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A review by honeycoffeereads
The Flinch by Julien Smith
2.0
One of the slimmest books I've ever read about facing your fears. Maybe it's supposed to work in the sense that in context of what happens to us in life, flinching is more about anticipating pain than facing it head on; when we don't focus on the fear so much, we can move through it instead of stopping dead in our tracks before something bad has happened. The trick to lessen the degree of flinching is to do more uncomfortable things - stop drinking coffee every day because that's what you always do, ground yourself in nature more, take a cold shower, do something unexpected that's against your every day status quo.
But by the end of the book, as other reviewers pointed out, there is no meat in varying degrees of flinches and what their root cause may be. The author might've wanted to avoid all that since many other similar books do the same thing. But it might've been more helpful to see how talking to someone at a party or even going to a party when you don't want to can help if your flinching is more social anxiety related; having a vulnerable conversation with your partner can help with deeply rooted flinching caused by family trauma; engaging in a playful activity can help with connecting the inner child that was taught to be scared of everything at an early age. Most of the chapters regale the same decrees about why it's not worth it to spend your whole life doing everything the way you normally do it, and five homework assignments to break the flinch, but the book could've offered something more in-depth about why we flinch the way we do, how flinching has evolved since the early dawn of time. It would've been really interesting to go into it more. After reading, I definitely want to ~*RAWR face the flinch RAWR*~ but there isn't really a descriptive of what the flinch is - generally the book, or something I feel I can give a name in my own life - except as that pause you feel before you do something small that seems big or is actually BIG. I thought about maybe not writing all of this and just giving it a two star, but I guess I got over the hurdle of a flinch and to post it instead, so at least there's that.
But by the end of the book, as other reviewers pointed out, there is no meat in varying degrees of flinches and what their root cause may be. The author might've wanted to avoid all that since many other similar books do the same thing. But it might've been more helpful to see how talking to someone at a party or even going to a party when you don't want to can help if your flinching is more social anxiety related; having a vulnerable conversation with your partner can help with deeply rooted flinching caused by family trauma; engaging in a playful activity can help with connecting the inner child that was taught to be scared of everything at an early age. Most of the chapters regale the same decrees about why it's not worth it to spend your whole life doing everything the way you normally do it, and five homework assignments to break the flinch, but the book could've offered something more in-depth about why we flinch the way we do, how flinching has evolved since the early dawn of time. It would've been really interesting to go into it more. After reading, I definitely want to ~*RAWR face the flinch RAWR*~ but there isn't really a descriptive of what the flinch is - generally the book, or something I feel I can give a name in my own life - except as that pause you feel before you do something small that seems big or is actually BIG. I thought about maybe not writing all of this and just giving it a two star, but I guess I got over the hurdle of a flinch and to post it instead, so at least there's that.