Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  Expansive Mind-set: If others do not do their fair share of the work, it is not my responsibility to step up. I am willing to allow the consequences of other people’s action or inaction. Monkey Mind-set: I tend to put other people’s needs before my own. Expansive Mind-set: I believe that taking care of myself is as or more important than taking care of others. Monkey Mind-set: When others are in pain, I become upset and try to fix their problem and/or point out what they are doing wrong. Expansive Mind-set: When others are in pain, I can listen with compassion, but it is not my job to fix or solve their problem. To gauge how over-responsible your mind-set presently is, and how you can turn it into an expansive one, complete the Over-responsibility Mind-Set chart, available at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067. A Bigger World The first rationale for choosing expansive strategies over safety strategies is that it breaks the cycle of anxiety. When you stop feeding the monkey you are showing the monkey that you can handle the situation, and in the future there is no cause for alarm. Over time the monkey mind will learn to perceive that particular situation as nonthreatening. The second rationale for using expansive strategies is just as, if not more, important. Expansive strategies create new experience, experience that will actually transform your mind-set. The more expansive your mind-set is, the better you’ll be able to handle all situations. You’ll be able to approach new people, places, and things with more confidence. Your options widen. Your world grows bigger. Just imagine what your life would be like if you actually believed you could handle things whether or not they turned out like you planned, if you didn’t have to be 100% perfect in every action you took, and if you didn’t have to fix everyone else’s problems. If you’re with me this far, great! You understand how your behavior has been reinforcing a mind-set that not only isn’t serving you, but actually maintains your anxiety. With this new insight you have the capability to disrupt a system that your monkey has spent years refining but that is getting you nowhere. In its place you can discover a bigger world where the sky is the limit. As you read this, can you hear some chatter and howling in the background? The monkey is not about to give up on its mission of 100% safety. In the next chapter we will look at the powerful tool the monkey uses to implement that mission, and the equally powerful means you have to counter it. Chapter 5 Takeaway In order to support a mind-set that allows us to thrive, we must create new experience and learning by replacing safety strategies with expansive strategies.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  It was totally unfair, a breach of journalistic objectivity, a scarlet letter of personal bias. Cole, eighteen, would later describe himself to me as a “typical tall, white athlete guy,” and that is exactly what I saw: he topped six feet, with broad shoulders and short-clipped, dirty blond hair. His neck was so thick that it seemed to merge right into his jawline. His friends, he would tell me, were “the jock group. They’re what you’d expect, I guess. Let’s leave it at that.” What’s more, he was planning to enter a military academy for college the following fall. If I had closed my eyes and described the boy I imagined would never open up to me, it would have been him. But Cole surprised me. He pulled up a picture on his phone of his girlfriend, whom he’d dated for the past eighteen months, describing her proudly as “way smarter than I am,” a feminist, and a bedrock of emotional support. He also confided how he’d worried four years ago, during his first weeks as a freshman on scholarship in a new community, that he wouldn’t know how to act with other guys, wouldn’t be able to make friends. “I could talk to girls platonically,” he said. “That was easy. But being around guys was different. Because I needed to be a ‘bro,’ and I didn’t know how to do that.” Whenever Cole uttered the word “bro,” he shifted his weight to take up more space, rocked back in his chair, spoke low in his throat like he’d inhaled a lungful of weed. He grinned when I pointed that out. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s part of it: seeming relaxed and never intrusive, yet somehow bringing out that aggression on the sports field. Because a ‘bro’”—he rocked back again—“is always, always an athlete.” Cole eventually found his people on the crew team, though it hadn’t always been an easy fit. He recalled an incident two years prior when a senior was bragging in the locker room that he’d convinced one of Cole’s female classmates—a young sophomore, Cole emphasized—that they were an item, then started hooking up with other girls behind her back. And he wasn’t shy about sharing the details. Cole and another sophomore told the guy to knock it off. “I started to explain why it wasn’t appropriate,” Cole said, “but he just laughed.”

• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  choosing situations for your practice that you know are not major threats to your survival. Low-stakes situations are less likely to trigger overwhelming anxiety, and you’ll be more capable of maintaining your new expansive mind-set and strategies. For example, does your over-responsibility have you doing too much overtime? While you could make an appointment with your boss tomorrow to set some clear limits, you’d be better off at a lower level like planning to leave work on time that day. If you have difficulty making decisions because

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  Any religious tendency or school of theology must be tested by the question whether it does justice to the re- ligious consciousness of sin. Now, one cause of distrust against the social gospel is that its exponents often fail to show an adequate appreciation of the power and guilt of sin. Its teachings seem to put the blame for wrong- doing on the environment, and instead of stiffening and THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN 33 awakening the sense of responsibility in the individual, it teaches him to unload it on society. There is doubtless truth in this accusation. The em- phasis on environment and on the contributory guilt of the community, does offer a chance to unload responsi- bility, and human nature is quick to seize the chance. But the old theology has had its equivalents for environ- ment. Men unloaded on original sin, on the devil, and on the decrees of God. Adam began soon after the fall to shift the blame. This shiftiness seems to be one of the clearest and most universal effects of original sin. Moreover, there is an unavoidable element of moral unsettlement whenever the religious valuation of sin is being reconsidered. Paul frequently and anxiously de- fended his gospel against the charge that his principle of liberty invited lawlessness, and that under it a man might even sin the more in order to give grace the greater chance. We know what the Hebrew prophets thought of the sac- rificial cult and moral righteousness, but we are not in- formed about the unsettling effect which their teaching may have had. If we could raise up some devout priest of the age of Amos or Isaiah to give us his judgment on the theology of the prophets, he would probably assure us that these men doubtless meant well, but that they had no adequate sense of sin; they belittled the sacrifices insti- tuted by Moses ; but sacrificing, as all men knew, was the true expression and gauge of repentance. In the early years of the Reformation, Catholic ob- servers noted a distressing looseness in the treatment of sin. Men no longer searched their consciences in the confessional; they performed no works of penance to 34 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL render satisfaction to God and to prove their contrition ; they no longer used the ascetic means of holiness to sub- due their flesh and to gain victory over the powers of .darkness. Luther had taught them that God required nothing but faith, and that all accounts could be squared by agreeing to call them square. By any standard of measurement known to Catholics, the pro founder con- sciousness of sin was with the old theology and its prac- tical applications. In point of fact, the Reformation did upset the old means of moral control and did create wide- spread demoralization. But in time, Geneva, Holland, or Scotland showed a deeper consciousness of sin than Rome or Paris. The sense of sin found new outlets.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  At its core, what psychologist William Pollack calls “the boy code” trains guys to see masculinity in opposition to, and adversarial toward, femininity: a tenuous, ever-shifting position that must be continuously policed. Anything that smacks of “girlieness”—in oneself, in other boys, and, of course, as embodied by actual girls—must be concealed, ridiculed, or rejected. Love, connection, and vulnerability are signs of weakness; aggression is celebrated and eroticized; conquest is everything. That fear of appearing subordinate to other guys, according to Cole, the boy I met outside the high school library near Boston, was one of the reasons he preferred to partner with girls on school projects. “There’s more risk involved with working with another guy,” he explained. “With a guy, I need to act as unapproachable as possible. It’s like, if I come off as too communicative, I’ll be the underling. When I’m working with a girl, it feels safer to talk and ask questions, to work together, or to admit that I did something wrong and that I want help.” For Cole, as for many boys, the rules and constraints of masculinity were a constant presence, a yardstick against which all their choices were measured. Once, during his junior year, he suggested that his teammates go vegan for a while, just to show that athletes could. “And everybody was like, ‘Cole, that is the dumbest idea ever. We’d be the slowest in any race.’ And that’s somewhat true: we do need protein. We do need fats and salts and carbs that we get from meat. But another reason why they all thought it was stupid is because being vegans would make us pussies.” Cole was raised mostly around his mother, grandmother, and two younger sisters—his parents divorced when he was ten, and his dad, who was in the army and then the National Guard, was often away on active duty. Cole spoke of his mom with unequivocal love and respect. His father was another matter. On one hand, the older man was a caring and present dad, even after the split with Cole’s mom. But the stoic expression that had made me leery? Cole got that from him. “I find it hard to be emotionally expressive,” he said. “Especially around my father. He’s a nice guy. But I can’t be myself around him. I feel like I need to keep everything that’s in here”—Cole thumped his chest again—“behind a wall, where he can’t see it. It’s a taboo, like . . . not as bad as incest, but I feel like that’s a part of me that I’m not supposed to show.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The tent had quietened a little, but not much. Most of the afternoon’s serious listeners seemed to have grown tired and left: their seats had been taken by idlers, by yawning women and by more rowdy boys.Before this careless crowd Ralph now stood and cleared his throat. He had his speech, I saw, in his hand - to refer to, I guessed, if he forgot his lines. His forehead was streaming with sweat; his neck was stiff. I knew he would never be able to project his voice to the back of the tent, with his throat so stiff and tense.With another cough, he began.“‘Why Socialism?” That is the question I have been invited to discuss with you this afternoon.’ Annie and I were sitting in the third row from the front, and even we could hardly hear him; from the mass of men and women behind us there came a cry - ‘Speak up!’ - and a ripple of laughter. Ralph coughed yet again, and when he next spoke his voice was louder, but also rather hoarse.“‘Why Socialism?” I shall keep my answer rather brief.’‘Thank God for something, then!’ called a man at that - as I knew somebody would - and Ralph gazed wildly around the tent for a second, quite distracted. I saw with dismay that he had lost his place, and was forced to glance at the sheets in his hand. There was a horrible silence while he found the spot; when he next spoke, of course, it was into the paper, just as he had used to do in our Quilter Street parlour.‘How many times,’ he was saying, ‘have you heard economists say that England is the richest nation in the world ... ?’ I found myself reciting it with him, urging him on; but he stumbled, and muttered, and once or twice was forced to tilt his paper to the light, to read it. By now the crowd had begun to groan and sigh and shuffle. I saw the chairman, seated at the back of the platform, making up his mind to step over to him and tell him to speak up or to stop; I saw Florence, pale and agitated to see her brother so awkward - her own griefs, for the moment, quite forgotten. Ralph started on a passage of statistics: ‘Two hundred years ago,’ he read, ‘Britain’s land and capital was worth five hundred million pounds; today it is worth - it is worth -’ He tilted the paper again; but while he did so, a fellow stood up to shout: ‘What are you, man? A socialist, or a schoolmaster?’ And at that, Ralph sagged as if he had been winded. Annie whispered: ‘Oh, no! Poor Ralph! I can’t bear it!’‘Neither can I,’ I said.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Even from her I felt distant, that night.So I was almost glad when, at about eleven o’clock, the mood of the party was changed, by Dickie calling for more light to be brought, for the lady on the piano to cease her playing, and for all the women present to gather round and pay attention.‘What’s this?’ cried one lady. ‘Why has it grown bright?’Evelyn said: ‘We are to hear Dickie Reynolds’ history, from a book written by a doctor.’‘A doctor? Is she ill?’‘It is her vie sexuelle!’‘Her vie sexuelle!’‘My dear, I know it already, it is terribly dreary ...’ This was from a woman who stood beside me in the shadows, garbed as a monk; as I turned to her she gave a yawn, then slipped quietly from the room in search of other sport. The rest of the guests, however, looked just as eager as Dickie could wish. She stood beside Diana; the book that Evelyn had referred to was in Diana’s hands - it was small and black and densely printed, with not a single illustration: it was not at all the kind of thing that people usually gave Diana, for her box. And yet, she was turning its pages in fascination. A lady dipped her head to read the title from the spine, then cried: ‘But the book’s in Latin! Dickie, whatever is the point of a filthy story, if the damn thing’s written in Latin?’Dickie now looked a little prim. ‘It is only the title that is Latin,’ she answered; ‘and, besides, it is not a filthy book, it is a very brave one. It has been written by a man, in an attempt to explain our sort so that the ordinary world will understand us.’A lady dressed as Sappho took the cigar from her mouth, and studied Dickie in a kind of disbelief. She said: ‘This book is to be passed among the public; and your story is in it? The story of your life, as a lover of women? But Dick, have you gone mad! This man sounds like a pornographer of the most mischievous variety!’‘She has taken a nom-de-guerre, of course,’ said Evelyn.‘Even so. Dickie, the folly of it!’‘You misunderstand,’ said Dickie. ‘This is a new thing entirely. This book will assist us. It will advertise us.’A kind of collective shudder ran right around the drawing-room.

• From Bold Move

  We act to eliminate the perceived threat by doing whatever we can to feel better fast. From an emotional standpoint, the explosion immediately—yet temporarily—relieves some of the pressure, but afterward we are always left with an even bigger mess to clean up and plenty of hurt feelings to go along with it. Blowing off steam feels helpful in the moment, but it can turn into a continual reactive avoidance pattern, which ultimately robs us of a bold life. Reactive Avoidance: My Many FacesReactive avoidance has many forms, some harder to detect than others. But I will confess, I know this one well because reactive avoidance is the go-to tactic I have employed my entire life to avoid discomfort. I fight back to feel better. I mean, sure, putting on a conservative pantsuit might not seem like your idea of a fight, but there’s a defiance contained within this action that is, deep down, my version of flipping the bird. I will also react with an email (I know, I’m a true Hell’s Angel over here). Case in point: About a year ago, my mentor at MGH, a remarkably kind woman named Susan, sat me down and said, “Can we talk about your emails? Specifically, when you’re stressed?” I could see in Susan’s face that she was struggling to be constructive, despite the awkward nature of the conversation. I remember the spike in my anxiety, as I waited for her to tell me something awful. Oh my God, the only person who has my back is about to fire my ass! The traitor! As these premature thoughts were rushing through my head, I tried to plaster a fake (and probably deranged-looking) smile on my face. Susan continued, “Luana, you are one of the most productive people I know. You’re brilliant, caring, and you know I love working with you.” My heart pounded while I waited for her to say “. . . and yet, I’m tossing you out on the street like a piece of garbage.” But the axe didn’t drop. Instead, she proceeded to tell me that she had noticed I might be my own worst enemy. “I’ve noticed that you seem to respond to emails late at night. Like, very late at night. With urgency. And ferocity. And an almost inappropriate directness. For example, last night you responded to Joe, who had requested to use some of your training material. You didn’t only say no; you wrote out a whole laundry list of reasons why there was a problem with his request. I know there is a lot of history there in your relationship with Joe, but was that response at 11 p.m. really needed? And did you really have to wash your dirty laundry in front of so many powerful people who were also cc’d on the email?”

• From Bold Move

  If you’re wondering whether your specific situation and behavior constitute psychological avoidance, I would encourage you to refer back to the diagram shared here . When We Dance with the Devil We Know, We Are Still Dancing with the DevilWhen we live our lives focused on only one goal, without checking in on how it is serving us, we risk turning our lives into an endless cycle of stress and burnout, just like you saw in my life during my time on the academic hamster wheel. Despite the fact that the trajectory I was on no longer fit my desires for my life, I kept going. So, going back to the old saying, I think it is a lot safer to face the devil you know because there is some degree of certainty in fighting a known evil. So, in the day to day, when we are dancing with the known devil, it might be hard, but we know how to act and what to expect. Yet, it’s still the devil. And the minute that devil becomes a collaborator in keeping you stuck, you will start to see negative long-term consequences. I had to nearly have a stroke to wake up and call the devil by his other name: avoidance . Overworking despite the price tag is only one way we end up remaining as avoidance. Sometimes we get stuck because our values collide. Ricardo cared about his family but often failed to show up for them, usually because he was focusing on work. Or maybe you’re like me and put family first but to the detriment of your own health. If remaining to avoid ends up hurting us more in the long term, why do we keep doing it? Let’s dive into the science behind this flavor of avoidance in the next chapter. Chapter TenBut Why Do I Stay?If we have an internal compass—our values—why don’t we use it instead of avoiding? It seems logical that we would navigate the world and make decisions based on what matters most to us. However, we sometimes get stuck in our old habits to avoid the possibility of discomfort. Based on my experience working with hundreds of clients around the world, there are three common substitute guides we rely on instead: emotions, goals, and other people. To understand how these problematic guides end up leading us through life, let me start by telling you a short personal story. When I first came to the United States, I found it particularly challenging to understand what people meant when they would ask me “What are you thinking?” whenever I would get quiet during a conversation. The idea of focusing on what I was saying to myself, not on how I felt , seemed strange to me.

• From Bold Move

  I asked him what would happen when he saw a posting where someone else appeared to be doing better than he was. Angad looked at me with a startling seriousness: “I panic. Like, if I don’t do something to match that, I’m a loser.” It can be hard for adults who weren’t raised with social media to take such claims seriously. But as a clinician who knows the signs of distress when I see them, I knew Angad wasn’t being dramatic. His brain perceived these messages as a threat as real to him as anything else. I offered to him, “It sounds like when you encounter a post that you find distressing, you get anxious, panic, and that feels awful. Is that right?” He nodded. “Okay, so what do you do then?” “I start posting a lot. See, I have a secret folder on my phone with my best pictures—fun times, cool places, whatever—and I post them as if they were happening right now.” My reaction must have said a lot because he laughed in response. The generational divide between us was now fully established. And yet, the operating system in our brains was the same. Feeling a bit like a dinosaur talking to an astronaut, I asked him to describe the most recent incident during which he felt the need to dig into his secret folder. “After we came back from spring break last week, a friend was posting all about his vacation in Europe with his new girlfriend. He’s an okay-looking guy, but his girlfriend is the supermodel type, just hot —” he paused here and looked at me apologetically. I laughed and encouraged him to continue. “So, I got anxious, you know, comparing myself to him and decided, ‘Hey, I also have pictures with hot girls!’ So I posted a bunch from a party last summer.” Following the logic of this behavior, I replied, “It sounds like you solved the problem!” “Yes, at least for a bit. I can’t explain it, but when I post fast, I get this relief, like the panic is going away because I am only focusing on posting. But to be truthful, after a while, I just end up feeling gross. It’s not a good headspace to be in.” He looked genuinely upset, and I could see the shame and anxiety that this behavior was causing him. No matter the cause, it was clear to me that he was trapped in the avoidance rut with no idea of how to get out. Although for you, the relationship with social media might lead to a different outcome, for Angad it resulted in reactive avoidance.

• From Bold Move

  Holy Shit: Am I Having a Stroke? I knew there was an emotional cost to what I was doing, and usually I was face- to-face with this cost in the wee hours of the night in those lonely, quiet moments where I would, for once, allow myself a little glimpse behind the curtain of this goal-driven treadmill of a career. Often, I found myself lying in bed, unable to sleep, anxious, staring at the ceiling as thoughts pounded on the shores of my brain: What am I doing? Will I always feel this anxious if I keep going? There is no other way; I must stay in this career! If I just write another grant, I will feel better. Why am I doing this? For whom am I doing this? Why am I so miserable when I have achieved so much? I don’t have the right to feel miserable given how fortunate I am. If I quit this job, who will I become? But long-term stress has a way of showing up in your body too. According to the American Psychological Association, stress directly affects the musculoskeletal system, cardiovascular system, respiratory system, endocrine system, gastrointestinal system, nervous system, and reproductive system. 5 At the risk of being alarmist, it’s worth noting that stress can lead to death. Studies conducted in England have shown that even low levels of distress are related to a 20 percent increased risk of mortality. 6 In early 2021, the physical effects of stress finally hit me. I was home, working on a research grant, when all of a sudden I started to lose sensation in part of my face. My first thought was: Okay, I am just a little stressed, this is a simple physiological reaction, calm down, there is nothing going on, this is just anxiety, but after a few minutes I had lost all feeling in half of my face and panic began to set in. Oh my God . . . I’m having a stroke! A few tears dripped down my face as I tried not to lose it, and I kept saying to myself, Is this anxiety or am I really having a stroke? With the last bit of my thinking brain that was available to me, I called my doctor’s office and reached a nurse. I described the symptoms: numbness on the right side of my face, a little tingling in my legs and arms, a heartbeat of 150 (while seated at my desk). Despite her attempt to temper her voice, the nurse on the line seemed alarmed and my brain immediately went to . . . Oh my God, I am having a stroke! I’ll lose everything I worked so hard for, this is the end! Tears were now streaming down my face as I struggled to speak with the nurse, who urged me to get to the office as fast as I could. My brain was spinning, and all I could do was get David to drive me.

• From Bold Move

  She lets me know that it was a minor injury but that she felt it was best that I come to get him because he is really upset. Thoughts: What? Get him? Why would I get him if it’s only minor? Is she telling me the truth? Is this really only minor? Emotions: Increased anxiety. Behaviors: I question her suggestion for me to come and get him because I am not sure this makes sense. After some back and forth, she agrees to keep him and to let me know if he doesn’t calm down after a bit. Emotions: Slight relief. Thoughts: This was the right call. Behaviors: Return to work. But when we are spinning in avoidance, we can get really stuck, which is what happened for my client Fatima. An accomplished interior designer, Fatima would often find herself stuck in a spinning cycle in the final versions of her design. She would say to herself, “My clients will hate this version” (thought) , making her feel anxious (emotion) . As her feelings of anxiety and helplessness increased (emotion) , she would say to herself, “I have done much better designs before; this one is only average” (thought) , leading to despair (emotion) . As this cycle continued to ping-pong back and forth between thoughts and emotions, Fatima would get more and more uncomfortable, which would eventually lead her to walk away from the design altogether (behavior) . After turning away from her work, she would feel a momentary sense of relief, but her brain would quickly say things like, “You will never be a fantastic designer” (thought) , which would lead to a deep sense of dread (emotion) . Similar to Jake, the CEO in chapter 1 , Fatima’s brain would perceive the thought My clients will hate this version as a possible threat and would create immediate anxiety. As her emotional thermometer went up, Fatima’s anxiety would increase so much that eventually she’d stop her work. Although the relief was helpful, there was a long-term cost for Fatima because her procrastination would often result in her missing deadlines, which infuriated some of her clients. For Fatima, it had become a chicken-and-egg game of anxiety and avoidance, causing her to procrastinate more and more (see figure below). Like Fatima, we can easily get stuck in a spinning cycle when our thoughts are unhelpful, our emotions are intense, or our behaviors lean toward avoidance. We get stuck because the more discomfort we feel, the more the amygdala is in control and the less we are able to think the problem through. This is often described as the amygdala hijack , because your amygdala is running your life, literally. Now, it is important to remember that the brain is just trying to protect us by avoiding discomfort. There is no one on earth that doesn’t get stuck in these spinning TEB cycles from time to time. After all, as you’ve already learned, our enemy—avoidance—is powerful.

• From Bold Move

  She scrolled through her phone and read: “‘I’m okay, but this is not cool.’” She shook her head. “I was crushed! But I also knew that he was right. The problem is, I just don’t know how to stop myself in situations like this when I get anxious. I love Ted and I’m afraid I’m going to drive him away if I don’t learn to control these urges. It’s my own fault, but my phone makes it too easy to act like this.” The reality is, Filomena is not alone when it comes to having access to a phone and how that might have changed how she relates to dating. In fact, in 2019, Pew Research Center reported that five billion people throughout the world had a mobile device.8 To put that number in some shocking perspective, research suggests that only three to four billion people own a toothbrush.9 Let that sink in for a minute: more people on this planet own a phone than a toothbrush. And unlike a toothbrush, these devices are constantly pinging, buzzing, and pestering us throughout the day. All our lowly toothbrushes ask of us is two minutes twice a day. (To say nothing of humble dental floss.) As you probably know from experience, and can see in Filomena’s case, sometimes we kinda, sorta use our phones in not-so-helpful ways. I know, a shocking statement. What? Dr. Luana, are you telling me smartphones don’t always encourage us to act in sane or rational ways? How dare you! I know, controversial stuff. Checking our phones, doom scrolling, and, yes, sending multiple frantic text messages have been shown across multiple research studies to be related to feelings of sadness, anxiety, and stress.10 As if starting a new relationship wasn’t riddled with enough emotions and pitfalls! Now we also have to contend with the emotional sequelae (fancy word alert!) of trying to communicate effectively using our phones (sometimes even using the modern version of hieroglyphics). When we don’t hear back from our partner, the anxiety only grows. One particularly relevant study showed that when stressed individuals do not receive responses to their texts to a partner during a fifteen-minute period, they end up with higher blood pressure than individuals who receive even the most mundane messages in reply (like a bland comment about the weather).11 The pain of waiting for those three dots (the ones that signify that someone is typing) to appear—or, even worse, watching them appear and then fade away—is real. For Filomena, sending another text was a way to get a hit of relief during this period of waiting. The hope that the next text would get through and she’d soon receive a speedy response let her relax for a moment. But when Ted didn’t respond, her anxiety intensified. This is an old pattern of avoidance—short-term gain, long-term loss.

• From Bold Move

  I’m scared to see my credit card statement.”Stress, burnout, difficulty concentrating, marital distress, financial worry—these are real, painful experiences, but what is leading to these problems? The question remains: What is the root cause of our infection? What I have learned throughout my life, clinical work, and research is that there is one common denominator that tends to get all of us stuck, and that is what I call psychological avoidance . Our Enemy Has a Name: Meet Psychological AvoidancePsychological avoidance is any response to a perceived threat that brings immediate emotional relief but comes with long-term negative consequences. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to this concept as “avoidance” in this book (buckle up: you’re going to be seeing this term a lot in the pages ahead). Put simply, avoidance gives us fast but temporary relief from discomfort but keeps us stuck in the long run. Imagine that you had an internal thermometer that measures your discomfort in real time, reading from zero (cool, calm, and collected) to one hundred (feeling like you are about to explode from anxiety, fear, or stress). The hotter the temperature gets, the more you want to bring it down—the more you want to avoid . After all, who wants to feel uncomfortable? Throughout my career, I have found it challenging for my clients to understand that avoidance is our figurative infection, because often discomfort itself (e.g., anxiety, stress, sadness, burnout) feels like the primary problem. Remove the discomfort and life would immediately get better—seems straightforward enough. Yet, the problem is not the discomfort itself but how we respond to that discomfort. Psychological avoidance has a real long-term cost because it will always rob you of the chance to live a bold life and prevent you from reaching your goals. Once you start to avoid, you need to keep avoiding again and again to push away the discomfort that, like a villain in a horror movie, just won’t stop coming at you. By avoiding, we are teaching our brains that the only way we can manage challenging situations is by running away instead of facing them, which reinforces our need to avoid. We’ve all experienced discomfort before and will surely experience it again. Each time you avoid, you will feel a bit better, but feeling better and being better aren’t the same thing! For Jake, it was what he did when he felt anxious that got him stuck, not the anxiety itself. Whenever his heart started to pound, he would get rid of his discomfort by avoiding (i.e., canceling meetings or grabbing a glass of wine). Each time he avoided, he felt some relief. His heartbeat returned to normal, and he could get on with his day. Jake’s actions make sense: Who wants to walk around feeling like they are having a heart attack? But he was stuck in an endless cycle of avoidance—and avoidance is powerful because, by definition, it works! It does make you feel better really fast.

• From Bold Move

  It is worth pausing here to note that what one person’s amygdala perceives as a threat is going to be different for another. For example, while a fast heartbeat for Jake means a heart attack, to me it often means that I am excited. Similarly, if you have a great relationship with your boss, a 10 p.m. email won’t trigger a threat response. However, if you fear your boss, then it almost certainly will. Let me give you another personal example in which my brain’s interpretation of a comment prompted a full fight, flight, or freeze response. About fifteen years ago, early in my academic career, I walked into the office and a colleague of mine, big smile on her face, said: “You look so Latina today!” I think to myself: What the hell does she mean? The blood rushes in my ears as my primal fight, flight, or freeze response is activated . . . What does it mean to be Latina? My heart pounds louder . . . Am I too fat? Is my butt too big? Do I have too many curves? I feel dizzy . . . Am I not American enough? I will never fit in at Harvard . . . This was back in the days when I had yet to find my sea legs in academia, so to speak, when I was still searching for my professional identity. I didn’t feel like I belonged there, and I was easily knocked around by my insecurities. When I think back on this moment, I can feel the same familiar unpleasant feelings bubble up in my chest. The minutes passed by slowly as I walked down the hallway, my heart pounding out of my chest, my breathing shallow. It all felt too much! While my head swirled in confusion, I knew I needed one thing: to get rid of this anxiety! Why do I look Latina? How do I fit in? How do I feel better? Quickly and with the urgency of James Bond defusing a ticking time bomb, I concluded that it must be my floral skirt. That must have been why I looked “so Latina.” I must have dressed wrong! So, what did I do? I went home that instant and changed my outfit. Yes, you read that correctly. I, an accomplished academic at one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, just straight-up left work in the middle of the day to change my outfit because of an offhanded and undoubtedly well-intentioned comment from a colleague. Was I facing a real threat? No, but my brain sure thought so. And in that moment of discomfort, avoiding by rushing home and defiantly changing my outfit seemed like the only solution (you’ve never seen someone button a boring gray blouse with such conviction!). Coming back to work that day, in my pressed gray suit, I felt oddly powerful, at least momentarily.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The title of the address was to be ‘Why Socialism?’, and the composing and rehearsing of this threw Ralph - who was no very keen public speaker - into a fever. He would sit at the supper-table for hours at a time, writing until his arm grew sore - or more often gazing bleakly at the empty page before him, then dashing to the bookcase to check a reference in some political tract, and cursing to find it lent out or lost: ‘What has happened to The White Slaves of England? Who has borrowed my Sidney Webb? And where the blazes is Towards Democracy?’ Florence and I would gaze at him and shake our heads. ‘Give the thing up,’ we would say, ‘if you don’t want to do it, or feel you can’t. No one will mind,’ But Ralph would always stiffen and answer, ‘No, no. It is for the sake of the union. I almost have it.’ Then he would frown at his page again, and chew on his beard; and I would see him imagining himself standing before a crowd of staring faces, and he would sweat and start to tremble. But here, at least, I felt I could help. ‘Let me hear you read a bit of your speech,’ I said to him one night when Florence was out. ‘Don’t forget I was an actress of sorts, once. It’s all the same, you know, whether it’s a stage or a platform.’ ‘That’s true,’ he said, struck by the idea. Then he flapped his sheets. ‘But I am rather shy of reading it out before you.’ ‘Ralph! If you are shy with me, in our parlour, what will you be like before five hundred people, in Victoria Park?’ The thought set him biting at his beard again; but he held his speech before him as requested, stood before the curtained window, and cleared his throat. “‘Why Socialism?’” he began. I jumped to my feet. ‘Well, that is hopeless, for a start. You can’t mumble into your hands like that, and expect the folk in the gallery - I mean, at the back of the tent - to be able to hear you.’ ‘You are rather harsh, Nancy,’ he said. ‘You will thank me for it, in the end. Now, straighten your back and lift up your head, and start again. And talk from here’ — I touched the buckle on his trousers, and he twitched - ‘not from your throat. Go on.’ “‘Why Socialism?” he read again, in a deep, unnatural voice. ’ That is the question I have been invited to discuss with you this afternoon. “Why Socialism?” I shall keep my answer rather brief.’

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  She’d said could I fetch her some Gallo wine and 7-UP from under the china cabinet (a combination she likened to sparkling burgundy), and I said sure. Then I walked as slowly and miserably as any mule through any cotton row in order to assemble that drink. The wineglass had a dusty yellow scum on it. That’s how long it had stood empty. I made a big show of scrubbing it off with a Brillo pad, then polishing the glass dry with a dish towel. If I thought anything at all, it was probably This won’t hold much wine, not sparkled with 7-UP. Mother had always been a binge drunk, not touching a thimbleful for weeks or months when she’d gotten her gullet full. But once she took that first drink, she was off. That night she got home, she kept it down to that eensy glass of wine, after which she tumbled naked into her oversized bed and slept for twelve hours. But at some point after New Year’s that wine made her hanker for alcohol of the high-test variety. Then, she dialed up the liquor store to order her vodka by the case, and she reached down the biggest jelly glass she could find in the cupboard. There was no need for ice or a measuring shot glass or even vermouth or those weird baby onions people who play at Gibsons make such a fuss about. The vodka was sloshed out in five-fingered units. Oddly enough, she hated the taste so much that she literally had to hold her nose to swallow the first one, like a kid taking medicine. But after that one, she downed them the way people in hell must down ice water. The big game for me once she’d started drinking was to gauge which way her mood was running that I might steer her away from the related type of trouble. Hiding her car keys would keep her off the roads and, ergo, out of a wreck, for instance. Or I’d tie up the phone by having a running chat with the busy signal (seven-year-olds don’t yet have any phone life to speak of), so she couldn’t dial up any teachers or neighbors she was liable to bad-mouth. If I could thwart her first urges to call So-and-So or head down the highway to Yonder-a-place, eventually she’d get onto something else or just give up and pass out. Lecia didn’t have the stomach for watching her that close, I think. She put herself in charge of counting Mother’s drinks. She kept a long-running tally of both the number of drinks poured and the approximate number of ounces consumed, which was no small feat if Daddy happened to be drinking too. And she did all the ciphering in her head, minus pen and paper, itself impressive. Having exact numbers always reassured Lecia no end.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  With the support of these malcontents, Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, became the fourth caliph; a devout man, he struggled with the logic of practical politics, and his rule was not accepted in Syria, where the opposition was led by Uthman’s kinsman Muawiyyah, governor of Damascus. The son of one of the Prophet’s most obdurate enemies, Muawiyyah was supported by the wealthy Meccan families and by the people of Syria, who appreciated his wise and able rule. The spectacle of the Prophet’s relatives and companions poised to attack one another was profoundly disturbing, and to prevent armed conflict, the two sides called for arbitration by neutral Muslims, who decided in favor of Muawiyyah. But an extremist group refused to accept this and were shocked by Ali’s initial submission. They believed that the ummah should be led by the most committed Muslim (in this case, Ali) rather than a power seeker like Muawiyyah. They now regarded both rulers as apostates, so these dissidents withdrew from the ummah, setting up their own camp with an independent commander. They would be known as kharaji, “those who go out.” After the failure of a second arbitration, Ali was murdered by a Kharajite in 661. The trauma of this civil war marked Islamic life forever. Henceforth rival parties would draw upon these tragic events as they struggled to make sense of their Islamic vocation. From time to time, Muslims who objected to the behavior of the reigning ruler would retreat from the ummah, as the Kharajites had done, and summon all “true Muslims” to join them in a struggle (jihad) for higher Islamic standards. 68 The fate of Ali became for some a symbol of the structural injustice of mainstream political life, and these Muslims, who called themselves the shiah-i Ali (“Ali’s partisans”), developed a piety of principled protest, revering Ali’s male descendants as the true leaders of the ummah. But appalled by the murderous divisions that had torn the ummah apart, most Muslims decided that unity must be the first priority, even if that meant accommodating a degree of oppression and injustice. Instead of revering Ali’s descendants, they would follow the sunnah (“customary practice”) of the Prophet. As in Christianity and Judaism, radically different interpretations of the original revelation would make it impossible to speak of a pure, essentialist “Islam.” The Quran had given Muslims an historical mission: to create a just community in which all members, even the weakest and most vulnerable, would be treated with absolute respect.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  In taking in these foreigners, with whom they had no blood relationship, the Arabs of Medina who had converted to Islam, the Ansar (“Helpers”), had also embarked on an audacious experiment. Medina was not a unified city but a series of fortified hamlets, each occupied by a different tribal group. There were two large Arab tribes—the Aws and the Khasraj—and twenty Jewish tribes, and they all fought one another constantly. 15 Muhammad, as a neutral outsider, became an arbitrator and crafted an agreement that united Helpers and Emigrants in a supertribe—“one community to the exclusion of all men”—that would fight all enemies as one. 16 This is how Medina became a primitive “state” and how it found, almost immediately, that despite the ideology of hilm, it had no option but to engage in warfare. The Emigrants were a drain on the community’s resources. They were merchants and bankers, but there was little opportunity for trade in Medina; they had no experience of farming, and in any case there was no available land. It was essential to find an independent source of income, and the ghazu, the accepted way of making ends meet in times of scarcity, was the obvious solution. In 624, therefore, Muhammad began to dispatch raiding parties to attack the Meccan caravans, a step that was controversial only in that the Muslims attacked their own tribe. But because the Quraysh had abjured warfare long ago, the Emigrants were inexperienced ghazis, and their first raids failed. When they finally got the hang of it, the raiders broke two Arabian cardinal rules by accidentally killing a Meccan merchant and fighting during one of the Sacred Months, when violence was prohibited throughout the peninsula. 17 Muslims could now expect reprisals from Mecca. Three months later Muhammad himself led a ghazu to attack the most important Meccan caravan of the year. When they heard about it, the Quraysh immediately sent their army to defend it, but in a pitched battle at the well of Badr, the Muslims achieved a stunning victory. The Quraysh responded the following year by attacking Medina and defeating the Muslims at the Battle of Uhud, but in 627, when they attacked Medina again, the Muslims trounced the Quraysh at the Battle of the Trench, so called because Muhammad dug a defensive ditch around the settlement. The ummah also had internal troubles. Three of Medina’s Jewish tribes—the Qaynuqa, Nadir, and Qurayzah—were determined to destroy Muhammad, because he had undermined their political ascendency in the oasis. They had sizable armies and preexisting alliances with Mecca so they were a security risk. When the Qaynuqa and Nadir staged revolts and threatened to assassinate him, Muhammad expelled them from Medina. But the Nadir had joined the nearby Jewish settlement of Khaybar and drummed up support for Mecca among the local Bedouin.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  It’s one thing to gain information and understanding, but it’s another to have actual experience. Have you ever been at a party and innocently asked someone what they liked to do for fun, and they launched into a thirty-minute monologue about surfing or snowboarding or stargazing or something else you have no idea how to do? They were clearly passionate about it, and they talked until your eyes glazed over a bit. You probably learned more than you ever wanted to about their hobby, but that doesn’t mean you could do what they do. You had head knowledge (and maybe a headache), but you didn’t have any firsthand experience. So you really had no idea how to do it. There is a reason job interviews tend to focus more on real-life experience than just about any other qualification. There is simply no substitute for hands-on proficiency. Prayer is the same. You can read this book and five others from cover to cover, but if you don’t actually pray, you’ll never know “how” to pray. To get good at prayer, you have to do it. We taught our kids to make their own beds starting when they were about three years old. When they would first try, their reply was always the same: “Dad, I can’t, I’m not very good at it.” You can guess how I replied. “You can; you just need practice!” That never went over well. But it was true. Now they are bed-making pros, and someday their spouses are going to thank us for that. The same principle is true in prayer. Not being good at something doesn’t mean you can’t be good at it. It just means you need practice. If you’ve ever felt a little intimidated by prayer or unsure what to say, don’t give up. Instead, lean in. Experiment. Learn what works for you, what you like the best, how prayer fits in with your unique personality and your current schedule. There really aren’t any rules or protocols for how you have to pray. There are some things you should avoid (as we’ll see in the next chapter), but for the most