Un-Agoraphobic

Overcome Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Agoraphobia for Good: A Step-by-Step Plan

By: Hal Mathew

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Un-Agoraphobic offers a comprehensive, step-by-step self-help program for overcoming agoraphobia and panic attacks. Since overcoming his own disorder twenty years ago, Mathew has been leading support groups and recovery programs for people with agoraphobia. He understands what agoraphobes need and how to deliver it.

No one knows exactly what causes agoraphobia or panic attacks, but it clearly involves some misfirings in the brain. The good news is that recent neuroscience research suggests the brain is retrainable - at any age.

The basis for any recovery plan for anxiety disorders is a highly structured approach each day. Mathew provides a daily schedule that lays out a clear set of steps and considerations for conquering this affliction, including:

• writing every day
• cultivating present-moment thinking
• taking a new approach to food and eating
• choosing a therapist
• starting a peer support group
• using visualization techniques specifically designed for overcoming anxiety and panic
• taking medications, if appropriate
• dealing with children, spouse, parents, friends, coworkers, teachers, bosses, and more
• taking your first trip out of the house

Mathew includes FAQs, general survival tips, and a special chapter on tips for spouses and loved ones.

Un-Agoraphobic is candid, funny, prescriptive, and spot on for panic disorders - by an author with a lot of life experience under his belt.

©2014 Hal Mathew (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Content is fine but wrong choice for narrator.

Would you try another book from Hal Mathew and/or Jeff Cummings?

Poor narrator choice. He sounds giddy when talking about an ailment/ disease as if he's reading a magical children's story. The content may be good but not sure people will keep listening. His tone is not matching the subject matter and it may be tough for those suffering to relate. A hint of empathy, understanding or seriousness would been more appropriate.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Jeff Cummings?

Anyone

great author and great help when reading this book

helped with understanding the fundamentals of this panic attacks why they happen and how to treat them.

Excellent book!!

Hal Mathew really put his heart and soul, as well as an incredible amount of life-changing work and information into this book. I couldn't recommend it enough to anyone struggling with agoraphobia, anxiety and panic!

Helpful

Great performance. A lot of useful information. I've found otherself help books in this genre to be more relatable.

Awful! Really didn't like this.

Any additional comments?

Thought this book was awful to be absolutely blunt. All the "advice" i have read countless times before with a free google sense. Also felt it was written in a very medical way. Maybe it is more for doctors who want to understand these conditions, but for anyone looking advice to actually overcome them, then is NOT for you. Very disappointed.

Can be better!

What would have made Un-Agoraphobic better?

This book seems to be more suitable for younger readers.

Has Un-Agoraphobic turned you off from other books in this genre?

No

How could the performance have been better?

Be more inspirational and provide more knowledge on the anatomy and biochemistry of nerves system.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Boredom.

This is not a self help book

This is not a self help book; it reads more like a motivational speaker or life coach. The book often promotes itself as a tool or guide, but it is neither. It kept me reading as I waited for the ever-upcoming guide and procedures to help myself. Suddenly, as I reached peak excitement to begin absorbing the upcoming knowledge this book was going to bestow upon me, it simply ended. ...that's it?

This book is all motivation and very little substance. it left me eager to recover, but provided very little in the way of actual tools and procedures.

As for the narrator, I understand why other people say he is too spirited for this book. He's obviously talented, but his voice skills would be better suited for fiction books or television commercials. We don't need actors, we need cold, hard information!