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 How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Mei is a director at a footwear company you’ve definitely heard of. With a pixie haircut and hipster glasses, she looks way cooler than most moms in their early fifties. She is warm and gracious, with a dedication implied by her striding pace and the venti-sized Starbucks she carries at all times. She likes her job and the close-knit team she supervises, but whenever she is called upon to present, Mei either begs her co-worker Yaser to take her place or insists on emailing the slide deck around and explaining it by conference call so no one can see her. A couple of times, when there was no other option, Mei called in sick. Why does a smart, capable woman like Mei turn to Jell-O when faced with a PowerPoint deck? Let’s ask Mei: “I just feel like a babbling idiot. I’m worried I’ll lose it and that everyone will think I’m an anxious freak.” Mei isn’t alone in this. When we’re anxious, we think we wear it on our sleeve. No matter our worry—we’ll look stupid, seem incompetent, lack personality, or anything else—we assume that it’s written all over our face. For Mei, it all boiled down to: “I must look like what I fear.” This second myth is unbelievably common. But why? What’s to blame for the idea that how we feel is how we look? For the primary culprit, look no further than your body. To explain, let’s take a quick tour through the physiology of anxiety. All emotions are physical: sadness is heavy and slow; anger is a roiling rush of adrenaline and bared teeth; disgust is a shudder of revulsion. Anxiety? Finely honed by millennia of evolution, all systems work together in service of sending oxygen to your lungs and shunting blood to your large muscle groups, readying you to come out swinging or to turn and flee. The result is the physiological signature of anxiety: Blushing is the dilation of blood vessels. Sweating is a natural consequence of raised body temperature. Shortness of breath and dry mouth are explained by your muscles’ increased demand for oxygen and water. Cold hands and feet? Victims of the sudden diversion of blood to your biggest muscles. Shaking hands or lips? Blame the adrenaline that floods the body, leaving us trembling like a revving motor. Muscles get fatigued from being coiled like a spring. And finally, the gastrointestinal system discharges any, uh, extra weight, thus lightening the load so we can run faster or fight more nimbly. None of this is particularly pleasant. Prolonged anxiety leaves us exhausted, with knots in our shoulders, back, and stomach. Plus, it’s hard to think through adrenaline, which makes it difficult to concentrate, think of what to say next, or remember what you were talking about—not exactly the impression you’re aiming for during, say, a job interview, a date, or, in Mei’s case, a presentation before a packed auditorium.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  The relief usually proves premature and temporary at best, and detrimental to real personal growth at worst. Commonly, the issues and stressors that existed before the person joined the cult are still there to be dealt with when she leaves. The resurfacing of these issues may influence how people handle postcult life and the conflicts and emotions attached to the original stressor. Prior History of Emotional ProblemsPrior emotional disorders or distress may increase vulnerability to recruitment and susceptibility to the indoctrination program. There are cults, for example, that focus their recruitment activities in drug-rehabilitation programs, Alcoholics Anonymous, and other twelve-step programs, as that milieu tends to be a ripe hunting ground for potential members. Some Eastern meditation groups specifically promise relief from emotional problems, while others offer a mystical appeal to those interested in Eastern ways. Similarly, psychotherapy, human potential, political, commercial, and New Age cults tend to prey on the enormous population of individuals seeking to change themselves or society. Individuals with a prior history of emotional problems are more likely to experience emotional problems while in the group. Therefore they more commonly require psychotherapeutic interventions following cult departure. Personality FactorsWe are all born with different degrees of intelligence, sensitivity, emotional resilience, and various other personality traits. Many of these traits are not only inherited but also are strengthened or weakened by educational and social opportunities during early childhood and adolescence. Depending on specific strengths or weaknesses and the type of education and socialization received, each person responds differently to trauma and stress (including that brought on by participation in a cult). For example, someone who has access to resources and is aggressively able to pursue treatment is likely to alleviate the effect of the experience quicker than someone who has been denied these things. In addition, a person's mastery of prior life crises may affect how well she deals with cult-related trauma. During Cult InvolvementDuring cult involvement, vulnerability factors are related to length of time in the cult, the intensity of the indoctrination process, the extent of harm done, access to medical care, and access to outside support networks. Length of Time in the GroupThe effect a cult experience will have depends in part on how long the person was involved. A related factor is the extent to which the person was exposed to the group's indoctrination and influence processes and systems of control. In some groups, it may take years of involvement before deleterious effects take hold. In others, indoctrination into higher levels of cult activity may be arduous or open only to a select few. In yet others, new members may be swept up into full-time commitment within a matter of weeks. Another factor is the type of responsibility the person had while in the group. For example, someone who was in the leader's inner circle could have been privy to knowledge and decisions that later might exacerbate feelings of shame or guilt.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It had grown darker during my time in the office, and wet and foggy. The street-lamps had all been lit, and every carriage had a lantern swinging from it; City Road was not, however, like Soho, where light streamed upon the pavements from a thousand flares and windows. For every ten paces of my journey that were illuminated by a pool of gas-light, there were a further twenty that were cast in gloom.The gloom lifted a little at Old Street itself, for here there were offices, and crowded bus stops and shops. As I walked towards the Hackney Road, however, it seemed only to deepen, and my surroundings to grow shabbier. The crossings at the Angel had been decent enough; here the roads were so clogged with manure that, every time a vehicle rumbled by, I was showered with filth. My fellow pedestrians, too - who, so far, had all been honest working-people, men and women in coats and hats as faded as my own - grew poorer. Their suits were not just dingy, but ragged. They had boots, but no stockings. The men wore scarves instead of collars, and caps rather than bowlers; the women wore shawls; the girls wore dirty aprons, or no apron at all. Everyone seemed to have some kind of burden - a basket, or a bundle, or a child upon their hip. The rain fell harder.I had been told by the tea-girl at the Angel to head for Columbia Market; now, a little way along the Hackney Road, I found myself suddenly on the edge of its great, shadowy courtyard. I shivered. The huge granite hall, its towers and tracery as elaborate as those on a gothic cathedral, was quite dark and still. A few rough-looking fellows with cigarettes and bottles slouched in its arches, blowing on their hands to keep the cold off.A sudden clamour in the clock tower made me start. Some complicated pealing of bells - as fussy and useless as the great abandoned market hall itself - was chiming out the hour: it was a quarter-past four. This was far too early to visit Florence’s house, if Florence herself was at work all day: so I stood for another hour in one of the arches of the market where the wind was not so cutting and the rain was not so hard.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Harris’s Google search that night took him on an ill-fated multiyear journey deep into the pickup artist scene. Harris thought it was his social skills that had stymied his love life and assumed “how to” rules would improve them.3 Instead, it left him vulnerable to a rigid system that viewed women as algorithms at best, targets at worst. “The seduction scene,” Harris said, “basically taught me to be manipulative and controlling, and if a woman did something outside the flowchart, something was wrong with her. I had wanted to get better socially, but it was more like really high-pressure sales tactics. It was really toxic.” Fast-forward fifteen years. Today, Harris is the creator of Paging Dr. NerdLove, an award-winning blog that manages to be practical, hilarious, and insightful all at once. With the pickup scene long behind him, he dispenses love and dating advice to nerds, geeks, otaku, and gamers “without all of the toxic parts—what works and is healthy.” As Harris says as Dr. NerdLove, “Geeks have the worst superpower in the world—we can anticipate the worst possible outcome to anything. We can tell you exactly how walking up and saying hi to someone is going to end with us going to jail.” But it’s not just geeks—anyone experiencing social anxiety feels as if their social skills are slipping from their grasp. And sometimes they do slip-slide away. Our worries become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it’s not just you. It’s so common it has a name: anxiety-induced performance deficits. This is when, precisely because we’re anxious, we start to act oddly. We go blank. We spill our drink. We fall, and not in an adorable Zooey Deschanel kind of way. In a cruel twist of irony, this sets off other people’s alarm bells and creates awkward moments. Because we’re sending signals that something’s off, it sets off the threat-o-meter of people around us—the lizard brain at its most basic. Whether it’s a deer’s white tail bounding away, a cloud of ink where the octopus once was, or Derrick or Harris approaching women with a vibe of, It’s okay; I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either, when we send out signals of threat others look at us so they can react accordingly and keep themselves safe. But everyone looking at us at our most awkward is the last thing we wanted, not to mention the thing we most feared. When we’re feeling inhibited, we’re already overthinking. We can’t access our skills unconsciously anymore, so sometimes we have to remember them consciously. Big asterisk: you already know how to do all these, but when we feel intimidated and inhibited we magically forget. Here’s a reminder for the next time you feel on the verge of releasing your own cloud of ink.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  The worst, Diego said, was when he had to do a physical exam and actually touch someone’s body. “And the absolute worst is when I have to do a Pap smear, a breast exam, a testicular exam, or anything like that,” he said. Between being observed by supervisors and having to touch patients, Diego said, “I’m anxious all the time.” So Diego worked hard to cover himself. When he spoke, he monitored himself to ensure he was using his “doctor voice” and sufficiently impressive vocabulary. While other people were talking, he thought about what to say next, weighing and rehearsing to make sure he didn’t say anything impolite, insensitive, or stupid. But all Diego’s impression management—focusing on his anxiety and monitoring what he said—was royally screwing up his work. He often missed what was being said to him—by patients, attending physicians, his resident. He had to ask people to repeat themselves. He would get distracted and lose his place while taking a history or forget the entire circulatory system while performing a physical. During bedside teaching sessions, he didn’t answer the attendings’ questions unless they asked him directly, and then his mind would go blank, unable to remember the lines he had just been rehearsing in his head. But after a couple of months in the hospital, his midsemester evaluations, to put it lightly, left room for improvement. He was distracted and unfocused, said the residents. He seemed preoccupied, said the attendings. Diego was discouraged and unnerved. He wanted nothing more than to do well, to be a good doctor. Something had to change. * * * As you know by now, social anxiety is fundamentally a distortion: it’s a mistaken belief that something is wrong with you and everyone will notice. That you’ll be Revealed. But that’s not the only lie social anxiety tells. In this section of How to Be Yourself, we’ll put the myths of social anxiety in the hot seat. Diego is a classic example of the first myth of social anxiety: I must always monitor myself and my anxiety. He plans and rehearses what he says, ensures his voice isn’t squeaky or cracking, and weighs his words to ensure he simultaneously sounds smart, doesn’t offend anyone, and generally avoids criticism. But all this impression management is exhausting, plus in the end, it actually hinders his performance and keeps him mired in social anxiety.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  For lots of people, grocery shopping squarely presses their social anxiety button. There’s the sense of being in the way, worry that people are evaluating the contents of our carts, or reluctance to chat up the cashier. For me, grocery shopping doesn’t typically trigger any anxiety since videographers seldom jump out from behind the seedless grapes. So when I signed up for the food committee I didn’t think anything of it. However, the first time I found myself in the grocery store with the co-op’s five-page shopping list, I realized I would need two carts, which in retrospect made sense for a week’s worth of twice-a-day snacks for fifty children. I wheeled the first cart around the store, loading it to the brim, and then dropped it off at Customer Service while I set out with the second. But when I looked at what remained on the list and realized my new cart would contain nothing but ten gallons of milk, forty bananas, and thirty apples, I felt that old sensation start to rise. As I maneuvered the cart over to the dairy section, I got stuck in my own head. I couldn’t help but imagine what other people would think: Well, she sure has a limited diet, Just buy a cow, lady, or, A little thirsty, are we? One by one, I hefted ten gallons into the cart, then pushed my considerably heavier load over to the produce section and topped it off with forty bananas. I don’t think I’d ever bought forty of anything before. Finally, as I was self-consciously bagging thirty apples, imagining the obnoxious things people might say, a man approached me. “Nice apples,” he intoned. I startled. In a flash, my adrenaline jolted—it was The Reveal. But when I looked up, I saw an old friend grinning back at me. I can guess what my face looked like because his expression quickly changed to alarmed and chastened. “Sorry I scared you,” he said. “No, no, it was totally me,” I said truthfully. “I was in my own world.” Pleasant small talk ensued, and he said nothing about the contents of the cart. I don’t think he even noticed. To be stuck in your own world of possible judgments, or stuck in your own head judging yourself, is not fun. For me, it kept me from being where I actually was—in the produce section of a busy grocery store on a Sunday afternoon—and instead put me in a self-generated world of judgment that wasn’t even real. It kept me from looking around at the good people of the grocery store—young couples debating coffee brands, dads with toddlers, white-haired women sniffing melons—and realizing that not one of them was eyeballing me or my cart.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I’m still trying to figure out what I believe,” I answered, taking the hot mug he held out to me. “I have something else for us, if you’d like, a little something I harvested up in the woods.” He pulled a gnarly root that looked like ginger from his pocket and showed it to me in his palm. “It’s chewable opium.” “Opium?” I asked. “Except it’s way more mellow. It just gives you a relaxed high. You want some?” “Sure,” I said reflexively, and watched as he sliced off a piece and handed it to me, sliced another piece off for himself and put it in his mouth. “You chew it?” I asked, and he nodded. I put it into my mouth and chewed. It was like eating wood. It took a moment for me to realize that maybe it would be best to steer entirely clear of opium, or any root that a strange man gave me, for that matter, regardless of how nice and non-threatening he seemed. I spit it into my hand. “You don’t like it?” he said, laughing and lifting a small trash can so I could toss it in. I sat talking to Clyde in his truck until eleven, when he walked me to the front door of the club. “Good luck up there in the woods,” he said, and we embraced. A moment later, Jonathan appeared and led me to his car, an old Buick Skylark he called Beatrice. “So how was work?” I asked. Sitting beside him at last, I didn’t feel nervous the way I had when I’d been in the bar and he’d been watching me. “Good,” he said. As we drove into the darkness beyond Ashland, he told me about living on the organic farm, which was owned by friends of his. He lived there free in exchange for some work, he explained, glancing over at me, his face softly lit by the glow of the dash. He turned down one road and another until I had absolutely no sense of where I was in relation to Ashland, which for me really meant where I was in relation to Monster. I regretted not having brought it. I hadn’t been so far from my pack since I began the PCT, and it felt strange. Jonathan turned in to a driveway, drove past an unlit house where a dog barked, and followed a rutted dirt road that took us back among rows of corn and flowers until finally the headlights swooped across a large boxy tent that was erected on a wooden platform and he parked.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Instead I straddled the white line between the Smith woman’s car and mine and extended my arms so that I touched both near doors, hers and mine, connecting us two. I held that quasi-crucifixional position for a time, looking out at the hills and the cars ahead, considering that if I pulled on my glasses right then to resume time, my car would race off driverless and would eventually crash, and I, left in the middle of the road, would almost certainly be hit by one of the cars behind ours. I looked through her window at her, my face inches away from her profile. I went around and opened her passenger door, which was fortunately not locked, and cleared off the junk on the seat (mostly cassettes and several Books on Tape from the library) and got in next to her. I don’t have to point out that cars are extremely private places; the feeling that I was doing something of questionable ethics by entering this woman’s small glossy blue Ford was more intense than I could remember in recent fermations. I was sweating with the almost horrified excitement of my wrongdoing. The soles of my feet were warm to the touch. I was in her car. “Well, here we are,” I said aloud to myself. I couldn’t bring myself to find out what was up with her breasts, or do anything more radical in fact than rest my hand lightly on her accelerator leg (she was wearing a huge thick pink sweater with roses woven into it, and faded jeans); I had a sense of being dangerously far away from home, perhaps because the steering wheel and brake pedal of my own speeding car were so nearby and yet so peculiarly out of my reach. What should I do? Should I simply jack in the passenger seat next to her? I don’t as a rule like masturbating in cars. I could get out and stand in the road and jack onto her trunk lock or her driver-side window, or, having rolled down that window beforehand, I could jack directly into the interior of her car. But it would be rude to get my hard sauce all over the flowers on her sweater, which looked expensive and hand-knit, perhaps a favorite sweater of hers. Besides, my shoes might melt or catch flame. What I really wanted was just to be alive in this woman’s car for a second while she was driving it—so I climbed in the back seat and lay down and used my glasses to reactivate time for the quick count of five and then deactivated it again.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Kesey, who was at the far end of the room, walked his barrel of a body straight over, pulled out a chair for me, and said, “Well HELLO. What do we have here? A triple A tootsie.” It was the first time I’d seen him not in a photo or at some Oregon literary event. The closer he came, the more nauseous I felt. But when he got right up to me, I could see the former wrestler in his shoulders and chest. His face was moon pie round, his cheeks vividly veined and flushed, puffy with drink. His hair seemed like cotton glued in odd places on a head. His smile: epic. His eyes were transparent blue. Like mine. My face got hot and the top of my head itched and all the others in the room looked like writers with special MFA badges while I felt like a human match. Like I might burst into a puny orange flame. While everyone was laughing about the tootsie remark he leaned down and whispered in my ear, “I know what happened to you. Death’s a motherfucker.” In 1984, Kesey’s son Jed, a wrestler for the University of Oregon, was killed on the way to a wrestling tournament when the team’s bald-tired van crashed. My baby girl died the same year. Close to my ear, he smelled like vodka. Familiar. He handed me a flask and we got along and bonded quickly the way strangers who’ve seen aliens can. That’s all it took. No one ever questioned me, least of all Kesey. It was brilliantly incomprehensible to me. I loved it. I was 25. The first day of the collaborative novel writing workshop, Kesey brought out a brown cigar box and asked Jeff Forester to roll a joint. Jeff Forester had beautiful bleached brownblond curly hair and translucent eyes and tan skin. He looked like a surfer to me. But with a wicked vocabulary and mucho skill with words. Jeff didn’t seem to bat an eyelash, he just rolled a perfect fattie, and Kesey began talking his Kesey talk, which began, “I’ve always hated sitting in a room with writers.” Bennett Huffman took a large toke from the christening joint and passed it. Bennett Huffman was tall and thin and light skinned. His quietness mesmerized me. While we were smoking in a round, Bennett closed his eyes, lost the color in his face, and fell to the ground - almost in slow motion. Passed out cold. I don’t remember who expressed alarm. It was maybe a woman. Like maybe we should call someone or do something. Beautiful Bennett there on the floor.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The room seemed to have darkened since we entered it, and I felt colder, suddenly, than I had all summer.I heard her take a step. In a second she was sitting beside me again, and had taken my hand from my brow. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I have something to ask you.’ I looked at her; her face was pale, except for its cloud of freckles, and her eyes seemed large. ‘Do you think that I look handsome today?’ she said. ‘Do you think I have been kind, and pleasant, and good? Do you think your parents like me?’ Her words seemed wild. I did not speak, but only nodded wonderingly. ‘I came,’ she said, ‘to make them. I wore my smartest frock, so they would think me grander than I am. I thought, they might be the meanest and most miserable family in all of Kent; yet I will work so hard at being nice, they’ll trust me like a daughter.‘But oh, Nan, they’re not miserable or mean, and I didn’t have to play at being nice at all! They are the kindest family I ever met; and you are all the world to them. I cannot ask you to give them up ...’My heart seemed to stop - and then to pound, like a piston.‘What do you mean?’ I said. She looked away.‘I meant to ask you to come with me. To London.’I blinked. ‘To go with you? But how?’‘As my dresser,’ she said, ‘if you’d care to. As my - anything, I don’t know. I have spoken to Mr Bliss: he says there will not be much money for you at first - but enough, if you share my diggings.’‘Why?’ I said then. She raised her eyes to mine.‘Because I - like you. Because you are good for me, and bring me luck. And because London will be strange; and Mr Bliss may not be all that he seems; and I shall have no one...’‘And you truly thought,’ I said slowly, ‘that I would say no?’‘This afternoon - yes. Last night, and this morning, I believed - Oh, it was so different in the dressing-room, when it was just the two of us! I didn’t know then how it was for you here. I didn’t know then that you had a - a chap.’Her words made me bold. I drew my hand away from hers and got to my feet. I walked to the head of the bed, where there was a little cabinet, with a drawer in it. I opened it, and took something from it, and showed it to her. ‘Do you know this?’ I said, and she smiled.‘It’s the flower I gave you.’ She took it from me, and held it.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  This is one reason why many so-called seekers hop from one cult to another or go in and out of the same group or relationship. Because every person needs something to believe in-a philosophy of life, a way of being, an organized religion, a political commitment, or a combination thereof-sorting out matters of belief is a major part of postcult adjustment. Often cult involvement is an attempt to live out some form of your personal beliefs, so the process of figuring out what to believe after you leave will be easier if you can dissect the cult's belief system. When you feel ready, take some time to evaluate your group's ideology, philosophy, and worldview. Define it for yourself in noncult language. Research the tradition out of which the cult grew (most cult ideologies stem from existing belief systems, and many cult leaders claim that lineage as part of their proof of legitimacy). Now you can find out for yourself what that tradition is actually about and how it was usurped or distorted by the cult. After you dissect the cult's beliefs, it may help you to go back and research the spiritual or philosophical belief system you had prior to your cult involvement. Through this process, you will be better able to assess what is real or safe, and what is off base. You will gain a basis for comparison that will enable you to separate yourself from the cult's beliefs, and question and explore areas of belief that were systematically closed to you in the cult. Most former members shy away from organized religion or any kind of organized group for quite a while after leaving a cult, and pastoral counselors are advised to do no proselytizing to former members at this time.11 Those for whom a religious affiliation is important sometimes find comfort in their precult religion and return to a church, synagogue, mosque, or place of worship in that tradition. That scenario, however, seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Most former cult members advisably take time before choosing another religious affiliation or group involvement. When you begin to get involved in something new, and should you have any concerns that it may be another cultic group, check it out as best you can by asking many questions and settling for no evasive answers. Use the checklists and resources in the Appendixes at the back of this book. Above all, if you have any doubts, trust your own instincts, ask others who are not in the new group about it, and slow down. Don't jump into any new commitments until you feel certain that the organization is legitimate, and any involvement will be beneficial to you. Vocational and Career Issues"So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" If you have just left a cult, you may find yourself asking that question at age thirty or forty, or older.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  In a study by the psychologist Paul Martin and colleagues using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI), the Beck Depression Inventory, the Hopkins Symptom Checklist, and clinical interviews of in clients at a rehabilitation facility, it was noted, not surprisingly, that for mer cult members exhibit considerable distress in the areas of anxiety, depression, and dissociation. 14 The DES and SCID-D have also proven useful in determining the degree and scope of dissociation, with the SCID-D indicating specific dissociative disorders. It is heartening to note that treatment has shown demonstrable effectiveness in reducing postcult distress, as measured by pre- and posttreatment testing. HospitalizationThere have been some studies of the usefulness or necessity of psychiatric hospitalization in the treatment of former cult members. Some patients are selfreferred; families may bring others in; and others are dropped off at hospital emergency rooms when their symptoms become too severe for the cult to handle. As illustrated in Christina's case and other examples in previous chapters, decompensation may occur both during and after involvement in intensive thought-reform environments. Psychiatrist David Halperin writes, "If psychiatric intake workers are not sensitive to cult issues and do not bother to inquire about their patients' possible cultic involvements, they will not realize the extent to which a patient's presenting symptomatology may be related to powerful group pressures and their aftereffects. As a consequence, they will tend to overestimate and misunderstand the psychopathology and inappropriately treat the cult-involved individual. Sometimes such misdiagnosing can result in unnecessarily prolonged inpatient treatment."" Halperin suggested the following considerations when working with current or former cult members who require hospitalization: • Careful assessment of the individual's pre-affiliation status. Cult affiliation may precipitate a brief psychotic reaction. It may also be symptomatic of severe underlying pathology and chronic illness. Even in an otherwise intact individual, the brief psychotic reaction may be surprisingly severe, with the patient manifesting agitated, suspicious, confused, and quasi-manic behavior. However, hospitalization, which places the individual in a structured and protected setting without further contact with members of the cultic group, is usually successful in terminating the brief psychotic reaction. • Treatment of an individual with a problematical pre-affiliation history is often protracted and complex. Mood stabilizers, anxiolytic agents, and neuroleptics may be required. • Follow-up care in halfway houses and other supportive settings, in particular rehabilitation centers for former cultists, may be extremely helpful. In most cases, follow-up care should include exit counseling, psychotherapy, family therapy, and pharmacotherapy.16 Halperin also notes that sometimes it is appropriate to incorporate exit counseling as part of inpatient treatment, with the exit counseling team also, educating hospital staff about the realities ' and potential aftereffects of cult involvement. MedicationThere is a scarcity of data on the pharmacological treatment of former cult members or other victims of trauma.'' Caution must be taken in the decision to prescribe medication to former cult members because it is difficult at times to distinguish between symptoms that are a function of thought-reform systems versus true symptoms of psychiatric illness.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I pull it right into my tent,” said Greg, and a little something inside of me flared to life. “That’s what the backcountry rangers do. They just don’t tell anyone about it, because they’d catch hell if some bear came along and mauled someone because of it. I’ll be hanging my food in the more touristy parts of the trail, where the bears have become habituated, but until then I wouldn’t worry about it.” I nodded confidently, hoping to communicate the false notion that I knew how to correctly hang a food bag from a tree in such a way that would thwart a bear. “But then of course we might not even make it up into those areas,” said Greg. “We might not make it?” I said, blushing with the irrational thought that he’d somehow divined my plan to quit. “Because of the snow.” “Right. The snow. I heard there was some snow.” In the heat I’d forgotten about it entirely. Bud and the woman from the BLM and Mr. Todd and the man who tried to give me the bag of bread and bologna seemed like nothing now but a far-off dream. “The Sierra’s completely socked in,” Greg said, echoing Bud’s words. “Lots of hikers have given up entirely because there was a record snow-pack this year. It’s going to be tough to get through.” “Wow,” I said, feeling a mix of both terror and relief—now I’d have both an excuse and the language for quitting. I wanted to hike the PCT, but I couldn’t! It was socked in! “In Kennedy Meadows we’re going to have to make a plan,” Greg said. “I’ll be laying over there a few days to regroup, so I’ll be there when you arrive and we can figure it out.” “Great,” I said lightly, not quite willing to tell him that by the time he got to Kennedy Meadows I would be on a bus to Anchorage. “We’ll hit snow just north of there and then the trail’s buried for several hundred miles.” He stood and swung his pack on with ease. His hairy legs were like the poles of a dock on a Minnesota lake. “We picked the wrong year to hike the PCT.” “I guess so,” I said as I attempted to lift my pack and lace my arms casually through its straps, the way Greg had just done, as if by sheer desire to avoid humiliation I’d suddenly sprout muscles twice the strength of the ones I had, but my pack was too heavy and I still couldn’t get it an inch off the ground. He stepped forward to help me lift it on. “That’s one heavy pack,” he said as we struggled it onto my back. “Much heavier than mine.”

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Ralli is extremely nervous and is drinking copious draughts of brandy. He retells his story for the seventh time, simply because he must talk in order to quieten his nerves. The body could not have been long in the water, yet the skin was like the skin of a washerwoman’s hands. When they lifted it to get it into the hydroplane the false teeth slipped out of the mouth and crashed on to the floor-boards frightening them all. This incident seems to have made a great impression on him. I suddenly feel overcome with fatigue and my knees start to tremble. I take a mug of hot coffee and, kicking off my boots, crawl into the nearest bunk with it. Ralli is still talking with deafening persistence, his free hand coaxing the air into expressive shapes. The others watch him with a vague and dispirited curiosity, each plunged in his own reflections. Capodistria’s loader is still eating noisily like a famished animal, blinking in the sunlight. Presently a punt comes into view with three policemen perched precariously in it. Nessim watches their antics with an imperturbability flavoured ever so slightly with satisfaction; it is as if he were smiling to himself. The clatter of boots and musket-butts on the wooden steps, and up they come to take down our depositions in their notebooks. They bring with them a grave air of suspicion which hovers over us all. One of them carefully manacles Capodistria’s loader before helping him into the punt. The servant puts out his wrists for the iron cuffs with a bland uncomprehending air such as one sees on the faces of old apes when called upon to perform a human action which they have learned but not understood. It is nearly one o’clock before the police have finished their business. The parties will all have ebbed back from the lake by now to the city where the news of Capodistria’s death will be waiting for them. But this is not to be all.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Me too,” I said, though I knew it wasn’t true. Even when I was exhausted, I could never sleep in moving vehicles of any sort, and I wasn’t exhausted. I was lit up by being back in the world. I stared out the window while Greg slept. Nobody who’d known me for more than a week had any idea where I was. I am en route to Reno, Nevada, I thought with a kind of wonder. I’d never been to Reno. It seemed the most preposterous place for me to be going, dressed as I was and dirty as a dog, my hair dense as a burlap bag. I pulled all the money from my pockets and counted the bills and coins, using my headlamp to see. I had forty-four dollars and seventy-five cents. My heart sank at the paltry sight of it. I’d spent far more money than I’d imagined I would have by now. I hadn’t anticipated stops in Ridgecrest and Lone Pine, nor the bus ticket to Truckee. I wasn’t going to get more money until I reached my next resupply box in Belden Town more than a week from now, and even then it would be only twenty bucks. Greg and I had agreed we’d get rooms in a motel in Sierra City to rest up for a night after our long travels, but I had the sickening feeling I’d have to find a place to camp instead. There was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t have a credit card. I’d simply have to get through on what I had. I cursed myself for not having put more money in my boxes at the same time that I acknowledged I couldn’t have. I’d put into my boxes all the money I’d had. I’d saved up my tips all winter and spring and sold a good portion of my possessions, and with that money I’d purchased all the food in my boxes and all the gear that had been on that bed in the Mojave motel, and I wrote a check to Lisa to cover postage for the boxes and another check to cover four months of payments on the student loans for the degree I didn’t have that I’d be paying for until I was forty-three. The amount I had left over was the amount I could spend on the PCT.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Having nothing to say or feeling conspicuous is a problem, to be sure, but it’s not a skills problem; it’s a confidence problem. Interestingly, most people who experience social anxiety actually have excellent social skills, but when we’re feeling inhibited we apply them in a way that keeps us from gaining confidence. We might keep other people talking so we don’t have to talk. We might deftly steer the conversation so we don’t have to talk about ourselves. We ask lots of questions. We act in a way that researchers call innocuously social. We nod a lot. We agree. We tend not to interrupt. We use what linguists have labeled back-channel responses like “uh-huh” or “wow, really?” to show that we’re listening and interested. And you know what? All this requires stellar social skills. We’re masters at reading a group, being agreeable, paying close attention, keeping the peace, and encouraging others to take the lead without their even realizing it. Even after we think we’ve screwed up, committed a faux pas, or said something unintentionally offensive, we bring in more good social skills by apologizing or explaining. Lack of such skills would get us in real trouble, which in turn would lead to isolation. Indeed, a 2012 study out of Berkeley found that even though it’s uncomfortable to feel embarrassed, it serves a vital social function by acting as a prosocial gesture. In short, we’re not poorly socialized; in fact, quite the opposite. Instead, we’re simply inhibited. So why does it feel like we have no social skills? Because I always end up doing something embarrassing, you might say. Or, I always cause awkward silence. Or, People look at me funny and I can’t tell whether they didn’t hear me or they think I’m an idiot. Okay, here’s what’s happening: social anxiety only strikes when there is a fear of judgment, a fear of The Reveal. You’re probably open, relaxed, or funny with your partner, your family, or close friends. But with strangers or people you don’t know well, you get inhibited and think you have no skills. And you’re not alone: meet Harris. * * * Harris O’Malley is a self-described geek, but he’s not straight out of The Big Bang Theory2—he’s open, confident, and today happily married. But back in college it was different. Back then, in addition to possessing ready opinions on the semiotics of Gattaca and Dark City and, as he says, “a Three Wolf Moon T-shirt worn completely without irony,” he also held a raging sense of inhibition. His pigeonhole was “the guy who wasn’t good with girls.” And for Harris, whenever he was friendzoned or got the “I think of you like a brother” talk, he felt like he was losing a game where he didn’t know the rules. One night, frustrated, he concluded he must be doing something wrong. Like Derrick, he decided it must be his skills. He opened his laptop and searched online for “how to get better with girls.”

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Noah wanted to know; he needed to know. He was searching, investigating. Who had these dead people been? Whom had they left behind? How old were they when they died? Could Noah die? Could his parents? Decades later, Noah comes to see me with what he calls his “obsession with dead people.” He wants to know everything about these people in the obituaries, and I want to know everything about him. With each obituary that Noah brings into the consulting room, we piece together our respective puzzles, hunting for what is missing. “I got it,” Noah reports after hours of painstaking research at home, googling, filling in dates and details of the latest obituary. “I think I know everything. Now I can let it go.” Unlike Noah, I don’t get it. Missing many parts of Noah’s personal history, I try to wait patiently for them to enter the room. I know from experience that sooner or later the missing pieces will appear. I just have to silently listen and invite them in. Noah becomes irritated when he is missing something in his puzzle. He holds the newspaper and reads aloud to me from the obituary of a woman named Marie, then rolls his eyes. “Listen to how annoying this is,” he says. “How come they write that ‘Ronald’ was her second husband? If you google him, you find this same Ronald was also the translator of a book she co-authored many years earlier with her first husband—who was also named Ronald.” I am confused and jokingly think, Maybe she only liked people named Ronald. My reaction is a result of the fact that I have trouble following the details, which makes me anxious. I don’t yet fully understand Noah’s interest in these facts about the dead. “Both of her husbands were called Ronald—is that possible?” Noah wonders. He counts the Ronalds again, as if he needs to make it clear that there is something behind those names. He holds in his mind those who have died, and he refuses to let them go. He embraces their stories as if they belong to him, and in that sense those people are neither alive nor dead but rather exist as ghosts between two worlds, never fully seen but present in his life, and now in mine as well. As I join Noah on his search, I become aware that ghosts—the ghosts of the dead, the ghosts of his history—haunt us both. We always know less than we want to. “How old was your mother when you were born?” I ask him one day, trying to imagine his family. Noah answers: “Forty-four, I think. Old, right?” He is almost forty-four and doesn’t have children of his own. “Are you old?” I ask.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Our aggressive impulses make us anxious and we often try to feel better either by overcompensating with kindness or by projecting those feelings onto others. Paranoid thoughts are a result of our aggressive feelings, feelings that we couldn’t tolerate and needed to get rid of by attributing them to another person. The more aggression is disowned and projected onto others, the more frightened we then become of those people. Guy feels too anxious to talk about his feelings and instead talks about the world around him, placing his feelings outside himself. He is hesitant about taking off his coat lest he would be too exposed, too vulnerable. He makes sure not to create a coherent narrative, and I sense that there is a secret behind his smile. “Why are you here, Guy?” I finally have the courage to ask. Guy stays silent for a long minute. “Because I come from mental illness,” he says. “I might be mentally sick too.” I’m not yet sure what he means, but I see how he is taking the first step toward me, toward a new future. Guy looks at his watch and then puts his coat on. “It’s enough for today,” he says, and I notice that he is the one ending our session again. “I’ll see you next week,” he says as he exits. It is the beginning of summer and a few months since Guy started his sessions with me. We now feel more comfortable with each other and I have learned to appreciate Guy’s cynical sense of humor and respect his ways and his rhythm. Guy often needs to avoid direct conversation; he rationalizes and intellectualizes his feelings and speaks in general terms. While I know his opinions about many topics, he tells me very little about his past or his family. Every Monday evening I wait for Guy to arrive. He is never late, and now, five minutes before his session, I hear the doorbell ringing. Before I have the chance to answer it, it’s ringing again, and then again . I open the door and Guy storms in and immediately closes the door behind him. “How did you know who’s at the door?” he asks, still standing at the threshold. “How did you know that it was me ringing and not some random person who wants to break in?” He sounds anxious. “You are worried,” I say, and Guy doesn’t answer. We both sit down. I notice that he doesn’t carry his usual backpack. He hasn’t gone to work, I assume. “Your doorman doesn’t seem so effective; he is sort of sleepy,” Guy says, and I hear him sigh. “Today I had jury duty and it was such a long day.” “And what made you think about my safety today?” I ask. “I’m not sure. I walked here from the subway and I saw a man downstairs.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I didn’t see the photos, like those I saw years later of kids in striped uniforms. I just knew that something bad had happened to my family in Europe.” Rachel’s family tried to protect the children from their own trauma and therefore never talked about it. Rachel was left with the knowledge that something terrible had happened but she didn’t know what exactly. She had a bad feeling that she couldn’t put into words. Rachel wishes there were a family story she could tell, or a concrete picture that would help her know what was real and what was only in her imagination. An important question comes to the surface. Is it better for the next generation of trauma survivors—the inheritors—to know, or not to know? Does it even matter, assuming our ancestors’ trauma finds its way into our minds anyway? This dilemma preoccupies many parents, who worry about the impact of their suffering on their children and try to minimize the damage. Parents want to protect their children from carrying their pain, and children try to protect their parents from having to reveal and relive their traumas. The unconscious collusion between parent and child is one that aims to avoid pain, and it contributes to the repression of those experiences, which become unspoken secrets. Descriptions of traumatic events are overwhelming and might create a “secondary trauma,” an emotional distress that happens when we are exposed to another person’s trauma. Disturbing reports or images inflict cruelty: they reenact the traumatic event and traumatize those who didn’t directly experience it. In Israel after World War II, survivors didn’t talk about the Holocaust. Being a survivor was a source of shame, and it was only years later that talking about the Holocaust became normalized and an inherent part of the culture. However, being exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust from such a young age doesn’t only educate but often also traumatizes Israeli kids. Without fully knowing it, they live and relive the history of the Holocaust. Remembering and reenacting suffering is part of the Jewish tradition, and it is threaded through many rituals, such as the Passover seder, where the “memory” of slavery and liberation is relived through our senses and our actions. The reenactment of trauma links the past and the future, our history and our destiny. It turns passive victims into active agents, victims into victors. The identity of the Israeli state, founded only three years after the Holocaust, is based on the ongoing Jewish trauma of persecution and on the dream of creating a safe home for the Jews. It is that dynamic of turning passive into active, which I discuss at length in Chapter 7, that aims to liberate victims from defeat and helplessness while denying their own aggression. The dilemma of memorializing of trauma on the one hand holds the need to honor the victims, to cherish an identity and a legacy, and to try to prevent crimes from happening again.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  That maybe he had lost something too. I know it sounds strange, but honestly, I never thought about how he felt when I didn’t want to see him anymore. I never imagined how he felt when he walked into his office that Monday morning. It didn’t occur to me that maybe my mother did this to hurt him and not only to heal herself. Even when I say it now, it feels wrong. I don’t think she had bad intentions.” I hear how through Art’s eyes, Alice’s view of her father became more nuanced. She could start seeing him and her mother as complex humans who struggled to survive. “After about a month of nightly conversations with Art, when we talked about absolutely everything, I agreed to meet him outside of the office. And that was it.” Alice pauses. “We spent that night together and knew that we would spend every night of the rest of our lives together. A month later we tried to get pregnant.” “And you felt like you were betraying your mother,” I say. “Oh yeah,” she replies. “I obviously told my mother right away and she was happy for me, but I knew that I had crossed some secret line. I was afraid to tell her that he wasn’t legally divorced yet. I was afraid she would see that as a move toward my father and would worry that I might forgive him and leave her. So I told her gradually. “At first she just listened, as she always did. She was always a good listener. And then she asked, ‘Is he a good man, Alice?’ And that made me so uncomfortable because I knew what she really wanted to ask. I knew she was thinking about my father. But she didn’t want to ruin it for me. She just kept asking if he was a good man. “‘Why do you keep asking that, Mom? Of course he is,’ I answered, and she noticed that I was irritated. “‘I love you more than anything,’ she said. ‘I want you to be with a good man. I want you to be happy. One day you will have a daughter and you will understand that.’” Alice looks at me. “To tell you the truth,” she says, “it did ruin it for me. It made me worried. I felt her doubt and I thought that maybe she could see something about Art that I couldn’t. When I was with him, I felt completely safe, but when I was with her, I felt her suspicion of him, and it made me doubt my own judgment.” I wonder out loud if it was her fear of losing Alice that made her mother so worried. Alice seems intrigued. “You know what Art likes to say?