“Randy J. Paterson has hit a home run with this highly accessible, engaging book. How to Be Miserable uses tongue-in-cheek humor, scientifically grounded practical advice, and a healthy dose of what is colloquially known as ‘reverse psychology’ to help put an end to common behavioral patterns that contribute to unhappiness. Anyone who wants to be less miserable should read this book and do the opposite of everything it recommends!”
—Martin M. Antony, PhD, ABPP, professor of psychology at Ryerson University in Toronto, ON, Canada, and coauthor of The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook and The Anti-Anxiety Workbook
“Randy J. Paterson’s How to Be Miserable contains practical, witty, and wise advice, and is based on the premise that we have become our own worst enemies. Confronting our ‘management’ strategies consciously is the only way our life actually begins to turn toward better outcomes.”
—James Hollis, PhD, Jungian analyst, and author of The Middle Passage and Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
“Randy J. Paterson has failed miserably in his quest to create a recipe for unhappiness in How to Be Miserable, and instead has written a gem of a parody on how to cope with the inevitable difficulties we all must face in order to live a happy and fulfilling life.”
—Simon A. Rego, PsyD, ABPP, associate professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in New York, NY
“How to Be Miserable is a different kind of self-help book. By learning the forty traps that lead to unhappiness, readers will actually discover how to create the life they’ve always wanted—one filled with lasting happiness.”
—Matt McKay, PhD, coauthor of Thoughts and Feelings
"...for fed-up self-help readers, it may be the panacea they need."
—Publishers Weekly
"What makes this book from Paterson ("Your Depression Map") so delightful is that the author's obvious use of reverse psychology actually works as readers can laugh at their own behaviors. For instance, Paterson says that if a person wants a miserable life, then he or she should eat junk food, dwell on what "could be," read online news in endless detail, and eliminate the word "no" from their vocabulary. Although most readers will be accustomed to positive and negative behavior patterns, this work outlines the results of their favorite excuses for not acting in mentally healthy ways."
—Library Journal
