Customer Reviews

When Love Meets Fear: How to Become Defense-Less and Resource-Full

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Having first read Richo's "How to be an Adult," calling When Love Meets Fear: How to Become Defense-Less and Resource-Full his "best book" is quite a statement. The former is a wonderful and life changing tome that teaches the keys to meaningful relationships with others.

When Love Meets Fear builds on that message with a book expressly on the subject of fear. The root of anger, frustration and stonewalling in relationships, understanding and accepting our fear is our greatest journey in life.

One caution: This book takes many sittings to read properly. I was able to read only a few pages then I needed to put the book down and spend a day or two thinking about what I had just read. Almost like magic, I found myself time and again reading just the few pages I most needed to hear as I worked my way through.

I cannot say enough good things about this book. I have tried a lot of self-help techniques but the ones contained in this book are unlike any I've encountered.

The biggest lesson I got out of this book is that so many of our problems nowadays occur because we had painful experiences earlier in life but instead of facing them and accepting the ramifications - we chose to lie to ourselves instead. Richo explains the most common lies: life is just, suffering is avoidable, things don't change, etc.

I understand from this book that it is much better to just experience those original painful feelings instead of spending your life overanalyzing every minute of every day trying to make the world something it is not.

This book simply explains the key to happiness. It is to let go of our fears, which is at the root of unhappiness, hate, aggression, apathy, and everything negative in the world. Once we are able to do that, we can open our hearts and embrace each other with love, respect, empathy, hope and forgiveness. It is a simple idea but something very difficult to do because our fears run very very deep within us all. Once we are able to do this to some extent, we try to help others do the same. It is simply the mission of all of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. When you think about it, nothing else really matters as much. This is what this book tries to help us understand. It is a wonderful message! In another excellent book called "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato, the author explains how this works in relation to human development and evolution. It shows us how we consciously begin living this life when we are naturally ready for it. These books are absolutely exquisite!

Finding this book when I did was the perfect psychological/spiritual prescription for helping to heal, not only some old fears, but also some new surprise anxiety panics. It helped turn my fears into calm emotions of self-knowing and self-acceptance. I sleep better at night since having read this book.

This book has been incredibly helpful on my journey of self discovery. Like Richo's earlier book, How to Be an Adult, this is an intelligent, well-written, and fascinating exploration of deep psychological processes. This is a book I pick up and refer to over and over again. I love the quotes peppered thoughout. Finally, a self-help book that really helps!

i have been afraid about many things and in many ways especially about intimacy. this book really helped my get over my fears. i did the very practical exercises the author recommended and i did notice a reduction in my fear-based style of living. this is a handbook on how to get on with life more courageously. and my relationship is working better too.

I have not even read half of this book yet, and I can already say that it has helped me change my self and my life. It has such insight and wisdom in it - I can't say enough about how wonderful it is. I have been working on the issues in this book for around twenty years, and I only wish I had bought it twenty years ago. If you are dealing with any of the problems this book is about (and if you are human, you probably are to some degree), do yourself a favor and get this book!

This is the second Richo book I have read ("How to Be an Adult" the first) and thought I could not feel so rewarded again. I was. It's another of his books to read and reread.

i have been afraid about many things and in many ways especially about intimacy. this book really helped my get over my fears. i did the very practical exercises the author recommended and i did notice a reduction in my fear-based style of living. this is a handbook on how to get on with life more courageously. and my relationship is working better too.

David Richo is one of my most favorite authors in the field of psychology & spirituality. His attitude towards life is deeply soaked in mystic wisdoms, ancient insights and contemporary knowledge.

In most of his works Richo subtly combines Buddhism and the wisdom tradition within Christianity with his thoughts and experiences as a practicing psychologist. Yet, never does he push any agenda, apart from offering his readers the tools to find their own ways out of issues, themes or problems that might have arisen in their lives.

This book, 'When love meets fear', is for me one of hist best. I must admit though, that the first time I read it, it somehow fell of me like water off a duck's back. somehow it ddn't resonate, and I couldn't get what he was trying to say.

Then, some years later, I read it again. And it hit home, hard. Maybe I had grown mature enough to see what he was trying to say; maybe it was because I found myself in a deep-dark place when I read it. Especially the third chapter, about the 'void' which is depression at its worst, struck a chord in me. The way in which Richo made connections to the lessons of Buddhism and mysticism about 'emptiness' and 'the void' allowed me to see the first glimpses of light in which was a hectically dark time.

For the first time in my life was I able to see my own 'descent into darkness' not as something 'absurd' or 'pathetic', but as a process through which every conscious adult will have to step to actually transform into a mature personality.

The second part of his book, with practical advise, made not much of an impression on me. Yet, the offering of 'the void' and the way in which Richo describes it make this book one of the most seriously abused books I have in my library.