Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of "Smile Mart," she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction--many are laid out line by line in the store's manual--and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, andspeech of her colleagues, playing the part of a "normal" person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It's almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action.

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.

This humorous volume recounts the experiences of a middle-aged woman who, in response to her debilitating anxiety, spent a year seeking out anxiety-inducing experiences to overcome it.

This volume explores both how anxiety works and how to understand the relationship between individuals and their anxious tendencies, as well as offers “tips and tricks” that can be used on a day-to-day basis to cope with anxiety.

This workbook provides step-by-step treatment strategies for coping with several forms of anxiety and is especially helpful for those who have already recognized their need for recovery. Also included in this title are worksheets which readers can use to apply their own experiences to the content material.

This volume doubles as a memoir recounting the first-hand experiences of a socially anxious teenager and an informative resource exploring scientific information about social anxiety disorder.