This is a great resource for those struggling with anxiety. The composition of this book does not lean heavily on educational information so that it is difficult to read and understand. There is a balance between education and relatable stories as well as exercises which assist in understanding how anxiety creates problems and how these problems can be addressed. Practical, readable, and useful. A great tool. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for allowing me to review this book.

A good read for those who suffer from anxiety and are looking for help in mitigating it’s harmful influence.

This was a super helpful and easy to read anti anxiety self help book. I loved that it was broken down into three easy parts. Some CBT introductions can be intimidating but this was not at all.

A three-step program to combat chronic anxiety full of strategies and practical information to face your anxiety head-on and not avoid it. A very detailed book with a plethora of information and exercises. A book that you will read again and again. Highly recommended.

Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss by Joel Minden provides strategies drawn from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help manage anxiety. CBT is an evidence-based treatment, so while the strategies won’t necessarily for everyone, they are legit, unlike many of the other self-help books floating around.

The approach is broken down into three major steps: predictions, not anxious fictions; take action, demand satisfaction; and accept and redirect. The book is divided into three sections based on these steps.

The book starts off with information about some of the important elements of anxiety. The author explains that anxiety involves overestimating the degree of threat and underlying our ability to cope. Two key problematic responses to this are avoidance and emotion-focused coping (things that ease the anxiety temporarily but actually end up feeding into it).

You may be familiar with the term cognitive distortions, but for the most part that isn’t used in this book. Instead, the author uses the term anxious fictions to describe distorted predictions about the future. The three key anxious fictions identified are probability overestimation, catastrophizing, and inadequate coping.

The author points out that anxiety is a problem of over-control, and I found it interesting the way he explained it. While anxiety can feel totally out of control, it’s associated with a low ability to tolerate uncertainty, as well as attempts to mentally get control over things that are totally out of our control.

The second section of the book is focused on pushing through avoidance for the purpose of living a satisfying life by engaging in meaningful activities. The book uses the mantra “do it anyway.” The author acknowledges, as he does a number of times throughout the book, that actually doing this isn’t going to be easy.

Various activities are suggested, including identifying manageable first steps and conducting behavioural experiments to generate evidence. There are plenty of questions scattered throughout the book to stimulate thinking. Scenarios are given to illustrate some of the major concepts covered.

Each chapter ends with an explanation of how the material covered can help and what’s next, as well as bullet point summaries of the key points. The final chapter gives a very good quick and easy point form summary of the book’s major concepts. The second to last chapter is written Q&A style to address questions you might have about what was covered.

This book was quite good. There’s wasn’t anything that stood out enough for me to say it was great, but if you’re looking for a CBT book for anxiety, this one is well worth considering.


I received a reviewer copy of this book from www.netgalley.com.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review. This book was a blessing for me because the older I got, the harder it was to do the things I wanted to do. I have given up a lot of things I wanted to do and I learned it was anxiety standing in the way. I just couldn't talk myself into doing things like I used to. It wasn't until I found this book on NetGalley that things started to look promising. While I was reading it, I did the notebook and kept going back to it. There are so much information and tools in this book that will really help. My life has started to improve. I have the book on my kindle and have put the techniques I used there as well so no matter where I am I have my kindle so if anxiety starts taking over and I want to go hide, I can see the tools and quiet my mind.
I saw a lot of things in the book that I didn't realize I was doing because of anxiety. I just always wished I could be different. This book was an eye-opener for me. This book has given me the tools to quiet the anxiety brain so the part that wants to do it can come through. I am using the tools and not only can I see a change but others can too. This book has helped me get my life back.

I am someone who suffers with anxiety and who has read a few of the many many books out there. Primarily because it’s scary and it takes a long time to get help and you want answers and want to do be doing something constructive.
This book is perfect for that.
It explains, it gives practical advice and exercises and it’s a great starting point.
Now in the position I’m in I think I need more but I’m getting that and books like these are the starting point for others to do so.
Really very good book. Thank you. Both to the author for writing it and for net galley for the opportunity to read it.

I have anxiety and I think this book is a good place to start for people who realize that they may have it too, and that they need to take certain steps to get it under control before they see a counselor of some sort. The book was really helpful and accessible, and I think it will have a good audience, especially now.

3.5 stars rounded up

I would recced the book to anyone with anxiety.
My anxiety might be quite chronic because I got anxious reading the book lol

Show Your Anxiety Who's Boss helped me understand more about my condition and analyse it. It wasn't always rainbows and butterflies and it wasn't the type of book filled with positivity, but it is a book where you want a (quite) in-depth tells about your anxiety and how to manage it.

As a person who has dealt with anxiety for more than half their life, I found this book to be very helpful with presenting new strategies to use when my anxiety is getting the upper hand.

Insightful and had great tips on managing and controlling anxiety. It was very useful in dealing with anxiety and facing those fears head on.

I highly recommend this book to those dealing with anxiety issues. The CBt techniques are well-explained. Some of the examples given are relatable. The author has explained the hows and whys in detail. An informative book with worksheets and practise exercises to work on. If you have gone through/going through CBT sessions, I am sure you could relate to the techniques mentioned in this book.

A nice primer with provided backup in the form of online worksheets, useful for those who suffer from low- to mid-grade anxiety when coping options are varied. Makes a good case that symptoms and types of anxiety are layered and fluid, and that the individual can expect to work for some relief. Realism comes as a welcome respite from following all of those prescribed steps, questions and feedback loops. I found this to be a good recommendation for friends, students and loved ones who need some additional coping ideas.

A well intentioned, structured attempt to help those with anxiety by getting them to look at their thought patterns, questioning them as well as identifying strategies for dealing with anxious thoughts. The author advises the use of a notebook during this process and worksheets are available online. The advice will be helpful for many readers, but probably not adequate for others with deep rooted anxiety issues.

Full Disclosure--NetGalley and the publisher provided me with a digital ARC of this book. This is my honest review.

Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss shows readers how to reduce their anxiety using an approach that you’d likely find in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), written by a therapist himself. The author approaches the regular methods of combatting anxiety, and why those attempts or notions aren’t working. Instead of these, he applies a better strategy that helps readers get down to the root of their own anxiety, what’s causing it, and how to reduce what is there.

As someone who was personally diagnosed with clinical anxiety, I’ve been working with these kinds of struggles my whole life. While some of my methods worked for some issues, others still remain to the point of dysfunction. From the first page, I learned quite a bit about myself and what went wrong with my methods. Additionally, the many writing exercises for each chapter were eye-opening for many things, mostly to see how related all of my sources of situational anxiety were.

Reading this book was oddly personal, especially for the kind of book that aims to look so deeply into your life and your troubles. In each example, the author responds with things that the reader is probably thinking – and it hit the nail on the head with what I was thinking about each time. These responses also helped bring together the purpose of the exercise, and it gave quite a bit of personal insight on top of the exercises themselves. I haven’t completed all of the exercises just yet, but this is something I will be gradually working on. There’s already so much I gathered from these exercises and I will continue to as I work on my own plan.

The only issue I had with this book was related to formatting in the e-book version. There were a few tables in this book with examples, and because the tables were not formatted correctly, it was difficult to read. I am not reducing my star rating from this as it is not the author’s doing, but I would hope that this is resolved in a newer version.

Overall, this book provides a lot of insight to those who are struggling with anxiety. I would highly recommend it if you are looking for better methods to reducing your anxiety, or even figuring out the root cause of your anxiety to begin with.

I’m giving this book 3 ⭐️. I thought that it was very good and highly informative for someone living with this condition. There were very helpful parts that stuck out to me . I definitely recommend this book. Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion. #Netgalley

The holiday season can be a time of great cheer and joy.  For some though, it is a time of year when anxiety reaches its peak.  While this book is not about the holidays, it is a very good resource on anxiety in general.  The author is a practitioner of CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy.  He sets out a way to understand and work with anxiety so that it does not rule one's life.  Dr. Minden has a three step plan which includes making "useful predictions, not anxious fictions", taking action and accepting and redirecting.  The author's hope is that "these approaches will help you move from reactive to proactive, from emotional to logical, from avoidant to active and from judgmental to accepting."  Through keeping a notebook and following the strategies in this book, you may find that you can cope better.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title in exchange for an honest review.