing compassion and kindness inward, to the way we feel about ourselves.

Our lives can feel so overwhelming and can be so very short. In the presence of a variety of fearful challenges along our journeys, such as sickness, aging, and the finitude of life, can we direct accepting, open, and warm feelings toward ourselves? If we’re capable of such acts, what’s their effect? By standing as a compassionate witness to our own pain, can we better be present to our experience and develop healthier, more fluid ways of responding to life’s struggles? This “self-compassion” may be the foundation for a more flexible, healthy, and rewarding life.

This book aims to help you understand the nature of your anxiety, the best ways of dealing with it, and how your mind can help you cope with it.