"Meet Robert, an ordinary man whose life spirals into chaos and terror from intense persecutory delusions, preventing him from going outside or answering his front door. An extreme case perhaps, but excessive mistrust is not confined to the psychiatric clinic. It is ubiquitous, an immensely strong and frequently distorting lens through which many millions of us see the world. Having spent thirty years at the vanguard of research into anxiety and paranoia, Professor Daniel Freeman shows how we can measure our own levels of mistrust and how we can remedy things if those levels are higher than we'd like. Compelling and compassionate, he looks at the causes including the role of genes, trauma, lack of sleep, low self-confidence, cannabis use and hearing voices."--Back cover.