Risa Williams Publishes New Book on Anxiety Management

Professor Risa Williams, adjunct faculty in the College of Liberal Arts, published a new book that we can all benefit from during these challenging times. Entitled The Ultimate Anxiety Toolkit: 25 Tools to Worry Less, Relax More, and Boost Your Self-Esteem (Jessica Kingsley Publishers), the book contains 25 creative tools specifically designed to help reduce anxiety in five key areas: stress, social anxiety, anxious thoughts, self-esteem, and the future. “I wanted to write a book full of simple, relatable, and practical tools that hopefully feel more like ‘fun’ for readers to do rather than ‘work’ to manage their everyday stress and anxiety,” Williams told us. “The tools are based on Cognitive Behavioral Theory, positive psychology, and mindfulness techniques, and I’ve also tried to make them creative and easy for people to remember to use.”

Asked how her work at Woodbury influenced her project, she said, “At Woodbury, I teach various types of writing, but I also tend to give students general advice about managing time more effectively and how you don’t have to put pressure on yourself to be “perfect” as a writer, as this can cause you to feel anxious about writing, which can make you want to avoid writing altogether. When you learn to talk to yourself in a way that encourages you to do something, rather than hinders you from doing it, the task goes much easier and you also wind up feeling better about it, too. This is true of writing, and other things you are studying or creating in university.”

The book has been broadly publicized including articles in the Huffington Post, Men’s Journal, and Authority Magazine.

To learn more, visit the book’s website.

Last Updated on March 26, 2021.