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Staring at the Sun

Overcoming the Terror of Death

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Staring at the Sun

Written by: Irvin D. Yalom
Narrated by: Gregory Gorton
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Irvin D. Yalom is an author whose best-selling trade books and novels tell compelling, dramatic, and illuminating stories with which readers can identify.

At 74, Yalom has penned a book that is the climax of his lifework, focusing on the universal human issues of mortality and death. He suggests that what he calls the "awakening experience" can help us acknowledge, accept, and utilize our fear of death in a very positive manner. Such an awakening experience can be as simple as a dream, or quick as a sudden insight. It is often a loss, a trauma, or just plain aging that can prompt an awakening experience that is a turning point for a more meaningful life. He discusses how people can make lasting changes in their lives, rearrange their priorities, communicate more deeply with those they love, eliminate interpersonal fears of rejection, and increase a willingness to take risks for personal fulfillment and a life filled with love.

©2009 Irvin D. Yalom (P)2009 BBC Audio Grief & Loss Personal Development Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
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This book is recommended to anyone who's not certain if they want to read this book! I'll obtain the hard copy as well so I can make notes and write down my own experiences relating to those topics that pertain to my life. Most importantly, to really benefit from the content, we need to answer the questions at the last section of the book.

Excellent Book

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This is a great and useful book, and while the narrator is mostly good, he has a distracting and uncomfortable habit of reading quotes of women talking with a cartoonish high voice that makes it sound like he is mocking or parodying them. Other than that, he is fine, but I find it distracting enough to need to mention it.

Great book, but a sometimes distracting narrator.

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Yalom makes the important statement that existential fears motivate a lot of or almost all depression and anxiety cases, and that therapists are often unwilling to engage these deeper fears. Many patients do not get the help they need because our healthcare system dodges around root causes and ignores the reality of death. In many ways, pre-Freudian doctors were more sensible about existential fear than we are today.

The narrator is good. Unfortunately, he does that fake shrill voice that male narrators often use for women. Otherwise he'd be perfect.

Harder to apply

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Staring at the sun was an educational look at death anxiety and it encouraged further insight into human fear of death. The narrators mimicking of women’s voices was degrading and influenced my confidence in the book as it was not necessary to pretend to be a woman as it came across as inaccurately stereotypically needy and whiney, which modern day women are not

A solid perspective

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I wish the narrator did not change his voice when he read story of patients. such reading can be amazing for fiction but not for real individuals. Felt uncomfortable.

Awesome Book

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