Pull the Stick Out of Your @SS: Real-Life Strategies to Help You Face Your Fears, Stop Your Worrying, and Live Your Best Life

by Bruce Serbin

Overview

Is your insecure, apprehensive personality getting in your way of enjoying life? Making friends? Finding love? Landing that promotion?
 
Get ready to get over yourself and pull the stick out of your ass that’s been holding you back from being present in your life and realizing your dreams.
 
In this lighthearted study of how to cope with anxiety disorder and stop being so damned uptight, Bruce shares the results of 20 years of research on anxiety disorders and depression and insight gleaned from working with the nation’s top mental health experts as a former journalist and publicist. Flip through these pages and you’ll find raw, humorous anecdotes paired with practical advice on the following subjects:

• Strategies for avoiding destructive behaviors like analysis paralysis, perfectionism, and egotism that firmly embed a giant stick up your ass. 
• Techniques for loosening up, such as refraining from overplanning, getting over FOMO, increasing your tolerance, embracing your emotions, and overcoming social phobia. 
• Support on how to get help if your emotional pain has become mental illness—and encouragement that doing so is a sign of strength, rather than weakness. 

With this edgy-bordering-on-profane take on breaking free from rigidity, Bruce will help you confront that little voice in your head questioning your actions and feeding you self-criticism. A hard knock at the stigma surrounding anxiety disorders, Pull the Stick out of Your @ss will leave you reeling in laughter and empowered to chuck conformity out the window and embrace your weird-ass self.
 
Take a deep breath, get out your swear jar, and prepare to be mellowed out by this gritty approach to mindfulness.

Former Journalist and Publicist, Bruce Serbin used to be a complete tightwad: quiet, nervous, preoccupied with the incessant negative chatter in his head, worried about what other people thought of him, constantly playing out different scenarios in his mind, trying to script out every interaction with people ahead of time. He experienced panic attacks, lived with severe anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suffered from hypochondria. Until one day, enough was enough. It was time to remove the stick from his ass and start living.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640951655
Publisher:	Sound Wisdom
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

For more than 15 years, seven-time national award-winning publicist and author Bruce Serbin has been a media powerhouse, booking his clients on local and national television and radio shows, in daily local and national newspapers and magazines, and in online news outlets. Bruce is the recipient of seven national awards and his work has been recognized by the Public Relations Society of America, Gold Coast Public Relations Council, League of American Communications Professionals and the Associated Press. He has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business News Daily and Yahoo, as well as in industry publications.

Table of Contents

You Look Like You Have a Stick in Your Ass! 13

Part 1 Stick-Pulling Strategies 19

How Do You Begin to Remove the Stick? 20

Chili the F^*ck Out! 28

Clean Out Your Ears and Listen! 35

Don't Be a Know-lt-All 39

Know When to Ask for Help 44

Don't Be Full of Shit 48

Shut Your Mouth and Stop Complaining! 52

Mean People Suck-Don't Be One of Them 57

Mind Your Effing Business 62

Be More Accommodating 66

Stop Planning Everything 69

Do Something You're Not Supposed to Do 74

Fantasize about the Craziest Stuff You Can Dream Up 80

Don't Waste Your Time with New Year's Resolutions 84

Don't Let the Quest for More Kill You 89

Don't Put Others Before Yourself 98

Don't Rush to the Crave 103

Don't Shit on Yourself 107

To Hell with Conformity-Be Who You Really Are 114

Laugh at Yourself-It's the Key to Disarming Others 121

Follow Your Heart and Everything Else Just Follows 124

Don't Quit Your Day Job 128

Envy Can Be Your Best Friend if You Use It Right 132

Get Over Your FOMO Because the Party Is Always Where You Are 137

When Life Throws You Lemons, Just Say "Screw It" 141

Stop Asking Why 144

Hell Yeah!-Profanities Help 147

Some Tips to Flip 151

When You Don't Know What to Do, Just Get Started 154

Part 2 Protecting Your Mental Health 157

Emotional Pain Is the Biggest and Most Dangerous Stick in the Ass 158

Mental Illness Is Not a Death Sentence 164

Holy Hypochondriac 169

Spread Your Wings and Fly 174

I Have Something to Say but I'm Social Phobic 182

Taking Medication Doesn't Mean You're Weak 189

Find Safety and Comfort in Yourself 193

This Is How You Tell Anxiety to F^*ck Off 199

Part 3 Reflections on Life and Parenting and Some Other Random Thoughts from Bruce 207

Birthdays Rock! 208

Ho Ho Ho, Oh No, Not the Holiday Season 211

You're Never Really Ready to Be a Parent 215

Some Other Random but important Stuff 221

Don't Sit on It: Pull That Stick out of Your Ass Immediately! 227

Mental Health Resources 231

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 232

Crisis Text Line 232

Anxiety and Depression Association of America 233

National Alliance on Mental Illness 233

The National Institute of Mental Health Information Resource Center 234

The Anxiety and Phobia Program at St. Vincent's Behavioral Health Center 235

Acknowledgments 237