Everything Isn't Terrible by Kathleen Smith: Summary

Kathleen Smith is a therapist in Washington, DC, and her guide is the Bowen theory of psychiatrist Murray Bowen. Bowen believed that anxiety is generated in relationships, so it has to be worked on there too. When we're anxious, we try to change other people so we can relax. Smith asks readers to manage themselves instead, because "you are the only variable you can manipulate."

The book has four parts: your anxious self, your relationships, your career, and the wider world. Most chapters follow one client, each a composite, and end with questions built on three verbs: observe, evaluate, and interrupt your anxious functioning.

On this page

Chapter 1: Focusing on Yourself
Chapter 2: Thinking and Feeling
Chapter 3: Your Pretend Self
Chapter 4: Defining Yourself
Chapter 5: Your Family
Chapter 6: Your Parents
Chapter 7: Ugh, Dating
Chapter 8: Love
Chapter 9: Making Friends
Chapter 10: Finding Community
Chapter 11: The Job Hunt
Chapter 12: Your Terrible Boss
Chapter 13: Procrastination and Productivity
Chapter 14: Switching Careers
Chapter 15: Being a Leader
Chapter 16: Smart Phones and Social Media
Chapter 17: Politics and Religion
Chapter 18: The Long Game
More book summaries: Anxiety and trauma

Chapter 1: Focusing on Yourself

Jordan spent her first session talking about her ex, Kyle. She watched his Venmo and logged in to his email. Smith calls this "other-focus," and she defines anxiety simply: "anxiety is your response to a real or imagined threat." Asking "Why?" just points to someone to blame. So Smith asked Jordan questions that didn't start with why. When does Kyle make you anxious? What do you do then? How well does it work? Jordan began to see her own part, and she calmed down. Smith's exercise is to flip other-focused questions into self-focused ones, like turning a phone camera around for a selfie.

Chapter 2: Thinking and Feeling

Monica's family split over her father's gambling and her mother's affairs, and she adopted her father's feelings as her own. Bowen's word for emotional separation is differentiation. It means separating thoughts from feelings, and separating your thoughts and feelings from other people's.

Smith compares anxiety to a smoke alarm that sometimes goes off with no fire. It also writes click-bait headlines, so she suggests asking, "What's the real story here?" Reacting is the anxious, automatic move. Responding means thinking first. Smith didn't reassure Monica or fix things for her, because she believes "the opposite of anxiety is curiosity." Monica hung a sign in her bedroom that said, "There is no fire!"

Chapter 3: Your Pretend Self

Adam lost his White House job on Inauguration Day in 2017 and sank into depression. Bowen described a solid self, made of real beliefs and values, and a pseudo-self that shifts with whoever is in the room. Titles and praise are what Smith calls pseudo-self boosters. They calm us for a while but put our mood in other people's hands. Leaning on others this way is called borrowing self, and it often means chasing the As: attention, assurance, approval, and agreement. Adam redefined success, for now, as asking for help and taking care of himself. He kept a record of his showers, outings, and gym trips to check against his anxious thoughts.

Chapter 4: Defining Yourself

Carmen had lupus. She fought with her family and lied to her boss about being late. Smith says you have to know what you believe before you can stand by it with others. Bowen called this "functioning based on principle." One of Carmen's principles was to tell her family about her illness without trying to calm them down.

Change brings pushback for a while. On a visit home, Carmen stayed calm and told her mother, "Mom, I am learning how to live with my lupus. I cannot teach you how to live with a daughter who has lupus. You're going to have to figure out how to do that yourself." Her mother cried and said, "I don't even know you anymore!" Over time she started therapy and calmed down.

Chapter 5: Your Family

Richard hadn't introduced his boyfriend to his family. Smith writes that "Families are anxiety-managing machines" that use four predictable strategies: distance, conflict, triangles, and overfunctioning and underfunctioning. Fights about religion, politics, money, or sex come from reactivity, which Bowen called immaturity, not from the topics. A triangle is when two people pull in a third to manage their tension.

Richard wrote down his own part in each pattern. Then he set principles, like being open with his grandmother and not venting to his sister. In time his grandmother welcomed his fiancé. Smith calls the family altitude training. If you can be calmer there, you can do it anywhere.

Chapter 6: Your Parents

Grace had panic attacks, a mother who texted constantly, and a habit of lecturing her mother about diabetes and debt. Smith had her list her responsibilities as an adult daughter. On her mother's health, they were to listen and be supportive. Giving advice was not on the list.

Bowen taught that there is an adult and an infant in each of us. Family history also helped. Grace's grandfather had died suddenly at forty-five, which made her mother's worry make sense. Grace began weekly calls with her distant father, since with parents "You move closer in order to become more separate." When she stopped managing her mother, her mother started listening to her doctor and cut up her credit cards.

Chapter 7: Ugh, Dating

Gail had put off dating with what she called As Soon As Syndrome. Smith drew her brain in three parts: reptilian, mammalian, and human. The human part works toward goals, so Gail gave herself homework, starting with one article comparing dating apps. On her first date she agreed with everything the man said.

She listed what anxious dating looked like for her, then reversed it into principles for mature dating. After a good date she allowed herself one nice text. When one man kept disappearing, she told him she wanted a relationship, and they parted ways. Smith counts that as a success. In Bowen theory people tend to end up with partners at their own level of differentiation.

Chapter 8: Love

Marcus and Sarah shared a four-hundred-square-foot apartment and blamed each other for nearly everything. Smith's "Blaming to Claiming" exercise turns a complaint about a partner into a statement of your own responsibility. She and Marcus called the anxious couple blob the SARCUS.

Marcus listed ways to be less responsible for Sarah, like no longer paying her phone bill, and more responsible for himself. As he stepped back, Sarah took on more. Smith writes that "intense togetherness does not equal intimacy." When Marcus finally said what he wanted for the future, they saw they wanted different lives and broke up. Smith calls it a success, not a failure.

Chapter 9: Making Friends

Mira was a lonely first-year PhD student. Her school friendships ran on complaining about professors, which Smith calls a ventship. Mira also kept her distance by hiding what excited her and refusing help. Smith quotes Brené Brown's definition of vulnerability as "uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure."

Mira decided to take up space. Her principles included being honest on hard days and telling people she liked them. At dinner she changed the subject from a professor to a novel she was reading. She made a messy pie and invited a housemate to help. Smith says more differentiated people tend to have deeper friendships, and more of them.

Chapter 10: Finding Community

Philip wanted a poetry group, but only after he had a new job, visible abs, and a journal full of new poems. Smith's reply: "Community is the cake, not the icing." He tried two groups, found one too chaotic and one too intimidating, and quit before trying a third.

Groups use the same four strategies as families, and you bring your family habits along. Smith suggested Philip see his group as Dumbledore's Army from Harry Potter, people sharing skills against a common enemy rather than competing with each other. He chose the group that challenged him more.

Chapter 11: The Job Hunt

Chris, bartending with a master's in museum education, swung between panicked applications at night and snoozing all morning. Smith calls this attacking and avoiding. The middle way is approaching, or taking the problem out to lunch. Chris set aside thirty minutes a day and defined the job he wanted. He stopped asking his girlfriend for reassurance. He had also faked enthusiasm in interviews, so he studied himself first, then researched employers.

Chapter 12: Your Terrible Boss

Morgan accidentally sent her boss, Joanne, a text complaining about Joanne. Then she fixed on every one of Joanne's flaws. Smith says a workplace is an emotional system like a family, and Morgan found all four strategies in her office, including in herself. Smith calls zooming out "taking the astronaut's view." Morgan saw she had always depended on praise from professors, coaches, and bosses. Smith contrasts a mentorship built on emotions with one built on thinking. Morgan started talking with Joanne more, and Joanne sent fewer midnight emails.

Chapter 13: Procrastination and Productivity

Martha, a pop culture reporter, kept missing deadlines. Smith mentions the "planning fallacy" of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, but she treats Martha's problem as a relationship problem. Martha had an audience in her head: editors, a new girlfriend, her grandmother, and Twitter followers. So she moved closer to those people and scheduled time for curiosity. For the work itself, Smith borrowed the TV idea of the Monster of the Week. Each Monday, Martha picked one ugly task to finish by the end of the week. Goals tell you why you work, Smith writes, and principles tell you how.

Chapter 14: Switching Careers

Anthony, a burned-out lawyer, wanted to become an art therapist after a late-night documentary. Smith notes that Gallup calls millennials the "Job-Hopping Generation." She had Anthony write out his fantasy and his nightmare, then sift out his values, like time with his son. She uses the Marshmallow Test to warn against all-or-nothing moves. Anthony ran the numbers, asked to bill fewer hours, and started volunteering with an art program at his church. In Smith's words, "It's not so much about what you choose. It's about who's doing the choosing."

Chapter 15: Being a Leader

Janelle, a new clinical director at a women's shelter, overfunctioned for her staff, and they got less competent. She also avoided Susan, a veteran employee who pushed back. Smith writes, "A mature leader spends the most time with the most anxious people in their group." Janelle rated Susan's anxiety at 85 and saw her own rise to match. Smith defines self-regulation as managing your own emotions and thinking for yourself. When staff griped about a new procedure, Janelle invited suggestions through email or one-on-one meetings and kept the change.

Clare, a college senior, looked great online and was panicking in real life. Smith calls the phone an innocent bystander that makes our automatic behaviors more automatic. Clare's phone history showed her patterns: texting her mother for reassurance, messaging roommates about another roommate, and ignoring friends she envied. Smith calls Facebook likes "the Burger King of self-confidence." Clare's principles included calming herself down before texting someone to do it for her.

Chapter 17: Politics and Religion

Christian faced a family wedding with his religious parents and his atheist brother, Dave. His habit was to agree with whoever was in the room. Smith suggests watching the process, not the content, and asking, "What is my part in the dance?" Honeybees visit a possible hive site before they join the waggle dance for it. Christian had joined his family's dances without looking. Bowen wrote that rejecting your family's beliefs out of tension is no more differentiated than adopting them unexamined. Smith adds that you can leave a conversation that feels unsafe. When a cousin asked if he'd marry in a church, Christian said, "I have no idea. But I'm working on figuring it out."

Chapter 18: The Long Game

Smith closes with her own story. She was an anxious child, and her mother died when she was nineteen. She calls herself a helper, and her most important wedding vow was to take responsibility for herself and let her husband do the same. Bowen called the discomfort of real change an "anxiety of progression." How you feel in the moment is a poor measure of progress. Smith ends with a client who had rebuilt her life. Asked for the secret, the client said, "I think I'm just learning how to calm down."