A GUIDE TO SELECTING
Books About Finding Your Purpose in Life
The Difference between Overwhelming Fear and Lingering Worry
There seem to be two distinct types of fear that require a different approach: overwhelm vs lingering worry, which involve different parts of the brain – amygdala vs cortex – that require different solutions (breaking trigger-response vs changing thought-patterns).
Within the area of overwhelm, there also seem to be two categories: physical danger and social anxiety. Physical danger can be either from certain aggressive animals, aggressive people, objects (needles) or circumstances (e.g. heights).
Somehow there is a conditioned overreaction to circumstances – a misapplication of our survival functions – which overlaps with trauma as it involves the wiring of the brain and the nervous system.
Sometimes the fear stems from a direct negative experience, like a dog attack. There are many books about specific fears that can be helpful.
Other times, the issue might be some deep-seated belief, e.g. “I am not competent”, that manifests in e.g. an inability to speak in public. Of course, the belief may also have originated from a direct negative experience.
In case of specific fears, it’s generally considered helpful to demystify the subject by investigating the object of fear. For example, fear of dogs can significantly weaken from learning about dog behavior, why they might become aggressive, how to recognize this and how to prevent it and how to handle various situations.
One aspect that’s part of virtually every type of fear, is exposure. This can be as gradual as you need, even just by imagining a confrontation. Key is to find the threshold at which tension would turn into overwhelm and stay just below it. This increases the strength, like with lifting weights at the gym. The more relaxed your state, the more you can lift.
Another regular component is the processing of past experiences that led to the conditioning. This can be done with any type of therapy.
When past experiences are too much to face directly, symbolic or trance-state practices often allow the memories to be processed indirectly.
A particular element in relation to social fears, is the meta-fear for appearing nervous. This sometimes has to be addressed first.
While much can be accomplished with exposure, relaxation techniques, knowledge & skills and processing of old memories, some subconscious beliefs may remain.
Hypnosis, EMDR and meditation combined with visualization and affirmation are some of the ways by which the wiring on the subconscious level can be accessed and altered.
Last but not least, one should always ask oneself to what extent the drive to overcome a certain fear is genuine or if it comes from a feeling of shame about it, especially regarding social fears. In other words, ask yourself if you’re perhaps trying to learn skills that will enable you to do things that increase your self-esteem when in fact these are inauthentic.
When you select books, for example to learn about your specific type of fear, keep in mind that while its description of the fear may be very accurate, the prescription for overcoming that fear is often not specific to that fear but just the generic type of protocol the author is fond of. In our book list, we describe the protocol of each book. Don’t be afraid to pick up a book about a different type of fear when you think the protocol sounds interesting. You’ll probably be able to apply it to your specific fear.
Types of Books About Overcoming Fear
Here you find a list of archetypal books about overcoming fear from which we captured the essence in a short summary. The books are listed in a random order. We don't earn any commission on your selection.
"The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook"
This book by Edmund Bourne for any type of fear and combines cognitive-behavioral techniques with practical exercises such as relaxation techniques, cognitive restructuring, and gradual exposure that help you to overcome anxiety disorders and phobias. It provides a collection of about all the mainstream techniques you can imagine, from how to do diaphragmatic breathing to reducing caffeine to affirmations.
"Rewire your Anxious Brain"
Catherine Pittman uses insights from neuroscience to explain why there is a big difference between how to deal with fight-flight-freeze-type of anxiety and the worry-type of anxiety, but also explains which kind of practices are appropriate for each type of anxiety. Both types involve a different part of the brain. With a fear trigger, you need to break from the script, for example with deep conscious breaths. Processing old memories reduces the triggers for the future. Continuous worry is resolved by looking into the logic and thought patterns you have.
"Nerve"
Author Eva Holland argues that exposure training is not effective. Based on neuroscience and her direct experience, she suggest combining exposure therapy session with the use of over-the-counter beta-blockers. When such medicine is taken immediately after the fear exposure, it appears to change the neural structure of the brain and dramatically amplifies the effect of the positive experience. This is quite distinct from, for example, some of the exposure-based books on trauma resolution, where the focus is on letting the body discharge old tension.
"Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway"
Susan Jeffers encourages readers to overcome fear and embrace personal growth by offering practical advice and mindset shifts to empower individuals to acknowledge and confront fear as a natural part of life. She explains how to acknowledge fear without letting it stop you, to see failure as a lesson, how to take small risks that build you confidence, but most importantly how waiting for fear to go away before you act will keep you stuck in the fear forever. The core message is that fear never fully disappears, but that it doesn't have to affect you.
"Mental Training – The Core"
Mental training Geir Isene explains in this one-page book a series of exercises that he also used to prepare gold medalist biathlon star Tiril Eckhoff for several Olympic games and World championships. The core is getting comfortable with discomfort by simply sitting across your training partner. See if you can just look without responding to any funny feeling that arises. Once that becomes easy, take turns in trying to make the other person laugh. Once the general skill to be nonreactive to discomfort is obtained, it can be applied to any area in life.
Bukuru's Zero-Books Approach
Our suggestion is to start developing your discomfort tolerance level as well as making a study of the thing you fear. The combination of insight and courage might already provide you with enough to do what any book will tell you: step up and start taking small explorations outside of your comfort zone. Some fear may always remain, who knows, but it might already free you from being limited by it. You can read here how to work on your ability to tolerate discomfort.
About Bukuru
The core philosophy of Bukuru is that each person should test their own beliefs. The project started as a quest to categorize self-development books in such a way that it would become easier to find books that match your beliefs. However, along the way we concluded that the essence of most books can be captured in a few sentences – if the idea is original at all. Instead of helping people buy books, we now help people not buying books.