This article was originally published on March 5, 2015.For many of us, anxiety is just a part of life. Unfortunately, "the things people naturally do to try to take away anxiety end up increasing anxiety in the long-term," says Alice Boyes, PhD. In her new book, The Anxiety Toolkit , she takes us through a few of those anxiety "traps" we often find ourselves in. And, she offers ways to get out — first, by by noticing what's going on, and then, by making friends with anxious thoughts rather than trying to cure ourselves of them. Here are Dr. Boyd's tips for dealing with four common aspects of overthinking:"People who are anxious often wait to start things until they feel 100% sure that they're going to be successful. So, they don't like to take an action if they feel they've got any chance of failure, and they tend to interpret uncertainty as a sign that they should be putting on the brakes. They might start something but feel that uncertainty — and then shove those brakes on and not follow through or get momentum. [Some] people tend to combine this with over-researching. Smart people have been rewarded their whole lives for their thinking and their ability to research, so they tend to approach everything with that same style.""Don't wait until you're certain. Learn to interpret that cue differently. Fear is when you're detecting that there's a danger present, but anxiety is when you're feeling like you should be on the lookout for danger. So, it's not necessarily indicating that there is danger; it's just that you're doing something new. It's just your system alerting you to that."Know that pattern about yourself: that your typical reaction to uncertainty is to stop, and that it doesn't mean you need to. [Then,] evaluate if something going wrong would really be a catastrophe and, therefore, whether or not you should be thinking [this] carefully about it."