Book Description
The only book on the market dealing specifically with your child's anxiety
Product Description
Is anxiety making your child's life a misery - causing problems at school, difficulties in making friends or facing new experiences, even affecting their physical health? Anxiety is a curse that can cast a damning spell over your child's life. But there is a solution. Chronic anxiety is a serious problem which may be general, or a specific anxiety about taking exams or doing sums, or a phobia about anything from trains or spiders to eating in public or going to the toilet. It can be treated successfully, and David Lewis offers practical and effective advice to parents of anxious children. By applying this straightforward advice and by being positive, patient and persistent you can banish anxiety and transform your child into a happy, confident person.
About the Author
Dr David Lewis is an international stress consultant and lecturer. The author of more than two dozen best-selling books on self-improvement, he is a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the International Stress Management Association and founder of Action on Phobias and Stresswatch, a non-profit charity advising companies on stress management. (20020103)
Excerpted from Helping Your Anxious Child by David Lewis. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1.
A Few Basic
Principles
What I love about The Work is that it allows you to go inside and find your own happiness, to experience what already exists within you, unchanging, immovable, ever-present, ever-waiting. No teacher is necessary. You are the teacher you’ve been waiting for. You are the one who can end your own suffering.
I often say, ‘Don’t believe anything I say.’ I want you to discover what’s true for you, not for me. Still, many people have found the following principles to be helpful for getting started in The Work.
Noticing When Your Thoughts
Argue with Reality
The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.
If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, ‘Meow.’ Wanting reality to be different than it is is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.
And yet, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that you think thoughts like this dozens of times a day. ‘People should be kinder.’ ‘Children should be well-behaved.’ ‘My neighbors should take better care of their lawn.’ ‘The line at the grocery store should move faster.’ ‘My husband (or wife) should agree with me.’ ÒI should be thinner (or prettier or more successful).’ These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is. If you think that this sounds depressing, you’re right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is.
After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred to me as the woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert town where the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hated it; people even moved from there because they couldn’t stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind, with reality, is that I discovered I didn’t have a choice. I realized that it’s quite insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100 percent of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!
People new to The Work often say to me, ‘But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.’ I answer them with a question: ‘Can you really know that that’s true?’ Which is more empowering?, ‘I wish I hadn’t lost my job’ or ‘I lost my job; what can I do now?’
The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know
A Few Basic
Principles
What I love about The Work is that it allows you to go inside and find your own happiness, to experience what already exists within you, unchanging, immovable, ever-present, ever-waiting. No teacher is necessary. You are the teacher you’ve been waiting for. You are the one who can end your own suffering.
I often say, ‘Don’t believe anything I say.’ I want you to discover what’s true for you, not for me. Still, many people have found the following principles to be helpful for getting started in The Work.
Noticing When Your Thoughts
Argue with Reality
The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.
If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, ‘Meow.’ Wanting reality to be different than it is is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.
And yet, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that you think thoughts like this dozens of times a day. ‘People should be kinder.’ ‘Children should be well-behaved.’ ‘My neighbors should take better care of their lawn.’ ‘The line at the grocery store should move faster.’ ‘My husband (or wife) should agree with me.’ ÒI should be thinner (or prettier or more successful).’ These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is. If you think that this sounds depressing, you’re right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is.
After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred to me as the woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert town where the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hated it; people even moved from there because they couldn’t stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind, with reality, is that I discovered I didn’t have a choice. I realized that it’s quite insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100 percent of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!
People new to The Work often say to me, ‘But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.’ I answer them with a question: ‘Can you really know that that’s true?’ Which is more empowering?, ‘I wish I hadn’t lost my job’ or ‘I lost my job; what can I do now?’
The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know
better than to do that, yet we do it, because we don’t know how to stop.
I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.
