Mindfulness for Worriers: Overcome Everyday Stress and Anxiety

by Padraig O'Morain

Overview

This accessible book provides readers with mindfulness-based techniques to reduce worry, anxiety, stress and panic attacks. It will help readers deal with anxiety-inducing episodes by learning to accept and overcome strong emotions without getting caught up in negative and damaging thoughts.

Aimed at anyone who is stressed or anxious, as well as people suffering from more extreme levels of anxiety, the book will provide the scientific evidence behind the effectiveness of mindfulness as well as lots of practical advice on how to quiet an anxious, racing mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781473619470
Publisher:	Hodder
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Pádraig O'Morain has practised mindfulness for 25 years and taught mindfulness for more than a decade. He runs workshops in his native Ireland where the inspiration for this book was sparked by an encounter with a very busy woman who took 4 years to get to one of his courses (and still had to dash to a meeting in the middle of it) and who has since reported that mindfulness changed her life - for the better.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 All About Mindfulness

Mindfulness: The Basics 11

How do you breathe? 16

Slow body scan 17

Return. Invite silence: A mindfulness formula 18

Give 5 per cent 24

Busy minds: Putting thoughts in their place 25

'No problem-solving' breaks 30

Part 2 Turning Down the Volume of Our Thoughts

Just worrying: Don't amplify worry 33

Calming the lake 38

Dogs of worry: Drop imaginary worries 39

Let the second arrow fall 44

Crazy thinking: Step down from exaggeration 45

Reactivity: Reduce automatic stress 49

Form the intention 54

The stress response: Calming your alarm system 55

7/11 Breathing 60

Increase tolerance: You can't take it? Yes you can! 61

How does this help me? 67

Part 3 Stopping the Worry Spiral

Process not outcome: Taking care of 'how' 71

Slow down 75

Locked in: Stay out of worry prison 76

Take a detour 80

The anxiety, worry, stress triangle: Working with worry to reduce stress 81

What your hands do 84

Acceptance: What it is, why it matters 85

One day of acceptance 92

Emotions: Accept every feeling 93

Deliberate boredom 97

Part 4 Dealing With the Negative

Holding on: Lighten attachments to lighten worry 101

Listen to the chatter 106

Extreme anxiety: Panic attacks and other conditions 107

Take a walk 116

Situation, thoughts, feelings: Where to intervene 117

Part 5 Getting It Right Or Getting Stuck?

Alway in beta: Lifting the curse of perfectionism 125

Get dotty 131

What might work: Drop precision in most things 132

Get your sums wrong 135

Impermanence: The good news is, everything changes 136

Notice the chair 143

Part 6 The Stress Effect: Our Bodies and Other Bodies

Getting into your genes: Why de-stressing matters 147

Out the door 152

Anxious bodies: It isn't all in the mind 153

Stay in your body 157

Families: Living with 'inherited' anxiety 158

Breathe through the floor 164

Relationships: Challenge assumptions to cut stress 165

Part 7 A New Relationship With Worry Stress and Anxiety

Going wrong; Pessimism as an asset 177

Breathe with today's dissatisfactions 182

Morita Therapy: Making peace with nervousness 183

A mindful to-do list 188

Exposure: Experience fears to face them down 189

Positive anxiety: Yes, anxiety can be good for you 195

Sitting quietly, observe change 201

Common Worries 202

Resources 220

Acknowledgements 225

Index 227

Editorial Reviews

Packed with bitesize techniques to 'turn frantic and frazzled into calm and composed', whenever and wherever you find yourself—Irish Tatler. Praise for MINDFULNESS ON THE GO

Pádraig's book makes it easy to make mindfulness part of our everyday lives. As a writer and poet he communicates with clarity and makes an abstract concept easy to understand. It's accessible and practical—Dr Tony Bates, Founder Director, Headstrong. Praise for MINDFULNESS ON THE GO

This book, by an inspirational mindfulness teacher, would be worth reading for the first chapter alone - before you get to chapter two, you'll be practising mindfulness without effort. The rest of the book is full of user-friendly suggestions, based on the author's 25 years of practising and teaching. If you think you're too busy to practise mindfulness, you really need this book.—Marcella Finnerty, Director, Institute of Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy. Praise for MINDFULNESS ON THE GO

From the Publisher