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FUTURE TENSE

Tracy Dennis-Tiawary

Why Anxiety is Good for You (Even Though it Feels Bad)

In this age of overwhelming anxiety, society sends us the message that we must attack it like we do any life-threatening disease - prevent it, avoid it, and stamp it out at all costs. This is the disease story of anxiety that we tell ourselves. But what if we were all wrong about anxiety?
Future Tense argues for the radical idea that anxiety is not the enemy - it is our ally, because when we tap into our anxiety instead of attack it, we immediately multiply our inner resources, not just for surviving, but for thriving. Anxiety is both protective and productive, propelling us into future thinking, where we are smarter, more focused, and more hopeful in the face of challenge. When we learn to embrace - and even love - our anxiety and teach our families to do the same, we harness the superpowers inherent in the future tense. This book will lead readers to adopt a new mindset about anxiety - a fresh set of beliefs and insights that allow us to explore and leverage anxiety rather than be overwhelmed by it - through real-world examples and stories combined with the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, genetics, biology, and sociology. It is a quest is to spark a powerful, new understanding of anxiety that gives rise to out-of-the-box solutions, as well as boosts the effectiveness of existing approaches. The best solutions in the world won't stick if our view of anxiety unintentionally accelerates it. Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at The City University of New York, and the Director of the Stress, Anxiety, and Resilience Research Center and the Co-Executive Director of the Center for Health Technology at Hunter College. She has been featured and interviewed in dozens of major media outlets to discuss her work, including the New York Times, ABC Special Report "Screentime" with Diane Sawyer, Wall Street Journal, CBS, CNN, NPR, The Today Show, The Daily Mail, and Bloomberg Television.
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Published 2022-05-03 by HarperWave

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A powerful and deeply informed new voice in the important conversation around anxiety and its causes and effects. FUTURE TENSE offers knowledge, empathy, and clarity in these times when chronic emotional pain has been normalized. Framing how anxiety works in our favor is a revolutionizing shift in perspective.

Reading Future Tense is an epiphany; it will turn your understanding of anxiety on its head, and point you to new paths forward. It offers a long-overdue challenge to the medicalization and numbing of anxiety. Instead, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary encourages us to consider how to live and grow with anxiety, and find creativity in dealing with life's fundamental uncertainties. A wide conversation around this book is urgently needed for our anxious times.

Our minds classify anxiety as 'bad,' but that very idea keeps anxiety from delivering its often useful messages about what's ahead. It's time for the whole culture to learn how to use anxiety when it's helpful and let it go when it's not, but that starts with learning what it is and how to feel it. This wise and well-written book will help. Highly recommended.

Author's article: Why Anxiety Can Be Good for Us: The Parable of the Hamster - Sometimes anxiety helps us in ways we don't expect. Read more...

Author's essay: In Praise of Anxiety - Rather than suppress this misunderstood emotion, we need to understand its essential evolutionary role in motivating us to action Read more...

Future Tense teaches us - with incredible research and great storytelling - that counter to everything we've thought and been taught, anxiety, when understood and used wisely, is one of the most valuable emotions to help us achieve our dreams. If you're prone to anxiety like me or live or work with people who are anxious, this is a must read!

One of several new books looking at the surprising upsides of anxiety, neuroscientist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary's book "is going to smash your existing beliefs about anxiety and replace them with more helpful ones," promises Grant. Read more...

This book is going to smash your existing views about anxiety - and replace them with more helpful ones. As an expert on the neuroscience of emotion, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary has delivered the riveting read we all need to help us learn to worry well instead of worrying less.

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Author's article: The Anxiety Paradox - Helping kids feel bad can help them feel good Read more...

If you're feeling more anxious than usual and, on top of that, feeling anxious about feeling anxious, then this book is for you. Anxiety, it turns out, is a feature, not a bug, of human nature. In FUTURE TENSE, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary offers a much-needed guide - based on years of scientific research and her personal clinical experience - to the emotion that is in some ways most easily misunderstood and, therefore, most undervalued. Clear, practical, and incredibly readable!

Anxiety is an unpleasant emotion, but can it be useful? NPR's A Martinez talks to clinical psychologist and author Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, who calls anxiety a triumph of human evolution. Read more...

The result is a fresh, hopeful approach to anxiety that will soothe readers facing a world filled with pandemics, war, and political turmoil.

Future Tense is groundbreaking. Filled with wisdom, compassion, and humor, it shatters our long-held assumptions and sets the stage for a new, hopeful way of understanding how to live - and thrive - with anxiety.