The Fear Reflex: Five Ways to Overcome it and Trust Your Imperfect Self

By Joseph Shrand, M.D.

What scares you?  Fear of failure? Fear of success? Fear of loss? Fear of strangers, commitment, being alone, being closed in, being taken for granted, dying, flying….? There are numerous things to fear and the media doesn’t help. Real life traumas, dramas, and events invade our lives through TV, the Internet, radio, movies, and even games.

In The Fear Reflex, Dr. Shrand looks at fear as a reflex mechanism that comes from over millions of years of evolution.

Fear stems from our inherent desire to survive and instills in us a growing sense of caution, which slowly increases as our brains shift us from being impulsive infants to adults who are able to anticipate the future. But ultimately, fear is the result of thinking our impulses and actions, or the impulses and actions of others, will result in harm. Like a driver on a road, we slow down at a caution sign, but stay immobile at a stop sign, red with the symbol of danger. As humanity has evolved, the fear reflex has been preserved to protect our survival and our species. Yet that same fear reflex today, paradoxically, can prevent us from living full lives.

The book offers a road map to help determine where your fear comes from and how to overcome it. Think about this – do you believe you have value? According to Dr. Shrand, people who feel they have little value have a fear of rejection, and when we fear rejection, we feel the need to protect ourselves. Some people suppress feeelings and talents, others “hide” and keep from drawing attention to themselves, while others get angry and push people away before they can be pushed away.

Using his, I-Maximum approach, Dr. Shrand teaches readers how to overcome their fears by changing the way they see themselves and others.

My method challenges the very concept of “sickness,” instead replacing it with the idea that we are all doing the best we can at this and every moment in time, with the potential to change from second to second in response to our internal and external environments. Change the environment, change the response.

In this book, I am going to teach you how to apply the I-M Approach to the fear reflex, but you can use it in practically every moment of every day to improve your life and the life of those around you. You can use this method to help you begin to really understand and trust who you are and take control of where you want to go. I believe that everyone is at an I-M, a current maximum potential. And when you believe that as well, amazing things begin to happen.

If your life is repeatedly stuck due to internal fears, give this book a read and start living a new life!