The Art of Fear: Why Conquering Fear Won't Work and What to Do Instead

by Kristen Ulmer

A revolutionary guide to acknowledging fear and developing the tools we need to build a healthy relationship with this confusing emotion — and use it as a positive force in our lives . We all feel fear. Yet we are often taught to ignore it, overcome it, push past it. But to what benefit?  This is the essential question that guides Kristen Ulmer’s remarkable exploration of our most misunderstood emotion in The Art of Fear . Once recognized as the best extreme skier in the world (an honor she held for twelve years), Ulmer knows fear well. In this conversation-changing book, she argues that fear is not here to cause us problems—and that in fact, the only true issue we face with fear is our misguided reaction to it (not the fear itself). Rebuilding our experience with fear from the ground up, Ulmer starts by exploring why we’ve come to view it as a negative. From here, she unpacks fear and shows it to be just one of 10,000 voices that make up our reality, here to help us come alive alongside joy, love, and gratitude. Introducing a mindfulness tool called “Shift,” Ulmer teaches readers how to experience fear in a simpler, more authentic way, transforming our relationship with this emotion from that of a draining battle into one that’s in line with our true nature. Influenced by Ulmer’s own complicated relationship with fear and her over 15 years as a mindset facilitator, The Art of Fear will reconstruct the way we react to and experience fear—empowering us to easily and permanently address the underlying cause of our fear-based problems, and setting us on course to live a happier, more expansive future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help, Personal Development, Audiobook, Personal Growth, Unfinished

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 13, 2017

About the author

Kristen Ulmer is thought leader, facilitator and fear specialist who radically challenges existing norms around the subject of this deeply misunderstood emotion.

Having spent 15 years being labeled fearless by the outdoor industry—named the best woman extreme skier in the world for 12 of those years and voted the North American most extreme woman athlete in all disciplines—Ulmer seeks to end our humanity-wide war against fear, which will not only resolve many common, epidemic problems we face, but allow us the greatest chance to achieve our whole-mind potential. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, More Magazine, Outside Magazine (4 times), and USA Today (4 times) to name but a few.

Her book; The Art of Fear; Why Conquering Fear Won’t Work and What to Do Instead, will be released on June 13, 2017.

Ulmer lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with her husband Kirk Jellum and their two savannah cats.

Reviews

[Julia Kulgavchuk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Several chapters of a sales pitch followed by a few pages of useful instructions. The pitch condemns everything and everyone for doing it wrong, including meditation and therapy; the instructions are then based on mindfulness and common therapy methods. The book can surely be useful but she has something to say for 20 pages not 300.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notes:

+ Fear is part of you, so going to war with it is going to war with yourself
- Warring with your emotions is like putting a kink in a hose, it stops the flow of all emotions, including the pleasant ones

+ Repressed fear is the root of many problems
- When we lock fear in the basement (body), it gets more aggressive about getting its message across to us

+ Fear is the CEO, Thinking Mind is the COO
- Of course there is reason to be afraid, the human experience is sometimes vulnerable and terrifying

+ “Let it be” is more helpful than “Let it go”
- Thoughts and feelings will come and go as they please, so we can’t really let them go, but we can let go of resistance to them, let go of clinging, let go of control

+ Practice exercise
- Breathe in fear and breathe out the hope of ever getting rid of it

+ Body awareness
- Noticing, nothing more
- Not fixing, understanding, analyzing, questioning, or changing; just noticing
- This is physical intelligence

+ It takes two wings to fly
- We need light and dark emotions

+ Work on becoming a “Human-Being”
- Human (you are separate and don’t feel okay): Thinking Mind labels and divides thoughts and feelings into good/bad, acceptable/unacceptable, okay/not okay
- Being (you are connected and feel okay): Beyond thoughts and feelings and the judgments of the Thinking Mind
- Human Being (you are connected and beyond while also being separate and finite; this is okay and not okay): Fully experience the okay and the not okay. Don’t elevate the spiritual sense of connectedness over the human experience of separateness. You will always come back down to earth and this not-okayness is okay


Quotes:

[Becoming a warrior] is about turning away from your old belief that Fear is a hindrance and instead walk in the opposite direction, toward recognizing that Fear is not only an asset and an ally, but one of the greatest experiences you’ll have in your lifetime.

Fear was but a simple emotion, a discomfort in her body warning of danger, and that it only had her best interests in mind. Fear was never the problem then; her reaction to Fear was the problem, making it difficult for Fear to get its message across or do its job. She saw how fighting it not only was a dead end, but was actually causing all her horrific symptoms.

You are a corporation made up of 10,000 individual employees… Imagine that in this corporation called (Your Name), none of the 10,000 employees know their job title, their job description, who’s boss, or even what they’re manufacturing. How well would that corporation run?... Fear is a big deal, because it’s usually the ringleader of the mutiny faction.

If left unchallenged (and it usually is), the Thinking Mind ultimately is who you believe yourself to be.

While, with effort, you may catch glimpses of something beyond your personal Ego/Thinking Mind, maybe even quite often, it doesn’t matter: You will always come back to it, again and again. Your Ego is your human fate. No one is without an Ego. And in that separation lies the source of Fear.

There’s nothing you can do about it, really. Everything you love—whether it’s people, passions, objects, states of being, or your sanity—will be taken away from you at some point, and not on your terms. And that’s just downright terrifying… Separateness—not the Fear—is the “problem.” The Fear is just the ultimate result.

Eventually, the fear of staying separate forever overshadows the fear of rejection, and you pursue relationships despite the fact that you may be rejected (which, at some point, you will be).

There is no such thing as a good or bad emotion; there is only emotion. But if an emotion feels uncomfortable in a way you don’t like, you call it a bad emotion.

You can control emotions about as much as you can control breathing: a little bit, but not for long. You couldn’t commit suicide by holding your breath—you’d just pass out, and breathing would resume. The same applies to Fear. The moment you drop your guard, Fear will come back. It’s as innate as breathing. It cannot, will not, be denied for long.

Wanting to be better, different, and other than yourself offers, on the one hand, great motivation to improve yourself. But there’s a dark side to this drive. When we want Fear to go away or be different, this suggests it’s a problem that must be fixed. And since Fear is a part of you, that means you must be fixed. If you need to be fixed, that means you’re broken. So your attention becomes focused on how broken you are and what’s wrong with you, which leads to toil, struggle, and shoddy self-esteem… If you don’t like Fear, you don’t like yourself.

Fear has now become the other that you need to fight or take flight from. Instead of the snake (the situation) being the problem, Fear is now the problem. The discomfort is the problem.

If there’s a problem in your life, any problem at all, I guarantee that your putting Fear in the basement has something to do with it.

You may not even be aware of Fear anymore; instead you’re just crazy jealous, gossip a lot, are shallow, or overeat. That’s still Fear expressing itself, but in its twisted, covert way. Which is the only way it speaks if it’s in the basement.

Any seemingly unpleasant “bad” voice you won’t look at becomes your shadow, the darkness that follows you everywhere, messing up your life. And while you may have stopped noticing it, make no mistake: Everyone else can still see it.

If something is going wrong in your life, the only question to ask is: What dark shadow about yourself are you unwilling to look at and own? And, more important, what latent Fear are you refusing to acknowledge?

Each voice in your corporation has great wisdom, and great delusion—every single one. As you’re learning, if a voice is repressed, only its delusion comes out. But when any voice is taken out of the basement and owned and honored, only its wisdom comes out.

Recognize that you’re powerless over Fear and Anger. Could you do that? You’d have to stop trying to control and instead feel and experience these emotions when they show up.

The energy of the cut-off emotion has to go somewhere, and it sure as heck doesn’t go into the atmosphere. Emotion is felt in the body, so when halted, it temporarily gets stored in the body.

There’s no such thing as overwhelming Fear. Fear is just Fear, it’s not overwhelming. But if you’ve been in a battle with Fear that you can’t win, the battle is what becomes overwhelming.

Stress and Anxiety are not the actual problem—trying to control or “solve” the Stress and Anxiety is the real problem, and the underlying cause behind the excessive symptoms.

If given the choice, would you rather feel happy or alive?

You can’t selectively repress an emotion without inadvertently repressing all emotions.

When Fear shows up, or any voice not in line with what the Controller or the Will wants, it kinks the hose. And Flow immediately stops.

Emotions are meant to be energy in motion, felt in the body.

​The more you try to get rid of Fear, the more afraid you’ll feel. The more you try to get rid of Anger, the angrier you’ll feel.

“Paradox [is] Truth standing on her head to get attention.” G. K. Chesterton

Suffering = Discomfort x Resistance

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” Shakespeare

Empower [your emotions] and show them respect; then they won’t have to operate covertly, in a twisted way, from the basement. They will seem radically different in an instant, and come out the opposite of how you’ve been experiencing them. They’ll become wise assets and allies, operating in a mature way, giving you great insight, motivation, and clear vision.

If your agenda is to “embrace Fear as a way to get rid of it,” that’s another form of trying to conquer Fear, and Fear is too smart for that crap.

Your Thinking Mind is not the right tool for the job of feeling your emotions. But you will try to use it anyway. Why is that? This voice rules your life, that’s why. It will try to rule this problem, too, but I assure you it is the wrong voice.

Give up all hope of ever controlling Fear; only then you can start to feel, and start to heal.

You didn’t overcome the Fear; Fear is what made the whole experience thrilling. You overcame the situation… The proper way to describe going through an experience that is challenging, then, is that you enjoyed the Fear. Not that you overcame it.

It’s the Body’s job to feel, not the Mind’s. Get this at your core. Your mind thinks. Your Body feels. Which is why you must stop thinking about Fear, in order to feel Fear.

You do not awaken by thinking about spirituality; it is something you must physically experience. You do not feel your emotions by thinking about them; you have to travel to and live in the place where they exist. Which is in the Body.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” Unknown

Which wins: what the mind says or what the Body does?

Being willing to feel and even embody something you would normally avoid is the holy grail of life’s practice.

Ask Fear, “What are you afraid of, and what do you see that I don’t, that I’m not dealing with?” This is the key to freedom. Whatever you won’t look at is always the key to freedom… If you find the questions difficult, just notice that you’ve shifted into the voice of the One Trying to Figure It Out, or the voice of Confusion, neither of which will be able to answer the questions. Merely shift back and start again. If Fear is still there and wants to speak, just be Fear, and let it speak for itself. Move how it moves. It will find its own answers.

“Step by step… I can’t see any other way of accomplishing anything.” Michael Jordan

The more you allow Fear to speak, the less it will have to say, and the less of a hold it will have on you. It’s that simple.

Go into any voice and spend time there, letting it be, and you will always organically come out the other side to a place of freedom.

Fear is not the problem; Resistance to Fear is the problem.

Which is easier: swimming upstream, or flowing with the river? Both resisting and embracing require effort. But again I ask: Which requires less effort to get a better result?

“The sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ And look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.” Hafiz

Accepting Fear is not the same as honoring it. It’s crucial that you understand the difference, because it’s huge.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

“Worshiping” is another word for “surrendering to.”

Mental intelligence does not offer the solution to everything. Nor is it the only access to awareness we possess. So while indeed your intellect is a staggering tool, and without it we couldn’t function, if worshiped alone, it can become your greatest weakness. You lose touch with what else is available.

Using your intellect to talk and think about, evaluate, and control your emotions is not “emotional intelligence.” Emotions being a huge part of what makes us human, emotional intelligence is, rather, your ability to identify, feel, and express your emotions in a useful, creative, and mature way.

Step by step, Fear will motivate you out of your stuck place and also pull you into the next level of your potential.

Fear + Breathing = Excitement

Is it really an adventure if there’s no Fear?

Life with Fear is raw, real, and beautiful.

We’re all going to die, so why not really live while you’re here? Come alive with Fear. Let it open your heart to the full opportunity and meaning of what it means to feel, to be fully present, and to be fully human.

You know you can get to ecstasy by intimately connecting in Love with another person. But maybe you don’t know you can get there when you have an intimate connection with anything. Even pain. Even discomfort.

If you took the fear of failure out of the equation, there would be no excitement. The challenge would be eradicated. The reward of completing a job well done would end.

Anger that shows up without integrity is poisonous Anger, and a clear sign that Fear and Anger have been repressed.

I own this energy. It’s mine. It comes from me. I am not a victim to it, but instead made powerful because of it.

When someone is healthy, it means that both the good and the (perceived) bad voices are working together.

Loneliness makes Love more poignant.

Sometimes you want Fear. So turn up the knob. Say yes to the speech. Fall in love. Sometimes you want Peace. Say no to the speech. Stay single.

Fearlessness is not the absence of Fear—it’s found by experiencing Peace with Fear.

If you feel afraid—or, more commonly, have fears (of something) that involve a story, belief, and thought—you’re in your head. If you feel energy and excitement, you are in your Body. The Body that exists in the present moment, with no past or future, no story, belief, or thought, is a state of pure, unjudging awareness, truth, and energy.

Connection to the universe will always be lost. The Zone is only meant to be temporary.

There actually is a higher place than spiritual intelligence, one that includes but isn’t limited by it… True Enlightenment is the pursuit and ongoing effort to include all states, seeing and owning all the voices that make you human, and doing your best to flow with them.

Your job in this lifetime is to become fully Human. Which means doing your best to experience and be all 10,000 voices—in particular Fear, because it will help expand you to the biggest you possible. This is great news. When in Flow, these employees could also be called the 10,000 motivators or the 10,000 energies.

Can I do my best to radically embrace and merge with all that arrives moment to moment? Can I make my life my practice?

Instead of spending your whole life fighting who you are, now you can get down to the epic, wild, uncomfortable, absurd, ignorant, delusional, and wonderful business of… just being who you are.

[Liliia Hordiienko · Rating 4 out of 5]

З назви цієї книги ви, звісно, подумаєте, що вона вчить боротись зі страхом. Однак ні, ні з чим боротись вона не вчить. Зате змусить вас слухати своє найтемніше Я і приймати почуте.
Цей нон-фік не з роду мотиваційної чи літератури з саморозвитку. Це щось сильніше, бо на сторінках цієї книги читач інтенсивно рефлексує і перевертає свої звичні установки догори дриґом.

Книга написана стильно, впевнено і жваво. Це відчувається крізь актуальний лексикон авторки, крізь її невимушений гумор і досвід, на який вона дивиться ніби зверху, а тому веде спілкування з читачем відверто і мудро.

Мені б хотілось, аби цю книгу прочитали всі: вихователі та вчителі, контролери громадського транспорту, касири та інші працівники сфери надання сервісу, великі і малі начальники, чоловіки та дружини... Всі. Щоб прочитали вдумливо. І тоді, здається, нам всім стало б простіше жити.

[Jennifer Jank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book about learning to embrace fear, rather than trying to get rid of it or act like it isn't there. I was unfamiliar with the author's sports career (being generally ignorant of all things sports) and the anecdotes are great. She points out that fear is necessary in our lives - we could die without it, so treating it like a red-headed stepchild actually makes things worse. Many times we're not even afraid of the situation, we're afraid of fear the emotion that comes out in the situation. Fear gives us energy and drive.

Where the author gets into trouble is when she steps out from discussing fears and the ways in which we can embrace it (as well as all our other many and necessary emotions) and talks about topics like medication, therapy and meditation, since she clearly doesn't have much of a background here. She parrots the common line that antidepressants numb all emotions, but that is simply not true for everyone - for many people in the depths of clinical depression, antidepressants bring them back to life. She also doesn't seem to understand the ways in which some types of therapy (such as cognitive behavior therapy) actually support her idea of embracing fear, and similarly that meditation helps people notice their emotions, which is necessary to take the next step of actually welcoming the fear and other emotions.

In other words, the discussion about emotions and the important part they play in our lives is well worth reading, but it's probably best to skip her opinions about other ways to work through some of these issues.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, I got a lot out of this book. Ulmer challenges the idea that we can conquer fear -- as a product of the “lizard brain,” it is stronger than anything the neocortex has going -- and so we should understand what its purpose is (to be afraid) and what to do about it (feel it, and move on). Much of the book focuses on the brain structure and how the brain works, which I found fascinating.

I did find, though, that the further I went in the book, the weirder it got. About 3/4 of the way through I said, OK, that’s enough, and declared myself done.

[Ryan Rodriquez · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is extremely rare that I choose not to finish a book. In this case, I just couldn't force myself through the unfocused ramblings I was being subjected to. Just like the slaloms the author so blissfully navigated in her prime, I feel her approach to this topic is in the same manner. All over and unfocused, she attempts to assign analogies to her descriptions. Not only do they fall flat, but they are inconsistent within themselves.

I would NOT recommend this book to anyone looking to take a practical approach to the topic of fear. The author used her "fear" to get a "fix" and used it as an excuse to subject herself to an abusive relationship in which she rewarded her abuser out of some sense of chasing a high. Maybe she spent too much time in high altitudes where oxygen deprivation is sometimes the king of the mountain.

[Katie de Leeuw · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author rudely dismisses all other therapy methods & provides no objective evidence that her own work. Anecdotal ‘evidence’ from her own larger-than-life experiences make her sound like she's got a stick up her arse. She's produced 500 pages of unstructured ramblings with only a few helpful sentences thrown in here & there.

[Ifeoma · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so terrible that I honestly could not finish it no matter how hard I persevered. It was mostly fluff and very very very little substance. I got the book because I listened to an episode of The Unmistakable Creative where she came on and did a fantastic job interviewing. She could’ve compressed the important ideas of the book into an article instead of writing a long ass book.

[Cindy Roesel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve grown up believing that one is either motivated by love or fear. Of course, we experience both in our lives, but I know I’m not a fear-based person. I believe I’m influenced by love and try to focus on the positive. It’s a daily exercise to keep one’s mind in that frame and not let the negativity around us, influence our mind and behavior. (Of course, a good cocktail of anti-depressants can fix that, right away.)
A new book by Kristen Ulmer, THE ART of FEAR (HarperWave) argues fear is misunderstood. That we often ignore it, push past it or somehow overcome it, in order to not deal with it. Ulmer believes that by acknowledging and embracing our fear, we can use it to our benefit and turn it into a positive force in our lives.
Kristin Ulmer knows fear really well. She was recognized as the best extreme skier in the world for twelve years, at which time she knew she could get incredibly injured or die every time she put on her skis. In her chit-chatty book, she argues that fear isn’t intended to cause us problems, that in fact, the only true issue we face with fear is our misguided reaction to it.
Ulmer starts her book by explaining why we’ve come to view fear as something negative. She gives us the tools to turn our thinking around making fear just one of the any other voices in our head. The tools she teaches explain how we can learn to live with fear in the same way we live with joy, love and gratitude. It’s all about a mindfulness tool she calls an attitude “shift.”  This way, Ulmer says we can experience fear in a simpler, more authentic way, transforming our relationship with this emotion and living with our true nature, instead of letting it drain us.
Reading through her book, one learns it’s taken Kristen fifteen years as a mindset facilitator to come to this point. So if you’re thinking about trying this out, don’t expect results overnight. But I think anything that leads to a happier, healthier more expansive life is certainly worth giving a shot.

Merged review:

I’ve grown up believing that one is either motivated by love or fear. Of course, we experience both in our lives, but I know I’m not a fear-based person. I believe I’m influenced by love and try to focus on the positive. It’s a daily exercise to keep one’s mind in that frame and not let the negativity around us, influence our mind and behavior. (Of course, a good cocktail of anti-depressants can fix that, right away.)
A new book by Kristen Ulmer, THE ART of FEAR (HarperWave) argues fear is misunderstood. That we often ignore it, push past it or somehow overcome it, in order to not deal with it. Ulmer believes that by acknowledging and embracing our fear, we can use it to our benefit and turn it into a positive force in our lives.
Kristin Ulmer knows fear really well. She was recognized as the best extreme skier in the world for twelve years, at which time she knew she could get incredibly injured or die every time she put on her skis. In her chit-chatty book, she argues that fear isn’t intended to cause us problems, that in fact, the only true issue we face with fear is our misguided reaction to it.
Ulmer starts her book by explaining why we’ve come to view fear as something negative. She gives us the tools to turn our thinking around making fear just one of the any other voices in our head. The tools she teaches explain how we can learn to live with fear in the same way we live with joy, love and gratitude. It’s all about a mindfulness tool she calls an attitude “shift.”  This way, Ulmer says we can experience fear in a simpler, more authentic way, transforming our relationship with this emotion and living with our true nature, instead of letting it drain us.
Reading through her book, one learns it’s taken Kristen fifteen years as a mindset facilitator to come to this point. So if you’re thinking about trying this out, don’t expect results overnight. But I think anything that leads to a happier, healthier more expansive life is certainly worth giving a shot.

[Miri Niedrauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally! A self-help book that doesn't fall back in meditation and "just breathing" as the solution to all of your inner turmoil problems.

If you deal with anxiety, struggle to understand and recognize emotions, or are just tired of the constant flow of nonsense self-help books, I highly recommend this book.

Kristen Ulmer shares her own strategies in dealing with fear and other emotions that we tend to perceive in a negative light. As she is a highly accomplished athlete and professional in her own life, it is much easier to lend credence to her claims than it is with many authors of psychology books.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
Acknowledging fear and not repressing or running from it is a good thing, but the advice to fire your therapist doesn't sit well with me. There is more than a wrong view of fear in therapy and there are people out there that really need the services and knowledge of a good therapist. People should be encouraged to seek mental health professionals in this day and age.

[Erin Lingle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would give it zero stars if i could. I rarely stop reading a book but I couldn’t take one more second of it. Fortunately, Libro.fm refunded the $3 I paid for it. I kept waiting for it to get better and it only got worse. When the author said for the reader to stop going to therapy, I couldn’t listen anymore. How reckless can you be? It’s terrifying that the author coaches people out in the world. Yikes.

[Kara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much fluff and not enough substance. Pretty repetitive, although it is definitely useful in parts. Probably could have been about a quarter of the length and had a more powerful impact without all the extra stories and examples that did more to confuse than to enlighten.

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was crap. 300 pages and she didn’t say anything

[Taiba Alhumaidhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started off wonderful, but towards the last few chapters it got very repetitive and boring.

[Elijah Ball · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was going to give this book a 3 star review until the very last page of the book. Yes this book gives some insightful perspectives on fear as well as other emotions that are truthfully connected and effected by fear itself. Which is why i felt the book should receive at least 3 stars. I have to give her a nod on the way she approaches the idea of fear and how we can better our relationship with our emotions.

HOWEVER, there are a lot of crappy things about this book. For starters, she rants on and on about things that don’t connect well with the topic and you become either lost or uninterested in the point she tries to make. This book was 300 pages long and she could have easily made it under 150 pages.

She also writes with a pretty big ego and you can tell that her research is fairly underwhelming because of how she clearly assumes things about certain practices without real knowledge of them.

If you want to know the entire point of the book that can be completed in one sentence, it’s that you should take time to feel the emotion and ask it questions about why it feels how it does instead of trying to repress it. This eventually minimizes the hold that the emotions (mostly fear) have over you.

I thought that despite how poorly this book was written, that would enough be worth 3 stars. But, then at the end of the book this lady writes that she still has a complicated relationship with fear and can’t even sleep through the whole night…

I’m in my seat, cracking up right now, because the whole book she was proclaiming how freeing her techniques and messages were!!

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provided me with some very helpful ways to address my issues with stress, anxiety and fearfulness. The idea of a person being the CEO of 10,000 employees (our various emotions, thoughts and minds) really spoke to me and my own existential struggle. I really loved her suggestion that we need to embrace these 10,000 employees as a good parent would his/her own children. Instead of immediately judging our thoughts and emotions as “good” or “bad” or desperately trying to ignore or suppress them, we need to welcome them and fully hear them out. I also found the idea of flow and allowing our bodies to experience our emotions, feelings and thoughts, both the “good” and the “bad,” very useful. Another plus is that she addresses her topic in a non “woo woo” way, so it makes these ideas accessible to people who don’t subscribe to a mindfulness directed way of working on the self. This book will definitely be helpful to someone even if they don’t buy into a meditation/mindfulness practice.

[Hassan Ah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is honestly one of the most important books I’ve ever read

It is truly transformational

Perspectives I’ve not come across before

I will be rereading it and noting and highlighting all the magnificent quotes I’ve come across

This is the type of books that bring about profound healing that deeply captures and influences the subconscious mind

It is a respite from the more recently widespread scientific or empirically based self help or healing approaches which speak more so to the conscious mind
But I believe there is the crucial aspect in which healing is most effective if it is resonant and bold and strong and impactful

This is what I felt and gotten from this book
True illuminating and waking up energy that generates the enthusiasm in me

This is why the skeptics won’t understand because they’re unwilling to relate with the ignition and aliveness all around it, with the stories and emotional dialogue and the parables and all the profound tidbits

Truly one of the books that I want to absorb and adopt and follow its message and have it embedded deeply in my character

[Spellbind Consensus]

*The Art of Fear* challenges the traditional notion that fear is an enemy to be conquered. Instead, it presents fear as a natural, valuable emotion that deserves acknowledgment and understanding. The author argues that resisting or suppressing fear only intensifies it, leading to greater anxiety and disconnection from oneself.

The book advocates for a compassionate and curious relationship with fear. Rather than trying to eliminate it, readers are encouraged to listen to fear, feel it fully, and learn from it. This approach fosters emotional resilience and deeper self-awareness.

Drawing from personal experience and psychological insight, the author highlights how fear can be a guide rather than a barrier. Tools such as mindfulness, body awareness, and acceptance are emphasized as effective ways to engage with fear without letting it dominate one’s actions.

Ultimately, the message is clear: true courage lies not in the absence of fear, but in learning to coexist with it, using it as a source of energy, intuition, and growth.

[Michele Dunkel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Loved it! It took awhile for me to resonate with what Kristen teaches. I even considered not finishing the book, but there was just enough to keep me reading. I would put the book down and pick up a different book I was reading at the same time to clear my head. But, I wanted to "hear" what Kristen was saying, so I would "chew" on the ideas. Then, about halfway through, we started talking the same language and I started really "getting" the idea of honoring fear and decided to try it while doing doughnuts on a seadoo. Asking myself "what am I feeling now" and "now" and, how about "now". I am loving the new awareness and acceptance and experience of my feelings, even when the feelings are just related to mundane concerns. I highly recommend this book.

[PabloPig · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very well written book that juxtaposes the personal experience of the author with the explanations of the nature of fear and of what we can do to come to grips with it. It is not desultory rambling as some reviewers here seem to think. By alternating personal accounts with discursive material, Kristen Ulmer draws the reader into the heart of the problem, which is the common misunderstanding of the nature and function of fear.

I listened to the audio version, well read by Jane Oppenheimer who brings to the text energy and urgency.

I have read a good number of books on psychology and spirituality, and find that this one contributes something new and important. It is one of the few books I felt impelled to give to friends.

[A.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extreme skier knows about fear, right? The thing is, she knows about it from a side most people don't experience. Way out on the far side of fear.

And it did her no favours.

She's brutally honest about her life, her mistakes, and her experiences.

And this title is of course, a tie in to her new career of life coach. Her idea is that you cannot defeat fear; and to try and live without it would make you feel ... nothing. The only way you can walk across the fire is if you feel the fear, your feet sweat, and protect you from the hot coals. Feel no fear and your feet get burnt.

Her writing style is quite distinctive and the text is interspersed with asides, stories and quotes.

3 stars

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was difficult to rate it. I decided for 2 stars instead of 3 as the at least 100 pages became so repetitive . She had something to say but within 100 pages not 300…. I also disagree with some general critics she made about psycho therapy, also as she takes out a couple of theories from it to build her „own“ concept of emotional intelligence…

Besides this she had some good thoughts taking a lot from Buddism and simmilar ares. In general this means don’t avoid your emotions Worthisp them even the unpleasant once, especially fear . The message is right and gave me at least another view on an old and important topic

Note: I read in English and made the review in English too but I am a not a native English speaker, so sorry for all mistakes.

[Nikolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a game changer for me. I walk around a lot less anxious and fearful since reading it and trying the techniques it. I didn’t read it from cover to cover, but I only skipped those parts that I knew about already.

The anecdotes from the author life are fascinating. They don’t necessarily add to the techniques she gives for addressing fear, but for me they Kind of gave her the right to address me as a reader in a very direct way. She definitely knows what fear is, and it’s her lived experience together with her application and study of the psychology of fear and zen techniques that make the book so effective and powerful. I think it could have been edited down a little, but then I wouldn’t want to be the editor telling the author what to do!

[Abbi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can count on one hand the number of books I haven’t been able to, at the very least, toil through to the end. But I just really couldn’t do this one. A few of the most basic, underlying ideas could be useful for some self-improvement if you’re in a reflective mood - but these could be gleaned from the dust cover alone. The only parts I genuinely enjoyed were the inset stories about her skiing. The rest I found to be a maddening and ceaseless stream of mixed metaphors and humorously bad parables combined with what I think is some genuinely concerning stuff regarding her opinions on therapy & science.

[Louise Yarnall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is Zen with the attitude of a former extreme skier—which the author is. The first half reads like an EST session, where the author is calling out all your contradictions, and hers. It also feels like a buildup that makes you wonder: Is this just hype or she going to deliver the promised key to enlightenment? The second half of the book does offer some thought exercises that, if done seriously, really seem to offer a way of getting in touch with all your feelings in a very useful way. I learned something here, and see a way to keep learning. Thank you!

[Bridget · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads more like a biography then a self help book. In chapter 4 she suggests that taking psychotic meditation shouldn’t be done, even though she’s not a doctor.

There’s a lot of banter and odd story examples harping about the same key points over and over without much explanation about how to achieve her amazing results.

This could have been a much more interesting book if it had been edited to be shorter.

She could have spent more detail on addressing how to accept and live with the guidance of your fear or ‘shadow-self’ as she calls it.

[Yoric · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like this concept, that fear comes from our perception of separation. (the opposite of wholeness).
This means if we could have power over our fears with becoming more aware of being connected.

With this inevitable separation, everything and everybody—which are no longer part of you—become unfamiliar and unknown. And because you don’t know what they are or what they’re up to, you are now vulnerable to them, and they can hurt you.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish, despite trying. Got this book on the recommendation from someone whom I respect. But the writing was repetitive and rambling and just a bit too weird. I put it down several times after slogging through parts of it, only to pick it up again and slog some more. Then I started scanning, hoping to get to the good tidbits, only to find it even more disjointed, repetitive and rambling.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

“For the story of your dance with Fear is the story of your life”

I’m not sure whether I agreed with everything in this book, but continued reading out of sheer respect for the author. Found it so interesting to read about the places and experiences she has been to and through and how central Fear was to her and how it has and always will be her greatest love.