Business Book Review: Face Your Fears

What's your fear? Perhaps flying, spiders, public speaking, height, or claustrophobia?

Whatever it is that can prevent you from doing something or send you running to another room, this practical guide will help you overcome these often deep-rooted psychological anxieties.

Apparently, in the UK alone, approximately 10 million people suffer from some sort of phobia – that’s around one in every seven people, and the effects can range from a simple inconvenience to severely limiting people’s day-to-day lives.

The author, Christopher Paul Jones, has created ICS, a breakthrough therapy that combines mainstream psychology with cutting-edge techniques. In the book, he offers “a road map to overcoming phobias.”

Jones is a fully trained clinical hypnotherapist, familiar with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), Contemporary Psychotherapy, Euro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and Rapid Induction Therapy.

His work has been consistently featured on TV, radio, and in the press, and his clients have included Hollywood actors and Oscar nominees, models, musicians, presenters, and many other satisfied members of the public.

This book gives an insight into the issues experienced by many celebrities and could be something you feel is a personal challenge.

It's main premise it that it promises to help individuals overcome fears, phobias, and anxieties with a simple, innovative, and effective 7-step method.

Three sections divide the book to assist the reader in exploring, examining, and eradicating fears.

It looks at how phobias start, explores tools and methods to overcome them (including the ICS seven steps to transforming phobias), and looks at the ten most common fears.

The book is full of advice and examples with clear illustrations of how to identify what causes a strong dislike to something and how to address them.

In what is claimed to be a proven approach, assisted by a mix of innovative methods, removing a phobia can be quicker and easier than one might think.

There are exercises, questions to ponder, and simple recap sections at the end of each chapter.

All the steps are helpful, and the book gets off to a great start with “step one: recognise what you’re really afraid of,” which was the obvious place to start and really got me thinking.

I found the section 'Myths and facts about public speaking particularly interesting and beneficial.

Jones uses the Aristotelian triptych - “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them again!” Used by military and journalists. Simple, but I found it helpful.

At the back of the book is a glossary of 101 phobias. Wow! I’ve never heard of many of these, but just reading the list made me think: do any of these affect me? At least if they do, I have the answer in the book for how to deal with them.

The book ends with 'conclusions', in which Jones gives a brief and punchy summary of the book. It is short and mainly talks about his experiences, but as a treatise it is so easy to read and follow, so the reader doesn’t really need a summary; it’s all there in the main section.

It was an interesting read and could be a handbook for hypochondriacs; you know, the more you read about these things, the more you start to identify with them.

However, if you’ve struggled to deal with an overwhelming fear, phobia, or anxiety that may have prevented you from living your life to the full and taken a toll on your mental health, then this could be the book for you.

Face Your Fears: 7 Steps to Conquering Phobias and Anxiety is written by Christopher Paul Junes and published by Michael O’Mara Books Limited.