Best Self-Help Book Of 2017 – Overcome Social Anxiety And Shyness by Dr Matt Lewis

Overcome Social Anxiety and Shyness
Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk

Paula’s phone vibrates. She checks her text messages to find an invitation to a colleagues party. Sickness hits her stomach. The thought of it fills her with horror. As she imagines trying to make conversation with strangers, without stumbling or saying the wrong thing, her chest pounds and her legs feel weak. She flashes back to the last party she went to. It makes her sweat to think of it. All those people and her lost in a corner, feeling inadequate, flushing beetroot red whenever someone spoke to her. She can’t go through that again. She needs to find a way to get out of it. She puts shaking fingers to the screen. Composes a message saying how sorry she is but she can’t make it – she has another engagement. She puts her phone down. Her heart quiets, the trembling stops, the panic eases. She’s dodged another bullet.

It’s hard to imagine the anguish which someone goes through when they are painfully shy, or struggling with anxiety around social situations, unless you have been through it. It’s debilitating and can seriously affect your quality of life. Avoidance often seems the only way to cope with the horrendous feelings anxiety brings you. So Paula copes by avoiding the situations which make her anxious. But before she knows it, she starts struggling to attend smaller gatherings. Even struggling to go out for meals with her family. She didn’t realise that her anxiety, if left unchallenged, and unchecked, would grow even bigger and affect more of her life.

Anxiety is one of the most pressing issues of our time, causing untold suffering. If you’ve experienced something like Paula’s situation, or anxiety of any kind around different issues, then Overcoming Social Anxiety & Shyness will be a great help to you.

Following on from his previous book, Overcome Anxiety, Dr Matt Lewis, a former lecturer in the areas of psychology and mental health, offers us a comprehensive toolkit for tackling social anxiety. He offers us a four pronged approach. He looks at how anxiety develops, how to build towards change, how to manage the feelings which come with anxiety, and how to become confident in social situations. This is not a passive, quick fix book. You will need to take on some tasks to help yourself. At times, it will be uncomfortable tackling your anxiety. Dr Lewis knows all about this from personal experience. And because of his own experiences you couldn’t be in better hands. Warmth and understanding appear on every page. You will no longer feel you struggle alone. You will also have explanations for how you are feeling – he offers a fascinating glimpse into the science behind how anxiety develops and what is happening in the brain. The heart of the book is the range of specific strategies, using mindfulness and other techniques, to help you bring your anxiety under control.

Although the focus is on shyness and social anxiety, this book will be useful for anyone suffering from any kind of anxiety. Anxiety can suck the joy from your life and also heavily affect those around you. Friends and family looking on can feel helpless to do anything for you, their words useless. Overcoming Social Anxiety & Shyness is a powerful, compelling read for those struggling with anxiety who want to change their lives for the better.

If you’d like to know more about the work Dr Matt Lewis is doing around anxiety and managing your mind, including the short online course he offers to help individuals tackle their anxiety, you can find details at his website – here.