Fear trap
The blurb asks a very simple question, “Why are you afraid?” The answer is not as easy as we think. Some people dream of death, of fires and drowning. Their imagination makes them afraid for their lives. Others are rendered handicapped by people in their lives. So how do we rein our imagination? How do we deal with toxic relationships? When are we ready to cast away the mantle of fear and breathe easy?
Authors Richard and Bonny Schaub have over three decades of experience between them. And just as Dante wrote of hell on earth that we create for ourselves and live in, and concluded that we need to bring about a transformation from within in order to ‘extricate ourselves from this senseless repetitive actions of fear and anger’ there can be no real lasting changes.
This book offers many examples of cases they have dealt with. Cases which are as universal as a dream of losing one’s home in a fire or losing your way in a forest. Cases where people who had lost their loved ones to death now were afraid for their own lives. All relevant to a reader who is living a frenetic life which takes him from one crisis to another.
Problem with the book is that it is very intense. And although it is very relevant, it just feels very technical. It offers you example after example, examination of a case one after another after another until your head begins to feel heavy with other people’s problems. So instead of solving my fears, it adds to the list. It’s all right to say we helped these people face their fears, taught them to look upon the things that make you afraid with compassion. When I buy a book like this one (which will probably be on a self-help shelf), I am actually looking for methods to face fear, to solve my problem. The examples are so unstoppable, so intense, that it is easy to put the book away labelling it scholarly rather than self-help.
If this is indeed a self-help book, then it needs to be easier on the eye and the brain. It also needs a few do-it-yourself exercises, meditation techniques to become more relevant to the reader. As it is now, it is quite heavy on the brain, and induces a certain amount of nodding off when reading the pages.
Obviously not for everyone, this book is indeed full of unfaltering observations and almost mystic in its quality. How much of its mysticism is real and worth it? Buy a cup of coffee and read a few pages at a time in the bookstore before you make the purchase.
Manisha Lakhe is
the author of
The Betelnut Killers
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