The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Teen Anxiety ― Activities to Help You Overcome Fears and Worries Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Move past anxiety and discover what really matters to you. Written by three experts in teen mental health, this powerful workbook offers evidence-based activities grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you cope with anxiety, build resilience, stop avoiding the things you fear, and lead a fuller, happier life.

Anxiety is what we feel when we’re scared about some future event that may or may not happen. When you’re struggling with anxiety your mind is trying to protect you from danger, so it’s busy telling you about all the things you can’t do. Along with these thoughts come a host of feelings and bodily sensations—such as sweaty palms, restlessness, lightheadedness, and stomach aches. But it’s not the anxious thoughts that make anxiety a problem. It’s the actions we take, or don’t take, as a result of these thoughts.

In The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Teen Anxiety, you’ll find helpful alternatives to the ineffective strategies and habits you’re currently using to deal with anxiety, such as avoidance. You’ll find basic information about anxiety to help you recognize what it looks and feels like, mindfulness tips to help you stay in the moment when you feel worried about the future, and tips to help you connect with your own values so you can start putting the important things in life first.

Sheri L. Turrell, PhD, is a clinical psychologist living with her family in Toronto, ON, Canada. She is passionate about her clinical work with adolescents, helping them move toward a life that matters. Turrell is primary investigator, working in collaboration with Mary Bell, for studies of group-based acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and is developing a mobile ACT app for adolescents. She runs a full-time private practice, and enjoys being a consultant and trainer for graduate students and mental health professionals who are interested in learning ACT. Turrell teaches ACT at the university level, where she also facilitates therapy groups.

Christopher McCurry, PhD, is a clinical child psychologist in private practice specializing in the treatment of childhood anxiety. He is a clinical assistant professor in the departments of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.

Mary Bell, MSW, RSW, is a social worker in Toronto, ON, Canada. Currently affiliated with The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Bell has had a private practice in Toronto and Singapore. Collaborating with Sheri Turrell, she continues to evolve an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) approach to working with adolescents and their families, and is developing an ACT app for adolescents. She loves to share ACT with clients and other practitioners.