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 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 must emphasize that there was never any pressure to stay. We all knew that we were free to leave at any time, and often a girl would be sent home because it was clear that she was not suited for convent life. At the end of the nine months, we received the habit and began two years in the noviceship. This was a particularly testing time, and we were often told that if we did not find it almost unbearable, we were not trying hard enough. My superiors should, therefore, have been delighted with me, because I spent a good deal of my noviceship in tears. As if to fend off unwelcome change, they had appointed a particularly conservative nun as novice mistress the year before I arrived. In Through the Narrow Gate, I called her Mother Walter. She was unswervingly devoted to the old ways, and revived many disciplines that her two predecessors had discarded as unsuitable for twentieth-century girls. The system she devised, I now believe, was extremely unhealthy, but I threw myself into it because I was convinced that the harder I found it, the sooner it would bring me to God. Much later I was told that several nuns had been concerned about what was happening in the noviceship during those years. As I shall explain in the early chapters of this book, the system was a form of conditioning. It was meant to change us irrevocably, and it did—in my case, for the worse. I suspect that pressure was brought to bear upon Mother Walter, however, because toward the end of my noviceship, she relaxed some of her draconian innovations. A new batch of novices had arrived who were older and more worldly-wise than my own set, and they simply would not put up with some of her more outrageous rules. But again, the change came too late for me. Yet Mother Walter herself was undergoing a painful transition, watching the religious practices that she had known and loved for so long thrown aside. It must have been a period of great suffering for her. It would never, of course, have occurred to me at the time, but I now suspect that she was not very intelligent, and therefore was unable to understand the effect of some of her policies. I remember once that, toward the end of my noviceship, when she was savaging us for what she regarded as a failure in obedience, I suddenly cracked and told her that I no longer knew what obedience really was. “We seem to swing, like a pendulum, from one extreme to another,” I protested, “from one disorder to another! One day we will be told off for not obeying absolutely to the letter, however absurd the command may be, and the next day we’ll be in trouble because we did obey blindly instead of using our intelligence and showing initiative!

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

  I was free, fortunate, privileged to be attending one of the finest universities in the world, and even though I was having some trouble adjusting, I was now on the mend. Wasn’t I? So why were the symptoms recurring, as though my body had not been informed that the battle was over? Why was it behaving in the same old way? I was not kneeling in a convent chapel this time, but sitting in a pleasant library in Merton College. The room was full but not unduly crowded; it was not stuffy, even on this warm summer day. The tall leaded windows were open and a light, fragrant breeze wafted into the room, gently lifting the threadbare curtains. I was listening to John Jones’s lectures on nineteenth-century England, enjoying the slightly eccentric cast of his mind and his delightful command of the language, when the familiar stench choked me, the voice of the lecturer became a confused babble of meaningless sound, the light in the room looked suddenly uncanny, there was a moment of pure terror, and then I felt myself falling down that familiar narrow shaft. When I opened my eyes, I was conscious of a hard band of pain across my forehead; the brown blur in front of me composed itself into the grain of a polished wood floor. I groaned and rolled over onto my stomach to try to blot out the world for a few more minutes. “I think she’s coming round now.” The voice was male and familiar. Slowly, as from a deep well, the memories came back to me. The lecture . . . John Jones . . . “Keep back and let her get some air.” To my right I could see a large scuffed brogue and an expanse of worn corduroy trouser. I knew that in a few moments I would feel embarrassed, but right now the world had shattered into separate, meaningless shapes, none of which seemed related to anything else. “Look, I think we’d better call it a day,” Mr. Jones was saying. I tried to raise my head, but it was pushed firmly down again. “I don’t think any of us feel like carrying on with the lecture. Does anybody know who this poor lady is?” “Yes, I do—she’s at my college. I can take her home. Karen, it’s Jane.” I peered up at her and tried to smile. She looked strange from this unfamiliar angle and I realized that she was alarmed. Gradually I began to be aware of the disruption I had caused. “I am . . . so sorry,” I muttered, as I always did after one of these attacks. “So sorry.” “For heaven’s sake.” Mr. Jones sounded genuinely astonished, and when I looked round at him, his large, kind face was creased with concern. “You didn’t do it on purpose. We’re just sad for you.” That was a bit of a change.

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

  I was quite unprepared for him, and the artificial smile I had carefully put on turned involuntarily to one of genuine pleasure. Jacob was beautiful. Tall and slim, his skin delicately tanned, an elegantly structured face, and tousled blond curls. But also formidable: he slammed the door and looked warily around him. “Who is that?” He spoke quietly, separating each word with care. “This is Karen, Jacob. She’s going to come and live here and help to look after you. Won’t that be nice?” Her tone turned the question into a plea. Jacob stared at me with hostility. “Hello, Jacob.” Even I could hear the anxiety in my voice. Jacob turned away in apparent disdain, and walked to the far end of the room. His gait was the only thing that indicated that there might be something wrong. He shuffled rather clumsily, his long arms swinging at his side, as though they didn’t quite belong to his body. “Go away!” he roared suddenly, and flung himself face downward on the floor. Jenifer crossed the room and knelt beside him. “Karen’s such a nice girl. She’s going to sleep in the room next to your playroom. When she brings her luggage over from college, you could help her unpack.” I tried—I feared unsuccessfully—to look delighted at the prospect. From the next room, the serene strains of a Mozart piano concerto filled the air. “Be quiet!” Jacob ordered. “Or I shall become very, very angry.” Jenifer gave up and returned to the sofa. “Herbert!” she shouted. “Come and meet Karen.” The Mozart stopped abruptly, there was another confusion of footsteps, and the door of the drawing room was flung open after much fumbling with the handle, and crashed against the wooden arm of one of the chairs. Herbert Hart, former Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, but now retired, made his way toward me with an absent but charming smile, uncombed hair, a clever Jewish face, and clothes somewhat haphazardly put together. As he stumbled erratically across the room, missing the coffee table more by accident than design, I realized that Jacob’s deportment was not the result of his disability but was hereditary. “How do you do?” He was, I noticed, a shy person. “How very nice to have you with us.” “This is Karen Armstrong.” Jenifer started to make the introductions. “Karen, this is my husband, Herbert—” “The Royal Arms!” The words were spoken with emphasis. We all turned, puzzled, to Jacob beside the French doors. “The Royal Arms!” he intoned again, still lying facedown on the floor. We looked at one another, and Herbert shrugged elaborately as he hurled himself perilously into a chair. “A pub, I suppose,” he muttered. “I don’t think I’ve taken him to one called the Royal Arms. He probably saw the sign during our drive. Jacob, tell Mummy and . . . er . . . Karen where we went this afternoon.” “The Royal Arms!” Jacob scrambled into a sitting position and beamed happily at us.

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

  6. List the expansive strategies you intend to use instead. (They are often exactly the opposite of your safety strategies.) 7. Finally, write down the necessary feelings that you will need to experience and welcome in order to grow. This includes both fight-or-flight sensations and negative emotions. Here is a short list of necessary emotions to help you anticipate what they might be. Anxiety Embarrassment Anger Guilt Panic Hopelessness Frustration Shame Filling out an Expansion Chart is the beginning of mastery over a situation you’ve previously been overwhelmed by. You reclaim the values you’ve been sacrificing for safety. You acknowledge your old mind-set and strategies, and define your new ones. You choose the necessary feelings you’re willing to welcome in order to meet your goal. What is perhaps most empowering about completing an Expansion Chart is that when you are fully prepared for what is coming, you take away a crucial advantage of the monkey—the element of surprise. The monkey commands a neural alarm system that travels at speeds up to 200 miles per hour. Without warning, it can hijack you before you can draw a breath—- unless you are expecting it. When you are fully prepared, it will be you who will be doing the surprising. When you have a plan and a purpose, even the smallest situation that makes you anxious is an opportunity to expand your life. In the next chapter we’ll learn how to create these opportunities to practice with rather than wait for the monkey to surprise us. Chapter 8 Takeaway When we override the monkey’s value of safety with our own personal values, and plan situations to practice honoring those values, we expand our lives. Chapter 9: Lowering the Stakes A few decades ago when video games were in their infancy, my six-year-old son was playing a cute game called Lemmings one day when my husband walked in. “Wow, this looks like fun,” he said. “Can I play?” In less than a minute he was thoroughly crushed. “I guess I’m no good at video games,” he sighed. Our little sage turned and put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Dad. You’re just not ready for level 34.” Level One You may begin your day tomorrow morning with the best of intentions, to meet each alarm of the monkey mind with a new response, welcoming necessary emotions as they arise. Determined as you may be, however, your chances of completing the day without being hijacked are similar to those my husband had of completing level 34 of Lemmings. To keep an expansive mind-set is exceedingly difficult when you are blindsided by the monkey with high doses of anxiety. Until you develop some resilience to anxiety, the best leverage you have with the monkey during your practice is to begin at level one. This means

• From Bold Move

  But in a sort of sarcastic way, he joked, “Then I asked myself, What would Luana say here? , and the answer was clear: if she was upset, I would know.” This helped him to calm down and stop wondering about conflict in our relationship when there was none. Parenting is another domain where Shifting is very helpful because parents (myself included) often jump to the worst-case scenario when it comes to their kids’ reactions. For example, our son started kindergarten and came home upset the first day. My brain screamed, He will hate school. Now we have a problem. Did something bad happen? How do I fix it? Anxiety knocked on my door, and I opened it, but I answered with my own Shift question: “What else can explain why Diego is so upset”? The answer to which was: This is likely a big transition for him; he needs time to adjust. Perhaps he is tired from waking up earlier than usual. Changing schools and missing all his friends might be scary for him. This will take time. When it comes to children, we sometimes have no clue what is really happening, so having many competing explanations at a time can really help to calm the catastrophes that our brains can create. Now it’s your turn. Take a moment to practice Shifting by completing the reflection below . Reflection Shifting Our Perspectives Take a moment to challenge your thinking. I would recommend that you write out your answers and anchor them on a specific situation so that you can examine what you are saying to yourself about that situation. In addition, write your initial prediction and refer back to it so that you can ensure you are asking questions about that prediction. Situation: [Your Notes] Prediction: [Your Notes] Question automatic predictions:Is there a different way to see this situation?What would I say to my best friend in this situation?Interpret your answers:How do these answers change my prediction?What might I want to do differently?Updated lenses:How will this prediction change my core belief?How does updating my lenses make me feel?What steps can I take to strengthen this prediction pathway? Yoga for the BrainThe great part about developing this kind of cognitive flexibility is that once you become more comfortable changing your perspective, you start to develop the ability to deal with negative thoughts more effectively. By doing so, your brain becomes less rigid and more willing to fight confirmation bias.5 Shifting is the opposite of avoidance. It’s like going to the gym. At first you might dread doing a dead lift: it’s intimidating, it’s a new skill, and it often leaves you sore.

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

  Instead of the chaos, violence, and grasping barbarism of the pre-Islamic period in Arabia, there would be spiritual and humane refinement. Repeated actions would lead to the cultivation of a new awareness. The point is that this was not a belief system, but a process. The religious life designed by Muhammad made people act in ways that were supposed to change them forever. Without fully understanding what I was doing, I too had started to behave in a different way. Muhammad had been intended in part as a gift to the Muslim community, but I was astonished by the generosity of their response when the book was published in the autumn of 1991. None of the pessimistic predictions came to pass, and Muslims in Britain and in the United States (where the book appeared the following year) took it to their hearts. But on the international stage, relations with the Muslim world were rapidly deteriorating. Two short weeks after I had delivered the manuscript to the publishers, the United States–led coalition began the air offensive Desert Storm against Iraq. There were rigged elections in Algeria, when, with the tacit approval of the West, the secularist National Liberation Front suppressed FIS, the Islamic party which was set to win in the polls. The result was a hideous civil war. And at about the same time, fighting broke out in Yugoslavia between Serbs and Croats. Once again we would see concentration camps in Europe, but this time the victims were Muslims. We seemed to be heading into a period of great darkness. In the ensuing years, as violence and religious extremism escalated in one region after another, especially in the Middle East, I found myself preoccupied by the problems of the Muslim world and its relationship with the West. No longer did news stories seem remote events that might as well be happening on another planet. The dread that had impelled me to write Muhammad would not go away. I wrote more books—about Islam, Jerusalem, and fundamentalism— because I felt instinctively that we were embarked on a dangerous course, that Muslims and Westerners were increasingly unable to understand each other and were all hurtling toward some nameless horror. Muhammad introduced me to a different world. I began to be invited to interfaith gatherings, and gained a new circle of friends.

• From Bold Move

  For many years, I would take offense whenever people I encountered heard my accent or took one look at me and shifted to Spanish. Not only was it the wrong language, but I just wanted to be accepted as an American! Whenever this happened—and it happened often—my brain would start spinning and all I wanted to do was scream, “Can’t you see I’m American?!” My own acculturation process took years, but there is one funny story I recall early in my Boston days that represents the point in time where I began to feel confident enough to begin integrating my Brazilian identity back into my newfound American identity. I was trying so hard to be an American, but one bright sunny winter afternoon in my first year at MGH, we were discussing cultural identity and, as you probably guessed, I was not ready for this conversation, nor did I want to be a part of it. This was in the spring of 2005, and back then I had almost no real insight into my own ethnic identity. So as the director of our training program went around the room asking people about their ethnic identity, I began to get very anxious. By the time she got to me, all I could manage to do was blurt out, “I’m Latina!” My great friend Dr. Molly Colvin, an amazing neuropsychologist, also one of the most in-touch people I know, looked at me and said, “Damn, Luana. You must be having a really bad day. You never identify yourself as Latina!” And she was right! I knew that at that point, I needed to address my own acculturation journey. I was just not sure how to manage my own acculturation, which is how I came to understand patients like Stephanie. So in our own way, both Stephanie and I were dealing with culture clash, and this conflict was taking us further away from what mattered to each of us. Because of this, we would often defer to culture to dictate our actions, without ever asking why or looking into our own intrinsic values. Bringing things back to avoidance, let’s consider an important question: What made Stephanie’s behavior a form of avoidance? Well, when culture impeded on her personal values, Stephanie let the norms of her Chinese culture dictated by her parents set the course for her actions. (For me, it was American culture, dictated by my own desire to belong.) Did our actions make us feel better in the moment?

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

  This is not always comfortable; in fact, it has become something of a social liability, because I find myself more and more distressed by the disdain that so often peppers social conversation. I know how this puts a splinter of ice into the heart of the disdained. I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest ways, we find it impossible, as Marshall Hodgson enjoined, to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant. Of course, toleration has its limits. We should cry out against injustice and cruelty wherever we find it, as the prophets did, especially when it occurs in our own society or on “our” side. It may be politically expedient to ignore the beam in our own eye while decrying the splinter in the eye of our enemy, but I do not see how it can be a religious option. But this pain is a small price to pay for the spirituality of empathy. Paradoxically, what I have gained from this identification with suffering is joy. This was something that I did not expect. And this habit of looking outside myself into the heart of another has put me outside the prism of myself. This ecstasy may not last for long, but while it lasts I experience an astonishing freedom. Self, after all, is our basic problem. When I wake up at three in the morning and ask myself, Why does this have to happen to me? Why cannot I have what X has? Why am I so unloved and unappreciated?—and I still have plenty of moments like this—I learn that ego is at the heart of all pain. When I get beyond this for a few moments, I feel enlarged and enhanced—just as the Buddha promised. It is important for me to do this, because my solitary lifestyle could imprison me forever in selfishness. In a relationship, you constantly have to go beyond yourself. Each day you have to forgive something, each day you have to put yourself to one side to accommodate your partner. Looking after somebody else means that you have to give yourself away. But I never have to do this. Because I travel such a lot, I cannot even have an animal to look after. So my science of compassion does for me what a husband, lover, child, or even a dog might have done in a different life.

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

  This was the point when you were supposed to reflect on the topics you had listed the night before. Finally you proceeded to “act,” which, for Ignatius, was the real moment of prayer. As a result of your deliberations, you made an act of will, applying the lessons you had learned to the day that lay ahead. There had to be a specific resolution. It was no good vaguely vowing to live a better life from that day forward. You had to settle for something concrete: to try harder with your sewing, for example, or to make a special effort not to think uncharitable thoughts about a sister who irritated you beyond endurance. Prayer, Ignatius taught, was an act of will. It had nothing to do with pious thoughts or feelings; these were simply a preparation for the moment of decision. Ignatian spirituality was never an end in itself, but was directed toward action and efficiency. He wanted his Jesuits to be effective in the world, and their daily meditation ensured that their activities would proceed from God. But this did not work for me. Every morning I resolved that this time I would crack it. This time there would be no distractions. I would kneel as intent upon God as my sisters, none of whom seemed to have my difficulties. I had never before had any problems of concentration. I had always been able to immerse myself in my studies for hours at a time. But to my intense distress, I found that I could not keep my mind on God for two minutes. The whole point of the careful preparation was to prevent this. It was acknowledged that at 6 a.m. we were likely to be less than fully alert and would need help in focusing our thoughts. But as soon as I sank to my knees, my mind either went off at a tangent or scuttled through a maze of pointless worries, fears, or fantasies, or else I was engulfed by the torpor of physical malaise. Like most adolescents, I craved sleep and experienced the 5:30 a.m. call as a violent assault. I often felt queasy with hunger and fatigue, and clung dizzily to the pew in front of me. At 6:30 the clock in the cloister chimed and we could sit down. But this sweet relief gave way to another trial, as I battled against sleep—and was comforted to see that even some of the older nuns listed and slumped in such a way that it was clear that they had succumbed. The minutes crawled by until the sacristan appeared to light the candles on the altar as a welcome signal that Mass was about to begin. At breakfast, an hour later, we were supposed to examine our meditation, going through a ten-point questionnaire: Had I made myself fully conscious of the presence of God? No. Had I made sufficient effort in the composition of place?