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 The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  How could I shape the material so that it made a point without imposing an artificial pattern that would distort it? How would I know what kind of style to use? I could see from Charlotte’s typescripts that she would sometimes put a line right through a paragraph: how did she know that it hadn’t worked? And besides, I didn’t really enjoy writing. I had always rather dreaded the moment when I had to write a chapter of my thesis or an essay. It had never been easy. Writing was a grim, exacting, frustrating process because you never said exactly what you wanted to. How on earth could I embark on a whole book? Especially since, with my track record, it was bound to be yet another failure. I might have dithered indefinitely, but Sally intervened. It was a summer evening in 1979, and I was staying overnight in her flat in Dulwich. I quite often did this, since it saved me having to do the grueling journey to Highbury every night. “Now, look here.” Sally led me into her sitting room, where we usually had a glass of sherry to celebrate the end of another school day. But on this particular evening, Sally had other plans. She had cleared her little white desk in the corner of the room. Her father had made it himself; indeed, he had sat at that desk struggling with the calculations that had led to the discovery of radar. “This is a historic desk,” Sally said. “It will bring you luck.” She had already laid out an exercise book and a new felt-tipped pen. “I’m going to go out now for an hour,” she continued. “I’m going to go for a walk, do some shopping—maybe I’ll call on Brigid. But I’m going to be away for a whole hour. So get started. Just sit down now and write the first two pages of your book. Just two pages, that’s all! And then, when I get back, we’ll have a drink to celebrate.” She pulled back the chair, turned on the desk lamp, looked at me firmly, and left the flat. And so there was nothing for it. I sat down and started to write. Miss Armstrong, I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of the road.” The headmistress spoke pleasantly, and looked relaxed, but her words were ominous. It was a dark, windy summer day in 1981, and we were approaching the end of the school year. The head looked down at her hands for a moment, then turned back to me and smiled. “We’re going to have to let you go.” I stared back, feeling a cold clutch of fear. I had seen this coming. My doctor was trying new combinations of pills, and I had been off sick a great deal recently, as my brain and body struggled to adapt to the changes in medication.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  There are no entries for “pornography addiction” or “sex addiction” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM does cite a number of sexual disorders, including aversion to sex, inability to have or control orgasms, and erectile disorder. Nevertheless, many psychologists believe that people whose porn consumption is out of control, causing them to lose sleep, time, relationships and money that they cannot afford, exhibit all the signs of a psychological addiction. Even if porn is addictive only in certain instances, that offers one more explanation for why this industry seems to have such a disproportionately powerful effect on the development of new media: one of the key aspects of an addiction is that the addict develops a tolerance for the substance, and requires a bigger hit to get the same pleasure. For pornography, that can mean seeking out more extreme subject matter—making the progression from soft-core to hard-core to increasingly extreme fetishes and taboos. It can also mean employing new technologies to enhance the experience—higher resolution, better-quality video, more secure privacy, quicker delivery, a more immersive environment. Internet historian Harley Hahn, who has written more than thirty books on technology and culture, has researched the addictive qualities of online porn. He accepts that pornography was one of the driving forces of the Internet, but that fact does little to impress him. “When you are successfully selling an addictive product, you’re always going to find yourself a pioneer in certain areas of the marketplace,” he told me. “It’s not so much that it allows you the freedom, but it pushes you into a market faster than other products.” Hahn is a long-time netizen who lived through the evolution from Usenet through the cluster of user-generated-content applications known as Web 2.0. For him, the power of mixing pornography with technology is real, but far from benign. In a proposal for a book about technology-driven isolation and addiction, he writes, “What happens when a susceptible individual uses technology to engage in a behavior that would otherwise be impossible, when such behavior stimulates his or her pleasure center unnaturally? If you guessed that such people risk depleting their dopamine levels, thereby creating inner cravings that may lead to addictive behavior with serious long-term consequences, you are correct.” His thesis is that the ready access to pornography on the Internet can overstimulate a vulnerable person’s pleasure centres, throwing off their body’s chemistry and sending them on a downward addictive spiral. It’s natural, Hahn says, for people—and men in particular—to be turned on by an image of a naked, attractive human being. It becomes a problem only with the sensory overload of the onslaught of image after image after image. Once the body’s neurotransmitters go on the fritz, addicts are left with a constant craving for more. And access to more pornography means more bandwidth, processor power, resolution, storage space and so forth.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was very brief; it was signed by Florence herself - Florence Banner, I now saw her full name to be - and was addressed to Miss Derby. Please accept notice of my resignation... it ran. I didn’t read that part. For at the top right-hand corner of the page there was a date, and an address - not that of Freemantle House but, clearly, the home address that I was not allowed to know. A number, followed by the name of a street: Quilter Street, Bethnal Green, London E. I memorised it at once.Meanwhile, the woman talked kindly on. I had scarcely heard her, but now I raised my head and saw what she was about. She had taken a little key from her pocket and unlocked one of the drawers in the desk. She was saying,‘... not something we make a habit of doing, at all; but I can see that you are very weary. If you take a bus from here to Aldgate, you can pick up another there, I believe, that will take you along the Mile End Road, to Stratford.’ She held out her hand. There were three pennies in it. ‘And perhaps you might get yourself a cup of tea, along the way?’I took the coins, and mumbled some word of thanks. As I did so a bell rang, close at hand, and we both gave a start. She glanced at a clock upon the wall. ‘My last clients of the day,’ she said.I took the hint, and rose and put on my hat. There were footsteps in the passageway below, now, and the sound of stumbling on the stairs. She ushered me to the door, and called to her visitors: ‘Come up, that’s right. It’s rather steep, I know, but worth the effort...’ A young man, followed by a woman, emerged from the gloom. They were both rather swarthy - Italians, I guessed, or Greeks - and looked terribly pinched and poor. We all shuffled around in the doorway of the office for a moment, smiling and awkward; then at last the lady and the young couple were inside the room, and I was alone at the head of the staircase.The lady raised her head, and caught my eye.‘Good luck!’ she called, a little distractedly. ‘I do so hope you find your friend.’ Having no intention at all, now, of travelling to Stratford, I did not, as the lady recommended, catch a bus. I did, however, buy myself a cup of tea, from a stall with an awning to it, on the High Street. And when I gave back my cup to the girl, I nodded. ‘Which way,’ I asked, ‘to Bethnal Green?’I had never been much further east before - alone, and on foot - than Clerkenwell. Now, limping down the City Road towards Old Street, I felt the beginnings of a new kind of nervousness.

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

  Monkey chatter: She may have made an honest mistake. Confronting her will be unfair! Eric: Thank you, monkey. Monkey chatter: If you confront employees, they will hate you and you’ll be a pariah in your own company! Eric: Thank you, monkey. Monkey chatter: You can’t threaten to fire the wife of a friend. That would be an unforgivable betrayal! Eric: Thank you, monkey. Remember that it is only a thought you are observing, a thought that is the product of a hijacked brain. Every time you observe it and decline to act on it, the distance between you and that thought grows, and the more you regain control of your cognitions. Each repetition of observing chatter, acknowledging chatter, and letting go of chatter will, like any exercise, make you stronger and more skillful at reclaiming your own brain. If you find yourself countering the monkey’s chatter with arguments of your own, stop. The monkey does not learn from reason or debate. The monkey mind learns by either 1) receiving confirmation of its perception of threat, or 2) not receiving confirmation of its perception of threat. You’ve been teaching the monkey the wrong lesson your whole life by confirming its perceptions with resistance. It’s time to stop. The clearest message you can send a chattering monkey mind is to observe it, thank it, and return—over and over again—to your new expansive strategy and mind-set. Your goal is to override the monkey’s call to action, not to drown it out or undermine it in any way. You are building immunity, so that no matter how loudly or how often the chatter strikes, you can continue to move purposely toward your personal goals and expand your world. Worry Time The next week during my session with Eric, he reported that due to scheduling conflicts, his meeting with his employee was still several days away. This had given his monkey lots of additional time to chatter in

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

  tolerating those feelings. Note that I reminded myself that welcoming anxiety with my breath is an expansion strategy. It’s a great reminder that processing anxiety is as normal as breathing. I’d like you to take a few minutes to practice filling out an Expansion Chart of your own. Download the Expansion Chart worksheet at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067 and follow the steps below to fill it out. With the insight this exercise gives you, you’ll have a huge advantage over what you’ve had in the past. When the monkey sounds the alarm, you’ll be prepared! Expansion Chart 1. Think of a difficult situation. This could be a task or activity that you have been procrastinating on, a decision you are having trouble making, an upcoming event that is making you nervous, a situation where saying “no” or standing up for yourself is hard, or a chronic worry that has been troubling you. Write this situation in the first box labeled “Opportunity.” 2. Identify the values that are truly important to you in this situation. They represent the direction that you want to be moving in and what you want to strengthen or cultivate by working on this problem. I find it very helpful to use the list of values you saw earlier in this chapter as a reference. 3. Identify the monkey mind-sets that are activated in this situation. This is a good time to review the examples of monkey mind-sets that are found in chapter 5. (They are labeled Beyond Certainty, Beyond Perfect, and Beyond Over-Responsibility. You can also download them at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.) 4. Identify the expansive mind-set that can counter the monkey mind-set. You can consult the same passages in chapter 5 or downloads cited in step 3. 5. List the safety strategies that you’ve used in the past. A good question to ask yourself is, What do I do to keep the worst from happening? You can also consult the list of common safety strategies found in chapter 4, or download them at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  This last was almost entirely occupied by a massive desk, piled high with papers, and heavily laden bookshelves, but the room where we were sitting was pleasant, with two small-paned French windows that looked out onto an immaculate garden, which glimmered green and silent in the early evening light. Jenifer handed me some sherry in a tiny silver goblet as if to fortify me for what was to come. “Well, now it’s time to talk about Jacob,” she said. She had told me a little about Jacob when I had first applied for the room, as he was the reason for my presence in the house. He was her eight-year- old, mentally handicapped son. When she spoke of him, her rather gruff voice took on a range of different inflections, expressing anxiety and a disarming eagerness to present him in an attractive light. Jacob had been an afterthought, born when the other three children were almost grown up. The birth had been precipitous, and Jacob had emerged with the umbilical cord wound around his neck. Deprived of oxygen, his brain had been irretrievably damaged, and he was now diagnosed officially as autistic. Recently he had also started to have epileptic seizures. I had assumed that autistic children were silent and withdrawn, but apparently Jacob never stopped talking and loved language. He lived in a fantasy world, however—unable, because of his malfunctioning brain, to see his surroundings in the same way as other people. He had, Jenifer told me, terrible fears. He could be driven into frenzy by a loud noise or a thunderstorm, because however carefully these alarming events were explained to him, they always retained the force of the unknown and the inexplicable. These terrors could often result in temper tantrums, during which he would lie on the floor and kick and scream, quite beside himself. At such moments it was impossible to do anything with him. “I seem to have a particularly bad effect on him.” Jenifer had smiled ruefully. “But then I never seemed to have much control over my other children either.” The Harts had a nanny who had lived with the family for almost thirty years, ever since their oldest child, Joanna, had been born. “Nanny is a treasure,” Jenifer had told me sternly. “It’s vital that you get on with Nanny.” And Jacob was able to attend a special school for educationally disadvantaged children, which wasn’t really right for him, as in some ways he was apparently very bright. He had, I was told, an extraordinary vocabulary for his age, and could read fluently. “The doctors told me that he would never be able to read,” Jenifer said. “I think they thought that because we are academics, we were obsessed with literacy. They kept telling us not to push it.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Hey there,” I called amiably. I was holding the world’s loudest whistle, my hand having traveled to it unconsciously over the top of Monster and around to the nylon cord that dangled from my backpack’s frame. I hadn’t used the whistle since I’d seen that first bear on the trail, but ever since then, I had a constant and visceral awareness of where it was in relation to me, as if it weren’t only attached to my backpack by a cord, but another, invisible cord attached it to me. “Good morning,” the man said, and held his hand out to shake mine, his brown hair flopping over his eyes. He told me his name was Jimmy Carter, no relation, and that he couldn’t give me a ride because there was no room in his car. I looked and saw it was true. Every inch except the driver’s seat was crammed with newspapers, books, clothes, soda cans, and a jumble of other things that came up all the way to the windows. He wondered, instead, if he could talk to me. He said he was a reporter for a publication called the Hobo Times. He drove around the country interviewing “folks” who lived the hobo life. “I’m not a hobo,” I said, amused. “I’m a long-distance hiker.” I let go of the whistle and extended my arm toward the road, jabbing my upright thumb at a passing van. “I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” I explained, glancing at him, wishing he’d get in his car and drive away. I needed to catch two rides on two different highways to get to Old Station and he wasn’t helping the cause. I was filthy and my clothes were even filthier, but I was still a woman alone. Jimmy Carter’s presence complicated things, altered the picture from the vantage point of the drivers passing by. I remembered how long I’d had to stand by the side of the road when I’d been trying to get to Sierra City with Greg. With Jimmy Carter beside me, no one was going to stop. “So how long have you been out on the road?” he asked, pulling a pen and a long, narrow reporter’s notebook from the back pocket of his thin corduroy pants. His hair was shaggy and unwashed. His bangs concealed then revealed his dark eyes, depending on how the wind blew. He struck me as someone who had a PhD in something airy and indescribable. The history of consciousness, perhaps, or comparative studies in discourse and society. “I told you. I’m not on the road,” I said, and laughed. Eager as I was to get a ride, I couldn’t help but feel a little delighted by Jimmy Carter’s company. “I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” I repeated, gesturing by way of elaboration to the woods that edged up near the road, though in fact the PCT was about nine miles west of where we stood.

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

  You can control your response to anxiety. You can open your body and make room for it to run its course with your breath. You can ask for more of it to train yourself—and the monkey—that you can handle it. Remember that negative feelings are inevitable, and thus necessary, and by making room for them you will, with time and practice, build resilience to them in your body. When you control your response to the monkey, it loses its control over you. I’ve devoted this chapter to the physical process of feeling what is necessary to expand your world. As we are well aware, the necessary sensations and emotions don’t happen in a vacuum. They are, after all, evidence of the monkey’s perception of threat. The anxious thoughts that accompany anxious feelings can be very compelling and numerous, coming at you in a torrent. Resisting them is as futile as resisting necessary feelings. In the next chapter we will learn how to welcome worry, or what I call monkey chatter. Chapter 6 Takeaway In order for the uncomfortable emotions and sensations associated with anxiety to run their course, it is not only necessary to feel them, but advisable to welcome them. Chapter 7: Monkey Chatter Eric came into our session one week looking very stressed. He described an incident he’d had with one of his employees a few days before that was upsetting him. The employee had made a careless error that cost the company a customer, and it was the second time this had happened. What made this more upsetting to Eric was that this employee was the wife of a good friend of his and Eric was the one who originally suggested she come and work for his company. Eric hated the idea of confronting the employee and was worried that if he did he would lose his friend. He’d slept very little the previous two nights, worrying about what to do. Eric was hijacked. His anxious thoughts were all based on perceptions of primordial threat. If I fire her everyone in the office will hate me! I’ll lose my

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

  It is more important to live life fully in the present moment than to spend time predicting what might go wrong in the future. I will assume safety unless there is clear evidence of danger. It is important to practice flexibility and learn to cope when things do not go as planned. I can take reasonable precautions knowing that I can influence but not control outcomes. Here are some examples of safety strategies commonly used in anxiety-- producing situations and expansive strategies you might use as alternatives. Safety strategy: Check to see if loved ones arrive safely. Expansive strategy: Assume safety and allow for uncertainty. Safety strategy: Research uncomfortable sensations online. Expansive strategy: Breathe into uncomfortable situations. Safety strategy: Make sure you packed everything for a trip. Expansive strategy: Limit packing time. Safety strategy: Postpone decisions until you are sure. Expansive strategy: Set a time to make a decision even if you’re unsure. The strategies above are behavioral. Here are a few opportunities to practice mental expansion strategies: Safety strategy: Weigh pros and cons over and over in your mind to make sure you’re making the best decision. Expansive strategy: Allow for uncertainty. Ask for uncertainty. Ask for more anxiety too. Safety strategy: Worry over the same problem repeatedly. Expansive strategy: Thank your monkey, and ask for more. Or schedule yourself a Worry Time. For a complete list of Safety Strategies versus Expansive Strategies for Intolerance of Uncertainty, visit http://www.newharbinger.com/35067. Certain problem areas come up over and over again for my clients with a need for certainty. I’ve put together a few Expansion Charts you can use with those problems too. Opportunity: Difficulty making decisions Values: Courage, Flexibility, Commitment, Autonomy, Self-Acceptance Monkey Mind-set I need to be certain of my decisions. I need to be certain I am making the best choice. Expansive Mind-set I don’t need to be 100% certain. If I make a decision that has a poor outcome, I can learn to cope with that. Being flexible and resilient is more important than being certain. Safety Strategies Don’t try new things. Put off making decisions. Spend excess time researching. Ask for others’ help making decisions. Expansive Strategies Try something new. Pick something every day to make a decision on. Limit amount of time for research. Make decisions on my own. Necessary Feelings: Anxiety, shame, embarrassment, and dread Opportunity: Excessive checking—making sure people you love are okay,

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

  will show you that the very things you’ve been doing to try to control your anxiety are actually what maintain your anxiety. Resisting, avoiding, and distracting yourself from your anxiety are behaviors that send the wrong message to your brain. These behaviors fuel a cycle of anxiety that always leads to a bigger dose. I call it feeding the monkey. By the monkey, I mean the monkey mind, a metaphor as old as the behavior itself. Let me explain what I mean. For thousands of years, sages have likened the human mind to a monkey —leaping into thin air from one branch of thought to another, never content, never at rest. Worries echo in our heads like so much monkey chatter. Powerful emotions have us jumping at anything that promises a little relief. Yet somehow relief always lies just beyond our reach. Whether due to genetic traits or traumatic life events, millions of us suffer from excess anxiety. But regardless of what variety or intensity our anxiety manifests, there is one thing that is true for all of us. We cannot relax and be at peace unless we feel safe. Humans and all other creatures, regardless of species, are first and foremost survival machines. Maintaining safety is, by necessity, our highest priority. When we feel that our safety is at stake, everything else—appreciating the beauty and wonder of life, pursuing the heart’s desires, or simply being “present in the moment”—becomes expendable. Whether or not you believe your personal safety is at stake, you’ve been living as if it were. The way we anxious folks are wired, we don’t feel like we have any choice. In order to understand how this has happened to us, let’s take a brief trip to what is sometimes called the “fear center” of the brain. Deep within the core of your skull, at the top of your spinal column, is a pair of almond-sized nuclei called the amygdalae. All experience—- everything you see, smell, hear, touch, feel, or think—passes through the amygdalae like travelers passing through airport security. There in the amygdalae each experience is instantly and automatically screened for threat. When there is a perception of threat, the amygdalae set off an alarm system that alerts their neighbors, the hypothalamus and the adrenal glands, which in turn send hormonal and neurological signals to the sympathetic nervous system, instructing it to accelerate the heart rate and breathing, bathe you in stress hormones, and shut down digestion and other unnecessary functions—in short, to go into survival mode.

• From Bold Move

  And there is a negative price tag to this behavior: it drives my family mad, and I end up exhausted. This is important to consider because at times we might think only of the cost of avoidance to ourselves, but it can also have a negative impact on those we love. Staying busy is one way I try to extinguish discomfort—too bad it is a better fighter than I am. Responding quickly to email and keeping busy around the house can both be forms of reactive avoidance, but they aren’t the only ways to fight back. Because discomfort can arise in many different situations, there is a wide range of ways that people react. However, all reactive actions have one thing in common—they are intended to eliminate discomfort by attacking whatever is making you feel anxious. Let me share with you a few examples from my clients to help you get better at identifying your own reactive avoidance. The Dark Side of ProductivityIn 1995, Dr. John Perry, a professor at Stanford, coined the term structured procrastination to describe how people go on to do a lot of things that are “important” in their to-do lists, only to avoid the things that really need to get done.1 As described by Perry, “I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things”—namely, the things he needed to do for his job, like grading papers. What Perry first pointed out was a phenomenon that many people refer to now as productive procrastination . Productive procrastinators, Perry says, “can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.” This is a sneaky type of reactive avoidance because often we are doing something that feels responsible, so how can that be avoidance? But once again we must look at the definition of avoidance: 1) Did my brain perceive threat? 2) Did I get uncomfortable? 3) Did my response provide me with a quick fix? and 4) Is there a negative consequence? Let’s look at an example. My husband, David, is the kind of person who avoids by retreating: if he can go into his brain and try to outthink his anxiety, he’ll do it. But just like anyone, including me, he uses more than one avoidance tactic. For example, as I am under the gun in this crazy sprint to finish this book, we are also about to receive twelve houseguests for my birthday (it’s a Latin thing). Traditionally when I have guests, I tend to go a little overboard: new sheets, vacuuming the rugs, shopping for groceries so I can make our favorite Brazilian dishes, and so on.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  She could so very easily not go along with this and insist on talking to the man in the motel office herself, and it would not be at all good for me if she did: I would have to use the Fold to escape, and I would have to abandon her while she was in the middle of telling the person at the desk that there was someone in her room, and then he would tell her that nobody was checked into room 24, and she would be left with a mysterious and disturbing sexual event that she could not; explain. The police would possibly get involved—awful to contemplate. But because I always mean well, despite my sneakiness, I would be flustered enough and genuine enough that she would believe me and accede. I would check in at the office and request room 24 and get the key. Adele would be standing outside room 23 when I returned. The door would be ajar—I would have left it ajar—so she would have been able to glance at the arrangement of magazines and the washcloth on the end of the bed during my brief absence if she wanted to. “There, all set,” I would tell her. I would noisily slap all the magazines in a big pile and cover the top one with the washcloth and carry them out to my new room. Again I would say, “I’m terribly sorry for the dreadful mix-up.” “That’s quite all right,” she would say. She would be very unflappable and pleasant. We would wave good-night.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I must learn to love Kitty as Kitty loved me; or never be able to love her at all.And that, I knew, would be terrible. Chapter 4 [image "006" file=wate_9781101078198_oeb_006_r1.jpg] The Star, when we reached it at noon the next day, turned out to be not a tenth as smart as those marvellous West End halls before which we had leaned, with Mr Bliss, to dream of Kitty’s triumph; even so, however, it was quite alarmingly handsome and grand. Its manager at this time was a Mr Ling; he met us at the stage door and took us to his office, to read aloud the terms of Kitty’s contract and secure her signature upon it; but then he rose and shook our hands and shouted for the call-boy, and had us shown, rather briskly, to the stage. Here, self-conscious and awkward, I waited while Kitty spoke with the conductor and ran through her songs with the band. Once a man approached me, with a broom on his shoulder, and asked me rather roughly who I was and what I did there.‘I’m waiting for Miss Butler,’ I said, my voice as thin as a whistle.‘Are you, then,’ he said. ‘Well, sweetheart, you’ll have to wait somewhere else, for I’ve to sweep this spot, and you are in my way. Go on, now.’ And I moved away, blushing horribly, and had to stand in a corridor while boys with baskets and ladders and pails of sand lumbered by me, looking me over, or cursing when I blocked their path.Our return visit, however, in the evening, was an easier one, for then we went straight to the dressing-room, where I knew my part a little better. Even so, when we entered the room I felt my spirits tumble rather, for it was nothing like the cosy little chamber at the Canterbury Palace, which Kitty had had all to herself, and which I was used to keeping so neat and nice. Instead it was dim and dusty, with benches and hooks for a dozen artistes, and one greasy sink that must be shared by all, and a door that must be propped shut or left to sag and let in every glance of every stage-hand and visitor that might be idling in the passageway beyond. We arrived late, and found most of the hooks already taken, and several of the benches occupied by girls and women in varying stages of undress. They looked up when we arrived, and smiled, most of them; and when Kitty took out her packet of Weights and a match, someone cried, ‘Thank God, a woman with a cigarette! Give us one, ducks, would you?

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

  friends! I’ll lose my business! I’ll be alone! No wonder he couldn’t sleep. When you are hijacked by the monkey you simply can’t think straight. All your thoughts are like monkey chatter, all based on the perception of a primordial threat. To help Eric sort through this I asked him to chart his cycle. Looking at Eric’s chart helped him see that he was overestimating the primordial threat. Would everyone turn against him for simply doing his job? Probably not. He also saw that he might be underestimating his ability to cope if some people, including his good friend, got angry. This was helpful. However, even though the situation probably wasn’t a primordial threat, Eric did have a problem that needed to be solved. Anxious thoughts can be a signal that something really is wrong and that action is required. But with all the monkey chatter in his head, Eric was having difficulty deciding what action he should take. To help Eric determine that, I introduced him to the following exercise. It is designed to help you sort through the noise so you can act on the signal. (You can download a worksheet for it from http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.) Five-Step Problem Solving 1. Identify the problem. 2. List four possible actions to solve it. 3. Review short- and long-term consequences of each possible action. 4. Choose the best action and do it. 5. Evaluate how it worked. Pat yourself on the back for trying something new! Beginning with step 1, I asked Eric to state his presenting problem in the simplest terms. Here’s what he said: “The employee I hired is alienating customers.” Step 2 was to think of four possible actions he could take to address the problem. During this step it is good to think freely, not trying to find the best solution, just brainstorming what comes to mind. Eric came up with four that covered his options pretty well. He could fire the employee, put the employee on probation, talk to his friend (the husband of the employee) about the problem, or simply not do anything. Next, step 3. I asked Eric to evaluate these possible actions, looking at what both the short-term and long-term consequences of each might be. Eric said that not doing anything would be the easiest now, but without intervention of some kind, the employee could lose him more customers in the future. Firing her would certainly prevent future mistakes, but it would feel extremely uncomfortable and would put a strain on his friendship with her husband. Talking to his friend, the husband of his employee, without talking to his employee did not make sense for the short run or the long run. He couldn’t outsource his responsibility, burden his friend, and expect the problem to be solved. The last option, giving his employee a formal warning that included

• From Bold Move

  Filomena realized that in any situation where she perceived abandonment, she would try to cling to the relationship like a drowning person to ship wreckage, which is what happens when one has an anxious attachment style.3 Ted’s being away from her threatened her sense of security, so much so that she would unleash a stream of nonstop texts to lower her emotional temperature as fast as possible. But beyond Ted, she would also behave this way with her family and closest friends. Filomena learned that by tightly holding on to those that she loved, she was actually creating worse relationships. Lastly, Oliver found that whenever he was in a situation where the rules (whether social, personal, or professional) were not followed, he would feel great discomfort to the point of exploding. So, when one of his team members, Martha, made a mistake, he became anxious. To deal with his own anxiety, he essentially bullied her, creating momentary relief followed by immediate shame and regret, and ultimately landing him in my office. And it wasn’t just at work. He would find himself in similar situations at home. Oliver shared with me that every time his family members broke some unspoken rule, like eating dinner later than expected, he would find himself raising his voice (even while acknowledging the insignificance of eating dinner half an hour later). The altercation would typically result in dinner being restored to its regular time, but would also make Oliver feel upset and small for yelling at his wife. This sort of thing also happened with his daughters, hence the joking-but-not-really-joking duct tape gift. His family viewed him as the “hothead dad,” and everyone felt as if they needed to either walk on eggshells around him or risk another outburst. They could joke about it, but the impact this behavior had on his family was unmistakably detrimental. As you can see, the process of identifying hot buttons allows each person to learn something about themselves. The insight gained through tracking is more than an intellectual endeavor; it is actually a strong motivator for behavior change because as the adage goes: you can’t change what you can’t measure. If you’ve ever worn any kind of watch or bracelet that tracks your steps, you might already be familiar with this concept. Just knowing how much (or little) you have moved can motivate you toward actionable steps (no pun intended). And this isn’t just my wonderfully insightful opinion. A recent review of studies found that adults who self-monitored their sedentary behavior became more active.4 We can also use the motivating magic of self-monitoring to help us prepare to Approach . From Tracking to ApproachingOnce you know your specific hot buttons, you basically know the land mines that set off that reactive explosion.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  This was the spring of 1969, and I now realize that on the international stage, the weeks that had elapsed since my departure from the convent had been momentous. Richard Nixon had been inaugurated as president of the United States, Yasser Arafat had been elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and a military coup had taken place in Pakistan. Palestinian terrorists had attacked an Israeli airliner at Zurich airport, Nixon had authorized the secret bombing of Cambodia, and Soviet and Chinese forces had clashed on the Manchurian border. I knew nothing of this. I had never heard of either Nixon or Arafat, and would have had difficulty in locating either Cambodia or Manchuria on the map. In the convent, we had not kept abreast of current events. In the noviceship, indeed, we did not even see newspapers. We were told of the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred a few weeks after I entered, but our superiors forgot to tell us that the conflict had been resolved, so we spent three whole weeks in terror, hourly expecting the outbreak of World War III. Mother Walter also told us about the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Catholic president. Later, this strict embargo on the news was mitigated somewhat, but in general political interest was frowned upon. As a result, I entered the secular world completely ignorant of the problems of our time, and because I lacked basic information, could not make head or tail of the newspapers. What I needed was a crash course in the current political scene, but this was not available, and I felt so ashamed of my ignorance that I did not dare to ask questions that would have revealed its abysmal depths. As it happened, there were students at my college who would have been delighted to take my education in hand, because St. Anne’s was probably the most politically minded of all the five women’s colleges. This was, of course, the great period of student unrest. In January, while I was preparing to leave my convent, the Czech student Jan Palach had publicly burned himself to death to protest Soviet occupation, and in Spain student disturbances had led to the imposition of martial law. In April, left-wing students at Cornell University in New York State staged a three-day sit-in to draw attention to their outdated curriculum, while at Harvard, three hundred students occupied the campus administration building and were forcibly removed by the police. Oxford was also aflame with revolutionary enthusiasm. But the ringleaders looked absolutely terrifying to me—unapproachable in their righteous rage.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  It was one of my favorite haunts, a place where I loved to come and study. It had been raining. I was wet and chilled, but back in my skin on a planet that had returned to normal. I never imagined for one moment that these were supernatural visitations. I knew at once that I must be ill and assumed that, like my fainting attacks, these visions were symptoms of strain. This seemed oddly appropriate. The world that I had rejected had turned on me and exacted a revenge, in which my surroundings periodically took on a nightmarish unfamiliarity. But as these strange interludes became more frequent, I became frightened, and took myself off to the doctor. How was I going to live with a horror that descended upon me without warning and made it impossible for me to function? It seemed as though the world and I had become chronically incompatible; that I would never be able to live in it. And what if one day I remained trapped on the other side of the looking glass? The doctor dismissed these worries as excessive but agreed that I was not very well. He talked sagely about anxiety attacks, told me that these things happened, were fairly common, and could easily be dealt with. After all, I had been under a strain; I was probably working too hard. In my final year now, was I? Exams next summer? Yes, people often got het up about these things. But in view of my . . . er . . . history, it might be a good idea to go and see a specialist. He knew a very good chap at the Littlemore Hospital. Somebody would write to me in due course to set up an appointment. Good idea to talk things over, perhaps take some medication—only temporarily, of course—to get rid of these bouts of panic, and then I’d soon be on my feet. The Littlemore. One of Oxford’s two psychiatric hospitals. My heart sank. I had seen it coming, but now that the process had been set in motion, it felt like a real defeat. Psychiatry had certainly not been part of the convent ethos. The very idea of “talking things over” with anyone was anathema. But I could see no alternative. The way both the doctor and the college nurse had taken refuge immediately in cliché when confronted with my predicament indicated that they felt out of their depth. I needed expert help, but I still shrank from exposing the mess of my life to a stranger, who would examine it clinically and make his own appraisal, and I hated the prospect of being known to be mentally ill. It was partly to prevent this, I suppose, that I started to become more reclusive and reserved. I was afraid of experiencing one of these uncanny episodes when I was with other people.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I disliked the crusading certainty of Ayatollah Khomeini, yet I was also disturbed by the shrill rhetoric of some of Rushdie’s champions. Did we not believe in the importance of truth and accuracy in our dealings with others? But some London literati who had begun by attacking the ayatollah and the Bradford Muslims very quickly segued into a denunciation of Islam itself, and what they said was dangerously over the top. Muslims were compared to Nazis and told to go back to their countries of origin. Islam was described as a bloodthirsty religion, and the Koran was said to preach a God of vengeance, who ruled by terror and threat. I knew that this was not correct, and could not see how it was acceptable to defend a liberal position by promoting a bigotry that, in view of our recent history, we Europeans could ill afford. On the first anniversary of the fatwa there was yet more media ferment. I had written a short opinion piece in the books section of The Sunday Times, showing that Rushdie’s portrait of “Mahound” corresponded exactly with Islamophobic myths that had first been promoted by the Crusaders. On the day that the essay was published, I looked bleakly through the newspapers. My little contribution seemed a minnow beside the more authoritative articles by the literary heavyweights, and I felt suddenly overcome by a cold, pervasive dread. By failing to live up to our own standards of tolerance and compassion, by assuming that all Muslims were as vengeful as the ayatollah and that their religion was inherently violent and evil, we were laying up a store of trouble for ourselves in the future. Rightly or wrongly, many Muslims throughout the world believed that the West despised them. The tone of these articles would confirm them in their suspicions, and provoke some to extremism. Of course, we must defend the principle of free speech, but after Auschwitz we could not afford to indulge an old crusading prejudice which was manifestly untrue. Rushdie’s portrait of “Mahound” performed an important function in his novel. It was presented as fiction and delusion, as part of the theme of distortion and “monsterization.” But the writers who were denouncing Islam so vehemently in the papers this morning presented their views as hard, incontrovertible fact. Most of their readers would not know the true story of Muhammad, and many would probably accept verbatim this inaccurate depiction of Islam, thus compounding the problem. The trouble was, I said to myself as I sadly returned to the pile of newspapers, there was no accessible life of the Prophet to act as a counternarrative. The traditional Muslim biographies of Muhammad were written in a foreign idiom that could appeal only to a believer from the Arab world or the Indian subcontinent.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He shook his head.‘Not even with that. Haven’t you worked, these past six months - harder than Kitty, almost? You know the act as well as she; you know her songs, her bits of business - why, you taught them to her, most of them!’‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘This is all so new, and strange. All my life I’ve loved the music hall, but I never thought of getting up upon the stage, myself...’‘Didn’t you?’ he said then. ‘Didn’t you, really?’ Every time you saw some little serio-comic captivate the crowd, at that Palace of yours, in Canterbury, didn’t you wish that it was you? Didn’t you close your eyes and see your name upon the programmes, your number in the box? Didn’t you sing to your - oyster-barrel - as if it were a crowded hall, and you could make those little fishes weep, or shriek with laughter?’I bit my nail, and frowned. ‘Dreams,’ I said.He snapped his fingers. ‘The very stuff that stages are made of.’‘Where would we start?’ I said then. ‘Who would offer us a spot?’‘The manager here would. Tonight. I’ve already spoken with him -’‘Tonight!’‘Just one song. He’ll find space for you in his programme; and if they like you, he’ll keep you there.’‘Tonight...’ I looked at Walter in dismay. His face was very kind, and his eyes seemed bluer and more earnest than ever. But what he said made me tremble. I thought of the hall, hot and bright and filled with jeering faces. I thought of that stage, so wide and empty. I thought: I cannot do it, not even for Walter’s sake. Not even for Kitty’s.I made to shake my head. He saw, and quickly spoke again - spoke, perhaps for the first time in all the months that I had known him, with something that was almost guile. He said: ‘You know, of course, that we cannot throw over the idea of the double act, now that we have hit upon it. If you don’t wish to partner Kitty, there’ll be some other girl who does. We can spread the word, place notices, audition. You mustn’t feel that you are letting Kitty down...’I looked from him to the stage, where Kitty herself sat on the edge of a beam of limelight, sipping at her cup, swinging her legs, and smiling at some word of the conductor’s. The thought that she might take another partner - might stroll before the footlights with another girl’s arm through hers, another girl’s voice rising and blending with her own - had not occurred to me.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  This new sensitivity was not always comfortable, because I found that I could hear a kind of crusading aggression all around me in contemporary society. I heard it in Israel, when I listened to the Israelis and Palestinians condemning each other, wholly unable to appreciate each other’s position. It was there again when British politicians attacked their opponents with bitter relish, and even in apparently civilized debates between intellectuals and literary critics on the radio. There was an edge of unpleasant self-righteousness as people gleefully demolished their opponents. I heard it all the time in London, when even my most liberal friends inveighed wittily—and often unkindly—against this or that. I certainly heard it in Mrs. Thatcher. So my study of the Crusades changed me, making me determined always to try to listen to the other side, and at least try to understand where the enemy was coming from. Had the Crusaders done that, a moral catastrophe could have been averted. Studying the Crusades had confirmed me in my conviction that stridently parochial certainty could be lethal, especially in religious matters. We lived in a global age now, and it was dangerous to assume, without question, that “we” had the monopoly of truth and justice. We had started working on the television series in the summer of 1985, and the project was initially supposed to take a year—two at the most. Three years later, however, the film was still unfinished, for reasons that were never entirely clear to me. Something had gone badly wrong. I could hear it in Joel’s muttered imprecations, and in the uneasy behavior of the crew. Our old camaraderie had gone, and been replaced by a high level of tension. I would pack my suitcases, all ready to fly off for a period of shooting, and then—sometimes when I was actually waiting for the taxi to take me to Heathrow—I would get a call telling me that the filming had been indefinitely postponed. Sometimes a trip was curtailed in midschedule, which meant that I spent my days zigzagging erratically, back and forth between London, Israel, and Europe. When we were able to shoot, the money came piecemeal, and there was always a bad moment at the end of the day when Joel and the producer, with their hearts in their mouths, went to the bank to see if the latest installment of funds had arrived to get us through the next twenty-four hours. Joel asked John to send in a British producer to supervise the finances, but John, for his own reasons, refused to do this.