Unwinding Anxiety

First and foremost Dr. Brewer is like a breath of fresh air. Anxiety doesn’t have to be managed or dealt with forever. It can be truly overcome. His program has been fundamental for me in overcoming anxiety. I would be remiss to leave out the other helpful tools along this journey. I was not a long time anxiety sufferer. It came on fast and out of nowhere and spun me into a panic. I had tried to use tools from the DARE program but the anxiety was deep in my subconscious, and I could not always get out. I turned to medication (SSRI) to help clear the fog and calm my nervous system down so I could start processing what was happening. I implemented the DARE program and meditation from day one. As my journey progressed I found Dr. Brewer. Him and his program has been life changing. The tools I have found most helpful have been SSRI (although I don’t think that is necessary for everyone. Again I was in panic mode and could not get out), DARE program (book and app), The wisdom of anxiety, The power of positive thinking, and Unwinding anxiety (book and app). It takes work. You have to be a student. A lifelong student. But the reward is freedom. Absolute freedom. What is better than that?

While this app isn’t free, it’s a bargain compared to seeing a therapist. First, a therapist that’s trained in what you need is hard to find, and let’s face it: simply finding any therapist is an onerous task. As a public school employee, I was severely stressed after coping with the political and social fallout from the pandemic. My husband had read about Unwinding Anxiety and suggested I try it. Hey, I’ve wasted 30 bucks before, so why not? It didn’t seem like a big gamble. I was only a couple days into the lessons when it became obvious that this app was amazing. I’ve been using a year, and my anxiety—and my relationship to it—is heathy and much improved. The app gives you easy-to-understand-tools and explains how and why these tools work with your brain, rather than trying to change through will power or similar. Hey, I don’t know about you, but one bad night’s sleep and my will power is out the window. What more can I say? Unwinding Anxiety is life changing, and you don’t need to be a hot mess before you try it. If you have ever had anxiety, i.e., are you human, then it will help you! Go for it!

Dr Brewer has done great research and is a leading expert in addiction recovery. His work on smoking cessation and overeating is great. Check out his website— it’s totally built around helping people break bad habits. The problem is that it doesn’t really apply to treating anxiety. When you use this app, you feel like his methods are being shoe-horned to fit into the “anxiety” box. The whole concept is identifying Triggers and Behaviors. You then evaluate your behaviors to see if they’re serving you. This is great for overeating— figure out why you overeat, and learn to ride out cravings without binging. But for anxiety, it’s less clear. In this app he says that “anxious thinking” is a habit and we can learn to break it. Okay... I sort of follow that. But the deeper you go with the app (I did all the main level modules) the more you realize that it doesn’t really apply. Thought patterns aren’t exactly the same as behaviors (where you can just choose not to smoke in any given moment, even though it may feel difficult) but he is trying to use all the same strategies. There is definitely some value here. I love learning to be curious about my anxiety, and learning to “ride the wave” and move through it. But the explanations of Trigger-Behavior-Result just aren’t the same as they would be for compulsive eating or smoking.