Don't Feed the Monkey Mind

How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry

By: Jennifer Shannon LMFT

Narrated by: Jennifer Lund Jorgens

Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

The very things we do to control anxiety can make anxiety worse. This unique guide offers a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based approach to help you recognize the constant chatter of your anxious "monkey mind", stop feeding anxious thoughts, and find the personal peace you crave.

Ancient sages compared the human mind to a monkey: constantly chattering, hopping from branch to branch - endlessly moving from fear to safety. If you are one of the millions of people whose life is affected by anxiety, you are familiar with this process. Unfortunately, you can't switch off the "monkey mind", but you can stop feeding the monkey - or stop rewarding it by avoiding the things you fear.

Written by psychotherapist Jennifer Shannon, this book shows you how to stop anxious thoughts from taking over using proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness techniques. By following the exercises in this book, you'll learn to identify your own anxious thoughts, question those thoughts, and uncover the core fears at play.

Once you stop feeding the monkey, there are no limits to how expansive your life can feel. This book will show you how anxiety can only continue as long as you try to avoid it. And, paradoxically, only by seeking out and confronting the things that make you anxious can you reverse the cycle that keeps your fears alive.

©2017 Jennifer Shannon (P)2017 Jennifer Shannon

One of the best books on managing anxiety.

If you are looking for a practical and easy to understand book on managing your anxiety, this is it. I have read many books and found this one extremely helpful.

Clear, useful

An easy listen, simple but helpful concepts, based on research, helpful examples and worksheets, clearly written and clearly spoken by narrator. Only negative is the audio compression which results in some static.

Immediately started applying it

This book brought me back to the approach of dealing with anxiety I first read in Stopping The Noise Inside Your Head. I tried it before with mixed results but something about the way this book worded it really clicked with me. I don’t know how far this approach will take me with my anxiety but I can’t thank the author enough. I try to catch myself when I’m anxious or feeling some kind of negative reaction or fear - this is necessary, this is needed, it’s what I want. I let anxiety have its say. I don’t have to do anything about it but I don’t try to fight it.

Again I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep up with this but it’s amazing how when I do this my emotions start to change. It gets really really bad and then progressively better (over and over again) as I focus on what I want to do and my values.

very helpful

Excellent presentation of timely book. Help with anxiety. Author is perceptive and very helpful for those who suffer from stress.

Simple, clear and effective

I've really embraced the metaphor of the chimp that is easily excited and alarmed by risk & ambiguity in the very novel situations its attracted to. I found the tips and strategies for easing and in fact welcoming anxiety simple to implement. I felt understood and more nb any shame I previously carried in anxious moments has fallen away - also reducing resistance which in turn dissolves anxiety faster.

Great Book! Very helpful.

Great book and very helpful! Recommend to all who want to improve there lives. I will re-listen to it multiple times.

Great! Great! Great!

It deserves more stars. If you have any issues at all with anxiety, worry, or fear, this book will help you. It nailed everything I've been dealing with. There were times I had to laugh because it seemed she was addressing me personally.... it makes so much sense. I'll read it again and again, and I plan to buy it for a couple of my loved ones. I also have to give credit to the narrator; Jennifer Lund Jorgens was awesome!

Amazing book

Love the break down of the mind and our thoughts that contribute to anxiety. Laid out well

Brings understanding to living a life with Anxiety

Very easy to listen to and much needed in a time in my life where Anxiety had peeked. I found Jennifer's advice on expansive strategies to be insightful and have already began to out into practice.

Perspective Changed!

Wish I would have read this 10, 15, 25 years ago. Very helpful in gaining a healthy perspective of what anxiety is.