Brave New You

A guide to understanding everyday fears that hold us back—such as anxiety and stress—and step‑by‑step instructions for building a practice to manage them for a fuller, happier life.

In Brave New You, we learn that by understanding and recognizing our fears we can master them. Written by Mary Poffenroth, PhD, a scientist and fear expert who has spent her career studying fear and teaching courage, this book could not be more timely. The mental health crisis is upon us. Anxiety rates have increased threefold since 2019; rates of depression have grown fourfold. Underlying this growth is a common factor: fear. Not fight‑or‑flight fear, but the kind of pervasive everyday fears triggered by problems and issues in the world around us, like climate change, pandemics, and wars that often manifest as depression, melancholy, anxiety, and stress. And others that have been around for a lot longer, including the fear of failure or not fitting in. Because we're not adapted to managing these lingering fears we do it all wrong, allowing them to damage us physically and emotionally, which keeps us from living fully functioning, happy lives. In Brave New You, Poffenroth takes on a physiological and mental journey through fear, mixing in her personal stories about overcoming her own fears, while providing readers with a large selection of tools, or "neurohacks," so they can begin to manage their own.