Main description:

In Deconstructing Anxiety, Pressman provides a new and comprehensive understanding of fear's subtlest mechanisms. In this model, anxiety is understood as the wellspring at the source of all clients' problems. Tapping into this source therefore holds the clues not only for how to escape fear, but how to release the very causes of suffering, paving the way to a profound sense of peace and satisfaction in life.

With strategically developed exercises, this book offers a unique, integrative approach to healing and growth, based on an understanding of how the psyche organizes itself around anxiety. It provides insights into the architecture of anxiety, introducing the dynamics of the "core fear" (the fundamental interpretation of danger in the world) and "chief defense" (the overarching strategy for protecting oneself from the threat). It elaborates the ways in which clients build personalities upon the foundations of these dynamics and isolate themselves.

Replete with processes that bring the theoretical background into technicolor, therapists of all schools of psychotherapeutic thought will find this book useful and applicable in their practice.

Contents:

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: CONSTRUCTING A NEW MODEL FOR ANXIETY

Chapter 1: Understanding the Birth of Fear in the Psyche
Chapter 2: How Fear Really Works
Chapter 3: The Core Fear and Chief Defense
Chapter 4: The Architecture of Personality

PART TWO: NEW STRATEGIES FOR RESOLVING FEAR

Chapter 5: The Principle of Doing the Opposite
Chapter 6: Finding the Core Fear
Chapter 7: Uncovering the Chief Defense
Chapter 8: Exercises for Doing the Opposite and Resolving Anxiety
Chapter 9: Resisting Resistance
Chapter 10: The Failsafe Rule for Navigating through Fear

PART THREE: PUTTING THE PLAN INTO ACTION

Chapter 11: Finding a Mighty Purpose
Chapter 12: Continuing after Therapy