Customer Reviews

It's Ok to Be Neurotic: Using Your Neuroses to Your Advantage

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One of the most useful and *gentle* self-help books I've encountered in a very, very long time. Unlike some books that almost make you feel guilty if you can't "overcome" your neuroses, this one acknowledges the difficulty of eliminating one's neurotic tendencies and then shows you how to turn them to your advantage. Yes, to your advantage.

The book is a very easy read and filled with immediately useful advice. But don't let it's accessibility fool you - the information and ideas laid out in this book are rock solid. If you even suspect you might be neurotic, stop beating yourself up and buy this book. The only thing you'll regret is how long it took you to discover it.

Frank Bruno comforts us with the revelation that nearly everyone else is just as neurotic as we are--and suggests strategies to help us live productive lives in the face of our neuroses. His goals are helps us accept our neuroses, comfort us that they do not make us "crazy," and show us how to both work around their weaknesses and capitalize on their strengths.

The book is organized around twenty core strategies:

1. Recognize that it is really OK to be neurotic.
2. Work to lower your neurosis temperature.
3. Adopt the positive attitude that a neurosis is not an affliction, but a challenge.
4. Affirm that you can learn to cope effectively with neurotic disadvantages.
5. Learn to live with your neurotic advantages so that you can reap their harvest without paying to high a price.
6. Look upon your neurosis as something that you possess, not as something that possesses you.
7. Accept that bad habits are acquired and not part of your basic personality.
8. Seek ways to convert neurotic energy into creative accomplishments.
9. Turn your anxiety about your health into a positive psychological asset.
10. Work toward emotional closeness with your partner.
11. Change your ego defense mechanisms from emotional liabilities into life-enhancing assets.
12. Think about your life in psychodynamic terms.
13. Realize that we can learn to live relatively unafraid in a world we never made.
14. Look upon your neurotic disposition as an asset, not a liability, in your personal search for meaning.
15. Work to make a distinction between imaginary threats and real ones.
16. Act as if you are not depressed, and it will help your depression lift.
17. Recognize that neurotic anger is self-induced, manufactured by your thoughts and perceptions.
18. Challenge the idea that you need psychiatric drugs.
19. Look upon your neurosis as an asset, not a liability.
20. Make the seven pillars of emotional wisdom a part of your philosophy of life.

The text is readable and well-suited for anyone who would attempt self improvement in the face of one or more common neuroses. If you believe yourself to be too well-adjusted to benefit from it, take the change to confirm this diagnosis with the Neurosis Quiz on page 11.

I suppose if you haven't read much in the psychology or self-help arena, this might be a good jumping off place, although Bruno does not have a list of recommended readings, which is irritating. But I found the book to be much too general, and to lack much original material. It is also quite repetitive, and a lot of it is just common sense.

Instead of this book, I would recommend Existential Psychotherapy, by Irvin Yalom, Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, or The Feeling Good Handbook, by David Burns.