Don't Feed the Monkey Brain by Jennifer Shannon

Title: Don't Feed the Monkey Mind

Author: Jennifer Shannon

Stars: 5 out of 5 Stars

Review:
Just like many reviews I also have general and social Anxiety. I have struggled most of my life with it not really knowing what it was until the last 6 years ago. I hated and loved being around crowds. I would go home and analyze ever last thing I said hoping I didn't say the wrong thing or make people think I was a werido. Than I would get myself so tired up in knots I wouldn't be able to eat or sleep for days on end. 
I struggled daily to find peace and while I do take care of my anxiety not in the natural way this book was a great guide to understanding anxiety in general. The author write using the analogy of the "Monkey Brain" which make understanding anxiety simple as well as the fun illustrations that she uses to help digest they more dryer and medical side to Anxiety make this a very enjoyable read.

The author tells her personal struggles with anxiety and even shares that fact she had anxiety writing this book which helps the readers relate to the author on a more personal level.
This book takes a story of feeling lost, crazy and unable to find peace of mind and fill in the details
The author includes quizzes and exercisers that are great suggestions to cope with anxiety. Several are very tradition and others are very innovative.

If you love someone dealing with Anxiety read this book and help them find the peace and guidance they need.
Advance COpy from Netgalley

Synopsis:
The very things we do to control anxiety can make anxiety worse. This unique guide offers a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based approach to help you recognize the constant chatter of your anxious “monkey mind,” stop feeding anxious thoughts, and find the personal peace you crave.

Ancient sages compared the human mind to a monkey: constantly chattering, hopping from branch to branch—endlessly moving from fear to safety. If you are one of the millions of people whose life is affected by anxiety, you are familiar with this process. Unfortunately, you can’t switch off the “monkey mind,” but you can stop feeding the monkey—or stop rewarding it by avoiding the things you fear.

Written by psychotherapist Jennifer Shannon, this book shows you how to stop anxious thoughts from taking over using proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness techniques, as well as fun illustrations. By following the exercises in this book, you’ll learn to identify your own anxious thoughts, question those thoughts, and uncover the core fears at play.

Once you stop feeding the monkey, there are no limits to how expansive your life can feel. This book will show you how anxiety can only continue as long as you try to avoid it. And, paradoxically, only by seeking out and confronting the things that make you anxious can you reverse the cycle that keeps your fears alive.

Paperback, 200 pages

Expected publication: April 1st 2017 by New Harbinger Publications

About The Author:

My journey writing this book began as a 5 year-old, sitting next to my mother while she studied for her psychology classes. I wanted so much to be a psychologist and help others. But I needed plenty of help myself. I was an anxious child, prone to stomach aches, missing school, and nightmares of a man who lived under the house. When my father died I worried obsessively that my mother could die too. 

It wasn’t until years later—after a seeing a succession of therapists, completing counseling grad school, and giving birth to my first child—that I discovered a clue to my persistent anxiety and worry. It was a new therapy at the time, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. CBT changed my life. I learned that my resistance to anxiety was what was maintaining it. When I practiced accepting and welcoming it, anxiety began to lose its power over me.

For the past 25 years I have made the treatment of anxiety the central focus of my practice. I treat Social Anxiety (extreme shyness), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Separation Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Phobias, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The powerful tools I’ve used to help my clients are the same tools I’ve used to help myself, and they can help you too.

Don’t Feed the Monkey Mind is a distillation of what I’ve learned from CBT and mindfulness practices. The book will help you recognize that your anxiety is not a monster to be avoided and resisted. It is only a wild, frightened little monkey that, with acceptance and welcoming, can be tamed. 

Married for 31 years and a mother of three, I am a Certified Diplomat of The Academy of Cognitive Therapy and a member of the Anxiety and Depression Disorders Association of America, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, the International OCD Foundation and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. I am the co-founder of the Santa Rosa Center for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and the author of The Anxiety Survival Guide for Teens and The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens. 

Website:  http://www.jennifershannon.com