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.

Page 93 of 501 · 20 per page

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  While you can have just obsessions or compulsions to meet diagnostic criteria, Luís was experiencing both. And while some clients have a specific set of triggers, Luís’s symptoms ran the gamut from circling the block out of fear that he hit someone with his car to a fear of germs on the toilet seat and the obsessive thought (content warning) of stabbing his father. If you’re having a strong reaction to reading that, it’s understandable. But just imagine your brain being pelted by these unwanted thoughts and images on a daily basis all the time—that is OCD in a nutshell. I know that for many of you reading this book, you don’t have to imagine this. What I just described is all too real for you. I’ve had many clients say it feels like their brain is “on fire.” Perhaps yours has been too and you’re looking for the fire extinguisher. OCD always pulls on my heartstrings. It can be incredibly painful, and I could tell that Luís was worn-out by his battle. Among the fears previously listed, he was also petrified of saying the “wrong” thing. He would scroll through his phone meticulously, worrying that he said or did something that would incriminate him, make him lose his job, or ostracize him from society. He would analyze conversations with friends and avoided ever sharing his opinion for fear that someone would disagree with him and rage against him. Even though he couldn’t think of anything that would be damaging to his reputation (and was truly one of the kindest and softest-spoken souls you could ever meet), he fretted over the possibility that he could have done something that would derail his life. Now, whether or not you’re relating to Luís’s experience, I believe this content is likely still of value—OCD diagnosis or not. While OCD is in a section of the DSM-5 that’s separate from other anxiety disorders, most of us can relate to experiencing obsessive thoughts to some degree, and wanting to engage in some compulsive behaviors to make ourselves feel better. To meet full criteria for diagnosis, a person needs to engage in obsessions or compulsions for at least an hour each day and/or experience significant distress socially, occupationally, or in other areas of functioning. 31 While only about 1 percent of the US population meets the full diagnostic criteria for OCD (equating to about 2 to 3 million adults at any given time), we can each identify, if not empathize, with the framework of how obsessions and compulsions work. 32 OCD can look and feel many different ways. It’s not just the typical “germophobia” that people reference.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  That’s why I’m such an advocate for getting our bloodwork done. It’s not uncommon for me to see clients spend thousands of dollars on therapy when the root of their anxiety is tied to a hormonal imbalance or a nutritional deficiency. If a client is presenting with any symptoms that could be biologically driven (insomnia, low energy, or gastrointestinal issues, for example), I almost always recommend they get a blood panel done with either their general physician or a naturopathic doctor so that we can understand at baseline how their body is doing. There can be invaluable answers in your bloodwork that could be the ticket to your recovery. So many of us keep ourselves in a state of purgatory because we’re afraid of the pain of a needle or we’re worried we won’t be able to handle the news if something is actually wrong. But it’s when you’ve empowered yourself with this data that you can take meaningful action. You do not need to keep yourself in the cycle of worry, wondering why, for example, you’re constantly feeling foggy or exhausted, why your skin is frequently breaking out, or why you struggle to get an erection (yep, we’re going there, because too many men suffer in silence about this one). There may be some easily explainable answers, and it all starts with getting your bloodwork done. I’ve seen the power of this in my own life. While I’ve grappled with emetophobia for basically as long as I can remember, I was finding that my panic attacks were spiraling out of control in recent years. If I felt like I was trapped (in a plane, on a bus, or even stuck inside a booth at a restaurant), it wasn’t uncommon for me to eventually start shaking, feel incredibly nauseous, and have difficulty breathing. My brain would start thinking of all the worst-case scenarios, especially, “What will happen if I throw up right here at the table?” It was getting harder and harder to deny my symptoms and I wondered whether others were catching on. I was at a breaking point in the fall of 2020. While I’d done exposure therapy for these panic attacks (as I covered in chapter 4), it wasn’t until I began seeing a naturopathic doctor who recommended that I get my bloodwork done that things started to turn around. Soon after, I learned that I had vitamin D, vitamin B 12 , and magnesium deficiencies.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  Each one of Matthew’s four vision quest stories appears within a context of Native history and culture. These contexts vary as I have tried to use the wisdom of different Native communities to articulate an interpretation of Christian themes, e.g., Lakota for the Plains tradition, Choctaw for the Woodland tradition, Hopi for the Desert tradition. At the end of the book I have “endnotes” to share references I used for that chapter or to offer a brief commentary. My goal in writing this book is to make a contribution toward the continuing development of a Native American Christian theology based on the Native Covenant, the tradition given to our people by God over 30,000 years of our spiritual evolution on this continent, a land sovereign to our nations and sacred to our people. I hope this theology will be a support to all persons seeking spiritual wisdom and reconciliation. Thank you for reading it. Welcome to the family. Chapter 1THE QUESTOn a cold autumn morning in 1973 I went out onto the roof of the apartment building where I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was student housing at the seminary I attended. It was an old brick building, four or five stories high, sitting in the midst of Harvard University. I walked out onto the flat roof and looked up at the gray New England sky. Dark clouds drifted by. The city was quiet, just waking up for the start of another day. I took a small box of cornmeal that I had bought at the local grocery store, opened it, and slowly poured it out into a circle around me. I stood in this circle and began to pray. I turned to acknowledge the four sacred directions, calling on the spirit of each one to surround me. I prayed to the Creator above me and the Earth below me to hold me in a spiritual equilibrium. I spread my arms and asked my ancestors to hear me and come to support me in any way they could. I called on the name of Jesus. I did all of these things because I was deeply troubled. I was a young, twenty-something Native American attending a Christian seminary to become a priest. I had chosen to do so because I felt I was called by God to a religious vocation. I believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and I wanted to follow him. But now I was having doubts. My doubts came from a book by Vine Deloria, Jr. called God Is Red .1 Deloria, a Native American author from South Dakota, took the position that Christianity was not the religion for Native American people. Later in life, I met Vine and we became friends. I even knew his father, a very well respected Episcopal priest and Lakota elder who served the church in South Dakota.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  TEC: "2C: Aram. jong, 3, pr 0 גר‎ proselytize, Ph. 3 in n.pr., & “1 ִּ--(נרם.‎ Gn 15°+74t. sf. Ja Ex20"+ 4t., a Dt 1"; pl. גָּרִים‎ Ex22” + 9%., גִּירִים‎ 2Ch2";—1. sojourner, temporary dweller, new-comer (no inherited rights), 61. Ex ד‎ 2% Lv 24 Nur5” Jos8* (opp. homeborn); of Abraham at Hebron Gn 23° (P; || (תושב‎ ; Moses in desert Ex 2”(J) 183 (E; here explan. of name Gershom, Moses’ son); as claiming hospitality Jb 31°; perh. in above cases, and certainly in general, with technical sense; fig. of Yahweh Je 14%; of Israel in Egypt Gn 15% Ex 22” 23° (all JE) Lv 19* (H) Dt ro” 23°; O73 with Yahweh Lv 25% (H) 1 Ch 29” 39% (in all || (תושב‎ cf. 119". 4. usually of O°) in Israel 2 ₪ 1° (Amalekite) cf. Jos 8%%* (E) 20° (P) Is 14'; dwellers in Israel with certain conceded, not inherited rights (cf. RS OTIC 434 ; 2nd ed. 342. .ה‎ ; K42; Sem 75 f. Sta Geseh. 1-400) The 13 is to share in Sabbath rest Ex 20” 23” (both JE) Dt5"; otherwise he is to have like obligations with Israel Ex J 2 19-48-49 Ly 16” (all 0 Lv 7 eee any 1826 20° 2238 24h 22 (all H) Nu (Ne 0 19” 35” (all P) Ez14’; similar rights Dt 1 Ez 47°; and like privileges Dt 16" 26" 29” 31” cf. 2 Ch 30”; very rarely any distinction made, in obligation Lv 2677797 (H), in per- missible food Dt 14”; in future success Dt הר‎ kindness to 13 frequently enjoined: Lv 19” || ,ענ‎ 237° (|| 2d.) 1o™ (all) Diiro®? 14° ל‎ ae Or a | ְאַלְמְנָה‎ Bin) : ו‎ prohibited Ly 19” 0 Dt 52 Ex22” 26°? (JE) Dt 24” 27” Je7® 22° Ze 70 (these eight || MIPS) DIN) ; obj. of care to 7 y 146° ((|d.); charge that 73 has been oppressed Ez 22’ 1 3° (both |lid.); also Ez 22” (|| P2812), + 94°; 66. also command that a poor brother be 158 “a "treated like 73, i.e. kindly, Lv25*(H). Latest conception somewhat different: גר‎ 1Ch22? 2Ch 2% (הגירים)‎ gathered for hard service; yet cf. 2 Ch 30”. (Oft. c. verb. cogn. Ext 29 Ly 16” I ל‎ 1875 19” 20" Nu ou ב‎ Ton Jos 20° Ez 47”; oft. || תושב‎ Gn23* Ly 25 2385.47 1Ch29”’y 39% 1 גּרוּת‎ n.f. וישבו בַּנְרוּת-- (1806ק-)₪ם881ס1‎ and אשר אצל בית‎ DM Je 41”, inm, khan? so Ew Gf; Hi al. nin folds, after Joseph. Aq. trax n.pr.loc..a southern city of Judah, toward Edom Jos 157). t [מגור]‎ n.[m.] sojourning-place, dwell- ing-place, sojourning—sf. DV 55"; ik estr, ל מְנוּרִי‎ sf." Gn 47" ID דש‎ 0 ak PRP Gn 17° 284, 39 Jb 18%, pan Gn 367 +2t., DOD Ex 6!;—dwelling- place + 55" Jbi ג‎ always pl., 2 718 Gn 17° 28* 367 37' Ex 6* (Hex always P) Ez 20%; sojourning (pl.)=life-time, מ"‎ "2% Gn 47°72" Gn 47%; of. DMB ש‎ 119%,

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  TAN ₪ vb. be anxious, concerned, fear (Talm. 87, 287 id.)—Qal Pf. 3 ms. 8) consec. 189° 107; 2fs. FIST Is 577; Impf. 3 ms. INT Je ;ד‎ STS ץ‎ 38%; Pt. as Je 38%, DYN Je 42'°;—1. be anxious, concerned, with reference to, in behalf of, c. 2 ז‎ ₪ 9° 107; 7d. c. מ[‎ 16 42" (famine personif.); sq. ‘NEM ץש‎ 38"; be anxious, abs. Je17® (|[NT). 4. fear, dread, sq. acc. of pers. feared Is 57" (|| 8%) Je 38° (where also sq. cl. with }8). 178 דאר TAWA adj.gent. = subst. ;הג‎ 1. people dwelling in Geshur (supr.) Dt 3% Jos 127" % 2. a tribe of, or near, the Philistines 708 also 1 27% but del G (not GL) cf. We Dr; rd. possibly אשורי‎ Homi4aheet- tia ® 29 2° 1d. הג'‎ for האשורי‎ . vb. feel with the hand, feel,‏ | שש]+ Pa., ac;‏ שש stroke (NH 20. Ar. 25, Aram.‏ Eth. 70M; or "Twv%; stroke, touch)—Pi. Impf.‏ pl. coh. NWY22 Is 59%, NVWI 00., grope, grope‏ ז for cf. Che.‏ Ki wine-press. DAn.pr. Wdadj.gent. OFA n.pr.loc. MM) adj. v. sub .ינן‎ Tana n.pr.m. (V unknown) a son of Aram Gn 10% =1 Chi”, רד T ANT u.pr.m. an Edomite, servant of Saul 18 21° 22°82 (yee beac ה‎ INV ץ‎ 52? (title). TANT n.f. anxiety, anxious care—1I87 Jos22%+5+.; anwtety for=for fear of, c. jD Jos 22%; anxiety Pr 12% (where 0. verb. mase. cf. Now), Je 49” ד"‎ 032; anwious care Ez 4% 12” (in both רעש||) 1218 ,(שמָמון|‎ and M39). ANT fish, ef. 3 sub .דנה‎ +N וד‎ vb. fly swiftly, dart through the air (cf. perhaps Ar. 315 rum vehemently (of camel))—Qal Jmpf. AYT! Dt 28% + 2 t.; NTA p18" (> || 2 S22" NIN); fly swiftly, dart, of eagle Dt 28”, in simile of swift army; of Chaldaeans comp. with eagle, in judgment against Moab & Edom Je 48% 49” (in both TAN n.f. a bird of prey, possibly kite B Saad. BoM! Di 1 1% Aram. SO, J$.9; NH דיה‎ of diff. birds of prey; name prob. fr. flying, swooping), Lv11™ forbidden as food; ef. also Dt 14% MBI) ואתִרהָאיָה‎ ANI, where for הראה‎ rd. INIT & del. 7277; so Sam G; ef. 6 1 [דיה]‎ n.f. id.—frequenting ruins, cf. Di 7.6.; דיות‎ Is 347 (on הדיה‎ Dt 14” cf. foregoing). דאר‎ u.pr. v. sub 11. .דור‎ דב .דבב v.‏ דוב ,דב of foll.; existence & mng. dub.)‏ ¥ ) דבא n.{m.] perh. rest, but sense very‏ [דּבָא]ז doubtful 6 Ar. 4s rest, Kamus; © 6 35 Onk‏ strength, reading perh. רבאך‎ cf. Sam. רביך‎ , vid. Di) דּבְאְִּי‎ PIP Dt 33%.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  As to the arrangement of the work, the Editors decided at an early stage of their preparations to follow the Thesawrus, and the principal dictionaries of other Semitic languages, in classifying words according to their stems, and not to adopt the purely alphabetical order which has been common in Hebrew dictionaries. The relation of Semitic derivatives to the stems is such as to make this method of grouping them an obvious demand from the scientific point of view. It is true that practical objections to it may be offered, but these do not appear convincing. One is that it compels the Editor to seem to decide, by placing each word under a given stem, some questions of etymology PREFACE “ix \ which in his own mind are still open. The number of such cases, however, is comparatively small, and the uncertainty can always be expressed by a word of caution. And even if the objection were much more important it would be better to assume the burden of it, in order to give students of Hebrew, from the outset, the immense advantage of familiarity with the structure and formative laws of the Hebrew vocabulary in their daily work. Another objection in- cidental to this arrangement is thought to be the increased difficulty of reference. This difficulty will diminish rapidly as students advance in knowledge, and by the practice of setting words formed by prefix or aftix—or otherwise hard for the beginner to trace—a second time in their-alphabetical place, with cross- references, it is hoped to do away with the difficulty almost entirely. The Aramaic of the Bible has been separated from the Hebrew, and placed by itself at the end of the book, as a separate and subordinate element of the language of the Old Testament. This is a change from that older practice which, since it was adopted here, has been made also. by Siegfried and Stade, and by Buhl, and which the Editors believe will commend itself on grounds of evident propriety. The question of adding an English-Hebrew Index has been carefully con- sidered. With reluctance it has been decided, for practical reasons, not to do so. The original limits proposed for the Lexicon have already been far exceeded, and the additional time, space, and cost which an Index would require have presented a barrier which the Editors could not see their way to remove.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Yours, Anne MONDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 8,1943 Dearest Kitty, If you were to read all my letters in one sitting, you’d be struck by the fact that they were written in a variety of moods. It annoys me to be so dependent on the moods here in the Annex, but I’m not the only one: we’re all subject to them. If I’m engrossed in a book, I have to rearrange my thoughts before I can mingle with other people, because otherwise they might think I was strange. As you can see, I’m currently in the middle of a depression. I couldn’t really tell you what set it off, but I think it stems from my cowardice, which confronts me at every turn. This evening, when Bep was still here, the doorbell rang long and loud. I instantly turned white, my stomach churned, and my heart beat wildly -- and all because I was afraid. At night in bed I see myself alone in a dungeon, without Father and Mother. Or I’m roaming the streets, or the Annex is on fire, or they come in the middle of the night to take us away and I crawl under my bed in desperation. I see everything as if it were actually taking place. And to think it might all happen soon! Miep often says she envies us because we have such peace and quiet here. That may be true, but she’s obviously not thinking about our fear. I simply can’t imagine the world will ever be normal again for us. I do talk about “after the war,” but it’s as if I were talking about a castle in the air, something that can Ii never come true. I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down below and the peace and beauty up above. In the meantime, we’ve been cut off by the dark mass of clouds, so that

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  relieving herself on some newspapers or between the cracks in the floor boards, so we have good reason to fear the splatters and, even worse, the stench. The new Moortje in the warehouse has the same problem. Anyone who’s ever had a cat that’s not housebroken can imagine the smells, other than pepper and thyme, that permeate this house. I also have a brand-new prescription for gunfire jitters: When the shooting gets loud, proceed to the nearest wooden staircase. Run up and down a few times, making sure to stumble at least once. What with the scratches and the noise of running and falling, you won’t even be able to hear the shooting, much less worry about it. Yours truly has put this magic formula to use, with great success! Yours, Anne M. Frank MONDAY, JUNE 5, 1944 New problems in the Annex. A quarrel between Dussel and the Franks over the division of butter. Capitulation on the part of Dussel. Close friendship between the latter and Mrs. van Daan, flirtations, kisses and friendly little smiles. Dussel is beginning to long for female companionship. The van Daans don’t see why we should bake a spice cake for Mr. Kugler’s birthday when we can’t have one ourselves. All very petty. Mood upstairs: bad. Mrs. van D. has a cold. Dussel caught with brewer’s yeast tablets, while we’ve got none. The Fifth Army has taken Rome. The city neither destroyed nor bombed. Great propaganda for Hitler. Very few potatoes and vegetables. One loaf of bread was moldy. Scharminkeltje (name of new warehouse cat) can’t stand pepper. She sleeps in the cat box and does her business in the wood shavings. Impossible to keep her. Bad weather. Continuous bombing of Pas de Calais and the west coast of France. No one buying dollars. Gold even less interesting. The bottom of our black moneybox is in sight. What are we going to live on next month?

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  Your voice has more power than you think. Anxious or not, use what you’ve got. Help us turn these tides of tragedy in the direction that we all need to go. We need you more than ever—and I’d venture to guess that you need it for yourself, too. CHAPTER ELEVEN GETTING BACK OUT THERE AFTER A WIPEOUT Most therapists either love or hate couples therapy. I happen to love it. It’s a whole different ball game when you have three people in the room (the couple and the therapist, though sometimes more if it’s a polyamorous relationship). Typically there is one partner who is more inclined to do the work. The other one is along for the ride. While I love when couples come for preventative reasons to benefit the overall health of their relationship, many couples wait until they’re at their wit’s end. Couples therapy is their Hail Mary pass. At its most morbid level, couples therapy can feel more like hospice care than restorative work. Sometimes it’s more a matter of a relationship dying peacefully than ending tragically without closure. Why does this matter, given that this is a book about anxiety? Well, if ever there was a place for anxiety to rear its ugly head, it’s in a relationship. Whether it’s spurred by anxious attachment, obsessive thoughts about the relationship, or an inability to commit, there are all kinds of ways that anxiety can rock a relationship. And that’s when everything may be going generally well. When things really turn sour, our relationships can wreck us completely. As we just finished the chapter on grief and what to do when we’ve been tossed and turned in our waters, we’ll now cover how you can get yourself back out there again when someone has broken your heart or your world has been flipped on its head. While you may be swearing off love if someone has done you wrong, you can’t let that damage stop you from connecting ever again. And even if you’re not in a relationship at present (and/or don’t want to be), this information still applies to friendships, colleagues, and family dynamics. We’ve all been hurt by someone at some point in our lives. We’ve all been burned at some point. This is about creating your comeback story so that you don’t continue to stay on the outskirts of your own life. Given this preface, I was interested to see how it would go when Grace and Ryan came onto the Zoom screen together. I could feel her trepidation and his hesitation before we started. Grace was a straight, Buddhist, Chinese, cisgender woman dating Ryan, a straight, Christian, white, cisgender man. They had been together for ten years and there was a pivotal question lingering in the air: Would they get engaged?

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  You tell your roommate that you feel stressed-out. You bring your roommate a bottle of wine to help them forget about their feelings. You sit with your roommate over a meal and talk about what’s been worrying them lately. You feel self-conscious in your body, and you worry your outfit doesn’t look good on you. You check with your friend to ask whether it looks like you gained weight. You promise your friend that they look amazing and tell them it doesn’t look like they’ve gained any weight at all. You tell your friend that their weight doesn’t define their worth. You might help them pick out a different outfit but at the end of the day, it’s about owning the body you’re in. You remind them that confidence isn’t contingent on appearance. When we enable others, it’s often done from a place of love. We hate to see our friends and family struggling with anxiety. We want to help them feel better. In fact, for many of us, it feels cruel to not give in to the checking behavior. It’s much easier to say “It’ll be fine” when our best friend is scared about her dad’s cancer diagnosis. It’s much harder to express in truth, “I don’t know what is going to happen, but I hope you know that I’m here for you.” We also often respond with false-hope maxims because telling an anxious person what they don’t want to hear is anxiety-provoking in itself. We want to keep things comfortable. Being honest about the fact that bad things can happen can create some tidal waves. We don’t always want to ride those waves ourselves. People may get angry or frustrated if we can’t promise their safety. It’s a lot easier to go with the flow and respond with an empty assurance. The waters temporarily calm when you say, “Nothing bad is going to happen. Don’t worry.” Little do you realize, it starts to get annoying when you have to give this consolation over and over again when your initial bout of enabling wasn’t enough. Spoiler alert: it never is. I was seeing this pattern play out with Casey and her boyfriend. She clung desperately to him because he steadied her nerves—or so she thought. Because she felt that she needed him so much, she would frequently worry whether he, we’ll call him Seth, “really” loved her. She would often ask him throughout the day, “Do you love me?” and “Are you going to break up with me?” Initially, Seth typically responded with “Of course I love you!” and “I’m never going to break up with you.” While these answers temporarily relieved Casey’s anxiety, the cycle didn’t change—it was only reinforced. Casey was checking more and more, now multiple times a day. Before long, Seth was getting fed up with the frequent questions. What’s worse, Casey was never feeling fully satisfied and she started to stalk his social media. Yep, she went there. This was where I came in.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  If it is overly sensitive, it’s not uncommon that you’ll see folks experience heightened awareness, avoidance, and a general sense of distrust toward others. If it’s underactive, you’ll see people engage in more risk-taking behaviors, as was mentioned in the introduction in the case of Alex Honnold’s free climb in Yosemite. Interestingly, agitation and anger have also been tied to the amygdala, which may explain why irritability can be a common symptom of an anxious presentation. 12 No matter what your amygdala looks like, anxiety can take a different shape in each of our brains. Where we experience activation—or a lack of activation— in our brains can make a difference. Studies looked at how there may be different subsets under the anxiety umbrella, including how these symptoms present themselves neurologically. 13 For example, some of us may be chronic worriers, ruminating about our past experiences and fretting about our futures. We tend to see this more with generalized anxiety, OCD, or social anxiety, for example. Others experience distinct episodes of panic, noticing things such as a racing heart, difficulty breathing, or sweating when they’re placed in a situation that pushes their specific trigger buttons. These folks may function with less day-to-day worrying, but if you place them in settings where they’re afraid (think of Michaela with her needle phobia), it can lead to a level-ten panic attack with an activated fight-or-flight response. Thus, diagnoses such as phobias or panic disorder tend to fit the bill here. Some of us luck out and experience both subsets of anxiety. What’s fascinating about the findings from the research is that those who have a general sense of worry showed more left-brain activity whereas those who were more panicky with hyperarousal showed more right- brain activity. 14 What does this mean? It means that anxiety is not a one-size-fits-all. Yes, we can resonate generally with what it means to feel anxious, but how we experience it may be entirely different from one person to the next. Knowing how your anxiety manifests for you is what matters the most. What’s going to be most helpful for you may vary greatly depending on what your symptoms look like. For example, if you tend to be a ruminative worrier, practicing mindfulness, though potentially helpful, may actually exacerbate your symptoms as you marinate in your already-well-aware worries. Conversely, if you’re a frequent flyer on the panic plane, learning about how to challenge your thoughts (though that is still useful) may not be as effective as learning grounding strategies and doing body work to soothe a nervous system that’s on red alert. This is potentially why you may have been getting so frustrated with yourself. You may have been using the wrong interventions to treat your form of anxiety. That’s why it’s so important to understand how anxiety paints itself in your life. Don’t compare your picture to someone else’s.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said, as we passed a boy in a yellow felt jacket that was bright, in the Brick Lane shadows, as a lantern. ‘I knew a girl once, oh! she would have loved that coat...’It did not take us long, after that, to reach Cable Street. Here we turned left, then right; and at the end of this road I saw the public-house that was, I guessed, our destination: a squat, flat-roofed little building with a gas-jet in a plum-coloured shade above the door, and a garish sign - The Frigate - that reminded me how near our walk had brought us to the Thames.‘It’s this way,’ said Florence self-consciously. She led me past the door and around the building to a smaller, darker entrance at the back. Here a set of rather steep and treacherous-looking steps took us downwards, to what must once have been a cellar; at the bottom there was a door of frosted glass, and behind this was the room - the Boy in the Boat, I remembered to call it - that we had come for.It was not a large room, but it was very shady, and it took me a time to gauge its breadth and height, to see beyond its spots of brightness - its crackling fire, its gas-lamps, the gleam of brass and glass and mirror and pewter at its bar - into the pools of gloom that lay between them. There were, I guessed, about twenty persons in it: they were seated in a row of little stalls, or standing propped against the counter, or gathered in the furthest, brightest corner, about what seemed to be a billiard table. I didn’t like to gaze at them for long, for at our appearance they all, of course, looked up, and I felt strangely shy of them and their opinion.Instead I kept my head down, and followed Florence to the bar. There was a square-chinned woman standing behind it, wiping at a beer-glass with a cloth; when she saw us coming she put both glass and towel down, and smiled.‘Why, Florence! How grand to see you here again! And how bonny you are looking!’ She held out her hand and took Florence’s fingers in her own, and looked her over with pleasure. Then she turned to me.‘This is my friend, Nancy Astley,’ said Flo, rather shyly. ‘This is Mrs Swindles, who keeps bar here.’ Mrs Swindles and I exchanged nods and smiles.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  She’s no longer in the laurel. She’s on top of it. She turns away from me, and before I can take another breath, she is off again through the sun-filtered branches, fast and determined. Shit! Shit! I start running, over branches, past little corrugated shelters, over earth compacted by hundreds of pheasanty toes. Any minute now, I think, I am going to hear the ‘Oi!’ of an incredibly angry keeper . Perhaps he will have a shotgun , I think , as I watch Mabel pile into a hen pheasant at the far corner of the pen in a leafy explosion of buff and cappuccino feathers and beating wings. When I get to her she is sitting in a black puddle of acid woodland water , mantling over the body of a hen pheasant. And as I walk up, another hen pheasant emerges from under her wing, and she grabs that too. She has a pheasant in each foot. Oh my God. Carnage . Her tail is spread into the puddle, her feet are buried in feathers, and her whole being seems to be vibrating at some unlikely, scary frequency. The pheasants are dead. One is in my waistcoat pocket, and the other is being plumed by my errant goshawk in lifting puffs of soft contour feathers that float and catch in the wire behind her. We need to get out of here fast before I have explaining to do. Shaking with worry, I take Mabel from her quarry. And then I injure myself horribly. Cutting through pheasant sinew, I take a wide, shallow strip of skin from my thumb. And as soon as I get Mabel back on the glove and stow her illicit prize in my waistcoat pocket, I start to worry about the amount of blood I’m losing. It’s not just that my hand is completely red; I can hear the drips falling to the woodland floor. I press the wound hard into the fabric of my hawking jacket. It’s covered in germs, I know, but I must stop the bleeding. Must. Stop. The. Blood . And blood pours from me all the long way back to the car, and all the way to Stuart’s house . I can never go back there , I think . Never , ever again. In March 1949, the publisher Wren Howard of Jonathan Cape travelled to the Channel Islands to stay at White’s new home. White had moved to the island of Alderney: it was a perfect refuge from the taxman and the world. He’d bought a white three-storeyed house in St Anne’s with magnolia wainscoted walls. He’d filled it with new things: his own surrealist paintings, a boudoir grand piano, silver candlesticks and a statuette of the Emperor Hadrian. There were dark curtains printed with bouquets of ghostly silver roses, jazz records, Jacobean chairs, and a sofa, towards which White ushered Howard to sit.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Crouched over the car’s back seat and lost in the memory of the suitcase I stared at a field of stars in darkness. Slowly it resolved into specks of feather-dust, little pieces of the crumbled keratin that protects growing feathers, loosed from the hawk’s young plumage and lit by a shaft of stray sunlight from a crack in the top of the box. Eyes and brain fell into place, and now I could see a dull shine of half-light on one lemon-yellow, taloned foot. Dim feathers, shivering with apprehension. The hawk knew she was being watched. I shivered too. ‘She’s OK?’ asked Christina, back and biting into a Solero. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Absolutely fine.’ Engine on. We pulled away. Hawks have been traded for centuries, I chided myself. Of course she was alive. Seven hours is nothing. Think of the seventeenth-century falcon traders who brought wild hawks to the French court from as far away as India. Think of the Fifth Earl of Bedford importing falcons from Nova Scotia and New England; rows of perched hawks in wooden ships, hooded and still, and the lowing of cattle that were carried as cargo on those ships to feed them. And as we drove onward, I thought of White’s goshawk, of how much worse its journey had been than this: first from its nest to a German falconer; then by aeroplane to England, then by train from Croydon to a falconer called Nesbitt in Shropshire; then to a different falconer in Scotland as part of a swap that didn’t seem to come off, for the hawk was returned to Nesbitt. A few days’ reprieve in an airy loft, and it was back on a train, this time to Buckingham, a small, red-brick market town five miles from Stowe. And that is where White picked it up. How many miles? I reckon that’s about fifteen hundred or so, over many days. I’m not altogether sure how the hawk survived. Small souls, sent far from safety. In the opening pages of The Goshawk, White describes the awful journey of his fledgling hawk: torn from its nest, stuffed in a basket, and sent to a strange land to receive an education. He asks us to imagine what it was like, to put ourselves in the hawk’s bewildered, infant mind; to experience the heat and noise, confusion and terror that was its journey to his door. ‘It must have been like death,’ he wrote, ‘the thing which we can never know beforehand.’

• From The History of Christian Theology (2008)

  26 Lecture 8: Christian Reading into Latin as ¿ gura or ¿ gure. Typology means ¿ gurative reading, which sees one person or event as pre ¿ guring another. An Old Testament type was matched with a New Testament “anti-type” or counter- ¿ gure as, for instance, when Moses pre¿ gures Jesus as prophet, or David pre ¿ gures Jesus as Messiah. Typology is an inevitable feature of Christian reading of the Old Testament. If Jesus is the Christ, he is the ful ¿ llment of the Messianic promises made to David, and David and all the good kings of Israel are types of Christ. If Jesus is the Christ, he is the greatest of the prophets, and all the prophets of Israel are types of Christ. If Jesus is the Christ, then his Body, the Church, is a renewed Israel. If Jesus’s death has power to save, it is because it was a sacri¿ ce for sin, and his blood made atonement, ful ¿ lling the meaning of the sacri¿ ces of the Law of Moses. If Jesus’s death has power to save, it is because he is the true Lamb of Passover. Some typologies are less inevitable but are still a deep part of the New Testament. Christ’s body becomes the true temple, the holy place of divine presence (John 2:21). Christ’s À esh is the manna of everlasting life, bread from heaven (John 6:30-58). When he feeds the multitude, he is the Good Shepherd of Psalm 23. When Moses gets water from a rock, “that rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). Other typologies developed after the New Testament. The passage through the Red Sea is a type or ¿ gure of baptism. Interestingly, Noah’s ark pre¿ gures the wood of the cross. Typology has a complex relation to the literal sense of scripture; it is not words so much as persons and events that have a ¿ gurative meaning. Typology is a form of reading used not only by the New Testament writers, but also within the Old Testament itself, as when Jacob pre¿ gures the people of Israel. Scholars often make a distinction between allegory and typology. Allegorical reading originates among pagan philosophers. Making Apollo an allegory symbolic of the sun was one way to do away with embarrassing anthropomorphisms in pagan myths. Allegory was practiced on a vast scale by Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who used it to interpret the scriptures in philosophical terms. A mark of pure allegory is that it is

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  Now we are about to go to battle against the unfettered thoughts that define us. Once the thought has been interrupted, we enter neutral ground. We then get to decide whether we are going to choose life and peace, the mind of Christ, the fruit of the Spirit—or sin and death, the mind of the flesh. In each of the next seven chapters, we are going to retrain our minds to think about truth. As we go to war with each toxic, twisted thought, we will begin to see the fruit and freedom of believing truth, walking moment by moment in our identity as children of God. The spiraling, chaotic thoughts that have so long kept us trapped will give way to the peace and beauty and abundant life Jesus died to give us. [image file=Image00030.jpg] 8 Holding Space for Silence I Choose to Be Still with God A friend reached out to me not long ago. She was spinning so fast emotionally that you could see it affecting her physically. I placed my hands on the outsides of her arms, as if to hold her up—or hold her still—as she spoke. Her marriage was in knots. One of her kids was acting out. Her pace of life was making her crazy. A misunderstanding had caused a rift between her and a dear friend. I listened to her describe these struggles, and I knew I did not hold the power to stop her spinning in that moment. While there were a dozen or more practical problems to untangle, before any of that she needed the only thing that could bring peace. “I love you,” I said as I looked into her eyes, “but you need Jesus right now.” Yes, there would be time for us to connect. Yes, I would help in any way I could. Yes, my friend would need the support of her people as she navigated the path ahead. But now, first, while the rotations were coming fast and furious, she needed to be alone with God. She needed what only Jesus gives. I said, “Right now I am going to leave you, and you spend thirty minutes alone with God.” She said she would. In the stillness and quiet, not only do we connect with God but we are also able to more clearly identify what is wrong. Recognizing our spirals and naming them is the first step in interrupting them. She had been spinning and desperate and dying for answers, yet when I checked in twenty-four hours later, the only thing she had to report to me were the twenty reasons that time alone with God just hadn’t happened.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  Before I talk myself out of it, though, and bargain for another month to postpone my plans, I come back to my own empowered acceptance. I know what I value. I want to build a family—especially with Greg. I know he’ll make the most incredible dad and I can hardly wait to see that happen. If I continued to delay, I would be forgoing a long-standing love for something that I know matters immensely to me—all for the temporary alleviation of a potentially inconvenient schedule. Not everything in life is about seeking comfort or the avoidance of unease. I come back to it over and over again: it’s about values induction, not pain reduction. I don’t have to buy into the narrative that women can’t have incredible careers and be parents at the same time. Both can coexist. If I allowed myself to indulge, there would always be an excuse for why “now” isn’t a good time. That’s anxiety, people-pleasing, and perfectionism talking. I know what I want, and I remember deeply in my bones: somehow, in some way, it will all be okay. It will be worth it, one way or another. Anxiety will be along for the ride, but I’m the one calling this shot about becoming a mom. I get how scary it feels to enter the unknown. It’s safer to sit on the shores of our lives and tell ourselves, “Maybe someday.” We’ll get a new job next year. We’ll move eventually. But what I’m learning is that there is never a good time. The timing will never be perfect. You just have to go for it and live in the goop of unpredictability. It’s a tall order if you’re someone who has lived with anxiety, like I and so many of my clients have. But it’s an order that you’re ready to fill. If you don’t trust yourself yet, I hope you’ll trust me when I tell you that you can do it. I should know—I’ve seen client after client pursue their values before they were ready or when it was incredibly uncomfortable. I’ve never had any of them express regret for making the brave choice. As you step forward, I want you to know that you are more than your anxiety. It does not have to define your life. You are not an “anxious person.” You are a person who feels anxiety. It is not your identity. Your anxiety doesn’t need to stop you from embracing your life fully. Ask yourself what you would do with yourself if fear weren’t a part of the equation. Now do that. Anxiety does not need to be the excuse anymore. No matter what your anxiety makes you want to do, whether it’s to flee or freeze or postpone, challenge yourself to have an opposite response.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  It’s at this point when we feel the strongest pull to avoid the exposure, or to engage in a compulsive behavior to alleviate our distress. This is often done innocuously. We continue with these behaviors because they momentarily relieve anxiety. The problem is that every time we do this dance of avoidance, checking, or any other compulsive behavior, the wave of our anxiety gets bigger and bigger until we feel like it’s impossible to ride out the wave. Before long, we want to get out of the water entirely. We want to stay home, bail on our friends, and keep ourselves safe by eliminating as many triggers as possible. Before we know it, we’re struggling with agoraphobia, where we can’t leave our homes and our friends have given up on inviting us to hang out. Thankfully, there’s a way out. ERP therapy operates on the idea of habituation. Here’s how it works: while the wave of your anxiety spikes when you first face a fear, anxiety levels ultimately go down when you tackle that fear over and over again. With each exposure we see that the wave’s peak gets smaller. We begin to get desensitized to the threat. This works on a behavioral level. When we witness for ourselves that we can survive our anticipatory anxiety and our feared situations, the brain starts to believe that we just might be able to manage it. This is why it’s so important that we show ourselves we can sit with the discomfort of our distress. It reminds us that we’re often far more resilient than we realize. I’ve done this work myself and I get what a delicate dance this is. That’s why I highly recommend working with a provider who specializes in ERP to guide you through this process. I’ve seen how ERP can be life-changing and I’ve also seen how it can be traumatizing when it’s not done well. After grappling for years with emetophobia, I decided to give ERP a try. Even though I knew it would be uncomfortable, I was sick (pun intended) of ruminating about getting food poisoning after meals, scanning the streets for vomit whenever we walked outside, and avoiding places such as bars because I could possibly see someone get sick. The biggest way that it was impacting me was that it was completely impeding my decision to think clearly about getting pregnant someday. Now, I completely empathize if you’re hesitant to start this kind of therapy—I know I was: “You mean I have to actively face my biggest fear? Yeah, I don’t think so.” But my distress was too great. You know if you’ve been there before (or if you’re there right now) that you can reach a point where you’re willing to get uncomfortable if it means relief could be on the other side. That’s where I was when I decided to start ERP. I worked with my own therapist to create my anxiety hierarchy.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  5. You often have visions or nightmares about the worst-case scenario happening to your loved ones. 6. Even though you may need alone time, you push yourself to be with others because you feel a pressure that this could be your last chance to have quality time together. 7. You feel like you will never be okay again once your loved one passes away or if they were to leave you. 8. You have trouble leaving your home or another place where your loved one lives. You’d rather be with them than go somewhere new by yourself or to meet new people. 9. You often have somatic symptoms (headaches, nausea, panic symptoms) when a goodbye is coming up or happening. 10. Every time the phone rings you worry that something bad has happened. If a lot of this is hitting home for you, you’re not alone. I would argue that our generation has seen an uptick in separation anxiety. Why? Because we have so much unpredictability in our lives. Things have changed—drastically. No one and nowhere feels safe. Many of us now refuse to go to movie theaters, shopping malls, or concerts because we’re so afraid of what might happen. The grim reality is that we never know when our loved ones could be ripped from us. Even though our world is considered safer than it was even in the 1990s (which as a true Millennial I consider the golden era of Spice Girls and Disney Channel original movies), we don’t trust our security in this world. 192 In fact, while half of all Americans report that they feel unsafe at some point every single day, more than 75 percent of younger Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four note that they feel nervous about their safety on a daily basis. That means that only 25 percent of young adults feel safe as they move about their lives. Fifty percent of us won’t use a rideshare service because we feel it’s dangerous. We don’t trust others and we don’t even feel safe in our own homes. Forty-two percent of us, when home alone, feel unprotected— myself included. 193 I would argue that September 11 was a significant event that shaped our sense of security in the world for Millennials and Generation Z, just as the COVID-19 crisis will likely shape Generation Alpha. On a fateful fall day, what began as a seemingly normal Tuesday morning turned into one of the most epic tragedies of our time. We witnessed a massive amount of death and destruction on our television screens while we ate our Cheerios. It changed everything. All of a sudden, nowhere felt safe anymore.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I asked. ‘Past Sam Collins’s, on Upper Street. Not so far as the post office. A little doorway on the left-hand side, somewhere between a public-house and a tailor’s ...’ This was all he could recall; I thought it might be enough. I thanked him, and he smiled. ‘What a lovely black eye,’ he said again, but to his daughter this time. ‘Just like the song - ain’t it, Betty?’ By now I felt as if I had been on my feet for a month. I suspected that my boots had worn their way right through my stockings, and had started on the bare flesh of my toes and heels and ankles. But I did not stop at another bench, and untie my laces, in order to find out. The wind had picked up a little and, though it was only two o’clock or so, the sky was grey as lead. I wasn’t sure what time the charity offices might close; I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to find them; I didn’t know if Florence would even be there, when I did. So I walked rather quickly up Pentonville Hill, and let my feet be rubbed to puddings, and tried to plan what I would say to her when I found her. This, however, proved difficult. After all, she was a girl I hardly knew; worse - I could not help but recall this, now - I had once arranged to meet her, then let her down. Would she, even, remember me at all? In that gloomy Green Street passageway I had been certain that she would. But with every burning step, I grew less sure of it. It did not, as it turned out, take me very long to find the right office. The man’s memory was a good one, and Upper Street itself seemed wonderfully unchanged since his last visit there: the public-house and the tailor’s were quite as he had described them, close together on the left-hand side of the street, just past the music hall. In between them were three or four doors, leading to the rooms and offices above; and upon one of these was screwed a little enamel plaque, which said: Ponsonby’s Model Dwelling Houses. Directress Miss J. A. D. Derby - I remembered this very well now as the name of the lady with the mandolin. Beneath the plaque was a hand-written, rain-spattered note with an arrow pointing to a bell-pull at the side of the door. Please Ring, it said, and Enter. So, with some trepidation, I did both. The passageway behind the door was very long and very gloomy. It led to a window, which looked out at a view of bricks and oozing drain-pipes; and from here there was only one way to proceed, and that was upwards, via a set of naked stairs.