by Robert Duff
Hardcore Self Help: F**k Anxiety
By Robert Duff, Ph.D.
www.hardcoreselfhelp.com
2nd Edition Copyright © 2015 Robert Duff, Ph.D.
Original Copyright © 2014
All Rights Reserved
Please direct all inquiries to [email protected]
Disclaimer: This book is not for everyone. It contains a large amount of swearing and some mild adult themes. This book is intended for mature audiences. If you are a parent buying this book for your teen, please review it yourself first and use your discretion. If you are not entertained by swearing, do not buy this book.
This is also a short book. The point is not to give you another giant manual. The point is to inspire you and arm you with knowledge so you can get out there and do this thing. You can read this book in one sitting. In fact, I encourage you to do just that and then occasionally go back to refresh on the parts that you would like to revisit.
If you have questions about this book, feel free to email or tweet me @duffthepsych.
Note about the Second Edition:
Hey, friends!
I wanted to write a quick little note to introduce you to the second edition of Hardcore Self Help: F**k Anxiety. I decided to write this second edition to correct some mistakes that made their way into the original edition, to add in some new goodies, and to extract some of the more useless bits.
Obviously I wanted HCSH to be popular from the start, but I could never have imagined how well it has done. For that, I must thank every single person who has purchased this book. THANK YOU! I’d also like to thank all of the youtubers, social media influencers, journalists, and friends who have been gracious enough to share my book.
This is a special book and the people who gravitate toward it are special people. I’ve had the time of my life connecting with you guys on Facebook, on Twitter, or via emails that you have sent. It’s clear that my hunch was right. There are normal people out there who are sick of reading psychobabble and want to get information from someone that they can identify with. It’s an honor and a privilege to try and fill that role.
If you enjoy this book, please join the amazing legion of fans that have left reviews on Amazon, Audible, and Goodreads. If you find me in real life and tell me that you wrote a review, I promise you a massive high five!
I also want to give a huge shout out to the amazing Ash Van Otterloo for tearing me a new one by way of some much needed edits.
Without further ado, let’s get into the book. Enjoy!!
Introduction
Ch. 1 WTF is Anxiety Anyway?
Ch. 2 The Triforce
Ch. 4 Don’t be a Jerk to Yourself
Ch. 5 Technology is your Frenemy
Ch. 6 The Secret
Ch. 7 The A Team (Anxiety Disorders)
Ch. 8 How to Talk to People Who Don’t Get It
Ch. 9 Get Your Head Shrunk
Ch. 10 Get Pumped. Do Work.
Thank You
Appendix
Informal References by Chapter
Introduction
Alright, let's be real. Your brain is fucking awesome. There's no debating that. It does some truly amazing things, right? Even the fact that you're sitting here right now thinking about your own brain is cool. Let that sink in for a second... your brain is thinking about itself. That's like... brainception (actually it's called metacognition, but that's a topic for the textbooks). I understand though, that no matter how badass your brain is, sometimes it's also kind of a huge douche. Remember that one time you were trying to sleep and you couldn't stop thinking about how you needed to wake up on time to do all of that important stuff you have going on? And every moment you spent worrying was entirely counterproductive because it was keeping you from doing the one thing that would actually help you be more successful the next day... you know - sleep? Yeah, that sucked. What about that time where you were just walking around and all of the sudden your heart skipped a beat and you knew for certain that you were dying and two minutes later you were hyperventilating, sweating your ass off, and completely impervious to reason? That sucked too. Oh, and we can't forget all of those times when you did something that was truly remarkable. You should have felt like a god. Seriously, you rock. But no, your douchebrain decided that it was an isolated event completely due to chance and took the opportunity to remind you that you're still a piece of shit... just a lucky one. Well my friend, you came to the right place.
My name is Robert and I've spent way too much of my life sitting in stuffy classrooms, learning from people that are too smart for their own good about the brain, emotions, the body, and their asshole ways. I have a doctorate in clinical psychology, but in so many ways I am just a normal dude. In this book, I will help you locate your internal armory. Your hidden cache of sick weapons with pointy ends, sharp blades, live ammo, fire, and all that other good stuff. Whether your spirit weapon is a badass ninja katana or a freakin’ rocket launcher, I will help you wield its epic power and slay that little shit named anxiety for good.
Look, I get it. This isn't your typical self-help book. I have nothing against Your Hidden Meaning or 12 Steps to a Better You, but those books aren't for everyone (if those are even real books…). Honestly if you purchased this book, then chances are you're looking for something different anyway. The ideas behind psychology, therapy, and self-help have been around for a long time. We aren't reinventing the wheel here, just giving it some really shiny new rims. I'm going to be talking to you like a normal person. That means that I will be swearing a lot and making up stupid analogies that will make you think “wtf is this guy smoking?” If you can't handle that, then you have my full permission to bow out now. I won't stop the entire class so everyone can awkwardly watch you walk out the door. However, if you're in (I really hope you are), then buckle up, because this should be fun. The words of the wise bard George Watsky come to mind:
...but if you’re blocking me
I will soon defeat you
I will build a bridge above you
or I’ll tunnel underneath you
I will eat you and excrete you
and I’ll feed you to the flowers
If I need to, I’ll go through you
and absorb your fucking powers
I put in hour after hour
Let’s be crystal clear
I’m gonna get there if it takes a day or fifty years...
So, my friend. I’m ready if you are. Let’s do work.
Ch. 1 WTF is Anxiety Anyway?
Put your imagination hat on, because we are going back to prehistoric times. I don't know if you are a dude, a chick, or somewhere outside the binary, but for simplicity’s sake, let's pretend that you are a caveman. You’ve got yourself a nice little cave with some sick stick figure paintings and a partner who can light a mean fire with some twigs and stuff. Well one day you are out in the plains looking for some food or doing whatever the hell you cavemen do all day and you decide to drop back by the crib to rest for a bit. You roll up to the cave and notice some other dude's loincloth outside. Aw, hell no. You peek your head in and see that asshole Grock from down the street about to make your mate reproductively unavailable for 9 months. Are you just gonna take that? No way, man. Evolution's got your back.
As soon as you realize what's going on, your brain prompts a neurochemical cascade that kicks your sympathetic nervous system into overdrive... in other words, you Hulk out. Your heart pumps massive amounts of blood to your muscles so you can dash across the room like the Flash, your pupils adapt to make your vision sharp as a hawk, and before he knows it, you have that scrawny idiot by the neck. This is an example of the infamous fight or flight response. Super useful f
or bashing the skulls of would be prehistoric cuckolders or running for your life from that giant bear that thought you were going to steal its cubs. Not so useful when you are in the middle of an exam or taking a crowded elevator up to the 23rd floor of your office building.
A bit of anxiety is helpful and adaptive. It's completely necessary, not only for fight and flight situations, but also as the force that will kick you in the ass and remind you that you need to get your report done before the deadline. Anxiety becomes a problem when it's triggered seemingly out of nowhere, when it causes you extreme discomfort, or when it prevents you from performing successfully in life. Do you have an exam or deadline at work coming up? First date? Anxiety is a totally normal reaction to those things. However, if that anxiety is so crippling that you couldn't even go on the date because it felt like your heart was going to explode out of your chest or you couldn't stop crying long enough to take phone calls at work, then it's probably time to do something about it.
This is the part where I tell you the same boilerplate message that's on my voicemail at work: If this is a psychiatric emergency, please hang up and dial 911. Seriously, though - if it's that bad, please please please get some immediate help. Stay safe, friend. If it's bad enough that's it's really distressing you or interfering with your life to a significant degree, then getting non-emergency professional help might really be useful. I’ll talk more about that later in the "Get Your Head Shrunk" chapter. Feel free to skip ahead to that chapter if that is something that you want to pursue ASAP.
Knowledge is power and you have taken the first step toward arming yourself with some real nuggets of wisdom. Actually, the sheer fact that you have decided to get off your ass (or stay on it) and read this book indicates that you are ready to make a change. You are ready to kick this thing in the balls. You won't feel 100% better this very moment, but I promise you that you are definitely on your way. Just keep swimming.
Okay, enough with the encouragement and introductory stuff. You want to get started with the actual helping part. Me too. Let's do it. In the next chapter I'm going to talk about the nifty ways your douchebrain influences your actions and how that comes back around to bite you in the ass with anxiety.
Ch. 2 The Triforce
One of the most effective forms of therapy for anxiety out there in shrink-land is called cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. CBT has lots of theories and techniques, but the one that I want you to focus on is called the “cognitive triangle”. It’s super simple… no really it is, check it out:
There it is. The triforce of mental douchebaggery. Let’s break it down a bit. Basically what the cognitive triangle acknowledges is that your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all influence each other. If I asked you to imagine someone you love getting in a terrible car crash, it would probably make you feel pretty crappy. On the contrary, if I asked you to imagine opening your kitchen cabinet and suddenly $1,000,000 falls out, you'd probably feel pretty awesome. That is an example of how thoughts influence your feelings. See? Told you it was simple.
Let’s take it a step further. Say you had the deluge of cash fall on your head. Awesome right? Well maybe. Where did this money come from? With great cash comes great responsibility and now you have a fat stack of money from god knows where. If your thought is that maybe this is drug money hidden in your house by some ultra-violent drug cartel, you probably wouldn’t be on cloud nine anymore, which will in turn cause you to behave a certain way. You’re probably going to freak out and call the cops or something. If instead you remembered that you had entered a giveaway at the mall for $1,000,000, then you are likely going to attribute it to that and behave like a raving lunatic and hop around the room hootin’ and hollerin’. See what we did there? Your thoughts led to feelings, which then influenced your behavior. It’s not a difficult concept in general, but sometimes we don’t even know the ways that our thinking influences our feelings and behaviors.
Our thoughts might be loosely rooted in reality, but they sure as hell don’t always stay there. When you have unhelpful thinking that makes you feel crappy or act in ways that are not in line with your typical self, we refer to these thoughts as maladaptive cognitions or cognitive distortions. It’s a fancy way of describing thoughts that sabotage you. Like I said at the start, sometimes your brain is an asshole. There are a lot of different cognitive distortions, so this is certainly not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the most common. I’ll be really surprised if you don’t find yourself nodding along and saying, “Damn, that’s just like me,” as you read through these. Don’t freak out. Everyone engages in unhelpful thinking sometimes. It’s the amount and the effects of that thinking that matter.
Filtering: Some of you out there probably are superhuman at your ability to engage in this one. This is where you take the negative details about a situation and magnify them, while filtering out all of the positive features of the situation.
Example: You go on a date with someone and halfway through dinner, you excuse yourself to the bathroom and realize that you’ve had a dried up booger hanging out of your nose. Smooth move. For the rest of the night, you somehow feel like you are the biggest idiot ever and completely disgusting because of this natural bodily foible. The fact that you two share a passion for kittens, fed each other flirty bites of decadent dessert, and plan on going another date in the future is completely dwarfed by your dwelling on that stupid freaking booger.
Overgeneralization: You already know this one. This is where we take one event or piece of evidence and jump to a general conclusion. Your brain is a terrible scientist.
Example: You are taking a full load of classes and in the midst of some family drama happening at home, you totally bomb your midterm for that one class that you hate with the instructor that smells like soup. From this point on, you know for certain that you’re a bad student because you screwed up on that midterm. Don’t worry about the fact that you still have a pretty great GPA and really won’t do that bad in the class when all is said and done…
Polarized thinking: This one we can blame daisies for. Remember, “He loves me. He loves me not?” How come we don’t say, “He loves me. He’s into me. He doesn’t like my friends. He wants to be just friends. He doesn’t swing that way. He’s not sure yet, but he is having a good time at the moment”? You get the point. Not everything is black and white, but when you engage in polarized thinking, there are no such things as shades of grey (not the book...perv).
Example: You group your personal or work projects into successes and failures. If you reached the end goal it was a success. If you didn’t it was a failure. Despite the fact that you can gain a lot of insight and skills from the process of pursuing a goal and ultimately not reaching it the first time, you didn’t make it and that’s all the matters… right?
Catastrophizing: Basically being a drama queen/king. This one makes you overthink and magnify the effects that a situation has on you. Picture the soccer players that flop like theatrical fish when they barely get brushed by an opposing player. Playa, please.
Example: You went to the doctor and found out that, in their opinion, your BMI is higher than it should be based on the charts for your age and height. Surely this means that you are obese and will likely get diabetes, never run that marathon you’ve dreamed of, and ultimately die alone…
Shoulds: This one can also go by oughts or musterbation, as Albert Ellis coined. Basically, you direct “should statements” at yourself that make you feel really bad. You should be patient, you should be reliable, you should get along well with others… you see where this is going. This is a common thing that people actually think is a good strategy for self-discipline, but it seems to backfire more often than not.
Example: In accordance with your New Year’s resolutions, you have told yourself that you should not eat donuts. When you do this, you start to think of yourself as someone who shouldn’t eat donuts and further, as someone who is better because they don’t eat donuts (damn, I want a donut right no
w). What happens when you slip, fall and your mouth lands around a delicious donut? You feel like utter garbage, because you told yourself that it was something that you must not do instead of being more realistic and telling yourself that it’s something that you want to do, but will try to avoid for the sake of your physical well-being. We all know shit happens, and musterbation only compounds the bad feelings that you get after “falling off the wagon.”
Mind Reading: Yeah, I’m talking to you. This is one that MANY of us are guilty of. Mind reading is very much what it sounds like. You assume that you know a person’s thoughts or internal motives, even though in reality you are just taking guesses.
Example: You text your significant other saying how much you love them and that you are really happy that things have been great lately. You ask them if they want to go to a movie later. I’m talking super cutesy with emojis and everything. Five minutes later, you get the response, “K.” That’s it, just… K. When you see your partner later you say, “So you don’t want to go to the movies?” You’re already pissed because you assume that they don’t care as much as you given their lackluster response. If they cared as much, they would have used an equivalent number of emojis… duh. In reality, they were just driving on the freeway and cared enough about you to not get killed by texting while driving.
