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Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Worry (Second Edition): Therapist Guide

Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Worry comes in two volumes. This page is for the Therapist Guide. Click on the following link to access the accompanying Workbook

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a first-line treatment for generalized anxiety disorder, recommended by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). The Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Worry: Therapist Guide (Second Edition) is written by Richard Zinbarg, Michelle Craske, and David Barlow and provides therapists with all the tools they need to deliver effective, evidence-based psychological treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and worry. Part of the Treatments That Work® series, it provides step-by-step instructions for teaching clients the skills they need to overcome their worry, whether or not they meet full criteria for GAD.

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Chapter 9: Controlling Thoughts That Cause Anxiety 1 – Overestimating the Risk

References

Front Matter

Chapter 15: Your Accomplishments and Your Future

Chapter 14: Drugs for Anxiety and Their Relation to This Program

Chapter 13: Dealing With Real Problems – Time Management, Goal Setting, and Problem Solving

Chapter 12: From Fears to Behaviors

Chapter 11: Getting to the Heart of Worrying – Facing Your Fears

Chapter 10: Controlling Thoughts That Cause Anxiety 2 – Thinking the Worst

Chapter 1: Introductory Information for Therapists

Chapter 8: Learning to Relax

Chapter 7: A Closer Look at Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Chapter 6: The Purpose and Function of Anxiety

Chapter 5: Learning to Recognize Your Own Anxiety

Chapter 4: The Nature of Generalized Anxiety

Chapter 3: Outline of Treatment Procedures and Basic Principles Underlying Treatment

Chapter 2: The Nature of Anxiety and Generalized Anxiety Disorder

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  • English (GB)
  • English (US)

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Introduction & Theoretical Background

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is extremely common, with the lifetime prevalence measured in a recent survey ranging from 4.1% to 7.7% (Kessler et al, 2005). GAD is characterized by excessive worry, which has the quality of being uncontrollable. People with GAD tend to worry about minor everyday events, or major life circumstances (e.g. job, family, finances), and the focus of the worry may shift repeatedly. The worry is typically associated with physical symptoms of tension, such as restlessness, fatigue and sleep disturbance. Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Worry is a comprehensive program to assist clinicians in delivering effective CBT for GAD and worry. The program includes two books:

  • Mastery of Your Anxiety and Worry: Therapist Guide details the step-by-step cognitive behavioral treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.
  • Mastery of Your Anxiety And Worry: Workbook is the companion to this therapist guide. It will help your patients to become active participants in their treatment and to learn to manage their experiences of worry.

About Treatments That Work®

Authored by leading psychologists including David Barlow, Michelle Craske and Edna Foa, Treatments That Work® is a series of manuals and workbooks based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Each pair of books – therapist guide and workbook – contains step by step procedures for delivering evidence-based psychological interventions and will help you to provide the best possible care for your clients. 

At Psychology Tools, we are proud to make many of the Treatments That Work® titles available to our members. Each book is available to download chapter-by-chapter, and Psychology Tools members with a currently active subscription to our ‘Complete’ plan are licensed to share copies with their clients.

How effective is this treatment?

Cognitive behavioral treatments for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) are recommended as first-line treatments by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). A wait-list controlled study of this Mastery of Your Anxiety and Worry program found that fifty percent of the individuals who completed the treatment had returned to within one standard deviation of the nonclinical mean on at least four of our five outcome measures at the end of the program, and can therefore be regarded as having achieved high end-state functioning. Another 12.5 were markedly im- proved (returning to within one standard deviation of the nonclinical mean on three of the five outcome measures), and another 25% were somewhat improved (returning to within one standard deviation of the nonclinical mean on two of the five outcome measures). Thus, a total of 87.5% were at least somewhat improved (Zinbarg, Lee & Yoon, 2007).

Chapters in Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Worry: Therapist Guide:

  • Chapter 1: Introductory Information for Therapists
  • Chapter 2: The Nature of Anxiety and Generalized Anxiety Disorder
  • Chapter 3: Outline of Treatment Procedures and Basic Principles Underlying Treatment
  • Chapter 4: The Nature of Generalized Anxiety
  • Chapter 5: Learning to Recognize Your Own Anxiety
  • Chapter 6: The Purpose and Function of Anxiety
  • Chapter 7: A Closer Look at Generalized Anxiety Disorder
  • Chapter 8: Learning to Relax
  • Chapter 9: Controlling Thoughts That Cause Anxiety 1 – Overestimating the Risk
  • Chapter 10: Controlling Thoughts That Cause Anxiety 2 – Thinking the Worst
  • Chapter 11: Getting to the Heart of Worrying – Facing Your Fears
  • Chapter 12: From Fears to Behaviors
  • Chapter 13: Dealing With Real Problems – Time Management, Goal Setting, and Problem Solving
  • Chapter 14: Drugs for Anxiety and Their Relation to This Program
  • Chapter 15: Your Accomplishments and Your Future
  • References

About the authors

Richard E. Zinbarg is Professor in Psychology at Weirnberg College of Arts & Sciences, and a licensed clinical psychologist, specializing in the treatment of anxiety and panic disorders. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1989. He also directed the Oregon Program for Anxiety Study and Treatment at the University of Oregon. He has published over 40 articles and chapters in the areas of anxiety disorders and clinical research methodology, and has presented extensively on these topics. His research interests focus on understanding the risk factors for the development of anxiety and depressive disorders, clinical research methodology, and developing more effective treatments for the anxiety disorders, with a particular focus on generalized anxiety disorder.

Michelle G. Craske is Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Biobehavioral Sciences; Miller Endowed Chair; director of the Anxiety and Depression Research Center; and associate director of the Staglin Family Music Center for Behavioral and Brain Health, at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published extensively in the area of fear, anxiety, and depression, including over 540 peer-reviewed journal articles as well as books on the topics of the etiology and treatment of anxiety disorders, translation from the basic science of fear learning to the clinical application of understanding and treating phobias, and cognitive behavioural therapy. She is editor-in-chief for Behaviour Research and Therapy. Dr. Craske received her BA Hons from the University of Tasmania and her PhD from the University of British Columbia.

David H. Barlow received his PhD from the University of Vermont in 1969, and has published over 650 articles and chapters as well as over 90 books and clinical manuals, mostly concerning the nature and treatment of emotional disorders and clinical research methodology. Currently, he is professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Emeritus, and founder of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University. He was formerly professor of Psychiatry at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Brown University. He was also distinguished professor in the Department of Psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Dr. Barlow is the recipient of the two highest awards in psychology, the American Psychological Association (APA) Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science, which honors individuals for a lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research.

Therapist Guidance

Each Treatments That Work® title is published as part of a pair:

  • Clients use the Workbooks which contain elements of psychoeducation, skills development, self-assessment quizzes, homework exercises, and record forms.
  • Therapists use the Therapist Guides which contain step-by-step instructions for teaching clients skills and overcoming common difficulties.

The authors suggest that the most effective implementation of these exercises requires an understanding of the principles underlying the different procedures, and that mental health professionals should be familiar with both the Mastery of Your Anxiety And Worry: Workbook, as well as this therapist guide. 

Therapists with an active subscription to a Psychology Tools ‘Complete’ plan are licensed to use Treatments That Work® titles, and to download and share chapters with their clients.

References And Further Reading

  • Kessler, R. C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K. R., & Walters, E. E. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of general psychiatry62(6), 593-602.
  • National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2020). Generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder in adults: management[CG113]. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg113
  • Zinbarg, R. E., Lee, J. E., & Yoon, K. L. (2007). Dyadic predictors of outcome in a cognitive-behavioral program for patients with generalized anxiety disorder in committed relationships: A “spoonful of sugar” and a dose of non-hostile criticism may help. Behaviour Research and Therapy45(4), 699-713.