How to be Miserable
in Your Twenties
Published 2020
The decade of the twenties imposes a huge number of changes on our lives. The pitfalls are many, and it’s easy for things to go astray. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guide to all the disasters waiting for us, so that we can sidestep as many as possible?
That’s the intention of How to be Miserable in Your 20s, which looks at the challenges of early adulthood and identifies 40 common pitfalls to avoid, divided into four main areas: Resisting the transition away from adolescence, counterproductive beliefs about adulthood spread by the culture, the task of creating a new self, and difficulties with navigating the waters of the new, bigger world.
How to be Miserable in Your 20s is a perfect gift for the teen or twenty-something embarking on this perilous, but ultimately rewarding, journey.
Available in paperback, as an e-book, and in audiobook format.
About the book.
An introduction to ideas in How to be Miserable in Your 20s - the rationale for the book, the major content sections, and the intent. Watch to see if it may be the book for you - or for an emerging adult you know!
The clinician’s guide.
A 90-minute discussion of concepts from How to be Miserable in Your 20s for clinicians working with young adults. Presented at the 2021 annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association.
“How to Be Miserable in Your Twenties reads with a tender irreverence. Paterson’s voice is heart-catching, imaginative, and wise as he invites emerging adults to abandon many of their self-defeating delusions which they have caught from their culture like a virus. Paterson gifts the reader with fresh agility to better dance with the paradoxical vicissitudes of life. You will find his creative re-rendering of the path to misery accessible, charming, and a helpful tool for reorienting you to a wise life.”
—Scott Spradlin, LPC, LMAC, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) therapist and trainer in Wichita, KS; and author of Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life