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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had said that I would see her at the entrance to the public house at six o’clock, and it must, I thought, be past six now ... Even as I thought it, the carriage slowed in the traffic and I saw her standing there, a little way along the street, waiting for me. The brougham crawled still slower; from behind the lace of its windows I could see her perfectly, frowning to her left and right, then bending her head to look at the watch at her bosom, then raising a hand to tuck a curl in place. Her face, I thought, was so very plain and kind. I had a sudden urge to tug at the latch of the door, and race down the street to her side; I could at least, I thought, call to the driver to stop his horse, so that I might shout some apology to her ...But while I sat, anxious and undecided, the traffic grew swift, the carriage gave a jerk, and in a moment Judd Street and plain, kind Florence were far behind me. I could not bear the thought, then, of asking the forbidding Mr Shilling to turn the horse around, for all that I was his mistress for the afternoon. And besides, what would I say to her? I would never, I supposed, be free to meet with her again; and I could hardly expect to have her visit me at Diana’s. She would be surprised, I thought, and cross, when I didn’t turn up: the third woman to be disappointed by me that day. I was sorry, too - but, on reflection, not terribly sorry. Not terribly sorry at all. When I returned to Felicity Place - for that, I saw now, was the name of the square in which my mistress had her home - I was greeted with gifts. I found Diana in the upstairs parlour, bathed and dressed at last, and with her hair in plaits and elaborately pinned. She looked handsome, in a gown of grey and crimson, with her waist very narrow and her back very straight. I recalled those laces and ties I had fumbled over the night before: there was no sign of them now beneath the smooth sheath of her bodice. The thought of that invisible linen and corsetry, which a maid’s steady fingers had fastened and concealed and my own trembling hands, I guessed, would later uncover and undo, was rather thrilling.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  That’s where I saw Grace take control of her situation. She was empowered as she accepted the reality of the relationship. And be prepared—I expect you to probably have a strong reaction to this: she set an ultimatum. Yes, you read that right. Grace said from the start that she would give therapy six months. If Ryan was still unsure about marrying her at that point, she was out. He would either know by then or he wouldn’t—either way it was an answer. Now this is where some of you may be saying, “But if you really love them, you’ll wait forever.” “Why do you need a ring to prove that your partner loves you?” “If they’re not ready yet, then it’s never going to work out. You’re a fool to stick around this long anyway.” “What if they only propose because they don’t want to lose you and then they secretly resent you?” Or my favorite, “This is sounding too hard. Relationships that are meant to be should come easier.” Well, if you’ve ever lived with a partner with anxiety or you’ve lived with it yourself, then you know that few things ever come that easy. It’s in the nature of the anxious brain to hem and haw, to doubt, and to be indecisive. We always need just a little more time. It’s not that we don’t love whom we are with. For some of us with anxiety, it can feel really hard to take that next step into the unknown. It’s scary to jump in the pool, even if we know we want to be in the water. This is where Grace and Ryan had been sitting for ages. They each hoped that the other would make the jump ahead. Ryan hoped Grace would change her mind about having kids. Grace hoped that Ryan would love her enough that he’d be willing to forgo having a family. Both were too anxious before therapy to fully broach the situation. This is where something like a time ultimatum can really come in handy. Boiled down, ultimatums are simply boundaries that are clearly elucidated. If you are honest about what you want and what your values are, that’s not something to be apologetic or feel guilty about. We often shame people, especially women, for giving ultimatums (ahem, boundaries), when really, they’re just naming exactly what they want and by when. Ultimatums are about respecting your time—and the time of the person you’re with. Rather than leading you to slowly build resentment if your wishes do not come to fruition, ultimatums make sure there are no surprises if and when you need to leave to find your values fulfilled elsewhere.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  darkness, obscurity ;—‏ 7 *1*?. גננ. גב חשךּז Gn 1° + 75%.) + Ez8" del.Co A Betc.);‏ חשך abs.‏ estr. id. Ex 10; sf. °300 y 18"=2§ 22”;—‏ darkness (opp. 8) lit. Gn 1°* (P), Is‏ .1 3. fig. " 45’ 1526 Ec 2% cf. in imprecation Jb 3** טַ & ky : Gn 1 (P), cf. Jos 2° (JE),‏ לילה = (ח' וצלמות) Is 45% 10 17" 24% 38" 104”; darkness in‏ mines Jb 28°; of extraordinary darkness, in‏ Egypt Ex 107*(E); AEN” NEx1o*(E),y 105%,‏ from piular of cloud Ex 14”(J); at Mt. Sinai‏ Dt 4" 5”; of clouds of theophany 2S 22%=‏ of darkness in death, or 02601, 1 S 2°‏ ;"18 IN), 17° 18% y 885 Pr 20”‏ ח' וצלמות) Tb ro‏ =extreme of darkness). 2. =secret‏ א ישון ח') =hiding-place‏ ; (צלמות |\(™12 place(s) Is 45° Jb‏ Jb 34> (|| 2d.), cf. » 139°" ;—on Ez 8", v. supr.‏ fig., a.=distress Is 5” g' 29 (fig. of blind-‏ .3 =18° ץ *ךָ 311 ?3 ness), 42’ 49° 58% 59° 60" La‏ ees Sb iE 20” 22" 23% 29° 107°"‏ Ec 5" 115 b. =dread,‏ 112 , (צלמות || {in both‏ terror, symbol. of judgment Am 5°” Zp 1”‏ Nat® Ez32° Jo2*3*. ©. =mourning Is 47°.‏ d. = perplexity Jb 5“ 12% 19°; confusion 735°.‏ =ignorance 2 37% 100 2. £. =evil, sin‏ .6 Pr2™. g.=obscurity Ec 6**.‏ = 15 Wiad adj. obscure, low, only mpl. as subst.; לְפֶנִי חשפִּים‎ asM da Pr 22” he shall not stand before obscure men (opp. .(לפני-מלבים‎ ח'---(.6%סן n.f. darkness (chiefly‏ השכהז Gn 15"+2 t., so rd. also prob. Mi 3° (for MT‏ estr. NVM y 18";‏ ;"139 ץ חַשִכָה ;ְחֶשָבָה Is 50";—darkness, opp. light (7758)‏ חְשכִים pl.‏ (JE); “NPN‏ 155 0 ח' supernat.,n>m3‏ ;"139 ¥ חשָרתדמים "22 ₪ 2 || DY y 18" in theoph. (but‏ a mass of water); fig.=lack of understanding‏ =distress 18 85 (|| M3), 50.‏ ;82° ¥ כ' n.m. dark place (poet.)—abs.‏ מחשך1 Ts 29" 42°; JZ y 88"; pl. DDVMD 88" 143°‏ =La 3°; estr. ‘20M ¥ 74";—dark place: a.‏ db. dark region,‏ .”74 מה'הארץ =hiding-place‏ im which men may lose their way 15 42%. ¢. =‏ y 88" (v. Che); of dark place of‏ שאול grace, or‏ God's wrath (like She’6l) 88°; 61. 143°=La 3°.‏ ad. =secret place, secrecy (of plots) Is 29”.‏ T [ wr] vb. shatter (BAram. 220 shatter; NH Pi., || משבר‎ ; Syr.\ vee forge’'a metal, Ar. 36 make dark,’nin יום לילה‎ Am 5°; abs. cause dark- - ness Je13” שש‎ 1057, cf. Am 8° (לארץ)‎ 2. - חשק 5 pee drive cattle violently ; As. hasdlu, shatter, destroy Zim**” D]***)—WNiph. Pt. fig. -b3 הְַּהָשָלִים‎ Dt 2 55 all the shattered ones, i.e. those broken down, worn out, sq. 2) FY TAN; others think=y>n. 1 Dyn n.pr.m. head of a family of returned exiles Ezr 25 = Ne 7™, Ezr 10% cf. Ne 8* 10”.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  strenuously exert) oneself to Je 9* 20°; abs. of eager and hopeless prayer 72307>Y 5) Moab, Ts 16% (|| ms72, dann waponby NB): of vain Ponsultations, (sq. 2) Babylon Is 47°; subj. * sq. inf. Isr“; Je 6" 15°, always of ו‎ patience ; a of parched soil (abs.) y 68”. Hiph. 2 3 ms. sf. 897 Jb 167; 3 fs, nda Ez 24” (del. G Co), x. sf. PONS Mi 6*; Impf וילאו‎ 16 12°; WHATS 7"; Inf 6. ד דַהַלאות‎ - weary, thaike weary, exhaust, sq. acc. Jb 16° (subj. God); exhaust patience of, obj. God Is 5% obj. men Is 7% Je 12° Mi 6°. ת'-- -; n.f. weariness, hardship‏ תִלְאָז 20% גו א Ex 18°4-, 4 of distress of Isr.in Egypt‏ in wilderness Ex 18° (both JE); from Assyr.,‏ gall); Mal 1°.‏ , ראש ||( 3° Bab., 666. Ne 9%; cf. La‏ TR? 34 U.pr.f. Leah, elder daughter of Taban, and wife of Jacob (perh. = wild-cow, Ar. %ש‎ (5) [ef. 2A ewe], D1?” RS¥2" and (doubtfully) No 216 1886, ie also Gray" Names, >< others, 5 11699189 ו‎ As. li’at, in sense mistress ; on poss. relation of axd to לוי‎ ve (לוי‎ —mother of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, J nate Issachar, Zebulun and Dinah; Gn ees ee (ch. vv) 30°94 15 t. eS לב‎ 3-7 eat 4 68 49°! Ru qe G .\)6( ₪. vb. cover, only Qal Pf 3 ms.‏ אטז aban 2 8 19%, rd. perh. OND, fr. DY‏ אַתפָנִיו We Dr Bu.‏ ond Ju 4", ete., v. לוט‎ ord gently, v.OS sub DON p. 31 supr.‏ לאט of. Ar. dT, DI‏ מִלָאכָה ‏ מִלְאֶף 4/0 ) לאך messenger, Eth. ain: send a messen-‏ גפ 4 521 מלאכה ger,v. TAA: be sent, wait on, minister; PAA: = Heb. NPD ; cf. Ph. מלאך‎ messenger; NH FNPD, Aram. N2NDY, as in Heb.)

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  T ש עה‎ vb. gaze (steadily, with interest, etc.) (As. Set, behold, look for, aim at) ;—Qal Pf. 3 ms. ש'‎ Gn 4°, etc.; Impf. 3 ms. T1Y¥ 5 177%, apoc. YO" Gn 4% 1s. NYWR(Ges!™!) p19”, ete.; Imv. ms.1YY Jb 14°; mpl. WY Is 224; — gaze at, regard (with favour),”subj., c. bs Gn4*° (J); ¢.jDpers.=turn gazeaway Is 22*Jb7*Thes Ew Che, + prob. 10” (for .6,(יָשִית‎ by pers. 14°; man subj., regard God (with trust, devotion), 6. על‎ Is 6 ON rei 17°; ¢. 2 of words, statutes, Ex 5°(J) ץ‎ 119"; abs. 3 fpl. תִּשְעֶינָה‎ Is 32° shall not behold makes no sense, read prob. ,שעע .4/1( תִּשעִינָה‎ Ew and most); 3 mpl. ישעג‎ 2S 22% they look (about) for help, <as || .ישוע 8 ץ‎ Hiph. Jmv. ms.1292 השע‎ 39% cause thy gaze to turn away from me (see also WI. yyw), <Qal TYY as Jb 14° (cf. 7 Is 224) HupBaeDuGes'”*. Hithp. Jmpf.2 ms. apoc. 1 אֶלמִּשְתַע‎ Is 41" gaze not about (in anxiety, \| NTN) ; ipl. AYA (Ges'®") v5 let us look at each other (in rivalry, v. ראה‎ Hithp.). (Vv of following; Ar. 5 Il. pound‏ שעט to pieces).‏ n.f. stamping (of hoofs) ;—cstr.‏ [שעטה] ד Je 47°.‏ שעטת PAN MIDI‏ q.v.; abs. Ly n.m. mixed stuff (perh. of Egypt.‏ שעטננז origin; Kn der. from Copt. saht, woven, + nudj,‏ ; שעטמ false (Peyron****"), and thinks orig.‏ has xiBdydos, spurious); —a kind of cloth‏ 60 forbidden for garments; defined Dt 22" by‏ VIM? DWE WY, and Ly 19" (H) by DYNDE.‏ v. Ty,‏ שָעִיר 1 ש על‎ (V of following; NH שעל‎ deep, depth, of sea; Aram. שָעְלָא ,שָעּלָא‎ Ison BH ([שעל]‎ T [שעל]‎ n.[m. | hollow hand, handful ;— 1. hollow hand : sf.i>ywWa Is 40" (fig. of * hold- ing waters). 2. handful: pl. ד שָעָלִים‎ K 20% (dust, in hyperb.); estr. שָעלִי שָערִים‎ (as if fr. [oy] Ko") Ez 13” handfuls of barley. 1043 אשען T ל ס[1101. גוד. גד משעול‎ way, road shut in;— estr. DDI '5 טוא‎ 22* (JE) 1.6. road shut in between vineyards. IL. שעל‎ (/of foll.; NH Syn, שעל‎ ; Ar. JUS, SUS; Aram. ַעקָא‎ JLSY, all= BH (שוּעָל‎ ie שנעל‎ naam. 25 fox, perhaps also | jackal ;— abs. ש'‎ Ne 3°; pl. Dye Jur5*+,- ש'‎ Ez 13* Ct שש/---;2%%‎ (prob.) Ne 3” Ct 2°"; perh. (fr. large no.) jackal Ju 15*; as haunting ruins Ez 13* La 5"; eating offal y 63”. yu. שועל‎ n.pr.loc. district in 15186[;-- 4% (MY 774); not identified —Vid.‏ "1813 אָרֶץ ש' A¥N p. 347” supr.‏ ש' also‏ ,%ך n.pr.m. in Asher ;-- 1 Ch‏ שוּעל .צנ ך Dovda, A Sovac, GL 2000.‏ n.pr.loc. (perh. haunt of foxes 2‏ שעלבים+ Ar. ha , As. Sélibu, fox) ;—in (orig.) territory‏ of Dan, Ju1® (cf. GFM, on etym. and site),‏ K 4°, GadaBew, 200960, Ju also ai adazekes,‏ 1 as doublet, or (AGL) alone; = pabyy 1%‏ Sa(a)AaBew,‏ y. foregoing.‏ שעלבין

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Time passes. It’s now getting on for a thick, gloamy evening. Smoke is everywhere on the horizon. A yellow crescent moon tilts, out of focus, up there in something that looks like a plate of agar. Swimmy dusk. Bats flit. Trees gather darkness to themselves. Mabel’s swivel and leash are in my pocket, I have swapped her jesses for thin flying jesses that will not catch on twigs or branches, and I grip them tightly between my gloved fingers. I have walked, under Stuart’s instructions, to a triangle of rough ground just one side of a copse of trees. It is a thick patch of thistles and dry seedheads, and we trudge through it. I am mute with stress, enraged by what is happening and powerless to stop it. It is dark. What the hell am I doing? The hawk’s pupils are huge. Her eyes are almost completely black. I cannot believe how stupid this is. I want to go home. I want to go home. And Stuart starts beating up towards me, mushing the thistles and grasses with a stick to push any hidden rabbits or pheasants towards us so Mabel can see them. This is ridiculous. I don’t want to be here, and I don’t know why I’m letting this happen. I shouldn’t be loosing this hawk. I should just – there is a movement behind me and to my right, and the hawk peers, seeing something running, and then bates at the spot. Oh! And I let her go. And immediately I wish I had not. Suddenly my hawk is free. She flies powerfully for a few seconds, dips at whatever it was, which has gone, and then starts to fly in circles, sailing like a moth, a giant hawkmoth. She gains height. There is a terrible crepuscular hush. I can see her long head turning to look at me, and her tail fanning and flexing as she turns. I’m in some kind of fugue state. The gap between me and the hawk is something I feel like a wound. She is circling, and looking at me, and seems uncertain about coming back. Stuart is standing here. Christina is standing there. I am standing right here, shouting and whistling at the hawk. The dark, that she can fly in circles, that everything’s unclear: these things are discoveries for her. She’s trying to work out what to do. The new ground. The angle of incidence between up here and down there, where Helen’s hand and heart are.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Oh! and when she stepped on stage at last, there would be that rush of gladness so swift and sharp I would catch my breath to feel it, and grow faint.That is how it was on my solitary visits; but on Saturday, of course, as we had planned, my family came - and that was rather different.There were nearly twelve of us in all - more by the time we reached the theatre and took our seats, for we met friends and neighbours on the train and at the ticket-booth, and they attached themselves to our gay party, like barnacles. There wasn’t room for us to sit in one long line: we spread ourselves about in groups of threes and fours, so that when one person asked Did we care for a cherry? or Did Mother have her eau-decologne ? or Why had Millicent not brought Jim? the message must be passed, in a shriek or a whisper, all along the gallery, from cousin to cousin, from aunt to sister to uncle to friend, disturbing all the rows along the way.So, anyway, it seemed to me. My seat was between Fred and Alice with Davy and his girl, Rhoda, on Alice’s left, and Mother and Father behind. It was crowded in the hall and still very hot - though cooler than it had been on the previous, sweltering Monday night; but I, who had had a box to myself for a week, with the draught from the stage to chill me, seemed to feel the heat more than anyone. Fred’s hand upon mine, or his lips at my cheek, I found unbearable, like blasts of steam rather than caresses; even the pressure of Alice’s sleeve against my arm, and the warmth of Father’s face against my neck as he leaned to ask us our opinion of the show, made me flinch, and sweat, and squirm in my seat.It was as if I had been forced to pass the evening amongst strangers. Their pleasure in the details of the show - which I had sat through so often, so impatiently - struck me as incomprehensible, idiotic. When they sang out the chorus along with the maddening Merry Randalls, and shrieked with laughter at the comedian’s jokes; when they gazed round-eyed at the staggering mentalist and called the human loop back on to the stage for another tumble, I chewed my nails. As Kitty Butler’s appearance grew more imminent, I became ever more agitated and more wretched.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  He had to pass himself off as a gentleman. He took up the correct pursuits: shooting, fishing, flying and foxhunting. The latter was a perfect challenge: there were a thousand rules and protocols; it required bravery, money, social skills, horsemanship and exquisite feats of disguise . ‘ Can one wear topper , black coat and jacks without tops?’ he anxiously enquired of his Cambridge friend Ronald McNair Scott. He was not sure about breeches. ‘Mine are the right kind of buff, I think (a sort of kakhi [sic]) but perhaps the weave (or cording or whatever you call it) is too coarse or not coarse enough?’ Too coarse. Not coarse enough. He kept meticulous hunting diaries to record his progress: number of miles hacked and coverts drawn, people encountered, hedges and ditches successfully taken, thoughts on his horse’s conduct, and painfully circumlocutory assessments of his own: ‘ I believe I did not misbehave myself, and was certainly at no time rebuked,’ he wrote. Defensive, negatively couched, these are the words of a man desperate to belong. In England Have My Bones , he describes Buckinghamshire in a similar way – through what it is not. His county lacks outstanding qualities, beauty and historical significance, and so it avoids the attention of the world. It is safe. When White goes on to explain how Buckinghamshire ‘ concealed its individuality in order to preserve it’ but is ‘secretly exuberant in its private way’ you realise that he is writing about his own character . More disguises . The mirror works both ways . The lines between the man and landscape blur. When White writes of his love for the countryside, at heart he is writing about a hope that he might be able to love himself. But the countryside wasn’t just something that was safe for White to love: it was a love that was safe to write about. It took me a long time to realise how many of our classic books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak. Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water , for example: the tale of a lonely man on the Scottish coast with an Iraqi otter on his sofa. Or the books of the BBC radio naturalist Maxwell Knight, former MI5 spymaster and closet queen. Doubly disallowed to speak openly of his allegiances, Knight wrote a book about hand-rearing a cuckoo called Goo. His obsession with this small, greedy, feathery, parasitic bird is terribly moving; it was a species made of all the hidden elements of Knight’s life: subterfuge, deceit, passing oneself off as something one is not. White is part of this poignant literary tradition. He remained alone all his life.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I worried I hadn’t dressed smartly enough. I was wearing a black cotton dress from Debenhams. Maybe it was the wrong thing? Why hadn’t I gone and bought a proper outfit? Something expensive, and smart, and sharp around the edges? It took a few seconds before it struck me that my panic might not be about clothes at all. I sat down in the stalls between my mother and my brother, took their hands, light-headed with love and sorrow. My aunt was here, my brother’s partner and her parents too. We were a family. We were. I looked around for the other speakers: Ron Morgans and Alastair Campbell, who’d worked with Dad for years, and Jeremy Selwyn, another photographer, biting his lip and watching the crowds pour in. I walked up to the lectern with the paper in my hand. I had given so many lectures, so many talks, that I’d thought this would be easy. But it was not. I was terrified. I grabbed the lectern’s wooden edges to stop me from swaying. How can I do this? Don’t look at the audience, said a voice inside me. Pretend they’re not there. And then another voice inside said: Look at the audience. I looked. Hundreds of faces. Dad’s colleagues, Dad’s friends. The fear vanished in an instant. I couldn’t be scared any more. And I started speaking. I told them about my father. I told them a little about his early life. I told them he had been a wonderful father. I reminded them, too, of his ridiculous inability to wear anything other than a suit – although he did make concessions on holiday, and occasionally removed his tie. I told them that on our trip to Cornwall to photograph the total eclipse we’d been standing on the beach before the skies darkened when a man who said he was the reincarnation of King Arthur, a man wearing a silver diadem and long white robes, came up to Dad, and said, bewildered, Why are you wearing that suit? Well, said Dad. You never know who you’re going to meet. And then I told the story I hoped they would understand. He’s a boy, standing by a fence and staring up at the sky. He’s at an aerodrome, Biggin Hill, spotting RAF planes. He is nine? Ten? He’s been photographing each aircraft that takes off or lands with the Box Brownie camera that hangs on a string around his neck, and putting their numbers down in a spiral-bound notebook. It is getting late. He ought to leave. Then he hears a sound he cannot place, an unfamiliar engine note, and yes, there, this is it, this is the moment he has dreamed of. He stares into the sky. He sees the landing lights of . . . he doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t know what it is. It is not in any of the books. He takes its picture. He copies its registration number onto the page.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The only way to tame them is through positive reinforcement with gifts of food. You want the hawk to eat the food you hold – it’s the first step in reclaiming her that will end with you being hunting partners. But the space between the fear and the food is a vast, vast gulf, and you have to cross it together . I thought, once, that you did it by being infinitely patient. But no: it is more than that. You must become invisible. Imagine: you’re in a darkened room. You are sitting with a hawk on your fist. She is as immobile, as tense and sprung as a catapult at full stretch. Underneath her huge, thorny feet is a chunk of raw steak. You’re trying to get her to look at the steak, not at you, because you know – though you haven’t looked – that her eyes are fixed in horror at your profile. All you can hear is the wet click, click, click of her blinking. To cross this space between fear and food, and to somehow make possible an eventual concord between your currently paralysed, immobile minds, you need – very urgently – not to be there. You empty your mind and become very still. You think of exactly nothing at all. The hawk becomes a strange, hollow concept, as flat as a snapshot or a schematic drawing, but at the same time, as pertinent to your future as an angry high court judge. Your gloved fist squeezes the meat a fraction, and you feel the tiny imbalance of weight and you see out of the very corner of your vision that she’s looked down at it. And so, remaining invisible, you make the food the only thing in the room apart from the hawk; you’re not there at all. And what you hope is that she’ll start eating, and you can very, very slowly make yourself visible. Even if you don’t move a muscle, and just relax into a more normal frame of mind, the hawk knows . It’s extraordinary. It takes a long time to be yourself, in the presence of a new hawk. But I didn’t have to learn how to do this. I was already an expert. It was a trick I’d learned early in my life; a small, slightly fearful girl, obsessed with birds, who loved to disappear . Like Jumbo in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I was a watcher . I had always been a watcher . When I was a child I’d climb the hill behind my house and crawl into my favourite den under a rhododendron bush, wriggling down on my tummy under overhanging leaves like a tiny sniper.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  “That’s okay.” I walked to the front of the bus. “Listen up, everybody! We’re going to go over the script together to make sure we’ve got it straight. What do we want?” “A meeting with the director!” “Where?” “In Altgeld!” “What if they say they’ll give us an answer later?” “We want an answer now!” “What if they do something we don’t expect?” “We caucus!” “Crackers!” Tyrone shouted. The CHA office was in a stout gray building in the center of the Loop. We filed off the bus, entered the lobby, and mashed onto the elevator. On the fourth floor, we entered a brightly lit lobby where a receptionist sat behind an imposing desk. “Can I help you?” she said, scarcely glancing up from her magazine. “We’d like to see the director, please,” Sadie said. “Do you have an appointment?” “He …” Sadie turned to me. “He knows we’re coming,” I said. “Well, he’s not in the office right now.” Sadie said, “Could you please check with his deputy?” The receptionist looked up with an icy stare, but we stood our ground. “Have a seat,” she said finally. The parents sat down, and everyone fell into silence. Shirley started to light a cigarette, but Angela elbowed her in the ribs. “We’re supposed to be concerned about health, remember?” “It’s too late for me, girl,” Shirley muttered, but the pack went back into her purse. A group of men in suits and ties came out of the door behind the receptionist’s desk and gave our contingent the once-over as they walked to the elevator. Linda whispered something to Bernadette; Bernadette whispered back. “What’s everybody whispering for?” I asked loudly. The children giggled. Bernadette said, “I feel like I’m waiting to see the principal or something.” “You hear that, everybody,” I said. “They build these big offices to make you feel intimidated. Just remember that this is a public authority. Folks who work here are responsible to you.” “Excuse me,” the receptionist said to us, her voice rising to match mine. “I’ve been told that the director will not be able to see you today. You should report any problems you have to Mr. Anderson out in Altgeld.” “Look, we’ve already seen Mr. Anderson,” Bernadette said. “If the director’s not here, we’d like to see his deputy.” “I’m sorry but that’s not possible. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll have to call Security.” At that moment, the elevator doors opened and several TV film crews came in, along with various reporters. “Is this the protest about asbestos?” one of the reporters asked me. I pointed to Sadie. “She’s the spokesperson.” The TV crews began to set up, and the reporters took out their notebooks. Sadie excused herself and dragged me aside. “I don’t wanna talk in front of no cameras.” “Why’s that?” “I don’t know. I never been on TV before.” “You’ll be fine.”

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  But I hadn’t even noticed what was happening until the lie pulled me into a spiral and my body revealed the anxiety that had set me spinning. Worried About Many Things How many of us are dragging through our days, weighed down by anxiety? Many of us find our thoughts circling around problematic circumstances or people. For others of us, anxiety has become the soundtrack of our days, so familiar we hardly notice it playing in the background of every scene. (Please know that I’m talking here about thought patterns, not about anxiety that is rooted in our bodies’ chemistry and for which I urge you to seek professional help, if this is your situation.) The enemy has ensnared us with two little words: “What if?” With those two little words, he sets our imaginations whirling, spinning tales of the doom that lurks ahead. But our tool for defeating “what if” is, not surprisingly, found in two words: “Because God.” Because God clothes the lilies of the field and feeds the birds of the air, we don’t need to be anxious about tomorrow.1 Because God has poured His love into our hearts, our hope will not be put to shame.2 Because God chose us to be saved by His strength, we can stand firm in our faith no matter what the day holds.3 Freedom begins when we notice what it is that is binding us. Then we can interrupt it with the truth. Anxiety says, “What if?” What if I get too close to this person and she manipulates me like the last friend I trusted? What if my spouse cheats on me? What if my children die tragically? What if my boss decides I’m expendable? What if… What if… Certainly there are healthy levels of anxiety that signal our brains to be afraid of things that are truly worth being afraid of—like a bear in the woods or oncoming traffic when we cross a street. As an editor for Medical News Today noted, “It is when this life-saving mechanism is triggered at inappropriate times or gets stuck in the ‘on’ position that it becomes a problem.”4 The type of anxiety that sends our thoughts spiraling is when our emotional reaction to scary things goes beyond rational to illogical because our brains’ fear networks are in overdrive. We keep finding new concerns to worry about and new facets to each concern, as if by constant stewing we can prepare ourselves for what’s to come. We experience palpable physical responses to things that are not real threats, and our future-tense fears are leaving us bound up with tight chests, unable to relax or be present, utterly forgetting that there is a God who will give us what we need today, next week, and twenty years from now, even if our very worst nightmares come true. We are “what-iffing” ourselves to death. But there is a better way, because we have a choice.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  I’ve felt confused and trapped by my own body at times. It started in high school when I struggled to eat because of frequent nausea and stomach pain. I lost fifteen pounds within two months. I was told there was “no clear diagnosis,” even after I was given an ultrasound and CT scan. That’s right—I wasn’t even told it was anxiety that I was grappling with, and, looking back, I remember never being asked about any symptoms of anxiety. It continued in college when I literally peed my pants from a bladder that couldn’t hold itself (for the sake of this story I wish I could tell you I was intoxicated but I was all too sober). I went on to have several urine tests and, again, no clear answers and not one mention of anxiety. I’ve since learned that frequent urination is actually a fairly common sign of anxiety. 5 When you don’t know what anxiety looks like, the signals that your body is sending can be even more alarming. Incidentally, this often only worsens the anxiety, and the physical and mental symptoms continue to amplify. It can feel like we’re in completely unknown waters and we can’t see the bottom. You may know that feeling if you’ve ever been diving or snorkeling and you can’t see the floor of the ocean and start to panic. There’s an actual name for this phobia: thalassophobia, where we fear the vastness and emptiness of the ocean. I know some of you are adding this to your list of symptoms as we speak. I think it’s actually quite helpful to utilize the water as a metaphor for our distress, and you’ll see me build on this visualization throughout the book. Whether or not we have a phobia of the ocean, there are several parallels between our minds and the sea. Let me explain how the ocean and our minds are quite similar: 1. The great unknown: We’ve only explored about 20 percent of the ocean in its entirety. 6 In fact, a greater percentage of the surface of the moon and the planet Mars have been mapped out compared to our ocean floor. 7 Similarly, we continue to identify and understand new areas within the brain. Researchers are differentiating more complexities within our neocortex on a regular basis, having named 180 separate areas in our cerebral cortex. 8 We are evolving to better understand how our genetics interact with our environment to create our lived experiences and physical symptoms, but the unique intersectionality in the brain continues to remain largely unexplained. 2. The unpredictability: Yes, we can draw out the expected pattern of the tides, but if you’ve ever been in the ocean, you know the sudden power of a wave knocking against your back.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  It looks different for each person, but ultimately, our brains love to introduce all kinds of wacky, unpleasant, and worst-case-scenario thoughts and images that make us do a double take on ourselves. That is simply what the brain does. While there are findings indicating a wide range in the number of thoughts we have in a given day, at a minimum, the brain churns out about six thousand thoughts a day. 28 Better yet: most of those thoughts are considered to be negative in nature and repetitive in context. This is how the brain has held power over you. Each time an upsetting idea or image pops up, you may have said to yourself, “What’s wrong with you?! You’re so [disgusting, weird, stupid, messed-up]—how could you have had that thought?” You start worrying that it’s just you who’s had these thoughts, and before you know it, you’ve got a classic case of what we call meta-worrying. What’s meta-worrying? It’s when you start worrying about how much you’re worrying. Sound familiar? You notice yourself obsessing about that interview, that date, or that conversation (from seven years ago), and before you know it, you’re freaked out because, really—you shouldn’t be this freaked out . . . right? Then start the mental cues: “But why am I so worried?” “What does this mean that I am so worried?” “Is this a sign because I am so worried?” Or the best: “I’m noticing that I haven’t been as worried lately. Perhaps I should be worrying about that . . .” Notice a key word there: “should.” As the saying goes, when it comes to anxiety, so many of us are should-ing on ourselves. We internally scold ourselves for something we have literally no control over—our minds. I don’t mean for that to unnerve you. I say it to help ground you. Because once you know that it’s not your fault that you feel anxious or that you have uncomfortable, scary, or gross thoughts sometimes, that’s when you take the wheel again. That’s when you start to actually feel like you have some control in your life again. The brain is a wild and free agent. It comes up with all kinds of odd, quirky, frustrating thoughts. But that’s just the brain being its true self. In fact, the brain loves to come up with the worst-case scenario, where we lose our job, we find out our partner is cheating on us, and we all die from a huge meteor hitting the earth. Okay, I’ll stop with the examples. The great news is that we are not the sum of our thoughts. If we were, we honestly wouldn’t make much sense. A thought is simply a thought—it doesn’t mean it has actual truth. Let me say that again in case you missed it: a thought is just a thought. It doesn’t mean it’s valid, real, or accurate.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  We stick our heads in our Bibles day in and day out. You might not be able to fully grab hold of truth on day 2, but on day 102, it will be taking hold in your heart and mind. We wake up in the morning, and rather than get on our phones, we get on our knees and we submit our thoughts to Jesus. We invest in healthy relationships and intentionally go to them when we start to spiral. We choose well. Daily. Moment by moment. We train our minds. And when a new temptation to spiral presents itself, we trust our training. Think of Who You Really Are Kate, my sixteen-year-old daughter, looked up from her sushi and said, “Mom, my mind is spinning! I know the right answers, but I need you to remind me: Who does Jesus say that I am?” I could see it. She felt desperate. She felt alone. Her mind had been running wild for some time, and she couldn’t make it stop. She needed me to reach in, help grab the reins, and slow it down. I was so struck by this amazing young woman in front of me that I kind of reverted to seeing her as my little girl, now all grown up, instead of as a fierce woman about to change the world. “You are smart!” I said. “You are passionate. And generous and creative and cute—” “Mom,” Kate interrupted. “I don’t want to know what you say about me. I want to know what Jesus says.” Oh yeah. Right. Of course. Because everything else is like chasing the wind, Ecclesiastes says.7 Our minds spin and spin, often grabbing hold of lies in the search for stability. Messages get mixed, and it feels as if we can’t quite put our feet back down on the simple truths of what it means to love Jesus, what it means to be loved by Jesus. If, like Kate, you need to be reminded of who Jesus says you are, may I put my hands on the sides of your face and tell you again what He says about Himself and about you? I AM WHO I AM. Exodus 3:14 I am the beginning and the end. I am the first, and I am the last. Revelation 22:13 I am light; in me there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5 My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together. Isaiah 48:13 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”10 I was deeply comforted by that. It reassured me that my own fight for faith is a work in progress. I can keep teaching the Bible, I can continue to lead IF, and I can continue to take my kids to church, because God is real. My feelings are based largely not on what is real but on made-up narratives in my head. What is real? God is real. He is not going anywhere, even if my mind jumps to all kinds of dark places. I can’t rely on my thoughts or feelings to hold my faith in place. God holds my faith in place. But What Do I Do? The woman standing before me was reeling with anxiety. Her teenage daughter was making some seriously poor decisions in life, and this mama’s heart was breaking into a thousand pieces. With tears in her eyes, she looked at me and asked, “Jennie, what do I do?” What do I do? I’ve heard countless women ask this question, women facing all sorts of challenges—cheating husbands and debilitating addictions and failed financial ventures and wayward kids and devastating diagnoses and…and…and… Each time, after they explain what has been trying their patience and tempting their hearts and tripping them up, they ask that same question: “What do I do?” [image file=Image00039.jpg] What they’re wondering is what they should do to fix the situation. Or to fix their perspective. Or to keep pain and suffering at bay. Or if none of those things are a possibility, they want me to tell them how in the world they keep moving forward without giving in to desperation and despair. What do we do? We confront our thoughts. We tear down strongholds by the power of God. We figure out if we are believing something untrue or unreal about God or ourselves, and we go to battle there. Psst. Let me tell you the greatest news: You are not God. You are not omniscient. When we allow our thoughts to spin out of control with worry and fear, either consciously or unconsciously, we try to elbow our way into the all-knowing role that only God can play. We forget that it’s actually good news that He is in control and we are not. You and I may have many gifts and talents, but being God is not one of them. Now, this is easier preached and harder lived, but that’s why we are going to stick together and steep in God’s Word. Change is difficult and may come slowly. After all, our fears arise from ingrained thoughts and entangled sins. But because we have been made new creations, we have the Spirit’s power to make the choice for truth.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  In fact, it was crucial for me to include a chapter on the intersection of our appearance with our anxiety because I am seeing such an epidemic of body insecurity and unhealthy eating patterns. Other clinicians have shared with me that they are noticing more and more clients struggle with hating how they look. The research supports this too, as we are seeing increased rates of eating disorders and body dysmorphia emerge as screen time, social media, and filtered images have taken the world by storm. 80 People aren’t wrong about how much importance our society places on physical appearance. We have a real issue with body-size discrimination and we need to do something about it. There are entire books written about this and indeed, I recommend reading about the intersection between anxiety and appearance in greater detail. Our work in this domain is just getting started. We continue to need systemic change, where we notice our biases and we step in to stop them. The solution is not shape-shifting ourselves to win people over. The answer is not starving ourselves, exercising to excess, or making ourselves vomit (which actually doesn’t make you lose weight in the long term, FYI). 81 Although our generation continues to be plagued by filters and an ever-increasing pressure to look like Barbie and Ken dolls, we can push back. Our lives depend on it. When we starve ourselves or make ourselves sick to meet some unobtainable ideal, there are consequences. Eating disorders are the second-most-deadly mental health concern after the opioid crisis. 82 In fact, we lose someone to an eating disorder every fifty-two minutes. 83 Many folks aren’t getting the support they need, either. BIPOC folks are half as likely to be diagnosed or get treatment for an eating disorder, and they are significantly less likely to even be asked by a doctor whether they have any symptoms. 84 LGBTQIA+ folks are impacted as well—in fact, gay men are seven times more likely to binge eat and twelve times more likely to purge, while transgender college students demonstrate disordered eating at four times the rate compared to their cisgender peers. 85,86 And before we go assuming that people suffering from eating disorders look a certain way, it should be known that fewer than 6 percent of people with an eating disorder are medically diagnosed as “underweight.” 87,88 Eating disorders and body dysmorphia can impact anyone, and it’s bound up with our anxiety. In fact, 71 percent of those struggling with an eating disorder have another diagnosis. What tops the chart with a 53 percent rate of comorbidity? Anxiety. 89 Our generation has sadly learned that striving for attractiveness is a false antidote to this anxiety and a way to wield power.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  And we wonder why we are Generation Anxiety. We’ve internalized that we can never stop. There’s a sense of hungry desperation that makes us feel like we need to be everywhere at all times. We’ve ultimately made ourselves sick with exhaustion, and the only way we’re going to get better is if we actually allow ourselves to listen to our bodies and change this cycle of endless pursuit. As a wise supervisor once told me, we need to move from human doings to human beings. That’s hard to do, though, when our generation has thrived on checked boxes. We have believed that if we hit our daily quota, then we will feel content. Jordan had fallen for this trap, thinking that if he did a little more, then he would finally feel at peace. Instead, our anxiety only fuels our endless list-making and calendaring. Before long, we’re working on our birthdays and we haven’t taken a vacation in two years. Jordan couldn’t even remember the last time he had fun for himself. And while part of our problem is trying to please others, we’ve also been trying to please ourselves. We feel that we can keep our anxiety at bay if we push ourselves from sunup to sundown. Many of our parents taught us this as well. We learned that if we played three sports, took AP classes, and got a promotion at a prestigious company, we were “good.” If we didn’t have multiple hobbies, took non-honors classes, and worked for a business that wasn’t name- drop–worthy, we were “bad.” We were behind. This usually wasn’t said out loud, but these were the messages that many of us absorbed. Full disclosure—I don’t think our parents did this with malicious intentions. They wanted the best for us. Like coaches, they wanted to watch us win because they thought this would set us up for success in life. In fact, they probably thought it would alleviate our anxiety if we were winning in all things. Who knew that it could actually have a detrimental effect? In this way, we’ve learned that we’re only as good as our latest achievements. Without them, we can feel like we are nothing. If we’re going to tap into less of an achievement-driven culture, we’re going to need to forgo our people-pleasing tendencies. This begs the question: What would it look like if you stopped living for the approval of your boss, your parents, or yourself? Are you willing to find out? Your constant striving no longer needs to starve you of your sanity. It’s okay to say no. This was one of the major goals that I worked on with Jordan. As I’m keen to give clients homework, I encouraged him to take time outside of our sessions and take stock of how he was living his life.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  Now we’re about to go deep with concerning statistics and I know we’re only a few pages in. If you think it might be too much, take a breather, skim what’s ahead in the next paragraph, and decide whether you’re ready for it. Just reading this book is the start of practicing sitting with discomfort and not avoiding your anxiety. When we’re anxious, we so often doubt our own strength. We forget that we can endure. As Glennon Doyle writes in her book Untamed, we distrust our ability to #dohardthings. This is why you see such unsettling outcomes in this country. The suicide rate, where we lose 130 people a day, 2 the opioid crisis, where over 10 million Americans over the age of twelve have misused opioids in the past year, 3 and the fact that we have one divorce in this country every forty- two seconds 4 are all examples of our difficulty sitting with pain and trusting that life gets better. Now, to be clear, every instance of suicide, substance use, and divorce has unique factors warranting their own caveats. However, when we look at these trends collectively, they speak to a larger problem. They highlight our need for avoidance—to run away from pain. Our fears tell us that it’s just too difficult and so we flee with wild abandon, hoping that pain will never find us. Sadly, it’s often waiting for us at home in other forms—loneliness, disappointment in ourselves, and an even bigger dose of anxiety for whenever the “next time” comes. So, if you’ve been stuck on the couch, telling yourself that you’re just “not ready,” I’m here to help you get your life back. If you have always struggled with facing fears, I’m here to offer you a road map. Your anxiety doesn’t need to win any longer. Now, this doesn’t mean you won’t be uncomfortable. In fact, you will be really freaking uncomfy at a lot of points as you get stronger and put yourself out there again. And, I would argue, isn’t that what you ultimately want, though? To live the life that is meaningful to you? To not let your anxiety call the shots on your future? Personally, I consider it my greatest goal as a clinician to not let anxiety be the reason my clients have regrets or disappointments in their lives. Let’s hit the pause button, though, before we go on. I’d be remiss if I didn’t clarify how different anxiety can look for each of us.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  So he flew across to the nearest tree. There was a branch just above him. He flew up to it. Hawks hate to sit on a lower perch when a higher one is offered, and so he hopped and scrambled onto the one above him, and then onto another, and another, laddering up the tree, pulling the creance behind him. Soon he sat at the very top of the unclimbable oak, the world offering itself to him; the skies fletched with pigeons, the fields sinking towards Stowe, the roof of the palace and its glittering lakes and all its obelisks and temples and classical avenues, all the lines of sight cut into the landscape by men two hundred years ago, with his small hawkish face looking down upon it as if this view, this perfect view, was the reason it was made. White had only left Gos on the railings for a minute. He’d heard the farmer’s car and ran across the field to tell Mrs Wheeler about his new wireless set. When he got back Gos was not on the well but on top of a tree, a shadow against the sky, and the twigs and branches below him woven and tangled with twine. He whistled, waved food, but the hawk didn’t move. He panicked and pulled on the creance and it made Gos bate and the twine more tangled than ever. He started to worry the creance would snap. ‘It had hardly any breaking strain,’ he wrote. ‘It had already been broken twice.’ The hawk was held tight; powerless, White called for someone to help him. But the arrival of the farmer’s son in a white shirt carrying a ladder made the hawk bate even more. Soon Gos was hanging upside down in a cocoon of fraying string, feathers breaking in his struggle to free himself, before finally he hung unmoving, exhausted, immobilised, a feathered fly in a tarred and knotted web. It was an hour and a half before White entangled his jesses with a screwhook fastened to the end of a salmon rod, dragged him down to the ground and got him back on his fist. You bloody little sod, White hissed at Gos. The hawk, he wrote, looked at him angrily, ‘as if it had all been my fault’. A couple more days and I’ll fly her free. A couple more days. But then a series of summer storms send cold water running in sheets along the ruffled tarmac and shell the roof with twigs and leaves. It is terrible flying weather. So instead of going out to the hill I exercise Mabel in the park. I tie the swivel to the creance and lower her to the ground – she jumps to the grass crab-wise and looks up at me, hunched and baleful – then I put a scrap of food on my glove, raise it high in the air, and she flies vertically up to eat it. Then we do it again.