Living without fear

Andreas Winter's new guide analyses what lies behind fears and how to get rid of them

With his depth-psychological coaching approach, the bestselling author once again succeeds in uncovering the unconscious causes of our behavior. Fear in all its forms is also one of the learned reactions to emotional stress. However, if you know what triggers it, you can free yourself from it.

Fear makes you fat...
Fear has many faces: it causes people to lie, bully, envy or be stingy. It makes people fat, addicted and sick, as it is often the cause of perfectionism, depression and cancer. The successful author and coach Andreas Winter even believes that "we live in a society of extreme fear, with a widespread and well-organized fear industry." This is because fears are good business, first by spreading and stoking them and then offering supposed antidotes.
According to the qualified teacher, fear is based on the helplessness of a child and has no place in the life of a confident adult. With his new book "What your fear wants to tell you", Winter has set himself the goal of uncovering the causes of these diverse fears and regaining control over life.

Learned fear
"People think they are afraid of spiders, strangers, elevators, the dark, snakes, needles, war, poverty or the police. But there is something completely different behind it, something that is the same for everyone. It is the loss of control!", says the introduction to the book. In his earlier bestsellers, Winter impressively described the "psychological algorithm" that determines the human desire to fulfill one's own needs without stress or resistance.
He describes fear as an unreflective reaction in anticipation of a threat, which comes from a time when the ability to make free decisions was not yet developed. It therefore fulfils a protective function to avoid the stress that usually arose in childhood in connection with an emotional emergency situation. The corresponding conditioning is a powerful factor in learning behavior - it often accompanies a person for a lifetime. Such self-created behavior patterns are reinforced through repetition, confirmation and deep emotional impressions and are subconsciously transferred to other stimuli. You therefore have to work with the subconscious to get to the fear patterns.

Dissolve the fear
Fear is therefore not stupidity, but an intelligent but immature attempt to protect oneself from repeating an extreme loss of control. For Andreas Winter, it may therefore protect a child from disempowerment, rejection, excessive demands and loss of control - but not an adult who has completely different options. To resolve fear, its actual causes must be made clear by asking those affected to answer three questions: "Why exactly are you afraid? What is the worst that could happen to you in this particular situation? What is it worth risking the worst for?"
Using various examples from his many years of coaching practice, Winter makes it clear how these feelings resulted from subconscious learning processes and unreflected experiences. In addition to the book, the author produced an audio coaching session of the same name on CD, in which the ability to experience images is used to get to the bottom of one's own fears and blockages. In this way, readers and listeners are "taken by the hand" to find out what is behind the fear and how they can get rid of it together.

Book tip:
Andreas Winter: What your fear wants to tell you. Understanding and overcoming blockages. With extra tips to combat panic attacks. Mankau Verlag, 1st edition September 2016, paperback, 194 pages, €9.95 (D) / €10.30 (A), ISBN 978-3-86374-323-9.

CD tip:
Andreas Winter: What your fear wants to tell you. Understanding and overcoming blockages. Audio coaching with self-hypnosis instructions. Mankau Verlag, 1st edition September 2016. Audio CD, total running time approx. 70 minutes, €15 (D/A), ISBN 978-3-86374-332-1.

Link recommendations:
More information about the paperback "What your fear wants to tell you"
To the reading sample in PDF format
More information about the audio CD "What your fear wants to tell you"
More about the author Andreas Winter
To the Internet forum with the author Andreas Winter