What Is Causing Your Anxiety? How to Identify Hidden Traumas That Feed Worry, Unease and Fear

Anxiety can seep into any area of life—from work and self-fulfillment to family and romantic relationships. And it can poison them. If you suffer from anxiety, you may even start avoiding situations that trigger fear. That will rob you of a full life with its new opportunities and discoveries, and in the long run will only strengthen the symptoms of worry.

Psychotherapist Jaime Castillo offers a new approach—focused on understanding where your anxiety comes from and healing past traumas that make you react painfully to one event or another in the present. You’ll identify how your worries are connected to specific traumatic events—perhaps once they seemed insignificant troubles, but now they feed your fear—so you can work through them and ultimately find peace.

Once you realize what truly caused your anxiety, the grip of worry will loosen—freeing you to live more consciously, with confidence in yourself and peace in your soul.

What this book is about

First, you’ll learn how anxiety arises and how an anxious brain generalizes and “inflates” the threat. You’ll also understand why ignoring anxiety and fighting it doesn’t bring tangible results.

Then—step by step—you’ll practice listening to your anxiety, allowing it to tell you about the source of this fear in the past, and working with the traumatic experience you uncover. You’ll be able to befriend your anxiety—rather than turning away from it, and in doing so, turning away from yourself. In this process, your relationship with anxiety will change completely, and you’ll be able to start living in accordance with your values and dreams.

Why you should read this book

— You’ll learn how to distinguish “reasonable” anxiety from “unreasonable” anxiety, and also understand whether your worry is caused by psychological factors or is a symptom of a condition.

— You’ll separate anxiety from your personality and become aware of its “needs” and your own desires.

— You’ll master methods for working with worry that help you cope quickly with acute stress.

— You’ll learn how people get stuck in memories and why not every painful experience turns into trauma.

— You’ll identify your main fear and conduct “negotiations” with it.

— You’ll get rid of anxiety’s paralyzing effect and move forward boldly—toward realizing your aspirations.

Who this book is for

This book doesn’t just answer the question: “Why am I anxious?” But—more importantly—the question: “Why am I so anxious?”

If anxiety drains your strength and will to live, if you have to give up new opportunities—whether it’s an interview or a date—because of excessive переживания, this book is for you.

Anxiety won’t leave you forever, because it’s part of life, but you’ll become the kind of person who can manage it and keep the ability to act even in the most difficult circumstances.

Why this book was published

Jaime Castillo is a therapist specializing in treating anxiety. She has helped hundreds of people find freedom from worry. Her book is based on several therapeutic approaches that have proven effective in practice: such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). You’ll learn the most useful and effective techniques from these approaches—combined with the author’s own developments created over many years of working with anxiety disorders.

This book will not only help you deal with anxiety symptoms through breathing techniques and grounding skills, but will also guide you back to the past, where your anxiety became stuck. You’ll be able to reach the root of the problem and make high-quality changes in yourself so you no longer look for new ways to overcome anxiety. You’ll stop avoiding worry—and the aspects of life connected to it—and start living a full life.

Author information

Jaime Castillo is a licensed psychotherapist and social worker specializing in the treatment of trauma and anxiety disorders. She is also a licensed specialist and consultant in therapy using EMDR, with additional training in Internal Family Systems therapy and exposure therapy.

She specializes in working with adults who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), phobias, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Castillo is often invited as an expert on trauma to various psychology magazines.

Key concepts

Anxiety, worry, self-help, EMDR, internal family systems therapy, IFS, acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, therapy of disorders