Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this book and to be an early reader via NetGalley! However, I will not be writing a review for this title at this time, as my reading preferences have since changed somewhat. In the event that I decide to review the book in the future, I will make sure to purchase a copy for myself or borrow it from a library. Once again, thank you so much for providing me with early access to this title. I truly appreciate it. Please feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions or concerns.

The only thing I learned from this book is that I never want to see the word “gazelle” again. This books has too many animal comparisons and examples that don’t make any sense.

As someone who always wants to learn new things, gain new perspectives and become a stronger more calm individual, I was very much excited and looking forward to reading How to tame your anxiety. We all know or are that someone that deals with anxiety so I believed that this book would be helpful in so many ways, to so many people. However, I found that it wasn’t so. The style of writing didn’t hit home for me and I have read much better and more effective ways to deal with this topic.

I appreciate the attempt, but the format and style of writing made me more anxious. People with anxiety do not need this overly wordy help because it doesn't help.

I was interested to see how the author would tackle the subject of anxiety when there are so many techniques available but information is being discovered everyday. I appreciated the effort to give scientific evidence but the anecdotes felt like they didn't match up with them. The first story about the clutter was inviting at first but rubbed me the wrong way because it felt negative towards other ways of taming anxiety. She stated that every one had to find their own methods but it did make me question why her techniques were better. I might revisit this and see if I have a different perception later on.

Let me start by saying that I relate 100% to where the author is coming from since I have chronic anxiety. I couldn’t stop nodding my head for the entire The beginning of the book. That being said, this book would not have been helpful in the midst of anxiety for me. It’s too much explanation why and how. And for someone with anxiety, that’s not the least bit helpful. Some of the analogies were helpful, some weren’t but overall there were far too many. I appreciate where the author was coming from but I’ve read much better books relating to anxiety and probably wouldn’t recommend this one.

I really tried to read this because I have Generalized anxiety disorder but it was so redundant and boring! It actually made me anxious to read it!

I anticipated actual, practical instructions to tame my anxiety. Instead, this is a very generic look at anxiety with little to no actual steps to cope with it.


Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

The title of this book drew me in. and made me expect lots of practical tips for taming anxiety. Unfortunately that is not the case. There is some interesting information about the science behind anxiety, but this quickly becomes redundant. As do the many examples about animals in the wild. Overall disappointing.

Idid not find this book as informative as other books. It jist did not seem to actually focus on way to cope with anxiety. A lot of the book seemed like filler. If you do struggle with anxiety I can not recomend this book. I would recommend Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World.

Tame Your Anxiety gives both a scientific view of anxiety and personal stories. This book is both informative and interesting to read.

I had a difficult time with this book. There is so much talk about about animals and so many animal metaphors. The metaphors were distracting. There is very little talk about actually managing anxiety as a condition. The anxiety discussed in this book is stress-based anxiety as Breuning does not seem to believe in medically diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder. As an anxiety sufferer, I found this incredibly patronizing. There were a few helpful tips, but overall, this book was frustrating to read. The repetitive bullet points at the end of the chapters made this book seem like an educational pamphlet, which again, felt patronizing.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book that I was given in exchange for a fair and honest review.


As a nearly lifelong anxiety sufferer (I was in fifth grade when I started having full blown panic attacks, but had anxiety stomach pain as early as second), I always love to check out new books that claim to help with the anxious mind. Anxiety sucks, y'all, and anything that can help is a lifesaver.


I was nearly thirty percent of the way through this book before Breuning started actually discussing ways to handle anxiety. Waiting to get past all the scientific explanations that I'd read a thousand times (and assume other anxiety sufferers will also know) to actually get to help with my anxiety gave me anxiety. Not only did I not like how slow this book was to get started, but Breuning uses this incredibly weird extended metaphor of a horse and a rider that felt totally unnecessary. Have you ever been trying to explain something, but you aren't sure if you are making your point so you keep providing more and more basic examples to try to make things clearer? That was the whole beginning of this book. Every couple [pages it was a new hypothetical scenario that would honestly have been much more appropriate had she been addressing children. Maybe Bruening should write a children's anxiety book.


Then, finally, we get to the meat of the book and Bruening starts to unveil her big strategy, which she says will tame anxiety if you do it every day. Awesome, right? We can finally get to the real heart of things. Except no, because immediately after revealing her strategy, we are in the jungle and rather than explaining how to implement her approach, she's back to convincing us it will work. there is way too much filler in this book and not even close to enough content. In a 160 page book, nearly half of it is useless to anyone who knows even the basics of how anxiety works.


I don't want to give a big spoiler alert and reveal her three steps, but no. they were not practical, they couldn't easily be applied while anxious, and they're less concise versions of books that have just explained it better.


Two summers ago, I read DARE: the New Way to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks, by Barry McDonagh. It is my suggestion that you return Tame Your Anxiety and pick up Dare instead because it was actually easy to follow and contained implementable steps to dealing with anxiety. It was a life changer.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8015846719980611108#allposts