The Anti-Anxiety Workbook is a self-help book written for people experiencing various types of anxiety, including specific phobias, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, social anxiety, trauma-related anxiety, and health anxiety. The book is divided into three parts. The first section, “The Prep”, is a number of chapters detailing what anxiety is in terms of both diagnostic criteria and psycho-education around the types of triggers, beliefs, sensations, and behaviours associated with the different forms of anxiety. This is followed by a sound chapter on preparing for treatment in terms of enhancing motivation, goal setting, and identifying potential obstacles along with suggestions for overcoming them. The second part of the book, “The Program”, is a group of chapters detailing a cognitive behavioural approach to reducing anxiety. This section is supplemented with a chapter on relaxation and meditation, as well as an informative chapter on medications. The final section of the book, “In the Long Run”, includes chapters focused on consolidating the changes the reader has made and relapse prevention. Of note, the final chapter, A Guide for Family and Friends, is well written and addresses issues faced by significant others, such as how best to support those who suffer with anxiety and highlights how they may inadvertently reinforce a loved one's anxiety.

The first section of the book nicely provides summaries of what anxiety is, and the chapter on developing goals and enhancing motivation appears to be well placed within the book and guides the reader through setting specific goals for their self-help programme. Here, the authors discuss how to involve family in treatment and they provide good advice on seeking professional help, complete with pertinent questions to ask any potential therapist should the reader believe additional guidance is needed. The second section of the book, outlining treatment strategies, has a number of strengths, including an informative and descriptive guide on anxious thinking, with details on how to identify such thoughts. It also provides relevant examples, as well as illustrating helpful ways to find evidence against negative automatic thoughts. The chapter does, however, fall short in terms of the minimal attention paid to re-evaluating rules and core beliefs.

The authors provide a worthy chapter on “Confronting Frightening Feelings”, describing interoceptive exercises, but they could have been clearer about testing out the beliefs associated with physical sensations. Other chapters discuss ways to overcome feared objects, situations, thoughts, memories, images, and urges. However, this is where one of the disappointments of the book is most apparent. The authors have primarily chosen a habituation approach and these chapters outline exposure-based strategies. Certainly, this may benefit the reader, and the authors describe the exposure process very well; however, it may have been more effective if the authors had detailed more clearly the role of cognitions, particularly when doing anxiety-provoking exercises. Earlier in the book, the authors discuss “experiments”; however, it is unfortunate that they did not continue to utilize a more cognitive approach throughout the book, including more use of behavioural experiments to test out beliefs and negative predictions rather than relying on exposure tasks that use changes in fear ratings alone. Another concern with this section of the book is that, while it discusses ways to process upsetting thoughts, images and memories, there is little education on self-help strategies the reader could use if they become overwhelmed by exposure to their thoughts, or if and when they should contact a therapist. However, earlier in the book, the authors noted that professional help may be of value if anxiety is severe. Perhaps it would have been beneficial to reiterate this when discussing working with intrusive thoughts and images.

The book outlines safety behaviours. However, while it proficiently provides guidance on identifying these and relevant examples, again the authors do not emphasize how such behaviours may maintain the beliefs related to their anxiety. Further, in addition to the term “safety behaviors”, the book uses varying terminology such as “false safety behaviors” and “safety thoughts”. Perhaps they were trying to simplify this concept for the reader. Nonetheless, it appears somewhat unclear and it may have been advisable to have just stayed with the term safety behaviours and noted Salkovskis’ original definition and terminology of safety seeking behaviours and detailed how such behaviours prevent the disconfirmation of negative predictions. On the topic of safety seeking behaviours, it was notable that early in the book the authors are clear that relaxation-based strategies are effective for generalized anxiety, worry, and stress, and not recommended for other types of anxiety. However, it could perhaps be confusing for the reader that the authors later state, within the relaxation chapter, that “. . .relaxation may help to take the edge off any kind of anxiety, making it easier to confront the situations you fear” (p. 157). Lastly, the final section of the book is particularly strong with educational material on developing resilience to anxiety, including improved lifestyle balance, how to overcome treatment barriers, and maintaining gains.

Overall, The Anti-Anxiety Workbook appears to be a valuable contribution to self-help resources. It is easy to read and is supplemented with many user-friendly worksheets. The book may have benefited from the use of visual models, diagrams, or vicious circles to complement the authors’ well written text. Nevertheless, for someone suffering from anxiety, this would be a good resource to start with. However, for those individuals engaged in therapy for a specific anxiety problem or requiring a helpful resource once they have finished treatment, it may benefit them more to read a book from the Overcoming series that is more specific to their difficulties and clearer about the testing out of anxiety-related beliefs.