TAMING FEAR IN THE AGE OF COVID

A guide provides practical tactics for facing up to fear.

Australian physician Sedhoff has written a self-help book that goes far beyond the terror associated with Covid-19. This eminently readable text addresses fear in the larger sense, offering an authoritative overview of the subject as well as a programmatic way to “resolve” one’s apprehensions. Part 1 begins with an illuminating introduction to the ways in which fear affects the brain specifically and individuals in general. The author then dives into a seven-stage process designed to reduce the “fear burden.” Each of these stages contains numerous, clearly identified actions to take, such as four mindfulness skills, four “methods to create structure and routine,” and three steps to overcome social anxieties. One of the more intriguing chapters in the first part of the book concerns how the media can heighten various forms of fear. Part 2 takes a more novel approach: Here, Sedhoff suggests strategies for turning the “fear monster to friend.” The author characterizes the fear monster as “ ‘a balloon monster’…that looks real on the outside, but get inside it and we find it is full of hot air.” Using this imagery helps to amusingly but dramatically undermine the frightening aspects of fear and leads into a 10-step method for overcoming any type of anxiety. What Sedhoff does next is ingenious: After summarizing the guide in a chapter that acts as a “mini-workbook,” he illustrates in discrete chapters how the 10-step method applies to taming the fear of severe illness, death, Covid-19, and PTSD—the last included “because PTSD and the fear it elicits are so extreme, but also because it can be challenging to navigate out of.” In the final chapter the author concludes: “Unless we walk with fear and talk to it regularly, it can lead us down dangerous paths that we may not know we are taking until it is too late.” Sedhoff’s voice throughout the volume is compassionate, calming, and reassuring. The numerous, diverse examples of scared patients helped by the author add richness to the work and credibility to his methodology.

A manual that should be highly therapeutic for the fearful and anxious.