How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off

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What to expect

An accessible, comforting and practical book for anyone experiencing anxiety, from the author of The Recovery Letters and How to Tell Depression to Piss Off.

Despite more and more people opening up about their mental health, anxiety is still taboo. We're not supposed to be anxious; we're supposed to be resilient and able to 'get on with it'. We are expected to excel while juggling a hectic, pressurised schedule at home and at work, despite the lines between the two being more blurred than ever.

This book dispels that taboo. It is for anyone who has experienced general anxiety disorder, trauma-related anxiety, clinical anxiety and those with 'low-level' anxieties.

At once empathetic and entertaining, How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off offers 40 ways to get to a better place with anxiety. They are born out of the author's personal experience of managing his own anxiety and his many years of working as a counselor helping people with their mental health.

Critics Review

  • James takes a super-serious message and delivers it with a twinkle in his eye. You end up accidentally learning loads of stuff

    Andy Cope, bestselling author of The Art of Being Brilliant
  • There are two notable elements to this book. Firstly, the entertaining and self-deprecating (and funny) but personal style of writing means that it is easy to connect with the author, and not see him as a preachy guru from on high. Secondly, the book is packed with solid advice for how we can relate to our anxiety in way that still allows us to live our best life. Highly recommended

    Nic Hooper, senior lecturer in psychology and author of The Unbreakable Student
  • A book to play anxiety bingo with and one that will help you realise you are not alone in experiencing absurd mental terrors that feel horribly real. James makes it very funny too, because the ludicrousness of where our anxiety imagination can take us can be as funny on the page as it is horrifying when it is playing out in our mind. You will laugh and come away from this tooled up for the next battle in your mind’s darker corners

    Robin Ince, comedian
  • James has written a wonderfully light-hearted, down-to-earth and practical book that has the potential to help many people and in many ways. How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off is a joy to read, and James’ jargon-free and authentic style will appeal to all those who need help with anxiety

    Richard Nicholls, writer and psychotherapist
  • One of the best ways to tell anxiety to sod off is to laugh. Which is where James Withey’s book is different to many other books about how to stop worrying. It’s funny! I mean, really side-splitting, roar-out-loud funny. Crammed with good advice as well as laughs, I now have it by my bedside

    Rachel Kelly, mental health advocate and Sunday Times bestselling author of Black Rainbow
  • It’s a rare gift to be able to engage with the serious subject of anxiety and be entertaining and funny at the same time. However, James Withey nails both in his new book. Any reader who applies his straight-talking, accessible advice to their anxiety will most certainly have it sodding off in no time

    Dr Aaron Balick, psychotherapist and author

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