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 Less (2017)

  “Mr. Less,” comes the male voice again, muffled by the door. “We have an idea.” “I’m all ears.” “It is this.” A whispered exchange in Japanese, followed by another clearing of the throat. “That you break the wall.” Less opens his eyes and looks at the latticed paper wall. They might as well be asking him to leave a space capsule. “I can’t.” “They are simple to repair. Please, Mr. Less. If you could break the wall.” He feels old; he feels alone; he feels unpoplar. In the garden: a cluster of small birds passes like a school of colorless fish, darting back and forth before the window of this aquarium (in which it is Less who is contained, and not the birds), disappearing at last to the east with one stately gesture, and then—because life is comedy—there appears one final bird, scrambling across the sky to catch up with his mates. “Please, Mr. Less.” Says the bravest person I know: “I can’t.” It was around seven in the morning not long ago that your narrator had a vision of Arthur Less. I was awakened by a mosquito who had, impressively, made her way past a fortress of fuming coils, electric fans, and permethrin-coated netting to settle inside my ear. I thank that mosquito every hour. If she (for humans are only hunted by females) had not been so skilled an intruder, I think I never would have seen it. Life is so often made by chance. That mosquito: she gave her life for me; I killed her with one smack of my palm. The South Pacific made a quiet rumble from the open window, and the sleeper beside me made a similar sound. Sunrise. We had arrived at the hotel in the dark, but gradually, light began to reveal that our room was covered on three sides by windows; I realized the house was set out in the ocean itself, like a thrust stage, and that the view from every window was of the water and the sky. I watched as they took on shades of iris and myrtle, sapphire and jade, until all around me, in sea and sky alike, I recognized a particular shade of blue. And I understood that I would never see Arthur Less again.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Guy feels less threatened, expressing the hope that I will do a good job and be right for him. He uses projection again, a defense mechanism that places threatening thoughts and feelings outside of the self. Through projection we deny anxiety-provoking feelings and instead put them in others. Uncomfortable feelings such as anger or sadness tend to be projected into other people in order to get rid of them. When a person is, for example, angry, she will attribute those feelings to others and be convinced that the other is angry at her, when in fact it is her own anger that she feels. I’m remembering Guy entering my office for the first time and how he filled me up with a sense of fear of being invaded, a feeling that he instilled in me and thus effectively communicated the sense of danger he lived with himself. Similarly, paranoid thinking is often understood as the projection of aggression onto other people. 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.

• From Wild (2012)

  In the morning, I realized I didn’t have my Bob Marley T-shirt. I’d left it on that branch to dry the day before. Losing my boots was bad. But losing my Bob Marley T-shirt was worse. That shirt wasn’t just any old shirt. It was, at least according to Paco, a sacred shirt that meant I walked with the spirits of the animals, earth, and sky. I didn’t know if I believed that, but the shirt had become an emblem of something I couldn’t quite name. I reinforced my duct tape booties with another layer of tape and walked all through the humid day. The night before, I’d made a plan: I would follow this road wherever it led me. I’d ignore all the others that crossed its path, no matter how intriguing or promising they looked. I’d finally become convinced that if I didn’t, I’d only walk an endless maze. By late afternoon I sensed that the road was leading me somewhere. It got wider and less rutted and the forest opened up ahead. Finally, I rounded a bend and saw an unmanned tractor. Beyond the tractor, there was a paved two-lane road. I crossed it, turned left, and walked along its shoulder. I was on Highway 89, I could only assume. I pulled out my maps and traced a route I could hitchhike back to the PCT and then set to work trying to get a ride, feeling self-conscious in my metal-gray boots made of tape. Cars passed in clumps of two and three with long breaks in between. I stood on the highway for half an hour holding out my thumb, feeling a mounting anxiety. At last, a man driving a pickup truck pulled to the side. I went to the passenger door and opened it up. “You can throw your pack in the back,” he said. He was a large bull of a man, in his late forties, I guessed. “Is this Highway 89?” I asked. He looked at me, befuddled. “You don’t even know what road you’re on?” I shook my head. “What in the Lord’s name have you got on your feet?” he asked.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  It was 1989 and I remember that we were given guns and told they were in case of emergency. I didn’t remember how to use the gun although I had been in basic training just a few months earlier. My best friend and I had agreed that killing someone was bad karma, so during training we just made believe we had listened but ended up having little idea how to use the gun. On our way to Khan Yunis, it didn’t feel like a big deal. In case of emergency, we thought, we would manage. The special-unit soldiers sent us an armored bus, and a motorcade accompanied us as we drove into Gaza. The roads were bumpy and at some point the musical producer of the band, an older man in his thirties who was a musician and served in the unit as a reserve soldier, decided to sit on the floor of the bus. We looked at him, amused, and asked, “Hey, what’s going on? Is everything okay?” To our surprise, he started to cry. “My wife is pregnant. They didn’t tell me we were going into Gaza. I didn’t sign up for that. This is crazy.” We all looked at one another and didn’t know what to do. We didn’t understand why he thought it was so crazy. We had traveled to every war zone and never thought any of it was especially intense. This was the world we were raised in. In some ways, the unstable national security and our mandatory army service felt like an irrelevant disruption, and life was about the future, not the present moment or the past. It was made up of hopes and big dreams, pushing against our external reality with deep friendships, with love, and with music. I turned around and smiled at the drummer, and he smiled back. We had our little secret and the war around us seemed like background noise. That day, we performed in a small room, surrounded by a group of soldiers who were our age but looked older and who we believed were much braver than we were. We knew that at the end of the concert we couldn’t ask them about the details of their activity or their special operations, but the truth was that we were not so curious anyway. We were more interested to hear about their high school experiences, to learn about their girlfriends at home and count the days until our army service would be over. Now, in Ben’s first session, he tells me that as an eighteen-year-old soldier he had no idea what he had signed up for, and that only now does he realize how crazy it all was. “Most of my friends from the unit are pretty fucked up,” Ben says, “but I don’t have any PTSD or anything. I’m fine.” I guess we are all fine, I think to myself. A part of me truly believes that, while another part knows that it cannot be true.

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

  It is quite threatening to a person's sense of self to contemplate having been controlled or taken over. The terms themselves-brainwashing, mind control, thought reform-sound harsh and unreal. Yet only by confronting the reality of social-psychological manipulation and control can former members overcome its effects. In his classic work Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Lifton outlines the social-psychological processes used to create what he calls "ideological totalism." This is the coming together of the individual and certain ideas, or the melding of the individual with a particular set of beliefs. Through his research, Lifton found that each person has a tendency toward "all-or-nothing emotional alignment." Combining that tendency with an all-or-nothing ideology results in totalism. It is a rather surefire formula: immoderate individual character traits plus an immoderate ideology equals totalism-an extreme worldview. And, writes Lifton, "Where totalism exists, a religion, a political movement, or even a scientific organization becomes little more than [a] cult."4 Lifton identifies eight "psychological themes" that he uses as criteria for evaluating if a particular situation meets the standard of a totalist cult or a "thoughtreform environment." The more these psychological themes are present, the more restrictive the cult and the more effective the thought-reform program. Each of Lifton's themes sets off a predictable cycle: (1) the theme sets the stage, (2) the rationale for the theme is based on an absolute belief or philosophy, and (3) because of the extreme belief system, a person in such a setting has a conflicting and polarized reaction, and is forced to make a choice. Enveloped in a totalistic environment, most individuals will make totalistic choices. The outcome of this social-psychological interplay is "thought reform"-that is, the person is changed.' Though we urge you to read Lifton's work in its entirety, these are summaries of his eight themes. 1. Milieu control is the control of all communication and information, which includes each follower's internal self-communication. This sets up what Lifton calls "personal closure," meaning that people no longer have to struggle or think about what is true or real. Ultimately this prevents doubting and self-questioning. 2. Mystical manipulation is the claim of authority (divine, supernatural, or otherwise) that asserts that the ends justify the means, because the "end" is directed by a higher purpose. Certain experiences are orchestrated to appear as though they are occurring spontaneously. The follower is required to subordinate himself to the group or cause and stop all questioning, for who can question "higher purpose"? Self-expression and independent action wither away. 3. The demand for purity is essentially a black-and-white worldview with the leader as the ultimate moral arbiter. This creates an atmosphere of guilt and shame, where punishment and humiliation are expected. It also sets up an environment wherein members spy and report on one another. Through submission to the guilt-inducing and impossible demand for purity, members lose their moral bearing. 4. The cult of confession involves an act of surrender and total exposure. The follower is now "owned" by the group.

• From Less (2017)

  Look at him: seated primly on the hotel lobby’s plush round sofa, blue suit and white shirt, legs knee-crossed so that one polished loafer hangs free of its heel. The pose of a young man. His slim shadow is, in fact, still that of his younger self, but at nearly fifty he is like those bronze statues in public parks that, despite one lucky knee rubbed raw by schoolchildren, discolor beautifully until they match the trees. So has Arthur Less, once pink and gold with youth, faded like the sofa he sits on, tapping one finger on his knee and staring at the grandfather clock. The long patrician nose perennially burned by the sun (even in cloudy New York October). The washed-out blond hair too long on the top, too short on the sides—portrait of his grandfather. Those same watery blue eyes. Listen: you might hear anxiety ticking, ticking, ticking away as he stares at that clock, which unfortunately is not ticking itself. It stopped fifteen years ago. Arthur Less is not aware of this; he still believes, at his ripe age, that escorts for literary events arrive on time and bellboys reliably wind the lobby clocks. He wears no watch; his faith is fast. It is mere coincidence that the clock stopped at half past six, almost exactly the hour when he is to be taken to tonight’s event. The poor man does not know it, but the time is already quarter to seven. As he waits, around and around the room circles a young woman in a brown wool dress, a species of tweed hummingbird, pollinating first this group of tourists and then that one. She dips her face into a cluster of chairs, asking a particular question, and then, dissatisfied with the answer, darts away to find another. Less does not notice her as she makes her rounds. He is too focused on the broken clock. The young woman goes up to the lobby clerk, then to the elevator, startling a group of ladies overdressed for the theater. Up and down Less’s loose shoe goes. If he paid attention, perhaps he would have heard the woman’s eager question, which explains why, though she asks everyone else in the lobby, she never asks it of him: “Excuse me, but are you Miss Arthur?” The problem—which will not be solved in this lobby—is that the escort believes Arthur Less to be a woman. In her defense, she has read only one novel of his, in an electronic form that lacked a photo, and found the female narrator so compelling, so persuasive, that she was certain only a woman could have written it; she assumed the name to be one of those American gender curiosities (she is Japanese). This is, for Arthur Less, a rare rave review. Little good this does him at the moment, sitting on the round sofa, from whose conical center emerges an oiled palm. For it is now ten minutes to seven.

• From Less (2017)

  Then, a few months later, the wedding invitation in the mail: Request your presence at the marriage of Federico Pelu and Thomas Dennis. How awkward. He could under no circumstances accept, when everyone knew he was Freddy’s old paramour; there would be chuckles and raised eyebrows, and, while normally Less wouldn’t have cared, it was just too much to imagine the smile on Carlos’s face. The smile of pity. Less had already run into Carlos at a Christmas benefit (a firetrap of pine branches), and he had pulled Less aside and thanked him for being so gracious in letting Freddy go: “Arthur, you know my son was never right for you.” Yet Less could not simply decline the invitation. To sit at home while all the old gang gathered up in Sonoma to drink Carlos’s money—well, they would cackle about him all the same. Sad young Arthur Less had become sad old Arthur Less. Stories would be brought out of mothballs for ridicule; new ones would be tested, as well. The thought was unbearable; he could under no circumstances decline. Tricky, tricky, this life. Along with the wedding invitation came a letter politely reminding him of an offer to teach at an obscure university in Berlin, along with the meager remittance and the meager time remaining for an answer. Less sat at his desk, staring at the offer; the rearing stallion on the letterhead seemed to be erect. From the open window came the song of roofers hammering and the smell of molten tar. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a pile of other letters, other invitations, unanswered; more were hidden deep within his computer; still more lay buried beneath a pile of phone messages. Less sat there, with the window rattling from the workers’ din, and considered them. A teaching post, a conference, a writing retreat, a travel article, and so on. And, like those Sicilian nuns who, once a year, appear behind a lifted curtain, singing, so that their families can gaze upon them, in his little study, in his little house, for Arthur Less a curtain lifted upon a singular idea. My apologies, he wrote on the RSVP, but I will be out of the country. My love to Freddy and Tom. He would accept them all. What a ramshackle itinerary he has nailed together! First: this interview with H. H. H. Mandern. This gets him plane fare to New York City, with two days before the event to enjoy the city, aflame with autumn. And there is at least one free dinner (the writer’s delight): with his agent, who surely has word from his publisher. Less’s latest novel has been living with his publisher for over a month, as any modern couple lives together before a marriage, but surely his publisher will pop the question any day now. There will be champagne; there will be money.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She was a kind of devil! I have told you — ’‘And yet, you stayed with her, so long...’I felt suffocated, all at once, by my own story, and by the meanings she was teasing from it. ‘I can’t explain,’ I said. ‘She had a power over me. She was rich. She had - things.’‘First you told me it was a gent that threw you out. Then you said it was a lady. I thought, that you had lost some girl... ’‘I had lost a girl; but it was Kitty, and it was years before.’‘And Diana was rich; and blacked your eye and cut you, and you let her. And then she chucked you out because you - kissed her maid.’ Her voice had grown steadily harder. ‘What happened to her?’‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’We lay a while in silence, and the bed seemed suddenly terribly slim. Florence gazed at the lightening square of curtain at the window, and I watched her, miserably. When she put a finger to her mouth to chew at a nail I lifted my hand to stop her; but she pushed my arm away, and made to rise.‘Where are you going?’ I asked.‘Upstairs. I want to sit a little while and think.’‘No!’ I cried; and as I cried it, Cyril, in his crib upstairs, woke up, and began to call out for his mother. I reached for Florence and seized her wrist and, all heedless of the baby’s cries, pulled her back and pressed her to the bed. ‘I know what you mean to do,’ I said. ‘You mean to go and think of Lilian!’‘I cannot help but think of Lilian!’ she answered, stricken. ‘I cannot help it. And you - you’re just the same, only I never knew it. Don’t say - don’t say you weren’t thinking of her, of Kitty, last night, as you kissed me!’I took a breath - but then I hesitated. For it was true, I couldn’t say it. It was Kitty I had kissed first and hardest; and it was as if I had had the shape or the colour or the taste of her kisses upon my lips, ever after. Not the spendings and the tears of all the weeping sods of Soho, nor the wine and the damp caresses of Felicity Place, had quite washed those kisses away.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Or would she - and this thought was a dreadful one - would she think her pretty, and like her more than me? Would she wish it had been Alice in the box for her to throw that rose to, and invite backstage, and call a mermaid ... ?Waiting for her that afternoon I was by turns anxious, gay and sullen - now fussing over the setting of the tea-table, now snapping at Davy and grumbling at Rhoda, now earning scolds from everyone for fretting and complaining, and generally turning what should have been a glad day for myself into a gloomy one, for us all. I had washed my hair and it had dried peculiarly; I had added a new frill to my best dress, but had sewn it crooked and it wouldn’t lie flat. I stood at the top of the stairs, sweating over the silk with a safety-pin, ready to weep because Kitty’s train was due and I must run to meet her, when Tony emerged from our little kitchen, carrying bottles of Bass for the tea-table. He stood and watched me fumbling. I said, ‘Go away’, but he only looked smug.‘You won’t want to hear my bit of news, then.’‘What news?’ The frill was flat at last. I reached for my hat on the peg on the wall. Tony smirked and said nothing. I stamped my foot. ‘Tony, what is it? I’m late and you’re making me later.’‘Well then, nothing at all, I expect. I dare say Miss Butler will tell you herself ...’‘Tell me what?’ Now I stood with my hat in one hand, a hat-pin in the other. ‘Tell me what, Tony?’He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘Now, don’t let on about it yet, for it ain’t been properly settled. But your pal - Kitty - she’s due to leave the Palace, ain’t she, in a week or so?’ I nodded. ‘Well, she won’t be going - not for a good while, anyway. Uncle has offered her a sparkling new contract, till the New Year - said she was too good to lose to Broadstairs.’The New Year!

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  The signs of love, which for your ancestors were perhaps among the most enticing objects in the landscape, can be so subtle by modern standards that you can miss them completely. If you rush through your morning routine, for instance, inhale breakfast and brush your teeth while driving to work, plow through your in-box and mushrooming to-do list, run to meeting after meeting right up to the end of your workday, race through the grocery store, fix a quick dinner for your kids, send them off to bed, only to collapse in your own bed to fret about the marathon day you face tomorrow, how do you find the time or the energy to kindle those fragile states of positivity resonance? Thinking Nearly sixty years ago, a decade before the counterculture of the 1960s erupted throughout the United States and beyond, Aldous Huxley famously described his first experience with psychedelic drugs, in his controversial 1954 book, The Doors of Perception . The book’s title cast back to the metaphorical language of English poet and printmaker William Blake’s 1790 book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , and inspired the name of the 1960s American rock band the Doors. Blake wrote: If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern. Building on Blake’s metaphor, Huxley likened the human brain to a reducing valve. It functions to limit your awareness to only those perceptions, ideas, and memories that might be useful for your survival at any given moment, eliminating all else. Although narrowed awareness prevents you from becoming overwhelmed by a flood of images and impressions, to some extent, it can become an overlearned habit, a self-limiting cavern. By comparing—through the use of language—your own reduced experiences of the world to the reduced experiences of others, you can become convinced that your limited awareness represents the reality of the world. Huxley writes: Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of bypass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary bypasses may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate “spiritual exercises,” or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Huxley’s hypothesis that the doors of perception can temporarily swing open wider than usual—even seemingly spontaneously—is now confirmed by brain imaging experiments. Importantly, however, you don’t need drugs, hypnosis, or lofty spiritual experiences to open those doors. Sometimes all it takes is a little positivity.

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

  So get specific. What exactly is the worst that can happen? What particular stupid thing do I expect I will do? Who, precisely, do I expect is going to judge me? As the defense attorney says, name names. Everyone will hate me turns into My boss will hate this particular presentation. Everyone will think I’m a freak turns into The five or six people I talk to at the party might notice my hands shaking and think something is wrong with me. People will think I’m ugly turns into Mackenzie and Carmen will be judgmental of my outfit and hair again. I’ll screw this up turns into The customer service guy won’t understand what I need and we’ll get into a long, awkward misunderstanding. Something bad will happen turns into I’m worried I won’t know where to stand or how to position my body during the meet-and-greet. Sometimes we get lucky and specify, specify, specify is enough to quell the anxiety right away. Once our specific fear is solidified, we recognize it for what it is. When Something embarrassing will happen is specified into I will go fetal and mute in front of the whole staff meeting, we realize it’s about as realistic as Barbie’s high-heeled feet. But more often, specify, specify, specify is the first step. After we’ve pinned down the Inner Critic’s worst-case scenario, we can start to challenge it. So let’s check back in the courtroom and see how our defense attorney does this. THE MAGIC QUESTIONS Next up, a set of magic questions. The defense attorney looks squarely at the Inner Critic and lets loose the first: “How bad would that really be?” The Inner Critic scoffs again. “How bad would that really be? Bad! Really bad! People will reject me! Or ignore me! Or think I’m stupid! You can’t tell me those things aren’t bad. You’ve got nothing.” “Okay, it wouldn’t be pleasant,” allows the defense attorney. “But would any of those truly be a disaster of epic proportions?” “Totally disastrous!” “Would anyone die? Would you be irreversibly broken?” The Critic pauses. “Does dying inside count?” “No.” “But those things would totally suck!” “Yes, they would suck, but would they be disasters? Would they be worth getting really worked up over?” For the first time, the Critic’s voice gets a little softer. “They’d still be bad,” it insists. The defense attorney smiles, clasps her hands behind her back, and rocks on her heels. She may actually be enjoying this. Okay, what’s our defense attorney up to here? She’s doing what’s called decatastrophizing, which is like declawing a lion. It’s bursting the bubble of the worst-case scenario. Don’t get me wrong, the problem is still there—someone out there indeed might momentarily think we’re weird, unattractive, or stupid. But how bad is that really? How bad is a little bit of judgment? Could we handle it? The consequences get put in perspective.

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

  Like fossil fuels or political capital, attention is a limited resource. We have only so much we can allocate before it is used up. For Diego, all his attention is focused on himself and the management of his anxiety, a phenomenon aptly called self-focused attention. Self-focused attention eats up our bandwidth by focusing on our bodies (I look weird, don’t I?), emotions (I’m freaking out here), performance (Why did I say that? I sound like an idiot), or management (I should smile at her. But maybe that looks creepy. But not smiling is creepier, isn’t it? Argh, I probably look like I want to stuff her in my car trunk). Thus, we come away from social encounters with very little information about how things actually went. And where do we look to fill in the gaps? Unfortunately, we ask our anxiety, which is about as credible as asking the used-car salesman which model we should buy. Or we ask the Inner Critic, which is even worse. In short, we look inside to see how things outside are going. Whether at a high school dance or our annual performance review we use our discomfort to determine how we are coming off to others. This is called the felt sense. We feel like an idiot, so we must be spouting nonsense. We feel like a loser, so everyone must be secretly signing an L on their foreheads when we turn around. Again, it feels true, so we ask our anxiety, arguably the least credible source of information, for reassurance. No wonder it’s not working. To top it off, this self-absorption reverberates far beyond just our anxious moments. Researchers from Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario asked socially anxious undergrads to have a five-minute getting-to-know-you conversation with a lab assistant (as you probably noticed by now, social anxiety researchers love the five-minute getting-to-know-you conversation). In order to induce self-focused attention, half the participants were instructed to pay close attention to their own feelings, thoughts, actions, and body sensations during the conversation. By contrast, the other half were asked to pay close attention to their partners’ words and facial expressions. After the conversation, the researchers let them stew for twenty-four hours. The next day, the self-focused group reported lashing themselves with criticism more harshly and more often than the partner-focused group. Indeed, the first myth of social anxiety—I must always monitor myself and my anxiety—set in motion a twenty-four-hour-long ripple effect of negativity. For Diego, the myth kept him trapped in the closed circuit of social anxiety as well. He desperately wanted things to go well, which made him anxious, which made him monitor his performance. But all the management limited his attention and, ironically, made things go poorly. His Inner Critic’s forecasts about poor performance became a self-fulfilling prophecy. * * * So if monitoring is getting in our way, what do we do instead? How do we get out of our heads? The answer is your next tool: turn your attention inside out.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  not under obligation to keep the statutes of the law, and though he has not referred specifically to any statute except those that pertain to circumcision, food, and the observance of days and seasons, he has constantly spoken simply of law, or the law, without indicating that his thought was limited to any portion or aspect of it. To men who have been accustomed to think of law as the only obstacle to free self-indulgence, or to those who, on the other hand, have not been accustomed to high ethical standards, such language is (despite the contrary teaching of w.5> 6) easily taken to mean that for the Christian there is nothing to stand in the way of the unrestrained indul- gence of his own impulses. Of this danger Paul is well aware (cf. Rom. 6lff- Phil. 317ff- Col. 3lff-), and beginning with this v. addresses himself vigorously to meeting and averting it. The word vdp^j previously in this epistle a purely physical term, is used here and throughout this chapter (see w. 16> 17» 20' 24) in a definitely ethical sense, "that element of man's nature which is opposed to goodness, and makes for evil," in which it appears also in Rom., chap. 8; see detached note on TLvtvpa and 2ap£ II 7, p. 493, and the discussion following 7. For fuller treat- ment, see Burton, Spirit, Soul, and Flesh, chap. VI, pp. 186, 191 /. Of any physical association with this ethical sense of the term there is no trace in this passage. The article before IXeuSepfav is demonstrative, referring to IXeu0epfce of the preceding clause, and through it to that of 5l and the implication of the whole context. On the omission of the verb with i*4 cf, p,-ft Vofye p.60ou$, Aristoph. Vesp. 1179; ^ TP$&; I-n, Soph. Antig. 575; P.TJ jxoc &jt,upfou£, Dem. 45" (cited by Alf.),* Hartung, Partikeln II 153; Devarius, De Partiadis, Ed. Klotz, II 669; W. LXIV 6; Mk. 14'. Note also the omission of the verb after y,6vov, in 2*°. What verb is to be supplied, whether IXETE, voteta, Tpfexe (cf. Sief, E1L a d,), orp^eTe or y-ETaorp&peTe (Rev. n* Acts 219» «), or some other, is not wholly clear. The thought is probably not "use not this freedom for, in the interest of," but "convert not this freedom into." On the use of efc, cf, Jn. i62°: fj Xu-rc^ 5(ji&v ete y<zp&» Yev^cjeToct, and Acts 2"» *«. ifopjid), properly the place from which an attack is made (Thucydides, Polybius), is used also figuratively by Xenophon, et aL, with the mean- ing, "incentive," "opportunity," "occasion." In N. T. it occurs in the Pauline letters only (Rom. 7f a Cor, $** n» i Tim. 5") always in v, 13-14 293

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

  But I digress. The point: your goal is to get accustomed to the hijinks of your own body, whether it sweats, trembles, quavers, blushes, or what have you. Remember exposure from chapter 10? This is the same thing. “Exposure” is simply the word for going through your fear, not around it, and realizing not only is it not so bad, after some practice, it’s boring. After a few treadmill sessions, Jake felt ready to try out the next step. He powered down the treadmill and headed to the locker room, where he took a hot shower for good measure and, as soon as he could throw on his clothes, strode out of the gym and across the parking lot to the electronics store. It was working—he felt hot and flushed, which, for the first time ever, was exactly what he wanted. The automatic doors whooshed open as he entered the store for his grand showdown with his fear of judgment. He walked down the aisles, through the home theater section, through the video games where, on slow days like that one, many of his colleagues hung out. As he walked, he greeted people, trying to catch their eye. A few said hi. One of his co-workers commented on the latest Red Sox loss but didn’t say a thing about Jake’s face. Jake actually felt a little miffed. All this work to make himself red—he could tell his legs would be sore tomorrow—and no one even cared. * * * I once worked with a client, Leslie, who was worried about people noticing her pauses in conversation. So we said “bring it on” to awkward pauses and staged an experiment where she had a conversation in session with one of my colleagues. Unbeknownst to my colleague, Leslie deliberately trailed off mid-sentence and left the conversation hanging while she silently counted off five seconds, then started talking again. In the debriefing afterwards, we asked my colleague her reaction. “It was a little odd, but I figured you just lost your train of thought,” she said. “To be honest,” she admitted sheepishly, “while we were sitting there not talking, I just started thinking about the things I had to do today. I didn’t really think about you.” This is typical. Think of the last time you noticed someone who paused, said, “Um,” had a strange expression, or an unusual appearance. Were you evil and judgy about it? Probably not. More likely, you just noticed and then moved on. For Jake, even if someone had asked, with a puzzled look, “Are you okay?” Jake could have simply said, “Yeah, I’m good.” Not so bad. No judgment, just curiosity.

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

  Twenty years later, when the media caught wind of the questions, it treated them like they were a secret recipe for love. But the specific questions aren’t magic; instead, according to the researchers, it’s the act of “sustained, escalating, reciprocal, and personalistic” disclosure that sparks liking the other person and, indeed, sparks them to like us. The thirty-six questions lead to closeness through disclosure in fast-forward. Usually what we do when we meet someone new is small talk. Small talk is important—it’s the social niceties test-track of conversation—but by definition, it stays on the surface. It’s not about you; it’s about other things—traffic, the weather, that your co-worker Darren is out sick and there must be Something Going Around. Disclosure, however, is about you. Again, it means sharing bits of what you think and do and feel. Any topic is game. Even banal small talk can be tweaked to become a disclosure. For example, talking about the weather can be a disclosure—you’re happy that it’s getting cooler because fall is your favorite season. Or when you were younger you used to love summer, but now you don’t deal with the heat as well. Or when you were a kid, every time it rained, you and your brother would “rescue” all the worms that came out on the sidewalk and bring them home in a jar, much to the chagrin of your mother. There. You’re still talking about the weather, but you’re also offering up a little tidbit about yourself, which can serve as the launchpad of conversation. When I work with the Maddys and Noras of the world about disclosure, the next question is, inevitably, “But what do I talk about?” But that’s not actually their question. Just like Maddy doesn’t want to be told to volunteer, she doesn’t need a list of possible topics. The real question is, “How do I think through the paralyzing anxiety and come up with something that doesn’t sound totally stupid?” The answer is, yet again, to lower the bar. We think we have to be interesting, entertaining, or effortless. But that’s too much pressure. Indeed, if you tell yourself you are not allowed to say anything totally stupid you won’t say anything. So start with what you’re doing or thinking. Say hi, ask how they are, and share some tidbit about what you’re doing, what you just did, what you’re planning, or what you’ve been thinking about recently. It doesn’t have to be smart, insightful, or articulate—it just has to be about you.

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

  Did you immediately assume your boss was going to ream you out about something? Or could it have been that he wanted to compliment you or simply assign you a new project? Were the people laughing because you said something embarrassing? Or funny? Was the non-texting friend mad? Or distracted? And was your old friend throwing some shade your way? Or implying that you looked good? This is what’s happening when Jake senses people looking at him. He assumes the worst—that they see his blushing and think he has some serious problems. So what’s the solution? When Jake confided in his friend Charles, his advice wasn’t what Jake was hoping for. “I’ve got one for the ladies,” said Charles. “How about this: ‘I’m not blushing—you’re just so hot I got sunburned.’” Jake rolled his eyes. Being a smart person, Jake’s not about to try that one. Like, ever. Here’s where we circle back to Jake on the treadmill. Rather than provide him with one-liners, our goal is to make blushing less of a big deal. Notice I didn’t say our goal was to stop the blushing. Instead of being afraid to turn red, Jake said to his blushing, “Bring it on.” It was time to bust the myth and discover not only do most people not notice, but also noticing doesn’t necessarily equal judging. Over his sessions on the treadmill, Jake became an expert at flushing red. Exercise feels a lot like the pesky sensations of anxiety: a pounding heart, sweating, shortness of breath, and, of course, turning red.2 Push-ups or a good weight-lifting session can make you shake. Run up and down stairs or knock out some burpees to make your heart pound. Even a good session with a stress ball can make your hands a little trembly, if that’s what you’re trying to get bored with. You can get creative, too: breathe through a coffee stirrer to feel light-headed, sit with your head between your knees for a minute and then quickly sit up to feel faint, or spin around in a swivel chair like a five-year-old let loose at Mom’s office to get dizzy, all in the service of getting bored with those sensations. I once had a client who, terrified of the tight space and restriction involved in getting a head-and-neck MRI, readied himself by lying on the floor with his head under his bed. When that got boring, he upped the ante by lying under the bed with his head duct-taped to the floor. The only problem was that he neglected to warn his wife about his practice and when she found him taped to the floor she had to be coaxed out of calling 911.

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

  In the show, there were Broadway-style productions with big groups of student dancers, multicouple performances where five or six couples danced simultaneously, and a few, select performances with one couple alone onstage. There was an audience of perhaps a hundred or so, plus an actual judge who gave written feedback on each dancer’s performance. Jim assumed Mayumi would recommend he join a Broadway-style group, but she didn’t give him a choice. “It’s you and me, Jim,” she said. Jim’s eyes widened. “I just got over pneumonia and now you want to give me a heart attack?” he asked, half-joking. But as the snow melted and the weather warmed, Jim practiced. And practiced. Before he knew it, it was June and he found himself backstage, his heart pounding beneath his tuxedo. He pulled at his collar. It was stifling backstage and he needed air. But when he peeked out from behind the curtain, he inadvertently caught the eye of the judge, who peered coolly over his glasses. Jim snapped his head back behind the curtain as if he had seen a sharpshooter. Maybe he’d have a heart attack after all. Then he wouldn’t have to do this. But then it was time. His name was announced. As if in a trance, Jim turned and walked onstage, forgetting he was supposed to make an entrance with Mayumi through the curtain. Mayumi trotted after him; after hundreds of students, she could roll with anything. And after four years of teaching Jim, she knew him well. He had told her all about his battles with social anxiety, his weekends hiding in the house, how it took him half an hour to dial the phone to schedule his first dance lesson, his hands had been shaking so badly. She knew he was nervous about this performance, but she also knew deep in her heart that he could do this, and do it well. They had practiced for months. It wasn’t about the dance steps anymore. It was about being onstage, being seen, being ready for the literal spotlight. She knew he was ready. The announcer continued, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jim’s first performance.” The applause came long and loud. “The only thing I could hear was the applause,” Jim remembered. “I thought to myself, ‘Is this really happening?’” The music started. A waltz, just like his surprise birthday dance. All at once, Jim felt focused. His anxiety evaporated. His body felt sharp and alert. His feet knew the steps—he didn’t have to think about it. What he did think about was that his backstage panic, to his astonishment, had morphed almost imperceptibly into a very different emotion: excitement. When the music ended and their feet slowed, Jim and Mayumi took their bows and ran backstage. Mayumi gave him a hug. “I have to go on again with another student now, but how do you feel? Would you come back and do it again next year?” Jim looked her in the eye. “Absolutely.”

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

  Let’s revisit you at the house party and offer some motivation and encouragement for the future. As you grip your glass, it’s no wonder you’re feeling anxious—you’re surrounded by strangers, your amygdala is freaking out, and your prefrontal cortex is taking its sweet time to help. You promise yourself never to do this again. But this time you make yourself a new promise. Rather than avoiding the next party, you vow to make some changes. Things can be different. Here’s why: A socially anxious brain, physiologically, is exactly the same as a non-socially anxious brain. The architecture is all there. You have the capacity; it just takes some practice to strengthen the ability that’s already innately there. CBT activates brain networks that are already present. And just like a commitment to working out strengthens the body, a commitment to practicing thinking and acting differently strengthens the brain. What’s more, other studies have concluded that CBT leads to visible brain changes—Goldin’s results aren’t just a happy fluke. The conclusion? When we challenge our socially anxious habits, over time we can break free of our well-worn neural pathways. By the time the next party rolls around, you and your brain can be ready. Pass the seven-layer dip. * * * It’s tempting for those of us punished by social anxiety to think we need a drastic change—to turn our personalities inside out like a tube sock or to shake our brains clean, Etch A Sketch style. But it turns out the drastic opposite end of the spectrum isn’t the goal, either. What’s the opposite of social anxiety, anyway? Fearlessness? At first, total lack of behavioral inhibition sounds great—no more dread, no more getting stuck in our own heads. But wait. Be careful what you wish for. While you might guess the opposite of social anxiety is confidence, that’s not quite right. The only people who have attained the dubious achievement of a total lack of social anxiety are the approximately 1 percent of the population who are psychopaths. But just like a tendency toward social anxiety is a package deal, so is psychopathy. You are indeed confident, but you’re also irresponsible, grandiose, impulsive, shallow, remorseless, and deceitful. Psychopaths may make compelling fictional characters, from Hannibal Lecter to Cartman from South Park (chili made from Scott Tenorman’s parents, anyone?), but in real life their existence, to steal from Thomas Hobbes, is nasty, brutish, and (often) short. Not exactly what we’re going for.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  What do the K and Y stand for? According to Johnson & Johnson, which has been manufacturing the jelly since 1910—their service reps were very friendly on the phone—they don’t stand for anything, just arbitrary letters assigned by the original research scientists. But they have come to mean plenty. TRACELESS Now that I have fallen into both sin and love, my scribbled daily testimonies serve to keep my anxiety of loss just barely at bay. With him I live on the ledge of the abyss. The terror that this experience might end competes with the even worse terror that it might be lost forever. Because he and I are not fused, except during sexual contact, I must constantly confront the spaces between us. He never overstays his welcome, and thus cultivates an air of scarcity, an erotic component of powerful and paradoxical consequences. On the one hand, the element of instability is clearly an essential factor, perhaps the central factor, in generating the total thrill of each and every encounter. The lost heat that monogamous couples constantly mourn is always there for us. And yet this unpredictability also leaves me with ample time and space for the insecurities of love to blossom. Thus I doubt, I question, I worry and heap indignities upon myself for which there is neither evidence nor refutation. The lingering voice of convention is always attempting to diminish and deride my own transcendent experience. And yet I have never tried to control him in order to avoid this anxiety; I have always known that he is not an extension of me but a clearly separate human being. Besides, I am well aware by now that if a man exhibits too many signs of attachment I lose interest and the sex becomes laden with obligation. Desire is sexy, a show of free will; attachment is the enemy of free will. A-Man, with his scarcity, has become the first man to keep me poised at that delectable point where I both thrive and suffer: always-in-desire, never-having-enough. It is easier to want something than to have it—and so often when you do get the thing you’ve wanted so long, you’re busy with numerous substitutes. With him somehow the wanting and the having combine, simultaneously. He is my very real yet eternally impossible fantasy: a man I can respect. Living entirely in the moment, he leaves no traces. He is here when he is here. He is gone when he is gone. Others linger when they are gone, like a bad smell, even when they were never really here in the first place. He is the most present, and as a result, the most emphatically, painfully absent.

• 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. Only when the bells had rung half-past five did I step again into the courtyard, and look about me: I was now almost numb.