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 Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Nothing in the British Constitution forbade the king from marrying a divorcée, a commoner, or an American. The Settlement Act of 1701—passed when a Catholic pretender was angling for the British throne—stated that the monarch could neither be a Catholic nor marry one. (Oddly, the act is still in effect today.) The Royal Marriages Act of 1772—pushed through by George III, who was furious that his brothers had secretly married for love rather than royal suitability—stated that heirs to the throne must obtain the monarch’s consent to a marriage unless the heir was over twenty-five. Neither of these acts would have prevented Edward from marrying Wallis. He would have found himself in an uncomfortable position with the Church of England, however, which forbade a divorced person from remarrying as long as the former spouse was alive. Wallis had not one but two former spouses very much alive. As king, Edward was also supreme governor of the Church of England and was supposed to uphold its precepts. Perhaps worse, public opinion was against the marriage. Yet, if Edward had had the patience and public relations savvy to calm his clucking bishops and smooth the ruffled feathers of his subjects, he could certainly have married Wallis. But ignoring sensible advice from friends and advisers, Edward made every disastrous political and public relations blunder possible, insisting on an immediate marriage so the two could be crowned together. It is likely that Wallis, rather than persuading the king to wait for public opposition to die down, was pushing for an early marriage. Wallis knew how extremely fickle and cowardly Edward had been with his earlier amours, deciding from one day to the next to dump a mistress and letting someone else give her the bad news. As the crisis over the king’s proposed marriage deepened, people picketed the palace with placards: “Down with the Whore!” “Wally—Give us back our King!” “Out with the American Garbage!”5 Bricks and stones were hurled at her windows. Children sang, “Hark the herald angels sing, Mrs. Simpson stole our King!”6 Agreeing with the age-old adage that the bedded can’t be wedded, a patron of a London pub reportedly said, “It just won’t do. We can’t have two other blokes going around saying they’ve slept with the Queen of England, can we?”7 The customs of earlier centuries—which could have quickly dispatched the problem—were no longer acceptable in 1936. The royal family could not order courtiers to stab Wallis to death, as poor Inez de Castro had been six hundred years earlier, though perhaps they would have liked to. Nor was Edward in a position to hang and burn all who spoke against his marriage, as his ancestor Henry VIII had done four hundred years earlier. And so the lovelorn king abdicated, concealing his ineptitude with a legend of chivalrous romance and honorable sacrifice.

• From Less (2017)

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

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Guy feels less threatened, expressing the hope that I will do a good job and be right for him. He uses projection again, a defense mechanism that places threatening thoughts and feelings outside of the self. Through projection we deny anxiety-provoking feelings and instead put them in others. Uncomfortable feelings such as anger or sadness tend to be projected into other people in order to get rid of them. When a person is, for example, angry, she will attribute those feelings to others and be convinced that the other is angry at her, when in fact it is her own anger that she feels. I’m remembering Guy entering my office for the first time and how he filled me up with a sense of fear of being invaded, a feeling that he instilled in me and thus effectively communicated the sense of danger he lived with himself. Similarly, paranoid thinking is often understood as the projection of aggression onto other people. Our aggressive impulses make us anxious and we often try to feel better either by overcompensating with kindness or by projecting those feelings onto others. Paranoid thoughts are a result of our aggressive feelings, feelings that we couldn’t tolerate and needed to get rid of by attributing them to another person. The more aggression is disowned and projected onto others, the more frightened we then become of those people. Guy feels too anxious to talk about his feelings and instead talks about the world around him, placing his feelings outside himself. He is hesitant about taking off his coat lest he would be too exposed, too vulnerable. He makes sure not to create a coherent narrative, and I sense that there is a secret behind his smile. “Why are you here, Guy?” I finally have the courage to ask. Guy stays silent for a long minute. “Because I come from mental illness,” he says. “I might be mentally sick too.” I’m not yet sure what he means, but I see how he is taking the first step toward me, toward a new future. Guy looks at his watch and then puts his coat on. “It’s enough for today,” he says, and I notice that he is the one ending our session again. “I’ll see you next week,” he says as he exits. It is the beginning of summer and a few months since Guy started his sessions with me. We now feel more comfortable with each other and I have learned to appreciate Guy’s cynical sense of humor and respect his ways and his rhythm. Guy often needs to avoid direct conversation; he rationalizes and intellectualizes his feelings and speaks in general terms. While I know his opinions about many topics, he tells me very little about his past or his family.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I needed to visit the privy again, rather badly; I knew that it was dreadfully rude to lie abed like this, in a stranger’s parlour. Yet I felt as if I had been visited in the night by a surgeon, who had taken all my bones away and replaced them with bars of lead. I could no nothing at all - except lie ...Florence brought me my tea, and I drank it - then lay back again. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, washing the baby; then she returned and pulled the curtains open, meaningfully.‘It’s a quarter to eight, Miss Astley,’ she said. ‘I have to take Cyril across the street. You will be up and dressed, now, won’t you, when I come back? You really will?’‘Oh, certainly,’ I said; yet when she reappeared, five minutes later, I had not budged an inch. She gazed at me, and shook her head. I gazed back at her.‘You know, don’t you, that you cannot stay here. I must go to work, and I must go now. If you keep me any longer, I shall be late.’ With that, she caught hold of the bottom of the blanket. But I caught hold of the top.‘I can’t do it,’ I said. ‘I must be sick, after all.’‘If you’re sick, you must go to a place where they will care for you properly!’‘I’m not that sick!’ I cried then. ‘But if I might only lie a little and get my strength... Go on to work, and I’ll let myself out, and be long gone by the time you get home. You may trust me in your house, you know. I shan’t take anything.’‘There’s little enough to take!’ she cried. Then she threw her end of the blanket at me, and put a hand to her brow. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘how my head aches!’ I looked at her, saying nothing. At last she seemed to force herself into a kind of calmness, and her voice grew stiff: ‘You must do as you said, I suppose, and let yourself out.’ She caught up her coat from the back of the door, and pulled it on. Then she took up her satchel, reached into it, and brought out a piece of paper and a coin. ‘I’ve made you a list,’ she said, ‘of hostels and houses you might try to find a bed in. The money’- it was a half-crown - ‘is from my brother. He asked me to tell you good-bye and good luck.’‘He’s a very kind man,’ I said.She shrugged, then buttoned up her coat, put her hat upon her head, and thrust a pin through it. The coat and the hat were the colour of mud.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Only when the bells had rung half-past five did I step again into the courtyard, and look about me: I was now almost numb. There was a little girl nearby, carrying a great tray about her neck, filled with bundles of watercresses. I went up to her, and asked how far it was to Quilter Street; and then, because she looked so sad and cold and damp - and also because I had a confused idea that I must not turn up on Florence’s doorstep entirely empty-handed - I bought the biggest of her cress bouquets. It cost a ha’penny.With this cradled awkwardly in the crook of my stiff arm I began the short walk to the street I wanted; soon I found myself at the end of a wide terrace of low, flat houses - not a squalid terrace, by any means, but not a very smart one either, for the glass in some of the street-lamps was cracked, or missing entirely, and the pavement was blocked, here and there, by piles of broken furniture, and by heaps of what the novels politely term ashes. I looked at the number of the nearest door: number 1. I started slowly down the street. Number 5 ... number 9 ... number 11 ... I felt weaker than ever... 15 ... 17...19...Here I stopped, for now I could see the house I sought quite clearly. Its drapes were drawn against the dark, and luminous with lamplight; and seeing them, I felt suddenly quite sick with apprehension. I placed a hand against the wall, and tried to steady myself; a boy walked by me, whistling, and gave me a wink - I suppose he thought I had been drinking. When he had passed I looked about me at the unfamiliar houses in a kind of panic: I could remember the sense of purpose that had visited me in Green Street, but it seemed a piece of wildness, now, a piece of comedy - I would tell it to Florence, and she would laugh in my face.But I had come so far; and there was nowhere to turn back to. So I crept to the rosy window, and then to the door; and then I knocked, and waited. I seemed to have presented myself at a thousand thresholds that day, and been cruelly disappointed or repulsed, at all of them. If there was no word of kindness for me here, I thought, I would die.At last there came a murmur and a step, and the door was opened; and it was Florence herself who stood there - looking remarkably as she had when I had seen her first, peering into the darkness, framed against the light and with the same glorious halo of burning hair.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It cost a ha’penny. With this cradled awkwardly in the crook of my stiff arm I began the short walk to the street I wanted; soon I found myself at the end of a wide terrace of low, flat houses - not a squalid terrace, by any means, but not a very smart one either, for the glass in some of the street-lamps was cracked, or missing entirely, and the pavement was blocked, here and there, by piles of broken furniture, and by heaps of what the novels politely term ashes. I looked at the number of the nearest door: number 1. I started slowly down the street. Number 5 ... number 9 ... number 11 ... I felt weaker than ever... 15 ... 17...19... Here I stopped, for now I could see the house I sought quite clearly. Its drapes were drawn against the dark, and luminous with lamplight; and seeing them, I felt suddenly quite sick with apprehension. I placed a hand against the wall, and tried to steady myself; a boy walked by me, whistling, and gave me a wink - I suppose he thought I had been drinking. When he had passed I looked about me at the unfamiliar houses in a kind of panic: I could remember the sense of purpose that had visited me in Green Street, but it seemed a piece of wildness, now, a piece of comedy - I would tell it to Florence, and she would laugh in my face. But I had come so far; and there was nowhere to turn back to. So I crept to the rosy window, and then to the door; and then I knocked, and waited. I seemed to have presented myself at a thousand thresholds that day, and been cruelly disappointed or repulsed, at all of them. If there was no word of kindness for me here, I thought, I would die. At last there came a murmur and a step, and the door was opened; and it was Florence herself who stood there - looking remarkably as she had when I had seen her first, peering into the darkness, framed against the light and with the same glorious halo of burning hair. I gave a sigh that was also a shudder - then I saw a movement at her hip, and saw what she carried there. It was a baby. I looked from the baby to the room behind, and here there was another figure: a man, seated in his shirt-sleeves before a blazing fire, his eyes raised from the paper at his knee to gaze at me in mild enquiry. I looked from him back to Florence. ‘Yes?’ she said. I saw that she didn’t remember me at all. She didn’t remember me and - worse - she had a husband, and a child. I did not think that I could bear it.

• From Less (2017)

  “And a note arrived for you.” An envelope on the miniature desk, below the image of Judas. Less opens it and reads: Arthur, contact me once you arrive, I’ll be at the resort, I hope you arrived in one piece. It is on business stationery, signed: Your friend, Carlos. After Rupali leaves, Less takes out his famous rubber bands. “Have you noticed,” Rupali asks him a few mornings later, at breakfast, in the low brick main building, a kind of fortress above the ocean, “how the morning sounds so much sweeter than the evening?” She is talking about the birds, awakening in harmony and bedding down in discord. But Less can think only of that racket particular to India: the spiritual battle of the bands. It seems to begin before dawn with the Muslims, when a mosque at the edge of the mangrove forest softly announces, in a lullaby voice, the morning call to prayer. Not to be outdone, the local Christians soon crank up pop-sounding hymns that last anywhere from one to three hours. This is followed by a cheerful, though overamplified, kazoo-like refrain from the Hindu temple that reminds Less of the ice cream truck from his childhood. Then comes a later call to prayer. Then the Christians decide to ring some bronze bells. And so on. There are sermons and live singers and thunderous drum performances. In this way, the faiths alternate throughout the day, as at a music festival, growing louder and louder until, during the outright cacophony of sunset, the Muslims, who began the whole thing, declare victory by projecting not only the evening call to prayer but the prayer itself in its entirety. After that, the jungle falls to silence. Perhaps this is the Buddhists’ sole contribution. Every morning, it starts again. “You must let me know,” Rupali says, “what we can do to help with your writing. You are our first writer.” “I could use a freestanding desk,” Less suggests, hoping to liberate himself from writing in the heart of his nautilus. “And a tailor. I tore my suit in Morocco, and I seem to have lost my sewing needle.” “We will take care of these. The pastor will know a good tailor.” The pastor. “And peace and quiet. I need that above all.” “Of course of course of course,” she insists, shaking her head, and her gold earrings sway from side to side.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The cabal knew the king would be more difficult. “A brisk and lively disposition could only captivate him,” wrote his biographer, “and this was the chief quality Madame Denhoff was deficient in, who with a dull, heavy air affected the modesty of a virgin, which was directly opposite to the character the King required of his mistresses.” The advisers “were sensible that she would not suit their monarch’s fancy, but knew no lady at Court more proper to propose to him.”39 Augustus expressed a hearty interest at seeing the beauty so lauded by his friends but was predictably disappointed at their first meeting. He “liked not her dancing” and “his heart could not yet be affected by her beauty.” By this time he had figured out that his ministers wanted him to take a new mistress. He told one, “I am to be forced to love but till they find me a better than Madame Denhoff, I doubt whether I shall be unfaithful to Madame Cosel.”40 Undaunted, the king’s advisers threw him so often into the company of Madame Denhoff—who cast him “tender and languishing looks”—that slowly his heart became “enslaved.”41 But back in Dresden, Madame Cosel’s spies informed her of her rival. No sooner had she dropped a son than she got in a carriage to Warsaw to confront her faithless lover. Madame Denhoff’s supporters, hearing that the imperious mistress was on her way to foil their carefully laid plans, decided her arrival in Warsaw must be prevented at all costs. They quickly advised Madame Denhoff to create a scene that evening, pretending to be afraid for her life if Madame Cosel arrived in Warsaw. Shedding a great many crocodile tears, Madame Denhoff told Augustus she would leave town rather than face her violent rival. Accordingly, the king gave orders to prevent Madame Cosel from entering the town. True to her reputation, when Madame Cosel was approaching Warsaw and given the message that she must turn back on the king’s orders, she took out a pistol and threatened to shoot the messenger if he tried to prevent her from going ahead. She was finally persuaded to go home rather than risk the royal displeasure, and instead seek to win back the king’s love upon his return to Dresden. But the political cabal made sure that reconciliation was impossible. The king allowed his former mistress to live in luxurious retirement, giving her Pillnitz Palace. But Madame Cosel was not one to live peacefully. After political intrigues against Augustus, she fled to Berlin, where the king of Prussia seized her and returned her to Saxony. Augustus, finally realizing she would always stir up trouble, locked her in a fortress despite her shrill cries for clemency. There she remained even after his death in 1733, until her own death in 1765, after forty-nine years of genteel imprisonment.

• From Less (2017)

  The instructions for getting to the restaurant are as mysterious as a love note or an exchange of spies— Meet at the Moon Crossing Bridge —but his faith is fast; he takes the wheel of what basically feels like an enameled toaster and follows the clear, perfect signs out of Kyoto, toward the hill country. Less is grateful the signs are clear because the GPS, after giving crisp, stern directions to the highway, becomes drunk on its own power outside the city limits, then gives out completely and places Arthur Less in the Sea of Japan. Also unnerving is a mysterious windshield box, which reveals its purpose when the Toaster approaches a tollbooth: it produces a high-pitched reproving female shriek not unlike his grandmother’s when she came upon a piece of broken china. He dutifully pays the toll man, thinking he has done what the machine wants, and passes into a green countryside where a river has magically appeared. But the pastoral scene does not last long—at the next tollbooth, the lady shrieks again. Surely she is berating him for not possessing an electronic pass. But could she also have discovered his other crimes and inadequacies? How he made up ceremonies for a fifth-grade report on the religions of Iceland? How he shoplifted acne cream in high school? How he cheated on Robert so terribly? How he is a “bad gay”? And a bad writer? How he let Freddy Pelu walk out of his life? Shriek, shriek, shriek; it is almost Greek in its fury. A harpy sent down to punish Less at last. “Take the next exit.” The GPS, that rum-drunk snoozing captain, has awakened and is back in command. Mist is rising as steam rises from damp clothing set beside a fire; here, it is from the pine-dark, folded wool of the mountains. A leaden river is coiling along a bank of reeds. The Toaster passes a sake factory, or so he assumes, because here is a cheerful white barrel sitting as advertisement on the road. Some farm or other has a sign out, in English: SUSTAINABLE HARVEST . Less rolls down the window, and there is the salt-green smell of grass and rain and dirt. He rounds a corner and sees white tourist buses parked all in a row along the river, their great side mirrors like the horns of caterpillars; before them, in a military line, stand elderly people in clear raincoats, taking photographs. Scattered below the steaming mountains are perhaps fifteen thatched-roof houses furred with moss. Across from them: a bridge over the river, a wood-stone trestlework, and Less steers the car to cross it, passing tourists huddled against the rain. He imagines a boat is meant to take him upriver to the restaurant, and as he reaches the other bank and parks the Toaster (from the dashboard comes the harpy’s shrill reminder), he sees a few people waiting on the dock, and among them—he recognizes her through her clear umbrella—is his mother.

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

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

• From Less (2017)

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

• From Less (2017)

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

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

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

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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