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 Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  The symptoms of trauma can be stable (ever-present), unstable (will come and go), or they can hide for decades. Generally, these symptoms do not occur individually, but in constellations. These “syndromes” often grow increasingly complex over time, becoming less and less connected with the original trauma experience. While certain symptoms can suggest a particular type of trauma, no symptom is exclusively indicative of the trauma that caused it. People will manifest traumatic symptoms differently, depending on the nature and severity of the trauma, the situation in which it occurred, and the personal and developmental resources available to the individual at the time of the experience. And Around and Around We Go Relaxing makes me nervous. Unknown As I have mentioned repeatedly, the perception of threat in the presence of undischarged arousal creates a self-perpetuating cycle. One of the most insidious characteristics of trauma symptoms is that they are hooked into the original cycle in such a way that they are also self-perpetuating. This characteristic is the primary reason why trauma is resistant to most forms of treatment. For some people, this self-perpetuating cycle keeps their symptoms stable. Others develop one or a variety of additional behaviors or predispositions (all of which may be considered trauma symptoms) to help the nervous system keep the situation under control. Avoidance behaviors. Trauma symptoms are the organism’s way of defending itself against the arousal generated by an ever-present perception of threat. This defense system, however, is not sophisticated enough to withstand much stress. Stress causes the system to break down, releasing the original arousal energy and its message of danger. Unfortunately, when we live with the aftereffects of trauma, simply avoiding stressful situations is not sufficient to prevent the breakdown of the defense systems. If we tiptoe around arousal, our nervous systems will create their own. When this happens, we cannot rebound from the impacts of everyday frustrations as easily as we could if our nervous systems were free to function fully and normally. Ordinary circumstances can disturb the delicate organization of energy in the traumatized individual’s nervous system. A traumatized person may develop so-called “avoidance behaviors” to help keep the underlying arousal in place. Avoidance behaviors are a form of trauma symptom in which we limit our lifestyles to situations that are not potentially activating. Fearing another near accident, we may develop a reluctance to drive. If the excitement of a ball game triggered a panic attack, ball games may suddenly be less appealing. If flashbacks occur during a sexual encounter, this may lead to a diminished interest in sex. Any event that causes a change in our usual energy levels has potential to trigger uncomfortable emotions and sensations. Gradually, our lives will become more and more constricted as we try to avoid circumstances that might cause the usual balance of energy to shift.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I bumped and spilled my glass of water, which called even more attention to us. She, however, had grace as she carefully left change for a tip, and we walked back to her house. Soon thereafter I was summoned to my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s house. I was nervous. I had been warned by anyone who could take me aside that she was jealous, overprotective, and mean. They were right. What they didn’t say was how attractive she was, how she was still in good form despite the rough years, her dark hair thick and lightly curled. It was her dark eyes that told the other story. They took in the edges of things, the tatters, and left the good behind. My lively new daughter ran up to us as soon as she saw us. My new sister-in-law quietly drew pictures of horses at the table. I moved in with the family in my mother-in-law-to-be’s tiny one-bedroom house that afternoon, because, as she told her son, “You can’t stay there and live off your grandmother.” That much was true. But she also wanted to think she had some control of the gossip. If I was in her house, she would know my whereabouts and could be the authority. She was also pragmatic: I could watch the children. I adjusted. I had no choice. I hated the days when she was moody and critical. I could smell those days coming from far off, like the ozone in a storm front. She might start with “Why aren’t you with your mother?” meaning, why doesn’t your mother take care of you? She reproached me as I washed dishes after eating food bought with her hard-earned money. Or she would say, “Your mother is rich. Why can’t she send us money?” She assumed my mother was rich because she was a lighter-skinned Cherokee who passed for white and lived in Tulsa. I promised myself that as soon as the baby was born we would find our own place. I would swallow hard. I didn’t like being at the mercy of someone else’s kindness. I did everything I could to make myself useful around the house. “My mother isn’t rich,” I answered. During my last visit to the clinic at the Indian hospital I was given the option of being sterilized. It was explained to me that the moment of birth was the best time. I was handed the form but chose not to sign. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Many Indian women who weren’t fluent in English signed, thinking it was a form giving consent for the doctor to deliver their baby. Others were sterilized without even the formality of signing. My fluent knowledge of English saved me. As a child growing up in Oklahoma, I liked to be told the story of my birth. I begged for it while my mother cleaned and ironed. “You almost killed me,” she would say.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  When we learn to recognize these four components of the traumatic reaction, we are well on our way to recognizing trauma. All other symptoms develop from these four if the defensive energy mobilized to respond to a traumatic event is not discharged or integrated within a few days, weeks, or months following the experience. Hyperarousal During times of conflict or stress, most people experience symptoms such as increased heartbeat and breathing, agitation, difficulty in sleeping, tension, muscular jitteriness, racing thoughts, or perhaps an anxiety attack. Though not always indicative of traumatic symptoms, these signs are usually due to some form of hyperarousal. If hyperarousal, constriction, dissociation, and a sense of helplessness form the core of the traumatic reaction, then hyperarousal is the seed in that core. If you reflect back on the previous exercise, you will realize that it invoked at least a mild version of hyperarousal. Whenever this heightened internal arousal occurs, it is primarily an indication that the body is summoning its energetic resources to mobilize against a potential threat. When the situation is serious enough to threaten the organism’s very survival, the amount of energy mobilized is much higher than that mobilized for any other situation in our lives. Unfortunately, even when we know that we need to discharge the aroused energy, doing so is not always easy. Like many instinctual processes, hyperarousal cannot be voluntarily controlled. The following exercise is a simple way to experientially confirm this. Exercise During the three scenarios you experienced in the last exercise, did you imagine or create the responses in your body or were they produced by your body as an involuntary response to the scenarios you envisioned? In other words, did you make them happen or did they happen on their own? Now attempt to deliberately make your body have such a response without envisioning a threatening scenario. Use a direct approach and see if you can make your body produce responses similar to those you experienced in the three scenario s In your eyes. In your posture. In your muscles. In your level of arousal. Now try all the parts of the experience together at the same time. When you compare your experience in this exercise to your experience in the earlier one, how is it similar? How is it different?

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Turn to the next picture and repeat the process. Remember to go slowly enough to be able to notice the sensations that arise in response to the pictures. For each picture or page of your scrapbook, stay with the sensations that are evoked for a few minutes and see if they change. They may stay the same or disappear, but they may also become stronger. Whatever happens, just notice it. If the feelings or sensations become too intense or unpleasant, deliberately shift your attention to a pleasant experience that you have had, or that you can imagine having. Focus all your awareness on the bodily felt sensations of that experience instead. Shifting your attention to the other sensations will help the intensity of the uncomfortable feeling to subside. Remember that unresolved trauma can be a powerful force. If you continue to feel overwhelmed by the exercises or any of the material in the book, please stop for now, try again later, or, enlist the support of a trained professional. If an image of a horrifying scene shows up in your mind’s eye, ever so gently notice what sensations come with it. Sometimes, when sensations are intense, images come first. The sensation is ultimately what will help you move through the traum a - whatever it is. You may end up knowing what it is and you may not. For now, just be reassured that as you move through your reactions, the need to know whether it was real or not will loosen its grip. If there is an objective need to know whether it is true, such as to protect a child who may be at risk, you will be in a better position to handle the situation effectively. Be aware that the energies of trauma can be bound up in beliefs about being raped or abused. By challenging these beliefs, especially if they aren’t true, some of that energy may be released. If this is the case for you, rest and give yourself plenty of time to process this new information. Stay with the sensations you experience as much as possible, and don’t be alarmed if you feel tremulous or weak. Both are evidence that normal discharge is happening. Don’t force yourself to do more than you can handle. If you feel tired, take a nap or go to bed early. Part of the grace of the nervous system is that it is constantly self-regulating. What you can’t process today will be available to be processed some other time when you are stronger, more resourceful, and better able to do it. There are both physiological and psychological elements of the felt sense. I’ve outlined some of their key differences in the following two subsections. The first subsection focuses on how the organism communicates through its physiology; the second focuses on some of the psychological conventions and customs from which the organism operates.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Few people question the seriousness of the problems created by trauma, yet we have difficulty comprehending how many people are affected by it. In a recent study of more than one thousand men and women, it was found that forty percent had gone through a traumatic event in the past three years. Most often cited were: being raped or physically assaulted; being in a serious accident; witnessing someone else being killed or injured. As many as thirty percent of the homeless people in this country are thought to be Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. Somewhere between seventy-five and one hundred million Americans have experienced childhood sexual and physical abuse. The conservative AMA estimates that over thirty percent of all married women, as well as thirty percent of pregnant women, have been beaten by their spouses. One woman is beaten by her husband or lover every nine seconds (the beatings of pregnant women are also traumatic to the fetus). War and violence have affected the lives of nearly every man, woman, and child living on this planet. In the last few years, entire communities have been wiped out or devastated by natural disaster s- Hurricane Hugo, Andrew, and Iniki; flooding of the Midwest and California; the Oakland Fire; the Loma Prieta, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Cairo, and Kobe Earthquakes; and many more. All of the people affected by these events are at risk or are already suffering from trauma. Many other people have traumatic symptoms that go unrecognized. For example, ten to fifteen percent of all adults suffer from panic attacks, unexplained anxiety, or phobias. As many as seventy-five percent of the people who go to doctors have complaints that are labeled psychosomatic because no physical explanation can be found for them. My work leads me to believe that many of these people have traumatic histories which at least contribute to their symptoms. Depression and anxiety often have traumatic antecedents, as does mental illness. A study conducted by Bessel van der Kolk [4] , a respected researcher in the field of trauma, has shown that patients at a large mental institution frequently had symptoms indicative of trauma. Many of these symptoms were overlooked at the time because no one recognized their significance. Today, most people are aware of the fact that sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, as well as exposure to violence or danger, can profoundly alter a person’s life. What most people don’t know is that many seemingly benign situations can be traumatic. The consequences of trauma can be widespread and hidden. Over the course of my career I have found an extraordinary range of symptom s— behavioral and psychosomatic problems, lack of vitality, etc .— related not only to the traumatic events mentioned above, but also to quite ordinary events.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But all their assistance was unavailing, because the good man, who was already advanced in years and had lived a disordered existence, was reported by his doctors to be going each day from bad to worse, like one who was suffering from a fatal illness. The two brothers were filled with alarm, and one day, alongside the room in which Ser Ciappelletto was lying, they began talking together. ‘What are we to do about the fellow?’ said one to the other. ‘We’ve landed ourselves in a fine mess on his account, because to turn him away from our house in his present condition would arouse a lot of adverse comment and show us to be seriously lacking in common sense. What would people say if they suddenly saw us evicting a dying man after giving him hospitality in the first place, and taking so much trouble to have him nursed and waited upon, when he couldn’t possibly have done anything to offend us? On the other hand, he has led such a wicked life that he will never be willing to make his confession or receive the sacraments of the Church; and if he dies unconfessed, no church will want to accept his body and he’ll be flung into the moat like a dog. 3 But even if he makes his confession, his sins are so many and so appalling that the same thing will happen, because there will be neither friar nor priest who is either willing or able to give him absolution; in which case, since he will not have been absolved, he will be flung into the moat just the same. And when the townspeople see what has happened, they’ll create a commotion, not only because of our profession which they consider iniquitous and never cease to condemn, but also because they long to get their hands on our money, and they will go about shouting: “Away with these Lombard dogs 4 that the Church refuses to accept”; and they’ll come running to our lodgings and perhaps, not content with stealing our goods, they’ll take away our lives into the bargain. So we shall be in a pretty fix either way, if this fellow dies.’ Ser Ciappelletto, who as we have said was lying near the place where they were talking, heard everything they were saying about him, for he was sharp of hearing, as invalids invariably are. So he called them in to him, and said: ‘I don’t want you to worry in the slightest on my account, nor to fear that I will cause you to suffer any harm. I heard what you were saying about me

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I bumped and spilled my glass of water, which called even more attention to us. She, however, had grace as she carefully left change for a tip, and we walked back to her house. Soon thereafter I was summoned to my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s house. I was nervous. I had been warned by anyone who could take me aside that she was jealous, overprotective, and mean. They were right. What they didn’t say was how attractive she was, how she was still in good form despite the rough years, her dark hair thick and lightly curled. It was her dark eyes that told the other story. They took in the edges of things, the tatters, and left the good behind. My lively new daughter ran up to us as soon as she saw us. My new sister-in-law quietly drew pictures of horses at the table. I moved in with the family in my mother-in-law-to-be’s tiny one-bedroom house that afternoon, because, as she told her son, “You can’t stay there and live off your grandmother.” That much was true. But she also wanted to think she had some control of the gossip. If I was in her house, she would know my whereabouts and could be the authority. She was also pragmatic: I could watch the children. I adjusted. I had no choice. I hated the days when she was moody and critical. I could smell those days coming from far off, like the ozone in a storm front. She might start with “Why aren’t you with your mother?” meaning, why doesn’t your mother take care of you? She reproached me as I washed dishes after eating food bought with her hard-earned money. Or she would say, “Your mother is rich. Why can’t she send us money?” She assumed my mother was rich because she was a lighter-skinned Cherokee who passed for white and lived in Tulsa. I promised myself that as soon as the baby was born we would find our own place. I would swallow hard. I didn’t like being at the mercy of someone else’s kindness. I did everything I could to make myself useful around the house. “My mother isn’t rich,” I answered. During my last visit to the clinic at the Indian hospital I was given the option of being sterilized. It was explained to me that the moment of birth was the best time. I was handed the form but chose not to sign. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Many Indian women who weren’t fluent in English signed, thinking it was a form giving consent for the doctor to deliver their baby. Others were sterilized without even the formality of signing. My fluent knowledge of English saved me. As a child growing up in Oklahoma, I liked to be told the story of my birth. I begged for it while my mother cleaned and ironed. “You almost killed me,” she would say.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  22 Lecture 3: ancestor Narratives in Genesis o The Israelite god repeatedly reveals himself to Abraham and to his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, and forms a covenant relationship with them. o God asks Abraham to “walk before me and be righteous.” In return, Abraham receives God’s promise that he will be the father of a “multitude of nations,” and he is granted an eternal landholding in Canaan. As a mark of the covenant, Abraham is asked to circumcise himself and his male descendants. • The rest of the book of Genesis narrates the history of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—four generations. We often refer to the first three men as the “patriarchs.” o Each one experiences divine visitations, during which the terms of the Abrahamic covenant are reiterated. o At the same time, each of these men faces serious challenges that seem to make the promises of land, progeny, blessings, and great nations useless. Abraham, for example, must wait 25 years from the time that he is first told he will father a great nation to the birth of the son that God has promised him. The patriarchs also face threats to their lives, often coming from God himself. • Several of the recurring themes of the patriarchal narratives speak to the exilic reality of those preserving these stories. o These themes include the Israelite god’s presence and power, which transcend national boundaries; the covenantal relationship between Abraham’s descendants and the Israelite god; the eternal nature of the covenantal relationship; and the gift of the Promised Land as an everlasting bequest. o The stories also acknowledge tensions experienced by the exiles: wives who cannot conceive, children whose lives are threatened, a land prone to famine and war, and a god who does not always protect.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Without prior agreement but simply by chance, these seven ladies found themselves sitting, more or less in a circle, in one part of the church, reciting their paternosters. Eventually, they left off and heaved a great many sighs, after which they began to talk among themselves on various different aspects of the times through which they were passing. But after a little while, they all fell silent except for Pampinea, who said: ‘Dear ladies, you will often have heard it affirmed, as I have, that no man does injury to another in exercising his lawful rights. Every person born into this world has a natural right to sustain, preserve, and defend his own life to the best of his ability – a right so freely acknowledged that men have sometimes killed others in self-defence, and no blame whatever has attached to their actions. Now, if this is permitted by the laws, upon whose prompt application all mortal creatures depend for their well-being, how can it possibly be wrong, seeing that it harms no one, for us or anyone else to do all in our power to preserve our lives? If I pause to consider what we have been doing this morning, and what we have done on several mornings in the past, if I reflect on the nature and subject of our conversation, I realize, just as you also must realize, that each of us is apprehensive on her own account. This does not surprise me in the least, but what does greatly surprise me (seeing that each of us has the natural feelings of a woman) is that we do nothing to requite ourselves against the thing of which we are all so justly afraid. ‘Here we linger for no other purpose, or so it seems to me, than to count the number of corpses being taken to burial, or to hear whether the friars of the church, very few of whom are left, chant their offices at the appropriate hours, or to exhibit the quality and quantity of our sorrows, by means of the clothes we are wearing, to all those whom we meet in this place. And if we go outside, we shall see the dead and the sick being carried hither and thither, or we shall see people, once condemned to exile by the courts for their misdeeds, careering wildly about the streets in open defiance of the law, well knowing that those appointed to enforce it are either dead or dying; or else we shall find ourselves at the mercy of the scum of our city who, having scented our blood, call themselves sextons and go prancing and bustling all over the place, singing bawdy songs that add insult to our injuries. Moreover, all we ever hear is “So-and-so’s dead” and “So-and-so’s dying”; and if there were anyone left to mourn, the whole place would be filled with sounds of weeping and wailing.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  If you notice that you are using words that are usually thought of as emotions, take each one and ask yourself: How do I know that I feel emotion? Because emotions are based on connections with the past, the picture or memorabilia may bring memories of other events. Just notice the sensations that come with these memories in the same way. Keep reminding yourself to sense and to describe what you sense as sensations, not as emotions or thoughts. Turn to the next picture and repeat the process. Remember to go slowly enough to be able to notice the sensations that arise in response to the pictures. For each picture or page of your scrapbook, stay with the sensations that are evoked for a few minutes and see if they change. They may stay the same or disappear, but they may also become stronger. Whatever happens, just notice it. If the feelings or sensations become too intense or unpleasant, deliberately shift your attention to a pleasant experience that you have had, or that you can imagine having. Focus all your awareness on the bodily felt sensations of that experience instead. Shifting your attention to the other sensations will help the intensity of the uncomfortable feeling to subside. Remember that unresolved trauma can be a powerful force. If you continue to feel overwhelmed by the exercises or any of the material in the book, please stop for now, try again later, or, enlist the support of a trained professional. If an image of a horrifying scene shows up in your mind’s eye, ever so gently notice what sensations come with it. Sometimes, when sensations are intense, images come first. The sensation is ultimately what will help you move through the traum a- whatever it is. You may end up knowing what it is and you may not. For now, just be reassured that as you move through your reactions, the need to know whether it was real or not will loosen its grip. If there is an objective need to know whether it is true, such as to protect a child who may be at risk, you will be in a better position to handle the situation effectively.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But he was sadly disappointed in his hope to escape sin and temptation behind the walls of the cloister. He found no peace and rest in all his pious exercises. The more he seemed to advance externally, the more he felt the burden of sin within. He had to contend with temptations of anger, envy, hatred and pride. He saw sin everywhere, even in the smallest trifles. The Scriptures impressed upon him the terrors of divine justice. He could not trust in God as a reconciled Father, as a God of love and mercy but trembled before him, as a God of wrath, as a consuming fire. He could not get over the words: "I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God." His confessor once told him: "Thou art a fool, God is not angry with thee, but thou art angry with God." He remembered this afterward as "a great and glorious word," but at that time it made no impression on him. He could not point to any particular transgression; it was sin as an all-pervading power and vitiating principle, sin as a corruption of nature, sin as a state of alienation from God and hostility to God, that weighed on his mind like an incubus and brought him at times to the brink of despair. He passed through that conflict between the law of God and the law of sin which is described by Paul (Rom. vii.), and which; ends with the cry: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" He had not yet learned to add: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." § 22. Luther and Staupitz. The mystic writings of Staupitz have been republished in part by Knaake in Johannis Staupitii Opera. Potsdam, 1867, vol. I. His "Nachfolge Christi" was first published in 1515; his book "Von der Liebe Gottes" (especially esteemed by Luther) in 1518, and passed through several editions; republ. by Liesching, Stuttgart, 1862. His last work "Von, dem heiligen rechten christlichen Glauben," appeared after his death, 1525, and is directed against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith without works. His twenty-four letters have been published by Kolde: Die Deutsche Augustiner Congregation und Johann von Staupitz. Gotha, 1879, p. 435 sqq.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The topic for the Sixth Day is ‘those who, on being provoked by some verbal pleasantry, have returned like for like, or who, by a prompt retort or shrewd manoeuvre, have avoided danger, discomfort or ridicule’. The tricks played by women upon their husbands form the subject-matter of the Seventh Day, whilst the Eighth Day is given over to tales about ‘tricks that people in general, men and women alike, are forever playing upon one another’. This last topic is one which could cover a large number of the remaining stories in the Decameron , and tales of verbal pleasantries are by no means confined to the Sixth Day, so that, viewed in its entirety, the Decameron is abundantly stocked with illustrations of human ingenuity. There is nothing unusual in this. Other collections of short stories, like the anonymous Novellino that preceded the Decameron and Franco Sacchetti’s Trecentonovelle that followed it, could be described in similar terms, and indeed it would be a dull series of narratives that did not accord an important role to the workings of people’s intelligence. What is interesting about Boccaccio’s treatment of the theme is his elevation of intelligence to a position in the scale of human values which places it on a par with the highest of the traditional virtues. This celebration of intelligence for its own sake is largely responsible for the ambiguous moral tone of the Decameron , a feature which forms a notorious stumbling-block for those critics and commentators who seek to extract from the work a coherent and consistent system of ethics. 56 The tone of moral ambiguity is established in the very first of the hundred tales, which concerns the arch-villain Ser Cepperello, who by making a false confession to a holy friar on his death-bed is reputed to be a saint, and is thereafter revered as Saint Ciappelletto. Cepperello is hired by a rich Italian merchant to recover certain loans in Burgundy, a province notorious for the lawlessness of its inhabitants, but shortly after his arrival there he falls mortally ill in the house of two Florentine money-lenders, with whom he has taken up lodging. His hosts are faced with an awkward dilemma. Knowing of his thoroughly evil past, they are certain that no priest will give him absolution, and that his body will be refused burial in consecrated ground, in which case, being already unpopular because of their profession, they will incur the open hostility of the locals, possibly forfeiting their property and their lives. If on the other hand they turn a dying man out of the house, their prospects will be no less bleak, for Cepperello, prior to his illness, had done nothing to offend the Burgundians, on the contrary issuing his first demands ‘in a gentle and amiable fashion that ran contrary to his nature’. Their conversation is overheard by their guest, who, as Boccaccio puts it in a characteristically acute psychological aside, ‘was sharp of hearing, as invalids invariably are’.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  “It means you’ll marry a drunk.” Yet night after night after dinner she would drag my little chair to the sink and my dress would get soaked, no matter how hard I tried to keep from marrying a drunk. Every morning that I woke up with a hangover after trying to keep up with the poet with whom I was so in love, I’d remember the wet belly of my dress. I’d promise myself I’d let him go. I knew I could not save him, but to let him go felt unbearable. One morning he mentioned that his brother was coming into town from California and wanted to have dinner before heading out to the pueblo. He asked if I’d like to go to Jack’s for pizza with them. I knew that his brother was a hard drinker. I tried to ignore the premonition and remembered his words after the last binge, when he had promised that he was going to quit drinking. Jack’s, though it was also a pizza joint, was one of his favorite bars. They did make the best pizza. I decided to go. That night after cleaning the house for company, I took my son to the babysitter. When I handed him over with his pack of clothes, toys, and snacks, I hugged him close, savoring his freshly shampooed hair. When my son saw the babysitter’s new puppy, he wriggled free to go play with it. The babysitter was roasting green chilies and had just pulled out of the oven a fresh batch of little fruit pies that her people made. She offered me some. I wanted to stay put in her warm house, to wash dishes, set the table, and visit and forget the teeth of anxiety. If I followed it to the source, I would be slammed back into childhood, to my father staggering in drunk and beating my mother. The first time the poet hit me was on a Saturday night. We hadn’t been together long. We were in that amazed state of awe at finding each other in all the millions and billions of people in the world. We were partying at Okie Joe’s up the street. He was talking politics with his buddies while I played pool with some of the other native students in the back room. I kept feeding the jukebox quarters, playing the Rolling Stones, “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” over and over again. He was down about the anniversary of the death of his best friend, who had been his idol. He had been the only man from a pueblo to finish law school at the university, and he fought the U.S. legal system by any means possible, including his fists. But he couldn’t fight alcohol. He was taken down by drink, his body found in a field weeks after his death. His grieving brothers were honoring him that night at the bar by drinking themselves to oblivion. They were getting rowdy.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  By reason of these things I feel myself alike ill at ease here and abroad and at home, more by token that meseemeth none, who hath, as we have, the power and whither to go, is left here, other than ourselves; or if any such there be, I have many a time both heard and perceived that, without making any distinction between things lawful and unlawful, so but appetite move them, whether alone or in company, both day and night, they do that which affordeth them most delight. Nor is it the laity alone who do thus; nay, even those who are shut in the monasteries, persuading themselves that what befitteth and is lawful to others alike sortable and unforbidden unto them,[17] have broken the laws of obedience and giving themselves to carnal delights, thinking thus to escape, are grown lewd and dissolute. If thus, then, it be, as is manifestly to be seen, what do we here? What look we for? What dream we? Why are we more sluggish and slower to provide for our safety than all the rest of the townsfolk? Deem we ourselves of less price than others, or do we hold our life to be bounden in our bodies with a stronger chain than is theirs and that therefore we need reck nothing of aught that hath power to harm it? We err, we are deceived; what folly is ours, if we think thus! As often as we choose to call to mind the number and quality of the youths and ladies overborne of this cruel pestilence, we may see a most manifest proof thereof. [Footnote 17: This phrase may also be read "persuading themselves that that (_i.e._ their breach of the laws of obedience, etc.) beseemeth them and is forbidden only to others" (_faccendosi a credere che quello a lor si convenga e non si disdica che all' altre_); but the reading in the text appears more in harmony with the general sense and is indeed indicated by the punctuation of the Giunta Edition of 1527, which I generally follow in case of doubt.]

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  In the years after the session with Nancy, I began to piece together the puzzle of healing trauma. The key I found was being able to work in a gradual, gentle way with the powerful energies bound in the trauma symptoms. Marius: A Next Step The following description of a young man’s odyssey illustrates a refinement of the strategies for healing trauma. Marius is a slight, intelligent, shy, boyish- looking young Eskimo in his mid-twenties who was born and raised in a remote village in Greenland. When I asked him whether I could transcribe his session for a book, assuring him I would disguise his name and identity, his eyes opened wide. “No, pleas e ... It would be an honor,” he said, “but would you please use my full name, so that if my family and friends from my village read your book, they will know it is me you are talking about.” So this is Marius Inuusuttoq Kristensen’s story. As a participant in a training class in Copenhagen, Denmark, Marius reports his tendency towards anxiety and panic, particularly when he is with a man he ad-mires and whose approval he wants. This anxiety is “symptomized” in his body as a weakening of the legs and a stabbing ache on the side of his right leg, and is often accompanied by waves of nausea. As he conveys this experience, his head and face feel very warm and he becomes sweaty and flushed. In talking about these feelings, he relates the following story about an event that occurred when he was eight. While returning from a walk alone in the mountains, he was attacked by a pack of three wild dogs and bitten badly on his right leg. He remembers feeling the bite, waking up in the arms of a neighbor, and has an image of his father coming to the door and being annoyed with him. He feels bitter, angry, and hurt by his father’s rejection. He remembers, particularly, that his new pants were ripped and covered with blood. Describing this, he is visibly upset. I ask him to tell me more about the pants. They were a surprise from his mother that morning; she had made them of polar bear fur especially for him. His experience switches dramatically and transparently to pleasure and pride. Feeling excited, Marius holds his arms in front of himself as though feeling the soft fur and basking in the warmth of his new pants: “These are the same kind of pants that the men of the village, the hunters, wear.”

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  One night, a month or so after my mother had started reading, she marched into my bedroom while I was getting ready for bed. She was furious with Steinbeck and me. Why had I given her a story to read that left the family broken down in the middle of the road? How could a writer abandon the characters and the story at a place of ruin? Unlike the reality we appeared to be living, she wanted her stories to have good endings. I loved the erotic poetry of the Song of Solomon from the Bible. These were in essence love songs for a beloved. The beloved was also God. I turned to these songs in the Bible to escape the pedantic sermons of the preacher. I preferred to consider God as a beloved rather than as a wrathful white man who was ready to destroy anyone who had an imagination. One Sunday morning a well-meaning member of the congregation brought a trio of young Mexican-American sisters to church. They sat together in the front row, next to their sponsor. I was immediately uneasy. I knew how difficult it had been for me being Indian in church, and they were darker Indian-looking girls. I had a bad feeling. In the middle of the sermon the preacher breached protocol and called them out directly from the pulpit for whispering. It was all right to save dark-skinned souls at a distance, from Korea or Africa, but he made it clear that he did not want these people in his church. The pastor continued to have difficulty concentrating on his sermon. I watched as his face turned red from anger, and when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he demanded that the girls leave. I watched with the rest of the congregation as the girls walked out of the church. I wanted to leave with them. I didn’t have the courage to stand up with them and walk out. I never returned after that Sunday. From then on I suffered Sundays in a nervous silence in the house with my stepfather. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] We didn’t live within walking or driving distance of a Creek church, nor did we have close relatives who would take us. My great-grandfather Henry Marcy Harjo had been a preacher, even a missionary to the Seminole Indians in Florida. Our great-grandfather Samuel Checotah was known as the first leader to convert to Christianity and became a Methodist minister. Because the tribe had outlawed Christianity, he was beaten for his faith. As my stepfather continued his scheme to send me to church school, I began making plans to run away. Like many others of my generation, I was attracted by the hippy migration to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. I liked all of it: the hip notion of love, the way people dressed, and the hippy anthems of acid-inspired music that tripped the airways.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  They didn’t want a girl with a ghost in their room, and neither did anyone else. My room had an extra bed, and it was decided that she would move to my room. That night and for many nights after, I stayed alert in the dark and didn’t sleep, anticipating the ghost’s return. Georgette’s books were all over the floor. Her plastic beauty case overflowed with makeup and polishes, flooding the counter over the drawers that we were supposed to share. For hours she scraped and rubbed off chipped polish on her nails, then reapplied numerous thick coats, smelling up the room with polish and acetone. She left used dabs of cotton and underwear scattered on the floor. At first I was amused by this alien creature, and told myself that she had made herself her own canvas. But she was getting on my nerves. I spent more and more time in the painting studio or sat on the fire escape, listening to music. One afternoon when I came back to my room from classes, I couldn’t hear anything for the whine blasting from Georgette’s favorite country station. I had just been summoned to meet with the head dorm matron, Mrs. Wilhelm, in half an hour, and after the bare escape I had every reason to be concerned. I had to make a plan about what I would do, where I would run if I got kicked out. “Hey, I need that!” Georgette gestured to me with her nail polish applicator as I turned down the volume, almost muting it. “I had a rough day.” “Peace,” I said, and made the peace sign with my fingers. I turned up the music a notch, then opened the windows to let in some air. I took a deep breath to relieve my panic. I had to get my thoughts straight before going into the meeting with the dorm matron. I had to have a plan. I couldn’t go back to my family, I would tell her. I would kill myself first. I thought about killing myself. Once when the pressure was too much, when the stepfather was bearing down on me, I sneaked a kitchen knife into my bed. I cut myself on the wrist. The cut was superficial. None of our knives were sharp. But the cut temporarily relieved the pressure. I felt calm. Then my mother came into the room, brought there by mother instinct. She lifted my blanket and saw the knife and my cut. Pain broke her face. I never tried it again. When I thought about it, I’d see her face guarding me. Across the way, in the boys’ dorm, I could hear Herbie practicing his guitar. We shared a love for jazz, Jimi Hendrix, and esoteric philosophies.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  We got up, ate cold pizza for breakfast, left over from my husband’s shift at the restaurant the night before. I washed the children, cleaned the house, and he went to work. I worried about money and what we would do when he lost his job. He would eventually lose it, as he had lost all the others. The only question was when. The last time he had walked out on a job we had had only an industrial-sized box of pancake mix, a gift from my mother, for meals, to supplement beans and commodity cheese. My mother was disappointed with my life and did everything she could to keep from coming to the side of town I was living in. She had grown up in worse and had cleaned and cooked her way to decency. My life was now a mockery of her struggle. Every night my husband came in from work in a furious cloud of anger. He told yet another story of how someone had tried to put one over on him. He had barely managed to keep from punching out his “skinny white boss,” who was riding him even though the new waitress was the one screwing up the orders. We had nearly starved before he got this job. The baby was nearing eight weeks old, and as I watched my husband open another beer and pace the room, I decided I had better start looking for work. I would wash dishes, dance on tables if I had to, rather than starve the children or myself again. Some days his mother would come over and we would pool our resources for food. We were bound together for survival. Her mood shifted according to the nature of our predicament. On the good days we would hit the yard sales together. I was her ally as we searched through junk for dishes and clothes. If she was feeling especially hospitable, she would buy me something to wear for under a dollar. One morning as I was toweling off the children from their bath, my mother-in-law pushed her way roughly into the house, puffing on a cigarette, then blowing smoke into my face. My husband surprised me with the swiftness of his leap between us. He had never taken up for me before when she slid into her enemy mode. “Mom, get out of here, now!” he warned her. She stepped back, surprised at the vehemence of his reaction as he slapped the cigarette from her hand, determinedly pushed her out the door, and slammed it behind her. The smoke followed her. “That cigarette was doctored with curses,” he told me. “She’s witching you.” One morning as we struggled to put a bag of stuff from a yard sale into the trunk of her car, she showed me a book of spells written in Cherokee that she had acquired during her last trip home. The book was so old the pages were turning to powder. I didn’t touch it.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  158 Lecture 22: National Identity—Intermarriage Shechemite men must be circumcised before one Shechemite man can marry Dinah. o Beginning in the Babylonian Exile, the practice of infant circumcision among Judeans became a cultural mark of identity, a ritual and sign that Judeans observed while in Babylonia, a land that did not practice circumcision. By the Second Temple period, circumcision was centrally important to an emerging Jewish identity. • After all the Shechemite men had willingly submitted to circumcision, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, “took their swords and came against the city unawares, and killed all the males” (Gen. 34:25). o This mass slaughter of men who have just agreed to the terms of a treaty with Jacob’s sons takes us by surprise even though the text indicated that the brothers had negotiated deceitfully. o Again, what seems significant is that Levi in particular takes it upon himself to prevent a treaty of intermarriage with foreigners and that the dividing line between these two peoples is the practice of circumcision. • The Jacob cycle is recognized as a pre-exilic composition; therefore, it represents one of the written sources that exilic editors incorporated into what ultimately became the Torah. It seems possible that the story of Dinah was shaped in ways that expressed exilic and postexilic anxieties around national identity. These anxieties found expression in the practice of circumcision, in the prohibition of intermarriage, and in the role of Levites interpreting and making sense of the Torah. o This is what we mean when we say that the crisis of exile determined which stories were preserved and how they were told. Dinah’s is a story that has a lesson for returning exiles, a message that the Levites were helping them understand: “Therefore, do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons” (Ezra 9:12).

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  22 Lecture 3: ancestor Narratives in Genesis o The Israelite god repeatedly reveals himself to Abraham and to his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, and forms a covenant relationship with them. o God asks Abraham to “walk before me and be righteous.” In return, Abraham receives God’s promise that he will be the father of a “multitude of nations,” and he is granted an eternal landholding in Canaan. As a mark of the covenant, Abraham is asked to circumcise himself and his male descendants. • The rest of the book of Genesis narrates the history of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—four generations. We often refer to the first three men as the “patriarchs.” o Each one experiences divine visitations, during which the terms of the Abrahamic covenant are reiterated. o At the same time, each of these men faces serious challenges that seem to make the promises of land, progeny, blessings, and great nations useless. Abraham, for example, must wait 25 years from the time that he is first told he will father a great nation to the birth of the son that God has promised him. The patriarchs also face threats to their lives, often coming from God himself. • Several of the recurring themes of the patriarchal narratives speak to the exilic reality of those preserving these stories. o These themes include the Israelite god’s presence and power, which transcend national boundaries; the covenantal relationship between Abraham’s descendants and the Israelite god; the eternal nature of the covenantal relationship; and the gift of the Promised Land as an everlasting bequest. o The stories also acknowledge tensions experienced by the exiles: wives who cannot conceive, children whose lives are threatened, a land prone to famine and war, and a god who does not always protect.