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One of the books that I recently read in my quest to better understand and quell my anxiety is called Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety by Dr. Chloe Carmichael.
Carmichael is a good writer and she’s approachable and honest. More importantly, the book is actually practical. The book is filled with methodology that actually can help you when you’re feeling anxious. I have already implemented a few of the techniques described and they’ve been really helpful. As Carmichael reinforces though, “To avoid the symptoms of perfectionism while retaining your high levels of conscientiousness and drive for success, remember that the key word here is ‘practice.’ It would be unreasonable (and even grandiose!) for you to think that would immediately master all of these techniques after just one or two attempts.”
In other words, these techniques are only truly helpful if we practice them often.
The book’s audience is what Carmichael calls high functioning people. Odds are that if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re one of us.
I felt called out by this statement she wrote:
“Many high functioning people are used to doing things “in their head” and feel that they glean so much benefit just from reading the steps of an exercise that they don’t actually do the exercise, because they feel like they’ve gotten the main points of the exercise just by thinking their way through it.”
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