The Truth About Self-Help Books

Curbing Constant Worries

Book 4: The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You

By Robert L. Leahy, PhD (Harmony Books, 2005)

Tested by: Amy Fishbein, senior health editor

My Goal: To stop worry from stressing me out.

I blame my penchant for worry partially on my mother (who else?), since she frets obsessively about everything, especially me. I'm a more discriminating worrier, however: My anxieties are mostly health-related. Whenever there's a new virus or disease in the news, I'm convinced that I'm at imminent risk for contracting it.

Leahy helps you to understand why you worry -- putting to use the basic psychological principle that in order to take charge and change something, you must first understand where it's coming from, i.e., why it's happening.

He describes the different "bad" ways to handle worry. One is collecting information on the topic you're concerned about. As an editor who helps educate women about how to protect their health, I always thought that gathering facts would be empowering instead of anxiety-producing. But Leahy says that worriers look only for info that reinforces their negative thoughts. Seeing this habit explained in print helped me pinpoint exactly when I was doing it and, to some extent, stop. On a recent trip, my husband and I got several mosquito bites, and when we developed headaches the next day, my worry/stress cycle started: What if we had contracted Triple E, a virus cropping up in the area? The book helped me nip my anxiety in the bud by reminding me not to focus on trying to confirm that we had the virus. Included in the list of Triple E symptoms was a severe headache that doesn't go away. So I stopped worrying and waited to see if the headaches disappeared. They did.

I found many of Leahy's tips (like "accept reality and commit to change") clichéd and vague. But I liked this method of challenging your worried thinking: "Determine how likely it is that what you are worried about will actually happen." I can almost always find statistics to offset my health anxieties.

Bottom Line: Figuring out why and how I worry has helped me to curb my tendency toward it. Now I'm sending the book to my mother.

Favorite Tip: Imagine the advice that you'd give to a friend who had your worries. We are generally more balanced and rational with friends or strangers than we are with ourselves.

Originally published in Fitness magazine, February 2006.