7 Best Books for Anxiety to Find Calm and Confidence

The best books for anxiety offer a complimentary assistance and encouragement to manage anxiety. They can ease your troubles while you're seeking professional help from a therapist.

Here, I’ve compiled a list of the best books for anxiety and depression to understand it better. These anxiety self-help books offer plenty of insights into managing and calming anxiety. And these can help you take control of your anxious thoughts.

Dare, by Barry McDonagh

Dare is one of the most effective self-help books for anxiety and panic attacks. In this anxiety help book, Barry offers a unique approach to managing anxiety. It teaches readers to dare their anxieties to end it. You’ll learn how to control anxiety feelings, face the anxiety-inducing situations, and overcome your intrusive thoughts. It’s one of the best books for coping with anxiety and help you boost your confidence and be your best self.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

When you’re very anxious, you end up trapped in your head all the time— the prison without walls.

You are not your anxiety. As abnormal as it makes you feel, this anxiety is not the real you. It is not who you are or who you have become.

You are not a weak or cowardly person for having an anxiety problem.

An anxiety disorder is simply an experience that a person moves through, just like a period of grief or sadness.

The anxious thoughts you experience are just thoughts and nothing more. They don’t represent the real you.

Also Read: 14 Best Books on Overcoming Self-Doubt and Building Confidence

The Worry Trap, by Chad LeJeune

The Worry Trap is another of the best self-help books for anxiety. It provides readers with tips and tools to be free from worry and anxiety. Chad uses the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help readers break free from the cycle of worry. The book is a step-by-step approach to learning and practicing it. The book is the best for anxiety control. It suggests practicing mindfulness and acceptance to manage anxious thoughts and feelings.

Also Read: 7 Best Books on Mindfulness

Anxiety: Panicking about Panic, by Joshua Fletcher

Anxiety: Panicking about Panic book is one of the powerful, self-help guide books on anxiety management and control of panic attacks. It’s an informative guide that draws from Joshua’s struggles with anxiety and how he overcame the condition. And it’s among the books to help with anxiety and panic attacks. The book aims to educate people to simplify their world of anxiety to successfully tackle it. It has quick, easy to access advice and practical strategies to manage panic attacks.

Top Lesson from the book:

Anxiety and worrying can cause heart palpitations. Worrying about the palpitations causes anxiety.

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, by Sarah Wilson

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful takes a unique approach to managing anxiety. It’s the best anxiety book with a personal narrative that’s both relatable and inspiring. Sarah shares her own experiences with anxiety and provides readers with a fresh understanding of anxiety. The book aims to help readers learn how to live with their anxiety and use it as a catalyst for personal growth. It’s a practical and poetic book, and a must-read for anyone struggling with anxiety. It’s one of the best books for confidence building for anxious people.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

It can be a good thing, too, to learn to sit in your own weirdness.

I said earlier that making decisions is a key anxiety trigger. If we drill down a bit we can see that this happens because we work to the belief there's a perfect decision out there to be made. But such a thing doesn't exist.

One of the dear, dear things about getting older, is that it does eventually dawn on you that there is no guidebook. One day it suddenly emerges: No one bloody gets it!

The more anxious we are, the more high-functioning we will make ourselves appear, which just encourages the world to lean on us more.

If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.

Also Read: 31 Best Books to Read for Life and Transform It

Don't Feed the Monkey Mind, by Jennifer Shannon

Don't Feed the Monkey Mind is among the books to calm anxiety. It’s a practical guide about controlling the constant cycle of anxiety, fear and worry. In the book, Jennifer compares the brain to that of a monkey mind, constantly jumping from one thought to another. It’s one of the best anxiety books that teaches readers how to identify and manage the monkey mind. The book suggests a mix of cognitive-behavioural therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness techniques to do so. It also contains fun illustrations and exercises.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Are you giving up your long-term interests or compromising your personal values in exchange for short-term anxiety relief? If the answer is yes to these questions, you’ve found a safety strategy.

Resisting, avoiding and distracting yourself from your anxiety are behaviors that send the wrong message to your brain. These behaviors fuel a cycle of anxiety that always leads to a bigger dose.

Three false assumptions of the monkey mindset: As long as I am certain, as long as I am perfect, and as long as others are okay… I will be safe, able to relax, and happy.

Intolerance of uncertainty: I must be 100% certain. Perfectionism: I must not make mistakes. Over-responsibility: I am responsible for everyone’s happiness and safety.

We spend our days – and for some of us, nights – reviewing the past for errors and looking into the future to prevent making more. We debate decisions we’ve already made, recycle old concerns, indulge endless regrets, obsess over things we can’t control. It’s all in response to a constant stream of negative feelings and monkey chatter.

Also Read: 7 Best Books for Product Managers

Negative Self-Talk and How to Change It, by Shad Helmstetter

Negative Self-Talk and How to Change It is another of the effective and best anxiety self-help books. It’s a practical and useful guide to managing negative self-talk. The book has tips and exercises to help rewrite your self-talk from negative to positive and improve your self-esteem. It might be the best book for anxiety for beginner readers. It’s in a short and easy-to-read format, and can be help you deal with the daily over-engineered thoughts. It’s definitely one of the best books for overcoming anxiety.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Deep inside the workings of the human brain, there is no actual ‘truth.’ The part of the brain that stores all of the messages you have received, accepts what it is told most often.

The key to failure is the repetition of a belief in failure. Negative self-talk is the repetition of a belief in failure.

When your brain receives repeated messages that redefine how you feel about yourself and your place in this world – it begins to record them and keep them.

What you believe about anything is not a measure of its correctness. What you believe about anything is a measure of the programs you have that support your belief.

The most important chemical process necessary to wiring or rewiring your brain is repetition.

Also Read: 7 Best Books for Overthinking

How to Be Yourself, by Ellen Hendriksen

How to Be Yourself is your go-to companion to help conquer social anxiety. It’s among the calming books for anxiety, with research and science, practical tips and compelling stories. Ellen has weaved them in a way to help people succeed in unfamiliar social situations. The book helps you understand the roots of social anxiety and how exactly to quiet your Inner Critic. It’s an effective self-help book on anxiety in social situations. It’s a valuable resource for anyone looking to be comfortable during meets and improve their confidence.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

You gain confidence by doing things before you're ready, while you're still scared.

Social anxiety is seeing our true self in a distorted way and believing the distortion to be the truth.

Ultimately, social anxiety is the fear that whatever we’re trying to hide will be revealed to everyone like a gust of wind sweeps away a bad toupee. We think there is something wrong with us and therefore try to conceal it.

Ending conversation is another safety behavior—we’re trying to save ourselves from the anxiety. But we trade the anxiety of the moment for loneliness in the long run.

Seldom does anyone actually say, “Wow, you sure seem uncomfortable. You’re weird and don’t deserve to be here.”

OK, those were some of the calm books to read for dealing with anxiety. These anxiety help books are among the top resources in understanding and managing anxiety.

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