My Most Frequently Recommended Book as an OCD and Anxiety Specialist

The Anxiety Before the Anxiety

If you live with OCD or chronic anxiety, you are familiar with the dread that shows up before anything even happens. Maybe it’s before a doctor’s appointment, an important conversation, or just an ordinary day where your brain whispers, “What if something goes wrong?”

That feeling is anticipatory anxiety, the fear of expecting fear. And it’s one of the most common patterns I see in my work with clients who struggle with OCD, health anxiety, or panic.

My most recommended resources is the book Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety by Sally Winston, PsyD, and Martin Seif, PhD. It’s practical, compassionate, and full of insights that beautifully complement Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), the gold-standard treatments for anxiety and OCD.

“If you’ve ever thought, ‘I can’t handle feeling anxious again,’ this book speaks directly to that experience.”

What Makes This Book Different

Unlike many anxiety self-help books, Overcoming Anticipatory Anxiety doesn’t teach you to calm down or distract yourself from fear. Instead, it helps you understand why those strategies - reassurance, distraction, avoidance - often make anxiety stronger.

The authors describe a “paradoxical approach”: instead of fighting anxiety, you allow it. You create space for uncertainty, notice the urge to avoid, and move forward while anxious.

It’s not about becoming fearless, it’s about realizing you don’t have to eliminate fear to live your life fully. That mindset is the foundation of ERP therapy, too.

Key Take Aways to Improve How You Cope with Anxiety

1. Anticipation Isn’t Evidence

Feeling anxious about something doesn’t mean it’s dangerous. Sometimes anxiety alerts us to a real threat but often it is a false alarm system overreacting to possibility, not probability.

2. The Anxiety Trick

Trying to prevent anxiety (through reassurance or avoidance) teaches your brain that anxiety itself is dangerous. The more you resist, the more powerful it feels.

3. Letting Anxiety Be There

Allowing anxiety to exist, without rituals, analysis, or escape, is how the nervous system self-regulates.

4. Challenging False Beliefs about Anxiety

In order to change your worry patterns, you need to change your beliefs about worry. Believing that "Worry means I care" or "Worries are warnings" reinforces the worry cycle and makes it difficult to stop.

When Anxiety Feels Unbearable

Anticipatory anxiety can feel like being trapped in a waiting room for fear. This book, as well as CBT therapy, help you walk out of that room. Not by eliminating anxiety, but by proving to yourself that you can handle it and move forward anyway.

If you’re ready to learn how to apply these concepts with a licensed anxiety and OCD therapist — in-person near San Jose or online throughout California — therapy can help you bridge the gap between understanding and living differently.

Schedule a consultation

Caitlyn Oscarson, LMFT

Cognitive Behavior Therapist

LMFT51585