Are you tired of worrying about what other people think about you all the time? Have you been served the wrong sandwich at the diner but you shut up and eat it anyway because you’re too nervous and don’t want to be a bother? Do you sometimes get on a bus or join a party and worry that everyone is talking about you? If you want to be yourself around people but are always afraid that you’ll just mess up and embarrass yourself, then keep reading....

We all have our inner critics, and we all care about what other people might think of us, but sometimes our inner critic becomes too overwhelming and we start worrying too much, and it interferes with our daily lives like in our jobs, our interactions with our family and friends, and when we go out in crowded places.

I know this for a fact because I spent most of my teenage life suffering from social anxiety. I would even pretend to be sick to get out of having to attend parties and would often lock myself inside the bathroom for sometimes hours on end during parties that I was forced to attend just to avoid having to mingle and be seen by people. It felt like everyone was always out to judge me, even my friends and my extended family.

The funny thing about my story is that everybody, including my parents, passed it off as me simply being very shy and private, and I really never told anyone how I really felt either, so it just went on and got worse until one day I just randomly met a person in trying to avoid some people. It turns out that that person was a therapist and told me some helpful things and pointed me in the right direction.

Sometimes what you need is just to be pointed in the right direction. Because of this chance encounter, I decided to take up psychology as my major in college in order to understand myself and my issues in a more detailed way. I also decided to try my hand at creating this audiobook, Overcoming Social Anxiety, in order to help point you in the right direction just like the therapist I ran into that day as a teenager.

Here are a few things that I talk about in the book:

• Why you shouldn’t just keep avoiding conflict - why you should be telling people what you want.
• What shrinks don’t tell you about the causes of social anxiety
• The secrets of Hollywood stars about dealing with their own feelings of anxiety
• How to gain respect and acceptance, without becoming a people-pleaser
• Harmful myths the mainstream media tells you about social anxiety
• The biggest mistake people make when trying to overcome their fear of rejection
• Why simply “faking it till you make it” does not help you overcome the feeling of awkwardness - what to do instead
• Why you shouldn’t just blindly accept how people treat you