Read this book!

If you are going to buy only one book on social anxiety, this is it. This book that not only compassionately presents various perspectives on social anxiety, but it also offers a vast array of solutions. These solutions are divided into easy to follow areas of mind, body and action. Once you've figured out how social anxiety affects you most, you can choose exactly which solutions suit you best. For extra guidance, there's an excellent appendix item full of goals that you can choose from, again, divided into areas of body, mind and action. I highly recommend this book.

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Comforting Information

This book contains all you ever wanted to know about social anxiety, and is sure to help you understand the condition. However, I would have preferred more focus on solutions rather than so much reaching (about 300 pages). I might suggest starting with a shorter book or course (I used the program at mc2method.com which was great), and then reinforce your efforts by following up with this book. Good luck!


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Feel an energetic approach to reducing shyness

The book begins with the usual discussion about the symptoms of social anxiety. But then the author goes into presenting some ideas that are novel to the broader discussion of social anxiety. An example of this is how anxiety is a process rather than a fixed thing. Yes, this is a simple idea and yet it provides a new perspective on social anxiety that makes the condition less monolithic and more changeable.

The author also presents a must-read section that ties in information that has come out of recent scientific research about how the brain works.

The author's insights and information are easier to hear and therefore easier to apply in our own lives thanks to her easy and fresh writing style. She writes with a natural feel that is strikingly authentic in the face of the more dry, scholarly writing of other social anxiety books.

The second half of the book then offers solutions in the form of goal-setting, visualization, therapy options and skill-building. Her emphasis on action takes more of a coaching approach than the traditional therapy models and this keeps us from just dreaming about what we want and actually forces us to move forward.

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