- If you feel that anxiety has taken over your life, that you can't control it, that the things you are anxious about are blown out of proportion in relation to the reality of a given situation, this book may help you to take charge of your life once more. Its goal is to enable you to turn anxiety into a familiar feeling, as common as joy or anger, so that you can allow it to become part of your emotional life without letting it paralyse you.

- Today, panic attacks and agoraphobia, two nervous disorders characterised by sudden and intense feelings of anxiety, can be treated simply, effectively and fairly quickly. Recent studies have even demonstrated that such treatment can be self-administered. This book aims to provide a guide to methods of treating such disorders so that people whose lives are governed by anxiety will gradually learn to take control of their emotions.

- With the help of this book, readers will find out how to identify and understand their symptoms; they will learn how to make a detailed analysis of their condition and to apply methods that will enable them to face anxiety and the situations that foster anxiety, without panicking. Readers will acquire the tools that will enable them to evaluate the difficulties they encounter and to adopt a simple and effective plan of action to effect personal change.

Before publication, this work was approved by doctors and specialists working in the fields of panic disorders and agoraphobia, as well as by patients.

Jean-Luc Émery is a specialist in cognitive and behavioural therapies, working at IFAS.