I saw a recommendation for this book and as a fairly anxious person, I thought it would be helpful. And wow, it has taken me so long to write this review, not because I was procrastinating, but essentially because I read the book twice – once where I read the book (where I made a lot of highlights) and another to actually take notes.

Unwinding Anxiety looks at anxiety as a habit loop. Our brain responds to triggers with behaviours that have rewards, and since we prefer familiar states, we can end up creating a habit of anxiety. Or really, a bad habit for anything, as the book rather ominously puts it:

“By combining the reward-based learning built into our old brain with intermitten reinforcement and immediate availability, we’ve created a dangerous formula for modern-day habits and addictions that goes well beyond what we typically think of as substance abuse.”

So how do we break this habit of anxiety (or smoking, or binge-eating, etc)? Well, Brewer proposes three steps, or three “gears” as he calls it:

1. Gear One: Map out your anxiety habits using the Trigger-Behaviour-Reward model.
2. Gear Two: Pay attention to the habit loop – is it as rewarding as it once was?
3. Gear Three: Replace the habit loop with a bigger, better offer that is NOT a substitution. Brewer recommends mindfulness

The book goes into a lot of detail on how to practice these three gears. And even though he says that you shouldn’t be going from Gear One to Gear Three immediately, I thought that they seem to flow together pretty seamlessly. If you can notice a habit loop, you can slow down and feel its effects on your body. If you can feel what is going on and name it, you can practice curiosity about it and hopefully be a bit kinder to yourself about what you’re going through.

And yes, I have been trying to practice this. The good thing about this book is that Gear One is very easy to put into practice – there is no “ask” for you to take new action or to stop doing something. Just learn to observe yourself. Brewer recommends staying in Gear One as long as you need, so you can really just practice this until you are ready for step two or three.

What I really liked about this book is that it goes beyond anxiety. You could probably apply this advice to any bad habit you want to break, though I’m not sure how it can help in forming good habits like exercising or sleeping earlier. Still, I’m probably full of bad habits that can be stopped and I think just being able to change that aspect will have a significant impact.

Generally, I found the book easy to read. Because I felt all three gears were very similar, parts of the book could feel very repetitive. However, when I read that Brewer wrote this because he received feedback that his earlier book wasn’t actionable enough, I understood why he went into so much detail and kept restating things. The point of this book is to get you to put his three gears into action! If you just want the theory, you could probably just read the first part and selected chapters from each of the remaining sections. Or you could read his other book, though I’ve not read that and can’t say how similar it is.

Overall, I thought this was a great book! I don’t think it’s for people suffering from severe anxiety or severe depression, because those can be from chemical imbalances in the brain and you probably can’t think your way out of it, but most of us will probably be at least slightly anxious or stressed most of the time and I think the strategies mentioned here can be really helpful for that.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva