3.25/5. Read this back in 2018 and did not review it back then. I don't remember enough about it to give it proper feedback.

This book is a true gem for everyone suffering from anxiety.
Well written and easy to understand, I have enjoyed reading it.

This book is easy to read and will be a great resource for anyone suffering from over anxiety or OCD.

A real how to bookmark gives some great examples and exercises for stopping the anxiety hamster wheel.

Easy to read book that helps you stop unneccessary anxiety and worrying . If you suffer from over anxiety, stress, OCD, give this book a read.

This book is a great way to empower and understand those who have anxiety disorders in our lives. Whether you suffer personally or simply have a loved one who does this is a great read.

I love self-help books and this one was interesting. There were a few formatting problems that were distracting, but some good takeaways to try.

I don't feel that this book is that groundbreaking, though I have read a lot of books like this. All of them are supposed to be the one and only book you'll ever need to overcome your problems, but I didn't find it to be revolutionary. Yes, you should face your problems and changing your attitude can help, but doesn't everyone know that?

This book didn't help me much. I liked it, it was simplistic and easy to read but their advice wasn't anything that I ould resonate with. i got the book from NetGalley but it left me wanting more.

I must apologise for not being able to review this book after you so kindly accepted my request. I have had an unfortunately challenging time, but am now free to resume reading and reviewing. I hope that you will not hold my difficulties against me in future requests

Thank you HCI Books and Netgalley for an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

The title of this book drew my interest. Who hasn’t lay in bed trying different strategies to fall asleep when your head is being noisy.

I dipped in and out of this book, reading bits at a time over a number of weeks. The premise of the book is to reframe how you look at your thoughts / worries. To conquer your fears requires a change in attitude and to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

These ideas were not new to me having read extensively on psychology over th years, however for someone suffering from OCD or Anxiety, that has not done prior reading this book offers useful strategies and potentially hope.

There were some helpful points made in this book, but overall, there wasn't anything that I think would truly help someone overcome serious mental health issues. I liked the distinction that there are two kinds of worries: signals that tell you there's a problem and require you to come up with solutions or strategies and noises that are just fruitless worries you obsess about that don't serve any purpose for you. The book discusses ways to deal with these types of worries, and I think these points might be helpful for some people who occasionally worry too much. However, I don't think this book would be particularly helpful for anyone with significant anxiety or OCD issues (especially if they're already educated about these disorders). I found myself skimming too often - there were actually too many examples so that the main narrative kind of got lost. Unfortunately, I don't think this book will be stopping the noise in my head anytime soon.

A very insightful, informative, and paradoxical book, I would say. My main take away in this book is we have to embrace anxiety so we can stop it from bothering us.

The book is written in a very conversational yet informative tone. Average readers like me can easily understand the concepts; making it easy to read despite the number of pages it has.

A very important part of this book is the one where the author really describe the steps in handling anxiety first, by describing his patients situations and how each of them go through the journey of coming to terms with their own anxiety. The author also presented an appendix for those who need professional help.

I found this insightful and well written. The concepts were clear and didn't go overboard with clinical language as I've seen other books do.

The author brings us back down to earth with a roadmap to differentiate between the distracting noise clutter in your head and signals from life that require a take action response. Anyone who struggles with anxiety, racing thoughts, and other related mental illnesses will surely benefit from reading this book. The only things I didn't like about this was it can become a bit repetitive, and is a little too lengthy. But has a lot to offer anyone who reads it.

Maybe I was hoping for too much... but I was hoping to read something I didn't already know. Things that weren't "basic knowledge, However it maybe something that could help someone else.

This is an interesting how to book on how to handle anxiety. It had some interesting tips.

3.5 stars

The Author of this book, Reid Wilson Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist who directs the Anxiety Disorders Treatment Center. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. His approach in this book is to move towards your discomfort, your uncertainty, to do what makes you uncomfortable. He uses examples such as firefighters, professional athletes and vignettes as examples of how to confront anxiety head on. He utilizes a paradoxical approach toward anxiety. He urges readers to change their perspective/thoughts to treat their anxiety. He points out in the beginning of the book that "What you often worry about isn't worth your attention."

Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. Occasional anxiety is a normal part of life. One might be anxious about an upcoming doctor appointment, your child going away to college, having to make an important decision, asking someone out on a date, etc. But for others anxiety can be crippling and can be an event specific or an everyday thing which can become worse over time. For those with panic attacks, social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, phobias, (to name a few) anxiety can be devastating and affects their life on many levels. How many invitations have those with anxiety turned down, how have they limited their day to day activities, how has anxiety impacted their relationships or their jobs, etc.

The Author encourages people to make a list of what anxiety has caused them and then to make a list or "outcome picture" to show what they want in their lives in the future. What new things they want to try, places they may want to travel, parties they want to attend, jobs they want to apply for, etc. Then they need be uncomfortable, to face their fear, to act, to get the outcome, they desire. He has unconventional ways of achieving this that he believes that if you can welcome what you are feeling it will alleviate your anxiety. For example, when someone is experiencing anxiety he/she may think "I've got to back away from any threat so that I can get rid of my fearful thoughts and feelings." He then wants you to think (tell yourself) "It's fine that they just showed up. I can handle these feelings. I don't have to do anything with them." and "These are exactly the thoughts [of feelings] I want to have." You are not saying that you want the thoughts to continue but you are accepting the thoughts you are experiencing. He urges people to look at their fearful thoughts as noise and not signals. When the thoughts pop up to mentally step back when you have that thought that tells you “Get me out of this" and notice the thought and realize it is there and not to fight it, to accept it. He believes this will make anxiety more bearable because you are dropping your resistance.

I think this book is good for reinforcing what most people might already know. I believe the vignettes may be useful to let the reader know that he/she is not alone. If someone is in treatment for anxiety they be familiar with many of the treatment(s) for anxiety. I like that this book was in layman's terms and stresses not to avoid things but to face them but do so with the attitude that it's okay to be anxious, I will get through this, etc. Easier said than done - his point was to give anxiety less power. You know to feel the fear but do it anyway...such as exposure exercises but while being aware of your thoughts and not resisting them. An example of an exposure exercise is: someone is afraid of elevators should ride elevators to elevate anxiety.

I liked how he showed many automatic thoughts that people think in the beginning of the book. I believe that most readers will identify with a lot of them. Think of something which causes you anxiety. Think of all the thoughts that pop into your mind. Imagine you are going to the doctor because you have a health concern. You don't know what the outcome will be, and you automatically have thoughts about it "What if this is serious", "What if I am really sick", "What if this is incurable" etc. You still go to your doctor appointment even though you are anxious. For someone with a crippling anxiety or fear this is harder to do but you still need to go through it. For example, you have a fear of public speaking and you have been asked to do a presentation at work. You need your job, but your anxiety is crippling. You sweat profusely, your hands shake, your voice trembles, you are embarrassed by this. You fear the humiliation. You fear judgement. You have feelings of dread and automatic thoughts associated with this. The author tells you to accept them. To tell yourself it's OK if my hands shake, I accept that. I am going to sweat, I'm okay with that. He states creating a paradox in your thinking will confuse your anxiety - make it stop and say "what? you are okay with this?" and by doing so your anxiety will lessen.

Will reading this book make your anxiety go away - I do not believe so - but it is a beginning. For some it will be reinforcement, for some a new way of looking at their thoughts, for some it might work for them. I think the important thing is finding what works for you.

Thank you to HCI books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The One with Anxiety as your Game Opponent
MARCH 17, 2018 / SMITHEREENS / EDIT
Reid Wilson, Stopping the Noise in Your Head: The New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry (2016)

I don’t have O.C.D. or any diagnosed anxiety disorder, but I like to think myself as a rather cautious person, and with many things on my plate last year, I found myself worrying more than usual. A book title focused on anxiety would have discouraged me, but by talking about noise in my head and worry, I felt right in the apparent target.

I was first surprised by the tone of the book, then I grew to like it, although it felt a bit repetitive and patronizing at times and could have been edited of many pages in my opinion. It seems more relevant to people with serious anxiety, panic attacks and OCD than the average worrier like me. Reid Wilson’s tone is direct and straightforward (and a bit too verbose to my taste) and his take on anxiety is that it’s a game opponent, a cunning adversary that feeds off your fear and that plays a lot of tricks to have your fears flare up.

By personalizing anxiety as if it was an evil character, Wilson (who is a PhD clinical psychologist) makes it something separate from our own head and our own past experience. He makes it possible to prepare a strategy to beat this opponent at its own game. The strategy includes trying to separate noise from signal, i.e. baseless worry from justified need to learn more or be alert about something, and seeking out a frequent exposure to the cause of anxiety (the more the better, and Wilson even devises a point system to score every time you get anxious, acknowledge and still moves forward).

I read slowly because it’s a bit short of 400 pages (I guess it could be half that size with a good editor) and I wanted to apply his tips before posting about it here. I didn’t follow the whole step-by-step approach but I had his guiding principles as I recently traveled by plane (I’m a nervous flier) and I think I handled it better than usual. A few points to score for Wilson’s method!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher HCI Books for the ARC.