Ten Times Calmer: Beat Anxiety and Change Your Life

Clinical psychologist Schnack understands how to distill information in practical ways, and she ably identifies the individual ways anxiety presents and the shared facets of anxiety. Because of her background, she encourages readers to seek professional support while acknowledging that may not always be an option. This book is structured the same way as her counseling sessions so that it follows a specific arc, built on foundational concepts and designed to give readers tools and techniques based on therapies including cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and more. While some of the activities like breathwork may be difficult for new practitioners to learn from a book, she lays out the benefits and how-to’s of the practices in clear, straightforward ways, and she frequently layers in stories of clients using the tools or prompts to manage an aspect of their anxiety. Most of the exercises are short, actionable tasks that will not add to anxious readers’ sense of feeling overwhelmed.