The other thing I just thought was what I also would do is I would take one incident and take that as indicative as a pattern. So if what happened to you happened to me, I would say to myself oh of course that happened to me, it will always happen to me, people always disappoint me, I attract people who don't treat me well, I'm worthless, etc. Basically instead of taking the incident for what it was in an isolated fashion i.e. his boss wouldn't give him vacation time that sucks that I can't see my friend this weekend I would make it this whole long involved story connected to the past and the future.
In recovery, those are things I had to work on or ended up working on—noticing that those thought patterns (where I would make everything this whole long involved into the future and past story) gave me major anxiety. Buddhist books and concepts coupled with other recovery reading have been helpful for the spiritual aspects, things like living in the present moment. I don't even think it is a question of using or not using but of working through recovery or not working through recovery. The other thing is I basically hermited for the first six months and had to center myself before I could get to a point to even begin to deal with other people. I don't know it is all so hard...good luck!
One day at a time as a spiritual concept is helpful to me (taking everything including incidents like this one day at a time)....Kevin Griffin's book help me with that.