How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety - Hardcover

Hendriksen, Ellen, Ph.D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250161703 ISBN 13: 9781250161703

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Picking up where Quiet ended, How to Be Yourself is the best book you’ll ever read about how to conquer social anxiety.

“This book is also a groundbreaking road map to finally being your true, authentic self.” —Susan Cain, New York Times, USA Today and nationally bestselling author of Quiet

Up to 40% of people consider themselves shy. You might say you’re introverted or awkward, or that you're fine around friends but just can't speak up in a meeting or at a party. Maybe you're usually confident but have recently moved or started a new job, only to feel isolated and unsure.

If you get nervous in social situations—meeting your partner's friends, public speaking, standing awkwardly in the elevator with your boss—you've probably been told, “Just be yourself!” But that's easier said than done—especially if you're prone to social anxiety.

Weaving together cutting-edge science, concrete tips, and the compelling stories of real people who have risen above their social anxiety, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen proposes a groundbreaking idea: you already have everything you need to succeed in any unfamiliar social situation. As someone who lives with social anxiety, Dr. Hendriksen has devoted her career to helping her clients overcome the same obstacles she has. With familiarity, humor, and authority, Dr. Hendriksen takes the reader through the roots of social anxiety and why it endures, how we can rewire our brains through our behavior, and—at long last—exactly how to quiet your Inner Critic, the pesky voice that whispers, "Everyone will judge you." Using her techniques to develop confidence, think through the buzz of anxiety, and feel comfortable in any situation, you can finally be your true, authentic self.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen is a clinical psychologist who helps millions calm their anxiety and be their authentic selves through her award-winning podcast, Savvy Psychologist, and through Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). Ellen’s scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution, and many other media outlets. Savvy Psychologist, which has been downloaded over 5 million times, was picked as a Best New Podcast of 2014 on iTunes and was Otto Radio's Best Healthcare Podcast of 2016. Ellen earned her Ph.D. at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. She lives in the Boston area with her family.

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How To Be Yourself

Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety

By Ellen Hendriksen

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2018 Ellen Hendriksen
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-16170-3

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Prologue, 
PART 1 I Thought It Was Just Me! Introducing Social Anxiety, 
1. The Root of It All: How Social Anxiety Takes Hold, 
2. Social Anxiety Is Like an Apple Tree (or, Why Social Anxiety Has Stuck Around for Millennia), 
3. Your Brain on Social Anxiety, 
PART 2 Looking Inside Your Head, 
4. How Our Inner Critic Undermines Us, 
5. Think Different: Replace, 
6. Think Different: Embrace, 
PART 3 Heading Out into the World, 
7. Get Started and Your Confidence Will Catch Up, 
8. No False Fronts in This Town: Play a Role to Build Your True Self, 
9. Mountains to Molehills: It Gets Easier Every Time, 
10. Putting It All Together: Your Challenge List, 
PART 4 Busting the Myths of Social Anxiety, 
11. How (and Why) to Turn Your Attention Inside Out, 
12. Seeing Is Believing: How You Feel Isn't How You Look, 
13. "I Have to Sound Smart/Funny/Interesting": How Perfectionism Holds Us Back, 
14. Why You Don't Have a Social Skills Problem (You Heard That Right), 
15. The Myth of Hope in a Bottle, 
PART 5 All You Have to Be Is Kind, 
16. The Building Blocks of Beautiful Friendships (They're Not What You Think), 
Epilogue, 
Notes, 
Author's Note, 
Acknowledgments, 
References, 
About the Author, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

The Root of It All: How Social Anxiety Takes Hold

Jim never missed Sunday night at the dance studio.

Outside, a few late-fall leaves still clung to the trees, blazing orange and trembling in the New England wind. Inside, the vast hall looked like a wedding reception, but in inverted proportions. Off to the side stood a few round banquet tables covered with linen tablecloths and scattered with half-finished glasses of water, but most of the room was given over to the expansive, gleaming hardwood dance floor. Marvin Gaye's "How Sweet It Is" rang out from the sound system.

The room was busy — perhaps twenty couples stood in loose lines, practicing the East Coast swing under the tutelage of Tomas, the studio's stately Brazilian owner. Every Sunday evening, Tomas held a group lesson that morphed into a social dance — he called it a practice party. Tomas manned the music system, announcing with each song, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's a foxtrot!" or, "Next up, let's rumba!" Students asked each other to dance. As they practiced their steps, instructors circulated, dispensing guidance and adjusting posture — a hand on a shoulder here, a raising of the chin there. In the four years since taking up ballroom dancing, Jim, fifty-six, with the trim build of a runner and neatly cropped red hair that reflects his Irish ancestry, had become a regular.

That evening, as the last notes to Harry Connick Jr.'s "A Wink and a Smile" wound down and couples slowed their foxtrots, Tomas leaned into the microphone. With a gleam in his eye, he asked, "Okay, can everyone clear the floor except Mayumi, please?" Jim was puzzled — Tomas usually linked the songs one after another to keep everyone out on the floor. But tonight something was different. Mayumi was Jim's instructor, so he clapped politely, then turned and headed for a folding chair. But Tomas continued, "We have a surprise performance for you all tonight — a birthday dance!" Jim froze. Today was his birthday. How on earth did they know? He hadn't told anyone. He turned back to the dance floor and looked past the dozens of people. In an otherwise empty circle of onlookers stood Mayumi, a smile on her face, her hand outstretched toward him.

* * *

What a difference time and practice make. Four years previously, never in his wildest dreams would Jim have imagined himself at any kind of party, much less a dance party where he approached women, busted out a cha- cha, and did it all surrounded by mirrors and dozens of others.

Jim grew up in the sixties and seventies in the Irish-Catholic section of Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood in the heart of Boston. Jim's father, a calm and even-keeled man, worked as a groundskeeper at Harvard for thirty years; Jim's mother was a secretary for an insurance company. Jim and his kid brother, Ryan, grew up on the second floor of what in Boston is known as a triple-decker, their apartment sandwiched between two identical others, fronted by a stoop of wooden stairs. After school, Jim and Ryan roamed the streets with the neighbor kids, many of whom were their cousins. Except when winter snowdrifts clogged the streets, the boys would play street hockey, lobbing friendly insults and taking turns fishing the puck from under boat-sized cars with vinyl roofs. Between games, they trooped back and forth to the variety store on the corner, using the change from running errands for Mom to purchase their near-daily installments of Mountain Dew and Twinkies.

The neighborhood was close, both literally and figuratively. "I could have jumped from my bedroom window into the window of the house next door if I wanted to," Jim remembers. "The houses were that close together." But the tightness of the houses reflected the tight-knit community. If a stranger appeared in the neighborhood, locals would take notice and approach, asking, "May I help you?" There were eyes on the street, eyes on the kids. "It was so safe," remembers Jim. "Though sometimes it would get me into trouble. My brother and I would go out to play, and our mother would tell us not to go past Linden Street. And of course we'd go past Linden Street. So when we got home she'd ground us. I'd say, 'How did you know?' And she would say, 'Mrs. O'Neill saw you and called.' We couldn't get away with anything. But it meant we were safe no matter where we went. I wouldn't have wanted to grow up anywhere else."

But while the Irish eyes peering from the triple-decker windows meant safety for Jim and his friends, for Jim's mother, Maeve, they meant something entirely different. Whether Jim and Ryan were headed to school, church, a family gathering, or just outside to play hockey, before they ricocheted down the stairs and out the door Maeve would put them through her usual paces. Jim remembers, "She'd say, 'Come here, let me look at you.'" She'd peer at them, giving the boys the once-over from head to toe, smoothing unruly hair and spit-shining smudged faces. "We had to look good," Jim said. "There was always a fear. A fear of being judged. Fear that the neighbors would talk. That the ladies would get together, shake their heads, cluck their tongues, and say, 'Oh my goodness, did you see those Nolan boys the other day?'"

When the boys came home, there was another ritual. As they rifled through the cabinets for a snack, Maeve would ask: Did you run into anyone? Did you see any of the neighbors? Jim remembers, "There was just a sense of being in a fishbowl. Of always being scrutinized. She lived in fear that a neighbor would see one of us playing in the dirt or being disrespectful or who knows what. But she could never articulate it."

Maeve got more self-conscious when she went out herself. "Standing in line at the bank with her was the worst," remembers Jim. "Because she was trapped; someone might see her and she couldn't do anything about it. It was like being on display between those red velvet ropes leading to the teller window." Over the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250161703
• ISBN 13: 9781250161703
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 298
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar