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 Girls & Sex (2016)

  The girls I talked to often spoke of “going crazy” as an integral part of “the college experience”; they sounded like they were all quoting from the same travel brochure. I’m not sure when that phrase began to refer specifically to drunken partying. Although I recall a certain amount of alcohol and weed when I was at school, if someone had asked me to describe it, I would have said the “college experience” was more about redefining myself away from my family through intense late-night talks with friends, exposure to alternative music and film, finding my passions, falling in love. But according to a blistering exposé by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic, as tuitions have skyrocketed, universities apparently need to convince “consumers” (their prospective students) that it’s worth the staggering debt they’ll take on to attend. What better enticement than to position higher education as not only edifying, but off-the-chain fun? “Every moment of the experience is sweetened,” Flanagan wrote, “by the general understanding that with each kegger and rager . . . they are actively engaged in the most significant act of self-improvement available to an American young person: college!” That’s a far cry from the original purpose of universities: to train young men for the ministry, a process that involved asceticism, temperance, and chastity. When I asked why they didn’t hook up sober, girls would laugh and say that would be awkward—their catchall word (along with uncomfortable and, sometimes, weird) for any unpleasant emotion. In this case, what seemed to unnerve them was not only having nothing on which to “blame” their behavior, but the idea of being fully emotionally, psychologically, and physically present in a sexual encounter. “Being sober makes it seem like you want to be in a relationship,” one freshman told me. “It’s really uncomfortable.” That first night Connor tagged along with Holly, they both got tipsy and kissed on the dance floor. The next day, they attended a football game together. Within a week, she had given him oral sex, something she’d never done before. “It was like, ‘Whoa! Where did this come from?’” she said. “He didn’t even ask. I was slightly alcohol-induced, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m just going to go for it.’ And I thought, ‘You know, this isn’t too bad. Why was I making a big deal about it?’” She paused, considering. “That was the moment, I think, when I became a lot less uptight.” Looking back on it, Holly believed she was “too generous” with Connor—she wanted to make him “happy,” but he didn’t seem to return the sentiment. “There was one night I asked, ‘Do you want to give me oral?’” she said. “He went down on me for about a half second. Then he said, ‘I just can’t do this. It grosses me out.’”

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  She said, ‘I don’t know whether I can accept that.’ ” “How appalling.” “I’m not sure I can accept her daughter as my wife.” “How was the trip otherwise?” “Fine except I went blind in one eye, got so doubled over with anxiety I couldn’t eat or walk, was knocked over by a taxi after I heard my drunken father lecture me about what perverted creatures out of hell my brother and I had been as children.” “Oh no! Always such a mistake to leave New York.” “Ava, can I have some nice soup?” Ava made some remark and Lou muttered, “Ava’s soup burned. This apartment is a dump. We haven’t had heat in a month. Stupid spic super. Today I was held at the office and then I was half an hour late for my shrink. So I rushed over on my bike and had my hour, now fifteen minutes, and then I asked the nigger elevator operator if I could use the john in the building but—” “Do you have to use those pejorative—” I said. “Don’t give me that sobsister shit: Kike analysts, nigger elevator men, spic supers.... You know we talk this liberal bullshit, but do we ever stop to

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Toni Cade Bambara’s preface and essay, “On the Issue of Roles,” in her 1970 book, Black Woman, played a lead role in Black women’s attempts to articulate a coherent narrative about Black female identity and Black women’s leadership against the angst-ridden backdrop of Cruse’s proclamation of crisis. My examination reveals the ways in which battles over race leadership are always deeply tied to contestations over gender and demonstrates that these moments of cultural upheaval frequently urge a refiguring of existing categories of gender within Black communities. This chapter concludes the intellectual genealogy and geography of Black women’s public intellectual work that I have been mapping throughout Beyond Respectability. I argue that the kinds of Black feminist intellectual projects that emerge during the 1970s are, by and large, products of Black women’s public work rather than, for instance, traditional academic theorizing. By the 1980s, with the ascent of women like Mary Helen Washington, bell hooks, Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Patricia Hill Collins, Black feminism moved solidly into the academy, benefiting from a newly available and unprecedented set of institutional resources for Black women to professionalize public intellectual work. But the work of literary and creative intellectuals in the 1970s retained what Farah Jasmine Griffin has called an “extra-academic” tenor that allowed for a range of conversations and contestations about the nature of Black womanhood in the public sphere. We Have a Dream: The Masculinist Politics of the Big Six The only woman to serve on the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom organizing committee, Anna Arnold Hedgeman was a reluctant Black intellectual. In 1933, Hedgeman was invited, as part a new generation of “young Negro intellectuals,” to Joel Spingarn’s Second Amenia Conference in Troutbeck, New York. 5 She recalled being both “flattered and disturbed to be called an intellectual because,” as she reflected, “my recent experience with the problems of the masses of people made me fear words which might separate us.” 6 Though a few women were invited to Amenia II, she mostly

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  So could lunch, dinner or whatever it was I thought necessary or important. I could almost see the Voice, so close, so impelling, so authoritative it was, and withal bearing such ecumenical import. At times it sounded like a lark, at other times like a nightingale, and sometimes—really eerie, this!—like that bird of Thoreau’s fancy which sings with the same luscious tones night and day. When I began the Interlude called “The Land of Fuck”—meaning “Cockaigne”—I couldn’t believe my ears. “What’s that? ” I cried, never dreaming of what I was being led into. “Don’t ask me to put that down, please. You’re only creating more trouble for me.” But my pleas were ignored. Sentence by sentence I wrote it down, having not the slightest idea what was to come next. Reading copy the following day—it came in installments—I would shake my head and mutter like a lost one. Either it was sheer drivel and hogwash or it was sublime. In any case, I was the one who had to sign his name to it. How could I possibly imagine then that some few years later a judicial triumvirate, eager to prove me a sinner, would accuse me of having written such passages “for gain.” Here I was begging the Muse not to get me into trouble with the powers that be, not to make me write out all those “filthy” words, all those scandalous, scabrous lines, pointing out in that deaf and dumb language which I employed when dealing with the Voice that soon, like Marco Polo, Cervantes, Bunyan et alii , I would have to write my books in jail or at the foot of the gallows … and these holy cows deep in clover, failing to recognize dross from gold, render a verdict of guilty, guilty of dreaming it up “to make money”!

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  they might tote a green bookbag or paint on badger eyes or let their bushy, waist-length hair bounce over their shoulders. Sorority girls, unlike Annie, had lots of “personality” of the sort I still see at airports (“You guys! I can’t believe it! This is too incredible!”), a pantomime that can go nowhere beyond being repeated for someone else’s benefit (“Come over here, you won’t believe it, look who’s here, Holly is here, I can’t believe it, Holly in Paris!”). Some were sweet and big-sisterly, good shoulders to cry on; others eternal cheerleaders, all freckles and bobby sox; still others were serious campus leaders with their blond hair in a severe twist. My Annie, although she’d pledged a rather dim sorority that seemed to have nothing but sluts and Home-Ec majors as members, was too moody and far too shy to have much personality. She looked on with confusion, even fear, as other girls kept digging their spurs into their own flanks, neighing louder and louder, pawing the air. She wore that scared smile that the partially deaf produce or that foreigners evince at boisterous parties of people speaking in another language. She didn’t get it. The Beats didn’t make much sense of her either. After all, she wanted to be a “top New York model,” as she said. The Beats were proud to feel they were outsiders against a majority that included nearly everyone else. She was histrionic, but not in the Bronx Ophelia manner of Beat women, who went about scattering black flower petals. Nearly simultaneously, we discovered William Everett Hunton, a first-year law student. I hadn’t slept with Annie. I was (I am) afraid of all women, but especially one so bony, painted, and breakable. Annie pretended to be hurt by my lack of ardor, but only to gain an advantage over me. I suspect she was actually relieved. William was as gay as I but far more eager to try sex with women. I’d conveniently adopted O’Reilly’s theory that homosexuality was only a symptom—a theory, to be sure, that made my urge to love men no more acceptable than Annie’s urge to vomit her supper, but at least the theory didn’t rush me into trying anything so flighty as tinkering with the symptom by literally sleeping with women. I could look forward to years of speculation about Mommy-Daddy; once all my mudpies were neatly stacked, in principle I’d wake one day finding my penis pointing due south, no longer north. “What do you think of him?” Annie asked me. We were walking diagonally across campus. The snow lay in dirty piles all around us as though it represented all the soiled linen we’d ever slept on. “Isn’t he exciting?” “And just a bit phony,” I said. “Does he excite you?” I swallowed. “Yes.” I’d never discussed these things with her before, although O’Reilly had told her of my diagnosis. “He excites me,” Annie declared. “I love his big blue eyes.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But when Barbara laughed, as she must do quite often at the outrageous habits of the great loose-limbed creature, why then these days she would usually cough, and when Barbara started to cough she coughed badly. They had seen a doctor who had spoken about lungs and had shaken his head; not strong, he had told them. But neither of them had quite understood, for their French had remained very embryonic, and they could not afford the smart English doctor. All the same when Barbara coughed Jamie sweated, and her fear would produce an acute irritation. ‘Here, drink this water! Don’t sit there doing nothing but rack yourself to bits, it gets on my nerves. Go and order another bottle of that mixture. God, how can I work if you will go on Oy a a 414 THE WELL OF LONELINESS coughing!’ She would slouch to the piano and play mighty chords, pressing down the loud pedal to drown that coughing. But when it had subsided she would feel deep remorse. “ Oh, Bar- bara, you're so little — forgive me. It’s all my fault for bringing you out here, you’re not strong enough for this damnable life, you don’t get the right food, or anything proper.’ In the end it would be Barbara who must console. ‘ We’ll be rich some day when you’ve finished your opera— anyhow my cough isn’t dangerous, Jamie.’ Sometimes Jamie’s music would go all wrong, the opera would blankly refuse to get written. At the Conservatoire she would be very stupid, and when she got home she would be very silent, pushing her supper away with a frown, because coming upstairs she had heard that cough. Then Barbara would feel even more tired and weak than before, but would hide her weakness from Jamie. After supper they would undress in front of the stove if the weather was cold, would undress without speaking. Barbara could get out of her clothes quite neatly in no time, but Jamie must always dawdle, dropping first this and then that on the floor, or pausing to fill her little black pipe and to light it before putting on her pyjamas. Barbara would fall on her knees by the divan and would start to say prayers like a child, very simply. ‘ Our Father,’ she would say, and other prayers too, which always ended in: ‘ Please God, bless Jamie.’ For believing in Jamie she must needs believe in God, and because she loved Jamie she must love God also — it had long been like this, ever since they were children. But sometimes she would shiver in her prim cotton nightgown, so that Jamie, grown anxious, would speak to her sharply: ‘ Oh, stop praying, do. You and all your prayers! Are you daft to kneel there when the room’s fairly freezing? That’s how you catch cold; now to-night you’ll cough! ?

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  with didn’t feel like they could simply disengage from them. They felt trapped in this relationship with an angry person and didn’t know how to deal with it. Five Caveats As you head into this book, there are five important things I want you to keep in mind. They are part of my worldview when it comes to understanding angry people, and really critical to getting the most out of this book. Sometimes the Anger is Justified Few people want to hear this, but sometimes the anger people have toward us is justified. We are human beings too, and thus capable of making mistakes. We do things, either intentionally or unintentionally, that cause problems for people. We may block their goals, treat them unfairly, or even treat them disrespectfully. Anger is not an inherently bad feeling state. In fact, it’s a healthy and important emotion for people to feel, as it lets us know we’ve been wronged and provides us the energy we need to deal with that injustice. The anger this person is feeling toward us may be a reasonable and healthy reaction to something we did. That does not mean, however, that their treatment of us is justified. Anger can be expressed in numerous ways, and some of those ways are cruel and unfair. We may find ourselves in a situation where we have done something wrong, another person is rightly angry with us, but is treating us in a way that is unacceptable. We can’t work effectively with angry people unless we’re fully willing to consider these dynamics. We have to be willing and capable of honesty, insight, and even some vulnerability. Acknowledging that we may have made a mistake and that we are partially culpable in any situation requires some emotional effort from ourselves, and we won’t be successful unless we’re willing to do just that. TIP Understand that you are under no obligation to stay in a relationship with an angry person

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CONFRONTING DEATH WITH ROLLO MAY O f the fifty men and women who passed through our group for cancer patients, all died of their illness except for one: Paula. She survived cancer only to die later of lupus. I knew from the outset that if I were to write honestly and usefully about the role that death plays in life, I had to be taught by those facing imminent death, but I paid a price for this lesson. Often I was severely anxious after the group sessions: I brooded about my own death, had difficulty sleeping, and was often hounded by nightmares. My student observers also grew troubled, and it was not uncommon for one of them to burst, sobbing, from the observation room before the session was over. To this day I regret I did not properly prepare those students for the experience or provide therapy for them. As my own death anxiety increased, I began thinking of all the psychotherapy I had had in the past—that long analysis during my residency, my year of therapy in London, a year of Gestalt therapy with Pat Baumgartner, as well as several sessions of behavior therapy and a short course of bioenergetics. As I looked back on all those therapy hours, I could not recall a single open discussion about death anxiety. Could this be true? That death, the primal source of anxiety, was never mentioned—not in any of my therapies? If I were to continue to work with patients facing death, I decided I had to get back into therapy, this time with someone willing to accompany me into that darkness. I had recently heard that Rollo May, the author of Existence , had moved to California from New York and was seeing patients in Tiburon, about eighty minutes from Stanford. I phoned him for an appointment, and a week later we met in his lovely house on Sugarloaf Road overlooking San Francisco Bay. Rollo was a tall, stately, handsome man in his late sixties. He generally wore a beige or white turtleneck sweater and a light leather jacket. His office was his study, just off the living room. He was a fine artist, and several paintings that he had done as a youth hung on the wall. I especially admired one of the high-spired church at Mont Saint-Michel in France. (After his death, Georgia, his widow, gave me that painting, which I now see daily in my office.) After only a few sessions, it occurred to me that I could make good use of my eighty-minute commute by listening to a tape of our prior session. I suggested this to him, and he agreed quite readily and seemed entirely at ease at my recording our meetings. Beginning each hour with him shortly after I had listened in my car to our previous session greatly increased my focus and, I believe, accelerated our work.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  It was a part of life I missed out on entirely, yet I also know that I was so anxious and so uncomfortable with myself that it was just as well I didn’t attend an Ivy League college: I doubt I would have enjoyed, or even survived, such an undergraduate scene. In my therapy work I have always been struck by how often my patients recover memories of their own lives at various stages when their children pass through these same stages. It happened to me years ago when my children were in their senior high school year and contemplated college, and it happened once again when my grandson, Desmond, began college. I was astonished and envious at the many resources available to help him and his classmates in choosing a school. Desmond had college advisers, written guides to the best one hundred small liberal arts colleges, and conversations with college recruitment teams. I recall no guidance whatsoever in my day: no high school college advisers, and, of course, my parents and relatives knew nothing of this entire process. Moreover, and this was crucial, I knew no one in my high school or neighborhood who had elected to go away to college: everyone I knew chose one of the two local colleges—the University of Maryland or George Washington University (both, at that time, large, mediocre, and impersonal institutions). My sister’s husband, Morton Rose, was an important influence. I respected him greatly: he was an excellent physician who had attended George Washington University both the undergraduate and the medical school, and I was persuaded that if George Washington was good enough for him, it should be good enough for me. Finally, when my high school awarded me the Emma K. Karr Scholarship—a full-tuition scholarship to GW—the issue was settled: no matter that the annual tuition was only three hundred dollars. At the time I felt that my whole life, my entire future, was on the line. I had known since my encounter with Dr. Manchester at age fourteen that I wanted to go to medical school, but it was common knowledge that medical schools had a strict 5 percent quota for Jewish students; George Washington Medical School had classes of one hundred and accepted only five Jews each year. The high school Jewish fraternity I belonged to (Upsilon Lambda Phi) had far more than five intelligent seniors who planned to take a pre-med curriculum and apply to medical school, and that was only one of several such fraternities in Washington. The competition seemed overwhelming, and so, from my first day of college, I settled upon a strategy: I would put everything else aside, work harder than anyone else, and make such good grades that a medical school would be forced to accept me. It turns out I was not alone in that approach.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  I received thousands of comments and questions from people, and both Buzzfeed7 and Bored Panda8 did stories about the series. It was clear from their comments and questions that this was an area where people felt unprepared and uncertain. They asked thoughtful questions like: How can we disengage if they won’t leave us alone? What do we do when the angry person won’t communicate with us? What if they aren’t mad at us, but we’re left dealing with their anger toward others? These and other similar questions really are interesting and thoughtful and nuanced, and I’ve used them to inform what I’ve included in this book. They’ve helped me better understand the situations people are dealing with and forced me to give some serious thought to how I can help people navigate these emotionally complicated interactions and relationship dynamics. What these online conversations also revealed is how common it is for people to work with, live with, or otherwise interact with angry people. According to the British Association of Anger Management, about one-third of people have a close friend or loved one with an anger problem, but that likely doesn’t capture the bulk of the problem because it ignores co-workers, regular customers, or even the person we may meet on the street on a random day. Anger problems appear to be increasing, so even if we aren’t angry ourselves, we’re still likely to come across such people regularly and often. To prepare for writing this book, I interviewed quite a few people who either described themselves as angry or told me they had an angry person in their life (sometimes both). What was clear from these interviews was how often the angry person was intertwined into their life in a way that made separation from them difficult or even impossible. The angry person was a boss, a parent, a spouse, a former spouse and co-parent, or even one of their kids. They were people who had power over them (such as a boss or a parent) or people with deep personal connections (a spouse or a sibling) and the person I was talking with didn’t feel like they could simply disengage from them. They felt trapped in this relationship with an angry person and didn’t know how to deal with it. Five Caveats As you head into this book, there are five important things I want you to keep in mind. They are part of my worldview when it comes to understanding angry people, and really critical to getting the most out of this book. Sometimes the Anger is Justified Few people want to hear this, but sometimes the anger people have toward us is justified. We are human beings too, and thus capable of making mistakes. We do things, either intentionally or unintentionally, that cause problems for people.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  23 On the basis of this analysis Braun can conclude that one should not be deceived by the constant statements of confidence in salvation (Heilsge- wissheit).24 Although there are no statements indicating uncertainty about salvation, his analysis is nevertheless able to show that behind all the obvious statements of Heilsgewissheit stands a final uncertainty of salvation (Heilsunsicherheit). 25 The reasoning is this: the very swing of the pendulwn from statements of the free mercy of God to earned mercy is a clear symptom of uncertainty. 26 16 Braun, 'Erbannen Gottes', pp. 18-24. 17 Ibid., p. 2I. 18 Ibid., pp. 25-9. 19 Ibid., pp. 35-46. 20 Ibid., p. 29. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., p. 30. 23 Ibid., p. 33· 24 Ibid., p. 46. 25 Ibid., p. 47. 26 Ibid. The Psalms of Solomon 395 Thus Braun has conformed the Psalms of Solomon to the picture of Pharisaic Judaism which is usual in Christian, and especially Lutheran scholarship, and which is usually supported by quotations from Rabbinic literature: it is a religion of works-righteousness in which the occasional statements of God's free mercy are submerged under the statements of self-righteousness, of salvation attained by works. Such a religion, however, leads to uncertainty, since a man can never know whether or not he has been sufficiently righteous. We have shown that this view, when referring to Rabbinic literature, is based on systematic misunderstanding of the material and the religious convictions behind it. The same point can be made about Braun's analysis of the Psalms of Solomon. 27 The fundamental error is in considering the statements of God's mercy to Israel to be in conflict with the statements that God shows mercy to the righteous. Braun seems to have misunderstood the last theme completely. He regards it as 'very astonishing' that the righteous do not receive judg- ment, but rather mercy, while the wicked are judged. 28 One should not be surprised. We have seen this theme or will see it in virtually all the literature being surveyed here, and it is one of the more common themes of Palestinian Jewish literature. Braun misunderstands the theme by not understanding what it is opposite: he takes it to be a statement of earned 'mercy', opposite to statements of gratuitous mercy. The statement that God shows mercy to the righteous is actually opposite to statements to the effect that God rewards the righteous/or their merits.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  There was no question of making his loyalty to God dependent upon rational proof; instead he saw his writings “advancing through faith to understanding, rather than proceeding through understanding to faith.” 3 Men and women had to use all their faculties when they approached God, and Anselm wanted to make truths grasped intuitively intelligible, so that every part of his mind was involved in the contemplation of God. Augustine had taught the Christians of the West that all their mental activities reflected the divine, and this was particularly true of their reasoning powers. “I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving,” Anselm prayed in his Proslogion (“Colloquy”) with God, “that you have made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you and love you.” 4 This was the raison d’etre of every “rational creature,” so people must spare no effort in “remembering, understanding and loving the Supreme Good.” 5 But it was extremely difficult to think about God or even to work up any enthusiasm for contemplation. Anselm was acutely aware of the torpor that made prayer so difficult. In the opening verses of the Proslogion, which takes the form of a highly wrought poem, he laments his sense of alienation from the divine. The image of God within him was so obscured by his imperfections that, try as he would, he could not perform the task for which he had been created. He must, therefore, shake off this mental sloth, using his intellect, reason, imagination, and emotion to stir up and excite his mind; his newfound rational powers in particular were a God-given tool for rousing and kindling the spirit. But he had no illusions about human reason, which he knew was incapable of understanding the unknowable God. “Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height,” he prayed, “for my understanding is in no way equal to that.” 6 He simply wanted to grasp a little of your truth, to which my heart is already loyal and which it loves [quem credit et amat cor meum]. For I do not seek to understand in order that I may have faith [intellegere ut credam], but I commit myself in order that I may understand [credo ut intellgam]; and what is more, I am certain that unless I so commit myself I shall not understand.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  Since then, when I have had patients with a long commute to my office, I have suggested this format to them. How I wish I could listen to those taped sessions now as I write these pages, but alas, that is not possible. I stored all the tapes in a drawer of an old desk in my tree-house office that was badly in need of repair. When my family and I took off for Oxford in 1974, I contracted to have the office rebuilt by an elderly, affable, midwestern jack-of-all-trades named Cecil, who had appeared at our front doorstep years before asking for work. We had plenty for him to do, as I have no skills in the art of house maintenance. Before long, Cecil and his chubby, affable, apple-pie-baking wife, Martha, who looked as though she had just popped out of a Mary Poppins film, moved their small trailer into a hidden corner of our property, where they lived and attended to all our upkeep matters for several years. When I returned from my sabbatical I found that Cecil had done a great job rebuilding my studio, but all the old rickety furniture, including the weathered desk and its drawers crammed with the tapes of my sessions with Rollo, had disappeared in the process. I never found those tapes and occasionally have alarming fantasies that their entire contents will appear somewhere on the Internet. Now, forty years later, I have great difficulty recalling details of our sessions, but I know I focused very much on my thoughts about death and that Rollo, though uncomfortable, never shied away from discussing my most morbid thoughts. At that time my work with dying patients ignited powerful nightmares that vanished immediately upon awakening. At one point, I suggested to Rollo that I spend the night in a nearby motel in order to see him first thing the following morning. He agreed, and those sessions, held while my dreams were fresher, were particularly charged with energy. I told him of my fear that I would die at sixty-nine, my father’s age at death. He said it was odd, given my posture toward rationality, that I clung to such a superstitious belief. When I spoke of my work with dying patients and how they evoked death anxiety, he told me I was courageous to undertake such work and it was hardly surprising that I should feel anxiety.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  People do what they see others do, especially others of similar or higher status. So the already angry nature of social media tends to bring on more anger. The existence, too, of celebrities and politicians* using social media as a tool for anger, hostility, and cruelty models for people that this is an acceptable way to emote. Again, the hostility and anger that already exist online tends to drive even more hostility. ANGER FACT Survey respondents report being aggressive online approximately once per month on average. 68 Strategies for Dealing with Anger Online Much of what we’ve already discussed in this book remains relevant here. You should of course, for example, make sure you keep your goals in mind, stay calm, and ask if the anger is justified. In some ways these things are actually a little easier in the online environment because you usually have time to calm down and give some thought to your response. Whether you are dealing with a stranger or someone you know, there are, however, some specific things to consider when dealing with anger online. At the core of each of these, though, is the need to avoid adding additional fuel to the fire by bringing in your own anger. Wait I had a professor in college who never let students ask about a grade within 24 hours of getting the grade. She said she wanted the emotional response to the grade to dissipate before they had a conversation about it. I don’t know that 24 hours is a magic number for this, but there’s a good reason to take some time before responding. Remember, another person’s anger at you will typically lead to emotionality from you (such as anger, anxiety, sadness, guilt). Taking some

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  52 Since the Rabbis conceived man's side of religion to be fulfilling the commandments, and since the biblical commandments, while not neces- sarily more difficult to fulfil than the laws of some other societies, are never- theless difficult or even impossible fully to obey, one might expect the Rabbis to evidence severe guilt feelings. Actually, this is not so, for reasons which will become fully apparent only later. We may immediately note, however, that the precise identification of what is obligatory and what not, of what. is transgression and what not, of what is sufficient atonement and what not is actually a way not of increasing the neurotic feeling of guilt but of removing it. If a man is in doubt, he can get a ruling and be free of anxiety. If he is guilty he can do what is necessary and be forgiven. If the court rules him not obligated on a certain point, he has no further responsibility. On this point one may best read Mishnah Horayoth. We may give here only a brief example: If the court gave a decision contrary to any of the commandments enjoined in the Law and some man went and acted at their word [transgressing] unwittingly, whether they acted so and he acted so together with them, or they acted so and he acted so after them, or whether they did not act so but he acted so, he is not culpable, since he depended on the [decision of the] court. (Horayoth 1.1) Similarly, one who makes a vow but does not foresee the evil results of it is released from his vow. He is not held guilty of breaking it. 53 A Nazirite is forbidden, among other things, to touch a corpse and thus render himself unclean. 54 The rule applies even if a near relative dies. 55 But a man cannot be sure that he is avoiding all contact with the dead, since touching a 'tent peg' can bring uncleanness. (The room in which a corpse lies is a 'tent' and a peg protruding into the room is unclean. It is possible without entering the 50 Below, section 7 n. 155. 51 Schechter, Aspects, pp. 219-41; Moore,Judaism I, pp. 460-73; III, p. 141 (n. 187, on terminology). 52 See e.g. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, pp. 28-63. 53 Nedarim 9.9. 54 Nazir 6.1, 5; 7.1. The exception is a neglected corpse, which should be cared for. See the discussion in Sifre Num. 26 (32f.; to 6.6f.). 55 Nazir 7 1. n6 Tannaitic Literature [I 'tent' of the corpse to touch the 'peg', which may protrude also into a clean room.) The Nazir who has a near relative dead need not live in a constant state of anxiety about transgressing, since the tent peg was excluded from the prohibition.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  The physician cleaned out the wound and gave me a tetanus antitoxin shot, and we returned to Baltimore without further mishap. Two days later, just as I was preparing to report for my first day of residency, I broke out in a rash, which soon developed into massive hives. I had had an allergic reaction to the horse serum in the tetanus shot and was immediately hospitalized at Hopkins for fear that my breathing would become compromised and a tracheotomy required. I was treated with steroids, which proved immediately effective, but I felt fine the next day and was taken off the steroids and discharged. I started my residency the next morning. In those early days of steroid use, physicians did not appreciate the need to taper steroids slowly, however, and I had an acute withdrawal syndrome with depression, along with such intractable anxiety and insomnia for the next couple of days that I had to load up with Thorazine and barbiturates to get to sleep. Fortunately, it was to be my only personal encounter with depression. On my third day at Hopkins, we first-year residents had our initial meeting with the very formidable John Whitehorn, the chairman of psychiatry, who would become a major figure in my life. A stern, dignified man who rarely smiled, John Whitehorn had a bald pate ringed by short gray hair. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles and intimidated almost everyone. Later I was to learn that even chiefs of other departments treated him with deference and never referred to him by first name. I did my best to attend to his words, but was so exhausted by my lack of sleep and the sleeping drugs in my body that I could barely move in the morning, and during Dr. Whitehorn’s greeting to us I fell asleep in my chair. (Many decades later, Saul Spiro, a fellow resident, and I reminisced about our time together at Hopkins, and he told me he respected me enormously for having had the chutzpah to fall asleep at our first meeting with the boss!) Aside from some low-grade anxiety and mild depression, I recovered from my allergic reaction in about two weeks, but I was so unnerved by the experience that I decided to seek therapy. I asked the chief resident, Stanley Greben, for advice. In that era it was commonplace, even de rigueur, for psychiatric residents to have a personal analysis, and Dr. Greben recommended that I see his own analyst, Olive Smith, an elderly senior training analyst in the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute, and one with royal lineage: she had been analyzed by Frieda Fromm-Reichman, who, in turn, had been analyzed by Sigmund Freud. I had a great deal of respect for my chief resident, but, before making such a huge decision, I decided to solicit Dr. Whitehorn’s opinion about my symptoms following steroid withdrawal and about starting analysis.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  I kept speaking on automatic pilot while frantically burrowing in my mind for the lost idea. After ten more minutes or so, it suddenly popped into awareness and I made my point. I doubt if the audience knew of the frantic internal chase for my lost material, but during those ten minutes, as I was speaking to the audience, I heard a phrase circling in my mind, “That’s it—the time has come. I’ve got to stop giving public talks. Remember Rollo.” I was referring to a scene I described earlier about Rollo May at an advanced age giving an address in which he repeated the same anecdote three different times. I had vowed never to put an audience through the spectacle of my senility. The following day, I returned a rental car to the agency (my car had been in the shop). It was after hours, and the agency was closed. I followed the posted instructions: I locked the car and deposited the keys in the locked drop box. But only a few minutes later I discovered that I had left my bag containing my wallet, keys, money, and credit cards in the car. I finally had to call AAA to come and open the car to retrieve my bag. Though this was an unusually bad siege of crumbling memory, milder lapses happen almost every day now. Who is that man smiling and approaching me? I know him, I’m certain, but his name, oh, his name? And what was the name of that restaurant Marilyn and I used to go to near the beach at Half Moon Bay? The name of that short funny comedian in the movie Throw Momma from the Train ? On what street is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art? What is the name of that odd form of therapy that rests on nine different personality types? And the name of the psychiatrist I used to know who originated transactional analysis? I recognize familiar faces, but the names evaporate—some return, and some disappear immediately after each reminder. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, Van Harvey, a few years older than I (yes, there are still a few of those around). He suggested I read a novel called The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, and I suggested he try Winter by Christopher Nicholson. A few hours later our emails crossed, each asking the other: “What was the name of that novel you recommended?” Of course, I should carry a notepad. But remembering to bring the notepad—ah, there’s the rub. Lost keys, eyeglasses, iPhones, phone numbers, and the location of parked cars—this is my daily fare. But losing both my apartment and automobile keys was extreme and probably related to the insomnia I had experienced the night before. I am certain I know the cause of the insomnia. That evening I had seen a French film, Amour , that depicts the ordeal of an aging loving husband who helps his ailing wife die.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Revisiting Those Five Caveats When we started this book, I introduced five caveats about dealing with angry people I wanted you to consider throughout: Their anger might sometimes be justified.Anger can be both a state and a trait.When people are angry with you, you likely get emotional too.Angry people aren’t necessarily monsters.Angry people are sometimes toxic and dangerous.I want to revisit these because so much of dealing with angry people is about remembering these five things. The strategies I’ve described in Part Two of this book really require that you consider each of these caveats. The reason you need to diagram a person’s anger, for instance, is because it will help you determine if their anger is justified (even if their treatment of you was not justified). You need to find ways to stay calm because in these situations with angry people, you likely get emotional too. And even though angry people aren’t necessarily “bad people” (though sometimes they might be), we may still need to disengage from them because they are bad for us. Putting The Strategies Together Let’s go through some examples of how to integrate these strategies in the workplace and at home and see what they look like. Anger at Work Imagine, for instance, you are at work and you get an email from one of your co-workers that reads, “Hey, you really dropped the ball on this. I’m really upset and am going to need to talk with you about it later.” You have a co-worker who thinks you mucked something up and is obviously angry with you. As we talked about in chapter 12 , situations involving email or other forms of online anger like this allows you to prepare in advance. You have the advantage of time because you got an email in advance of the actual conversation. Chances are, when you received the email and read it, you started to have your own emotional responses that might have included some anxiety, guilt, defensiveness, anger. In a moment like that, it’s important to stop yourself and do a few things. First, diagram the situation from their perspective and ask if the anger is justified. Ask yourself if you are really in error in this situation or if there’s a misinterpretation from the other person. It’s also important to determine, though, all the factors that might be contributing to their anger. Have they been under a lot of work stress lately that might be exacerbating their response to this? Did they misunderstand what actually happened in a way that made their anger worse? Are they catastrophizing the impact of your mistake? Is their anger being exacerbated by the people around them?

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  At the moment of his departure he said to them: Remove the vessels so that they shall not become unclean, and prepare a throne for Hezekiah the king of Judah who is coming. It is a tradition grown hoary with repetition in New Testament scholarship that this story illustrates more or less everything that is wrong with Rab- binic religion. It is taken as proof that Rabbinic soteriology, which is sup- posed to demand a majority of good deeds over evil deeds, produced a state of uncertain anxiety. 76 Bultmann put it this way: 77 A further consequence of the legalistic conception of obedience was that the prospect of salvation became highly uncertain. Who could be sure he had done enough in this life to be saved? Would his observance of the Law and his good works be sufficient? For in the day of judgment all his good works could be counted up and weighed, and woe to him if the scales fell on the side of his evil deeds! When his friends visited Johanan ben Zaccai on his sick-bed, they found him weeping because he was so uncertain of his prospects before the judgement seat of God; the prospect of meeting God as their Judge awakened in the conscientious a scrupulous anxiety and morbid sense of guilt. This same view has been enshrined in Rengstorf s section on 'Hope in Rabbinic Judaism' in the article on elpis in Kittel's Dictionary. 18 Rengstorf 75 I quote the version from Berakoth 28b, according to the Soncino translation. There is a parallel in ARN 25. Sec also Neusner, Yohanan ben Zakki, pp. 172f.; rev. ed., pp. 227f. 76 See Koberle, Siinde und Gnade, pp. 655f.; Windisch, Paulus und das Judentum, 1935, pp. 53f.; S.-B. III, pp. 218-20 (cf. IV, pp. 5, 11 (t) ); Bultmann and Rengstorf, cited immediately below. 77 Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, p. 70. 78 TDNT II, pp. 523-9. z.26 Tannaitic Literature [I ~uotes a passing remark of Schlatter that 'Semitism has no precise parallel to ~lpis' 19 as justification for assuming that there are no words for 'hope' in Rabbinic literature. Tiqvah, he says, 'had as good as disappeared', citing as m exception only II Bar. 78.6. 80 Before accepting Schlatter's word on this point, he might have considered such a passage as Kiddushin 4. 14: 'R. Nehorai says: ... [The Torah] guards him from all evil while he is young, md in old age it grants him a future and a hope' (tiqvah ). Or Rengstorf might nave considered other words, such as metuqan ('what is prepared'), seber ('hope'), sikui ('future prospect'), or the words for trust and confidence based on ba{a~, 81 not to mention such general passages as the various prom- [ses of God to save the Israelites or the statements that one may rely on God (Sotah 9. 15, /ehishsha'en).

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  anxious, tense, or even angry, you can take a moment to look around you in an effort to ground yourself and lessen that emotional feeling. By the time you get to the one thing you can taste, you should have a greater sense of calm and control. Have a Mantra In emotionally charged moments, having a mantra can be a really effective way to calm yourself. It’s easy to feel like a situation is getting out of control when a person is angry with you. Your thoughts might start to feel a little scattered and you may have a difficult time focusing. A mantra or affirmation – something you say to yourself internally – can help you take back some power and sense of control in these moments by reminding you that you are capable of getting through this. For instance, any of the following statements can be valuable in moments like these: I’m strong enough for this. I have control of myself right now. I can handle this. This situation is temporary. I am ________ in these moments [patient, kind, strong, for instance]. You can think of such mantras as a combination of encouragement, meaning-making, and even some planning. By telling yourself that you have control right now, you are both encouraging yourself to hang in there and also reminding yourself that staying in control is important. It is both inspirational and practical. TIP Take a moment to identify a mantra that will work for you in these moments. You may even have a specific mantra for specific situations where you anticipate you’re going to interact with an angry person.