Managing Intense Anxiety

This workbook is designed to use with clients who have been diagnosed with or may be showing signs of:

• Panic Disorders

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder

• Specific Phobias

• Social Anxiety Disorder

• Unspecified Anxiety Disorder

• Agoraphobia

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

In this workbook, we've used "anxiety" as an umbrella term to address mental health issues associated with these diagnoses.

People who experience intense anxiety are likely to find it challenging to function in everyday life due to the symptoms associated with anxiety. The assessments and activities in this workbook provide facilitators with a wide variety of tools to use in helping people manage the intense anxiety in their lives more effectively. Many choices for self-exploration are provided for facilitators to determine which tools best suit the unique needs of their clients.

The Managing Intense Anxiety Workbook can be used independently or as part of an established mental health issue program. You may administer any of the assessments and the guided self-exploration activities to an individual or a group with whom you work. And you may distribute any of the assessments and activities over one or more days. Feel free to pick and choose those that best fit the outcomes you desire.

This workbook aims to provide facilitators who work with individuals and groups who may be experiencing intense anxiety issues with a series of reproducible activities to supplement their work with participants. Because these activity pages are reproducible, they can be photocopied as is, or you may adapt them by whiting out and writing in your changes to suit the needs of each group, using that page as your master copy to be photocopied for each participant.

The Managing Intense Anxiety Workbook provides the tools needed to help participants understand the intensity of their issues and learn how to lead more effective lives.

The Awareness Modules

The reproducible awareness modules contained in this workbook will help you identify and select assessments and activities easily and quickly:

Module I: Signs of Stress Symptoms

This module will help participants explore the signs of stress in their lives, recognize anxiety symptoms, and learn tools to help decrease their anxiety.

Module II: Need for Control

This module will help participants explore the various ways they need to be in control of their lives.

Module III: Social Approval

This module will help participants explore various ways their need for the approval of others affects their functioning in social situations.

Module IV: Perfectionism

This module will help participants explore ways their need to be perfect and mistake-free and their determination to achieve unrealistic standards can cause anxiety.

Module V: Erasing the Stigma of Mental Health Issues

This module will help participants explore the stigma of having intense anxiety and the impact that the stigma has on them.

This workbook is also available in PDF eBook format, making it simple to store on your computer or mobile device and access with a PDF viewer. The PDF format allows you to easily print copies of the activities and worksheets during therapy and counseling sessions.

Managing Intense Anxiety Card Deck

Use the open-ended questions with groups or individuals to kick-start a session. Each question corresponds to a specific page in the book.

Sample Questions:

What does the following quotation by Charles Spurgeon mean to you? “Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.”

Which types of social events create anxiety for you? Why?

What is one of your goals? What are some steps to move you toward achieving that goal?