Rebecca A. Ward, LMFT: My Publishing Journey

Rebecca A. Ward, LMFT: My Publishing Journey

At the persistent urging of friends and family, I started writing my book, The Paper Tiger Syndrome: How to Liberate Yourself from the Illusion of Fear, at the start of the COVID lockdown in March 2020. As a licensed therapist and trauma warrior, I felt compelled to share my understanding of fear with more people—in all its many faces and forms—and how to liberate yourself from it. 

Fear comes masked as anger, grief, shame, stress, overwhelm, burnout and much more. It hides in the darkness, in the unknown, and the corners of the mind where the light of conscious awareness rarely reaches. Fear is in us and around us and we don’t have to look very far to see how much it consumes the world—just turn on the news to see how much we are drawn to it.

Penning The Paper Tiger Syndrome began by facing my own fears from over two decades of traumatic losses and medical traumas. The journey through my own fears was a hard road, fraught with landmines and pitfalls; revisiting them for the book was grueling but it was also healing. I briefly share my story of my own liberation from fear in the book to serve as a source for inspiration for my readers. Today, I am on the other side of it all and grateful to be here, every day. 

Your journey may be smoother than mine (and I hope it is), but the principles of fear, stress, and trauma are something we all share. Fear is part of the human experience, but it doesn’t have to run your life.

So, you may be asking: what the heck is a “paper tiger?!” It’s a term with roots in Chinese culture that describes something or someone that appears threatening, but in fact, is powerless. I believe that it is no coincidence that The Paper Tiger Syndrome has come out during the Chinese Lunar Calendar’s, Year of the Tiger. These majestic creatures are a symbol for courage and we need courage to overcome our fears.

The paper tiger syndrome originates in the body’s primitive wiring of every human being on the planet. The trouble is that this mechanism—the nervous system—has not learned to distinguish between real tigers (imminent threats) and paper tigers (a false alarm). Our bodies experience “misfires” all the time—stress responses that wreak havoc on the health and wellbeing of society. We can change that by learning to regulate the nervous system. 

This book covers the scientific roots of humanity’s fears, how spiritual grounding can be our lifeline, along with everything readers need to liberate themselves from the fear, stress, and burnout we all experience. It’s chock full of explanations, stories and all the practices to regulate the nervous system and release fear. Once we release fear, we have deeper access to the spiritual self—the Original Blueprint®—a term I use to describe the purest form of the human expression of the soul.

Reuniting with your Original Blueprint® has no room for fear—liberating yourself from fear brings you back to unconditional love for yourself and for others …because we are all intrinsically linked. Being in a well-regulated body is a feeling few ever experience—it’s more than just the absence of fear; it is the feeling of pure contentment, inner peace, joy, and aliveness. Self-regulation is contagious, too, because nervous systems ping off each other. It is the kind of pandemic (Greek for pandemos, means all of us) we want to see happen.

If you leave this planet having liberated yourself from fear, you have given the greatest gift you can leave behind. It’s a legacy that will serve every soul on this planet—you are blocking the transmission of fear from the generations to come and restoring the wellbeing of humanity. 

Releasing your fears is what this book will help readers do. I know because it’s the same journey I took to reconnect with my own Original Blueprint®. It’s a road that has many twists and turns, detours, and roadblocks, but the journey will eventually bring you back home to yourself. My greatest wish is to help you do that.

Stay true to you, dear ones.

About the Author:

Rebecca A. Ward is the author of The Paper Tiger Syndrome: How to Liberate Yourself from the Illusion of Fear. A Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, she specializes in shock and developmental trauma, stress reduction, and the psychological symptoms associated with chronic illness. Her work is informed by somatic-based practices, including as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP). For more information, please visit https://irisinstitute.com and follow Rebecca on Instagram.

The Paper Tiger Syndrome: How to Liberate Yourself from the Illusion of Fear

Can you remember a time when you felt truly fearless? When you knew, without a doubt, that the world was safe? Can you ever remember feeling completely liberated from the undercurrent of discontent, anxiety, or suffering that’s so prevalent in modern life? For the average person, consistently experiencing that kind of freedom sounds like wishful thinking. Life’s hardships can create a sense of foreboding that’s hard to shake. But the truth is that most fears and anxieties are really just paper tigers.

Paper tigers are the thoughts and experiences that conjure up dread, but that don’t present any real danger. Missed deadlines, traffic jams, conflict with a loved one, and arguments with the boss create the same physiological responses in the human body that our ancestors experienced when they were stalked by predators on the plains. In the modern world, however, those responses are unwarranted. They’re neurological “misfires” that wreak havoc on our mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing, all in an effort to keep us “safe.”

The Paper Tiger Syndrome is a guidebook on the journey of healing and self-repair, which demonstrates that the most direct way to overcome fear, stress, and trauma in your life is to regulate your physical body. In here, the author—a trauma survivor herself—shares her own inspirational story to show you what’s possible and helps you understand how to regain control so you can freely live again.

Based largely on the principles of somatic therapy, The Paper Tiger Syndrome provides specific exercises and tools to help you walk the bridge from fear to safety to unconditional love. In that space of love—the space that exists beyond fear, trauma, or suffering—lies the purest form of the human expression of your soul. It’s what author Rebecca Ward calls your Original Blueprint®. Learn to reclaim it.

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Category: On Writing