Irrational Fear Cure by Teri Smith Pickens

 

The Irrational Fear Cure (in Four Miraculous Steps)

Teri Smith-Pickens
Self-help/Motivational
 

Flying Enigma Press, January 5, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-0-9761596-0-5
$14.99 paper
Order your copy here

ABOUT THE BOOK

A needed prescription for our irrational fears

The Irrational Fear Cure is a radical yet visionary book that serves as a blueprint for achieving personal and societal well-being. It is a timely resource for a world living in the age of a global pandemic.

Author Teri Smith-Pickens, a mental health practitioner, interviewed more than 200 people to help them to better understand where their fears and anxieties come from. She shares these stories throughout the book, highlighting how many people are living in survival mode stemming from trauma in childhood, and as adults, who now use obsessive compulsive behaviors to fill voids they feel on the inside.

She outlines what happens to a mind already filled with irrational fears and chronic anxiety when it encounters the rational fear of a pandemic. By unmasking the truth behind these addictions, she gives a deeper understanding of the fears we all face and how to cure them. 

Teri makes it clear that it is not part of God’s plan for us to live in our childhood primal brains and remain in bondage to our fears. Instead, He wants us to put on our spiritual anchor and break free from all fears and anxiety. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Teri Smith-Pickens is an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker, in addition to her work as a mental health practitioner and coach. She has inspired and transformed many lives through her coaching, speaking and media appearances. In 2007, Teri had a supernatural revelation that changed the course of her life, giving her unerring courage to confront important, controversial mental health issues in children’s lives and the society at large, giving birth to her book, The Fear Cure in Four Miraculous Steps.

Author’s Website: www.thefearcure.com 
Author’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/teri-pickens-b9387a13/
Author’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/fushia18/ 
Author’s Twitter: www.twitter.com/TeriPickens 
Author’s Facebook: www.facebook.com/centerforeducationandhealing/
Author’s Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/teri_pickens/
Author’s YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCp1eKtZdi37ZfFDjZsK9drQ
 
BOOKING INFO: Nicole Ballengee, nicole@prbythebook.com

Author Q&A

The Irrational Fear Cure in Four Miraculous Steps

By Teri Smith-Pickens

1. Your book is titled The Irrational Fear Cure in Four Miraculous Steps. With so many people suffering from various anxieties today, is it truly possible to cure our fears?

Absolutely! It is the same concept used in psychotherapy when a client has anxiety which is debilitating and disrupts their functioning. It is a signal of something they fear, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is used to change the person’s mindset to new and better thinking.

2. You interviewed 200 people to demonstrate fears and anxiety for your book. What primary insight did you take away from talking with those people?

That we all suffer from different levels of anxiety, which is a signal of something feared, usually a threat to survival, which impacts our mental health. People refuse to acknowledge being mentally ill, or to admit to symptoms that are debilitating to their functioning.

3. How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic is worsening peoples’ anxieties?

We ‘all’ live in Survival Mode, caused by childhood fears gone awry, which causes our thinking to be fear-based and irrational. Now, when you superimpose a rational event like (Covid 19) onto this mental state, it causes an exponentially increased level of anxiety.

4. What is your number one piece of advice for people suffering from irrational fears?

Talk to someone about the negative thoughts in your head, otherwise you will continue to feed the fear and trigger the irrational parts of your brain which causes your decisions to be impulsive and not well thought out; when you talk to someone you name and arrest the fear so it stops growing and is less frightening.

5. You make it clear in your book that most irrational fear stems from something that occurred in childhood. Do you have special advice for parents to help their children avoid internalizing a fear that will cause anxiety as an adult?

Absolutely, be vigilant & aggressively protect your young child from all fears until they have developed the ability to reason. Don’t trust their care to others during this primal period. Avoid unsupervised or inadvertent exposure to stuff their minds can’t process, and which ends up in their “implicit” memory, setting their Fight/Flight/Freeze response on autopilot, where it later becomes irrational.

6. Your book also discusses the importance of three-fold development for well-being – the body, mind and spirit, with the spirit being the most important factor. Why do you think so many people today leave out the spiritual aspect, and what impact does that have?

They are missing their Spiritual anchor which anchors them to something bigger than them. In childhood our anchor is our parents/guardians which later gives way to a belief in God, but when fear is experienced before reasoning comes, it shuts off trust and we go to Survival Mode by depending only on ourselves. This is the psychological mask we wear to cover our authentic self which suffered pain/hurt. If we couldn’t trust our parent/guardians to protect us from our fears, we are not going to trust a God we can’t see.

7. Does someone have to follow a spiritual life / faith life to benefit from your book?

This is a tough question because the answer to getting rid of Fear is Faith, which is spiritual. They can use the tools to lessen their fears without God, for example, using psychotherapy, but they will not have “the cure”; they will simply continue exchanging one obsessive compulsive behavior for another, to feel like they can stay in their own skin. Only Faith gives the permanent anchor, which is Spiritual.

8. Ultimately, what do you hope readers take away from your book?

As a species, we must understand the imperative of protecting children from their        fears to avoid living in fear-based Survival Mode, and to decrease the annual incidence of suicide for those who just can’t negotiate this “dark night of the soul”.

9. How and where can readers purchase The Irrational Fear Cure?

The book is available at regular bookstores like, Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, etc. and on my website, www.thefearcure.com

10. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about the book?

Don’t use human reasoning when reading this book, look to your own symptoms that will tell you that something is wrong – look at what you have tried so far and see if it worked.

My Review

Smith-Pickens revitalizes her 2009 book with updates for a new decade. With new statistics and polls and university studies to back her up, the author shares the definitions of fear, its causes and our reactions, and steps to reclaim our lives from Survival Mode.

I began reading this manuscript after a church service in which our pastor shared a message of hope, hope for tomorrow, and why Christians have an advantage of claiming and living in hope. The juxtaposition of reading that most people experience times of Survival Mode, described as a “leprosy of the mind,” is intriguing. Smith-Pickens defines real fears and imaginary, or irrational, fears, but that our brains still treat them the same way, causing physical reactions with the release of chemicals or muscle preparation, readying us to survive the sense of threat.

In twelve chapters, the author shares methods for dealing with our fears, stemming often from childhood, or from current events. People of faith, she explains, shouldn’t put our hopes and expectations of dealing with our fears in inanimate objects, for that is submitting to idolatry. Case in point: trusting masks to prevent being infected with Covid-19. Spending time in God’s Word is one way to stop building up our irrational fears. Fears developed in childhood often manifest in other diagnosed conditions. Putting our trust in the right place can be a way to combat these behaviors.

Filled with current stories of events to illustrate her points, Smith-Pickens offers readers simple practices to guide us out of existing in Survival Mode to healing and living an authentic life that resists isolation, poor health, and broken relationships. A few general resources and a more specific reference lists are included.

Write Now Literary Tour with Jess Lederman and Hearts Set Free

 

Write Now Literary is pleased to be organizing a two-week book tour and giveaway for Hearts Set Free by Jess Lederman. The book tour will run January 18-29, 2021.

 

Book Title: Hearts Set Free

Genre: Literary Fiction/ Historical/Christian

 

ISBN-10 : 1098511093

ISBN-13 : 978-1098511098

A graduate with a degree in music from Columbia University, Jess Lederman is an author of Christian-themed fiction who lives with his wife and two young sons in the Pacific Northwest.

He is currently at work on a novel that begins in the last days of the Wild West and ends in Las Vegas in 1955. When Jess is not writing or chasing his young sons around, he can usually be found at the piano playing Chopin nocturnes for his wife, Ling.

Seven Lives Inexorably Intertwined. Over Eighty-Six Years. That Will Bring a Revelation Beyond What Any of Them Could Imagine.

 

The Alaska Territory, 1925. When Yura Noongwook’s husband abandons her and her thirteen-year-old son, she vows to win him back and destroy the woman who stole his heart. They embark on an epic cross-country quest that leads them to the Nevada desert, where they meet a man who has turned into the last thing anyone expected him to become …

 

David Gold. Reno, 1930. A Bible-school dropout known as the Pummelin’ Preacher. His boxing career is fading, just like his faith. But then a former call girl shows up, tells him about the rag-tag congregation she’s part of; how their pastor was murdered. And that the Spirit is moving and David’s destiny is to lead their tiny flock.

 

Las Vegas, 2011. Cable TV star Tim Faber is an atheist bent on proving God is only alive in people’s imaginations. But Joan Reed, his producer, is trying to recapture the faith of her youth. And both of them are driven to unravel a mystery surrounding the Big Bang theory, never dreaming the answer will forever change their lives.

 

To do that, they have to meet with the now 99-year-old Luke Noongwook and David Gold’s grandson, Daniel.

 

The veil is being pulled back, but none of them are prepared for what they’ll find on the other 

side.

Read my review here.

Join Jess's Mailing List 

 

Join the authors mailing list to be entered into a drawing

https://www.jesslederman.com/special-offers

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Chapter One

Luke and Yura: The Alaska Territory, 1925

 

My father deserted my mother and me when I was thirteen years

old. He had become famous that winter on the Great Race of Mercy, one

of the Athabascan mushers who brought diphtheria serum to Nome

and saved ten thousand lives. He’d done the impossible, a blind run in

the howling darkness, crossing the open ice of the Norton Sound, the

temperature falling to sixty below, the sun a distant dream. He was our

hero, our North Star.

 

And then he was gone.

 

He left us, of course, for a woman. A blizzard had hit him at

Unalakleet, a storm so powerful that it travelled four thousand miles,

till at last it reached New York and froze the Hudson River. The woman

lived in just that far-away land, on the wild island of Manhattan, and

her name was Kathleen Byrne. The Hearst papers had been giving the

Great Race front-page headlines; Kathleen was a reporter, lean and

hungry, she’d go to the ends of the earth for a good story, and one day

she got her chance.

 

No one in my hometown of Nenana had seen anything like her,

a slender redhead with emerald eyes, smoking Lucky Strikes and

exhaling expertly through her nostrils, this coolly confident young

woman with fiery hair.

 

She wanted details that would bring the story to life, so Father

brought her to our home to show off his sled dogs. At least, the ones

who’d survived, for three he had raised since they were pups had died

on the trail. Somewhere in the madness of that journey he’d forgotten

to cover their groins with rabbit skins, and they’d perished of frostbite

in the unfathomable cold.

 

I gaped at her stupidly.

 

“Excuse my son,” said my mother. “He has no manners.”

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/96d196a638/?

 

Sign up for a free monthly craft summit from WWA

 

Serving all writers since 1948 WWA...Announcement What You need to Know from the Wisconsin Writers Association Have a plot knot you just can't untie? Does your protagonist feel more like a caricature than a character?  Yeah, writing is hard, but you no longer have to face these challenges alone! The Wisconsin Writers Association is pleased to announce its  Craft Solutions Summit with Ryan R. Campbell! This monthly event offers participants the opportunity to troubleshoot their story woes with other writers in our community--with help from the WWA Craft Development Chair and International Book Awards finalist, Ryan (R.R.) Campbell. How does it work? The first five people to sign up for the summit each month will be invited to join the call and 1) share one writerly bit of pride, 2) one writing-related woe they're facing, and 3) their goal for the next month. We'll then, as a group, talk out each other's challenges in order to encourage, inspire, and urge each other back to the page with solutions at the tips of our fingers! Sounds great, but what if I'm not among the first five to sign up? Never fear! If you're not among the first five to sign up for the summit, you can still watch the discussion live with other WWA members. During the event, you'll be able to learn from others while sharing your own insight via the Zoom text chat.  And then, hey: you can try to sign up again next month! When and where will these be held? The Craft Solutions Summit with Ryan R. Campbell will be held via Zoom on the third Thursday of every month from 7 - 8:15 p.m. Register Join us on February 4th at 7PM for an Open Mic and Craft Chat with Thomas Wayne King and Debbi King. Tom and Debbi will host the evening and present a short craft talk called Your GPS for Writing Success: Polishing Your Work.  Want to read at the open mic? Email Julia at jnusbaum11@gmail.com. We have 10 spots open. First come first serve.  Register Become a Member     If you no longer wish to receive these emails you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Write Now tour with Bre's Heavenly Adventures prize drawing

 

Write Now Literary is pleased to be organizing a two-week book tour and Amazon gift card giveaway for Bre's Heavenly Adventures with Jesus by Breanna Brown. The book tour will run Jan 11-22, 2021.

ASIN: B08R6M41Q1

Genre: Christian Children's Book

Bre Brown currently serves as the Youth Minister of Watchman Ministries, alongside her Husband Eric Smith, located in Fredericksburg, VA. She’s been regarded, as the "prophetic voice for the next generation." She received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Louisville and currently possesses her qualified mental health professional registration in the state of Virginia. She is currently pursuing her graduate certificate in non-profit studies. She is the CEO and founder of Child Enrichment Solutions LLC. Which is a full-service coaching and consulting firm that helps youth to identify negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that inhibit them from achieving personal achievement utilize constructive coping strategies to lead happy, empowered, and successful lives.

 

Bre gets angry when her father breaks his promise and refuses to play with her. But Bre's mom tells her that she another father named Jesus-and he is the best father ever. He is always there, always ready to listen, and he will never stop loving her-even when she has made a mistake! So Bre goes to heaven to meet him...and this book will tell you what happened there!

"As the tears began streaming down her face. Her mama stopped to ask, "will you be ok?" Why doesn't he love me? Bre asked. He always does this! Do you think he's mad?"

 

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hearts Set Free epic historical inspirational drama

   

Hearts Set Free
Jess Lederman
 
March, 2019
400  pp
Available in $12.99/$19.99 print, $2.99 ebook, $21.99 audio
Buy on Amazon 

Barnes and Noble 
 
About the book
Seven Lives Inexorably Intertwined. Over Eighty-Six Years.
That Will Bring a Revelation Beyond What Any of Them Could Imagine.

The Alaska Territory, 1925. When Yura Noongwook’s husband abandons her and her thirteen-year-old son, she vows to win him back and destroy the woman who stole his heart. They embark on an epic cross-country quest that leads them to the Nevada desert, where they meet a man who has turned into the last thing anyone expected him to become …

David Gold. Reno, 1930. A Bible-school dropout known as the Pummelin’ Preacher. His boxing career is fading, just like his faith. But then a former call girl shows up, tells him about the rag-tag congregation she’s part of; how their pastor was murdered. And that the Spirit is moving and David’s destiny is to lead their tiny flock.

Las Vegas, 2011. Cable TV star Tim Faber is an atheist bent on proving God is only alive in people’s imaginations. But Joan Reed, his producer, is trying to recapture the faith of her youth. And both of them are driven to unravel a mystery surrounding the Big Bang theory, never dreaming the answer will forever change their lives.
To do that, they have to meet with the now 99-year-old Luke Noongwook and David Gold’s grandson, Daniel.
The veil is being pulled back, but none of them are prepared for what they’ll find on the other side.
 
My review
Hearts Set Free is a cautious mix of a mainstream story invaded by the Holy Spirit. It’s not a tame Christian tale, nor follows the traditional Christian literature ground rules, so if you expect traditional pure inspirational lit, this isn’t it.
 
Author Jess Lederman creates a puzzle of time and characters, seemingly disparate eras and goals, and begins to weave them together, dancing back and forth in time and place. Several storylines emerge: in the 1920s and 30s a First Nation Alaskan husband leaves him family, who some years later, decide to go after him; a young man called to ministry during WWI makes a left turn into the underworld of professional fighting; in the modern era, a pair of lovers in midlife crisis seek an elusive genius’s theorem regarding the universe for their television reality documentary while debunking the God myth, and a Las Vegas pastor searches for redemption. Many pieces of the story set the foundation for the final battle.

Some ways into the story, it becomes heavily nuanced with the gospel message and lengthy biblical exegesis, as all characters in all walks of life are introduced to faith. These are real people who are often trapped in real sin.

The book should be read in larger chunks, or the reader might consider keeping notes of characters and names in significant historical eras, as several of them interact at different times and have very similar names. The chapters jump around through time and among the players until they begin to coalesce as little bits of details begin the reveal the puzzle’s picture.
 
Hearts Set Free is not an easy or light read. Adult language and situations are part of the story. Ultimately, Lederman shares the battle between spiritual realities and the redeeming love only Christ can offer. 

About the author

A graduate with a degree in music from Columbia University, Jess Lederman is an author of Christian-themed fiction who lives with his wife and two young sons in the Pacific Northwest.

He is currently at work on a novel that begins in the last days of the Wild West and ends in Las Vegas in 1955. When Jess is not writing or chasing his young sons around, he can usually be found at the piano playing Chopin nocturnes for his wife, Ling.

Dandelions book 4 of Waxwood series by Tam May

Dandelions

Tam May, book 4 Waxwood series

Genres: Historical fiction, women’s fiction, family saga/drama
Release date: December 20, 2020
$3.99 Ebook
$10.99 Print, 266 pp

Buy on Amazon
Barnes and Noble

About the Book:
She had more in common with her nemesis than she wanted to believe…

For Vivian Alderdice, the 20th century begins with a new start. Now a working girl and progressive reformer like her friend, Nettie Grace, she has forsaken the Gilded Age opulence of Nob Hill for the humbler surroundings of Waxwood’s commercial district. Rather than whittle away her days with other wealthy young women in gossip, parties, and flirtations, she sells talcum powder and strawberry sodas to customers at Nettie’s Drugstore and helps the poor to read at the Waxwood Women’s Lending Library and Reading Room.

But sometimes the scars of the past leave bitterness behind …

Harland Stevens, the man who ruined her brother’s life two years before, appears like another specter in Vivian’s life and, in spite of herself, Vivian is compelled to help him escape from a hell of his own.

Find more here.

My Review:
The Waxwood saga gets a new twist when Vivian Alderdice learns another lesson in compassion. I’m drawn into this series of the West Coast elite during the turn of the twentieth century – the Gilded Age in San Francisco. Author Tam May has done an artful job staying in character and context, scene and setting of this often overlooked and elusive era of modern history.

The Alderdice family is not what it seems – but then, everyone has secrets. The saga begins in book 1 with Vivian Alderdice’s grandmother, whose secret entices Vivian on a journey of discovery, first to unravel a mysterious friendship, then in subsequent books, a journey of self-discovery. Vivian chose to step away from the illusions of the wealthy elite to find a useful place in society. She moves in with a new friend and leaps headlong into aiding the working class society of Waxwood, the real life community just outside the resort community outside of San Francisco where the well-to-do spend summers.

In this fourth book, when Vivian’s past makes an unwelcome appearance in the guise of a former friend taking care of a relative now in a near catatonic state, the friend elicits Vivian’s help. Roger thinks she can reach inside his cousin Harland Stevens’s broken mind and find the man who once controlled the fate of young men which included her brother, resulting in disaster. Vivian has despised Stevens for ruining their lives.

Vivian receives a mysterious message about forgiveness from a beggar woman, and must decide whether to act on it. The lessons she’s learning about compassion have a greater impact than she expects. I look forward to reading more about her journey in future books.

Although readers will benefit from reading the books in order, each book is complete if you give yourself time to allow the story to unfold at its own pace. The Gilded Age, after all, was a gentile time. Take a step back and allow yourself to be immersed in an era of change. Told from a tight angle of omniscient perspective, readers follow the story mostly from Vivian’s point of view with occasional insights from the supporting characters.


About the Author
Tam May started writing when she was fourteen, and writing became her voice. She loves history and wants readers to love it too, so she writes historical fiction that lives and breathes a world of the past. She fell in love with San Francisco and its rich history when she learned about the city's resilience and rebirth after the 1906 earthquake and fire during a walking tour. She grew up in the United States and earned a B.A. and M.A. in English. She worked as an English college instructor, interesting a class of wary freshmen in Henry James' fiction. She also worked as an EFL teacher, using literature to teach English to business professionals before she became a full-time writer.

Her book Lessons From My Mother's Life debuted at #1 on Amazon in the Historical Fiction Short Stories category. She's also published a Gilded age family saga titled The Waxwood Series. Set in Northern California at the close of the 19th century, the series tells the story of the Alderdices, a wealthy San Francisco family crumbling amid revolutionary changes and shifting values in America's Gilded Age. Tam's current project delves into historical mystery fiction. The Paper Chase Mysteries is set in Northern California at the turn of the 20th century and features amateur sleuth and epistolary expert Adele Gossling, a young, progressive, and independent young woman whose talent for solving crimes comes into direct conflict with her new community, where people are apt to prefer the Victorian women over the new century's New Woman.

Tam lives in Texas but calls San Francisco and the Bay Area "home". When she's not writing, she's reading classic literature, watching classic films, cross-stitching, or cooking yummy vegetarian dishes.

For more information about Tam May and her work, check out her website at www.tammayauthor.com. You can also sign up for her newsletter, which offers glimpses into the nooks and crannies of history that aren't in the history books and subscriber-exclusive sneak peeks, giveaways, and polls. plus a free short story.