It takes courage to transform the life you have into the life you want. But how do you dare to be brave when you are biologically wired to see risk and uncertainty as threats to your survival?
In this beautifully illustrated volume of short chapters, award-winning author and qualified scientist, Ruth Clare, reveals a powerful truth: fear isn't your enemy, it's untapped energy that fuels transformation... if you know how to use it. Drawing from neuroscience, creative practices and personal experience managing anxiety while chasing big dreams, Turn Fear into Courage is both an encouraging companion and a practical framework for shifting out of the primitive survival mode that is keeping you stuck, into a courageous new version of yourself.
Perfect for writers, artists, entrepreneurs and leaders who want to move beyond anxiety and self-doubt and leave their mark on their world.
Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, depression, burnout or the fallout of trauma, this book will show you how to become your own best healer.
Ruth Clare spent decades in conventional therapy recalling painful stories of her childhood growing up with a violent father and an alcoholic mother in a home where she never felt safe. Despite all the money and effort she put in to getting over her trauma, she still found herself feeling permanently on guard, swinging between cycles of anger, overwhelm and avoidance.
Desperate to find a solution, she spent years deep-diving into the emerging neuroscience of trauma, polyvagal and nervous system theory, building a framework of understanding of the way trauma lives on in the body and what we can do to discharge the survival energy that keeps us stuck.
A roadmap to trauma recovery and resilience, Beyond Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn shows you the tangible steps to take that allow you to finally let down your guard, treat yourself with more compassion and live with more openness, ease and joy.
With Beyond Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn you will learn how to:
As a child, Ruth Clare didn’t know her father was a Vietnam veteran. She didn’t know people went to war and came back changed. What she knew, was that no matter how vigilant she was, or how desperately she tried to please, she always seemed to set off her father’s anger. With a mother too scared to intervene when anger became violence, Ruth learnt to stand up for herself, and others, vowing never to allow the circumstance of her life to defeat her.
After becoming a parent, Ruth’s fear of repeating the damaging patterns of her past with her own children ignited a need to understand more about the generational impacts of war. Weaving personal stories of veterans, and research into the overlap of trauma and domestic violence in military populations, Ruth shines a much-needed light on the heartbreaking price children of veterans can pay when a parent returns home from war.
This deeply moving, award-winning memoir gives a powerful voice to the far-reaching impacts of war, and the unrecognised sacrifice of families of veterans.
“Resembling a novel in its sensory detail and riveting narrative.” Australian Book Review
"Extraordinary memoir." Booktopia
“Powerful and heart-rending memoir, told with grace and empathy.” Kate Forsyth
"Brilliantly moving" Annabel Crabb
"Thoroughly engaging." The Australian
“Stories such as Clare’s must be read.” Books + Publishing
“Ruth Clare brings history into the home with piercing intelligence, unflinching honesty and total terrifying recall.” Clare Wright
Ruth Clare is an author, TEDx speaker, and intergenerational trauma educator whose work breaks silences and drives system change, especially for military families.
Developer of the Parenting After Trauma (PAT) program, Ruth's award-winning memoir, Enemy, was published by Penguin in 2016. Her TEDx talk, The Pain of Hiding Your True Self, has been viewed more than 600,000 times.