Reddit reviews Overcoming Anxiety (Overcoming Books)

You can do each muscle group at the same time.

The way I learned it was to tense each area for around 5 seconds and then let go for 10, concentrating on how different it feels between tensed and relaxed.

Lay on your bed. Start from the bottom and work your way up as follows:

Feet - curve your toes up and tense your feet, hold, relax & repeat

Legs - Straighten legs, point toes towards face, hold, relax & repeat

Abdomen - tense stomach muscles as if preparing to be punched, hold, relax & repeat

Back - arch back, hold, relax & repeat

Shoulders/neck - shrug your shoulders, bringing them up and in, press your head back, hold, relax & repeat

Arms - Stretch out your arms and hands, hold, relax & repeat

Face - tense forehead and jaw by lowering your eyebrows and biting, hold, relax & repeat

Whole body - tense entire body (feet, legs, abdomen, back, shoulders, neck, arms and face), hold, relax, repeat.

Some people may feel tense after going through this exercise, in which case you can either repeat the entire thing or just the muscles that are tense (it should be repeated until you feel completely relaxed). Once the exercise is over, you should spend a few minutes relaxing your mind.

Finally, try to practise this routine twice a day until you start to feel relaxed first time.

I learned it from this book: Overcoming Anxiety: A Books on Prescription Title (Overcoming Books) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1849018782/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Sh8tyb3QMZ7W5 which was recommended to me by my GP.

So, I think most of the free online ones don't seem that great. But the NHS (UK) recommends these two programs: Fear Fighter is for people with phobias or panic attacks; Beating the Blues is for people with mild to moderate depression

and this book to patients which works pretty much how the paid for online courses work I believe, but much cheaper to start and get an idea.

I'm pretty sure if you do some googling you can also find most of the parts of the book as free pdfs online. All these online ones are based around CBT but really it needs that interaction and adaptation to you that only a professional can do, but the self help CBT stuff works well enough for quite a few people and for others it gives them the bump they need to progress to an actual therapist.

Hope it helps anyhow. I'm not a doctor (just as a disclaimer) but I am a researcher in the neuro field (though (again) this isn't my specialty). But if you have any other questions I might be able to help with let me know.

For the anxiety you can get books on cognitive behavioural therapy. That shit works. It's not like talk therapy, it's more training yourself to pay more attention to the good things and not dwell on the bad things. You can do that yourself.

I don't have the answers to your situation but try fixing the things you can control and it might help you cope with the things you can't control. Anxiety is one thing you can make progress on just by reading a book and putting the things you learn there into practice.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1849018782/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?qid=1415283237&sr=8-6&pi=AC_SX110_SY165