Best 5-point scale book for adults? (dealing with anxiety)

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asperience
Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

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Joined: 9 Nov 2006
Age: 54
Gender: Male
Posts: 48
Location: San Francisco Bay Area.

26 Jan 2009, 2:29 pm

I recently leafed through a book on the 5-point scale (http://5pointscale.com) and even though I only read a few pages, the 5 point scale has been probably the most useful technique I've ever learned for dealing with anxiety and other difficult emotions. I'm looking to find and read a book to understand the 5 point scale better, but most of the books out there are geared towards kids rather than adults like myself.

The basic takeaway to a 5 point scale is to rate the degree of an emotion or feeling. For me, this simple process helps me to avoid black and white catastrophic thinking. For most of my life whenever I would have an anxious reaction to something, people would tell me to think of "what is the worst that can happen", but that would only make things worse. I can always come up with a possible horrible outcome, no matter how unlikely. Usually it was something like "If take a certain social risk, the worst that could happen is that people will hate me, will tell my boss, and I'll get fired, and starve to death because I can't find another job". So I avoided many social risks because the worst that could happen was unacceptble to me, even though that worst case scenario was extremely unlikely.

The most important thing I get out of the 5 point scale is to not ask "what is the worst that could happen to me", but rather to ask "how far am I away from the danger zone right now" as I'm doing socially difficult or otherwise anxiety-producing things.

By reframing the question that way, I often realize that the danger zone is much further away than I thought. And sometimes asking the question helps me to realize that I'm closer to the danger zone than I had noticed, so I back off and avoid it.

There are lots of 5 point scale books for people on the spectrum, but the only one I've found that mentions adults in the writeups is:

http://www.amazon.com/Against-Law-Socia ... cm_cr_pr_p

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has read this and/or has other recomendations for good books on 5 point scales for adults.



aspiemom1
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Joined: 22 Jan 2008
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26 Jan 2009, 4:11 pm

Its been a long time (over 8 years) but there was a "workbook" regarding Anxiety/Panic Attacks that I got that had this scale. It had you chart daily for a while every time you had anxiety and panic attacks and rate them as well as list what was going on etc. So you yourself could find what triggers and how best to deal with them (it gives suggestions for this part of it)