Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Often, any stimulus will activate the frozen (trauma) response rather than the appropriate orienting response (i.e., upon hearing a car backfire, a traumatized vet may collapse in fear). Orienting responses are the primary means through which the animal tunes into its environment. These responses are constantly merging into one another and adapting to allow for a range of reactions and choices. The process of determining where it is, what it is, and whether it is dangerous or desirable happens first in the subconscious. A friend recently told me a story that vividly illustrates this animal instinct in action. On a trip through Africa, Anita, her husband, and their three- year-old son went on a safari in Kenya. They were traveling through the Masai Mara desert in a van and had stopped to rest. She and her husband sat opposite one another in the car; their three-year-old son sat in her husband’s lap next to an open window. They were talking about some of the animals they had seen when my friend suddenly found her body hurling across the van to slam the window shut for no apparent reason. Then she sa w - that is, became consciously aware of the snake rising out of the grass outside the van, a few feet from her son’s face. The mother’s response preceded her conscious awareness of the snake. A delay could have had deadly consequences. The instinctive brain will often orient, organize, and respond to the stimuli well before we are consciously aware of them. Flee, Figh t... or Freeze As Grant watched, a single forearm reached up very slowly to part the ferns beside the animals face. The limb, Grant saw, was strongly muscled. The hand had three grasping fingers, each ending in curved claws. The hand gently, slowly, pushed aside the ferns. Grant felt a chill and thought, He’s hunting us. For a mammal like man, there is something indescribably alien about the way reptiles hunted their prey. No wonder men hated reptiles. The stillness, the coolness, the pace was all wrong. To be among alligators or the larger reptiles was to be remind- ed of a different kind of life, a different kind of worl d ... — Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park Certain species have developed mechanisms that are especially well suited to keeping them safe. To avoid detection and attack the zebra uses camouflage; the turtle hides; moles burrow; dogs, wolves, and coyotes roll over in a submissive posture. The behaviors of fighting, fleeing, and freezing are so primitive that they predate even the reptilian brain. These survival tools are found in all species, from spiders and cockroaches to primates and human beings. Universal and primitive defensive behaviors are called the “fight or flight” strategies. If the situation calls for aggression, a threatened creature will fight. If the threatened animal is likely to lose the fight, it will run if it can.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Sammy has been spending the weekend with his grandmother and step-grandfather, where I am their guest. Sammy is being an impossible tyrant, aggressively and relentlessly trying to control his new environment. Nothing pleases him; he is in a foul temper every waking moment. When he is asleep, he tosses and turns as if wrestling with his bedclothes. This is not behavior entirely unexpected from a two-and-a-half-year-old whose parents have gone away for the weeken d- children with separation anxiety often act it out. Sammy, however, has always enjoyed visiting his grandparents and this behavior seems extreme to them. His grandparents stated that six months earlier, Sammy fell off his high chair and split his chin open. Bleeding profusely, he was taken to the local emergency room. When the nurse came to take his temperature and blood pressure, he was so frightened that she was unable to record his vital signs. The two-year-old-child was subsequently strapped down in a “pediatric papoose” (a board with flaps and Velcro straps), with his torso and legs immobilized. The only part of his body he could move was his head and nec k which, naturally, he did, as energetically as he could. The doctors responded by tightening the restraint in order to suture his chin. After this upsetting experience, Mom and Dad took Sammy out for a hamburger and then to the playground. His mother was very attentive and carefully validated his experience of being scared and hurt, and all seemed forgotten. However, the boy’s tyrannical attitude began shortly after this event. Could Sammy’s over-controlling behavior be related to his perceived helplessness from this trauma? I discovered that Sammy had been to the emergency room several times with various injuries, though he had never exhibited this degree of terror and panic. When the parents returned, we agreed to explore whether there might be a traumatic charge still associated with this recent experience. We all assembled in the cabin where I was staying. Sammy wouldn’t have anything to do with talking about the fall or the hospital experience. With parents, grandparents, and Sammy watching, I precariously placed his stuffed Pooh Bear on a chair, where it fell off and had to be taken to the hospital. Sammy shrieked, bolted for the door, and ran across a foot bridge and down a narrow path to the creek. Our suspicions were confirmed. His most recent visit to the hospital was neither benign nor forgotten. Sammy’s behavior indicated that this game was potentially overwhelming for him.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘You will then go to Rinuccio Palermini and say to him: “Madonna Francesca says she is ready to grant your every wish, provided you do her a great favour, namely that just before midnight tonight you go to the tomb where Scannadio was buried this morning, and without saying a word about anything you may see or hear, fetch his body gently forth and take it to her house. There you will discover why she wants you to do her this service, and you will have all you desire of her. But if you should refuse to do it, she charges you here and now never to send her any further messages or entreaties” The maidservant called on each of the men in turn and delivered the two messages exactly as instructed, in each case receiving the same answer, namely that they would venture into Hell itself, let alone a tomb, if she wanted them to do so. So the maid conveyed this answer to her mistress, who waited to see whether they were mad enough to carry out her request. After dark, having waited until most people were asleep, Alessandro Chiarmontesi stripped down to his doublet and set forth from his house in order to take Scannadio’s place in the tomb. But as he was on his way to the graveyard, he began to feel very frightened, and to say to himself: ‘Why should I be such a fool? Where do I think I’m going? For all I know, her kinsfolk may have discovered I’m in love with her. Perhaps they think I’ve seduced her, and have forced her into this so that they can murder me inside the tomb. If that’s the case, I shan’t stand a dog’s chance, nobody will be any the wiser, and they’ll escape scot free. Or possibly, for all I know, it’s a trap prepared for me by some enemy of mine, who persuaded her to do him this favour because she’s in love with him.’ But then he thought: ‘Let’s suppose that neither of these things will happen, and her kinsfolk really do have to take me to her house. It’s hardly likely they would want Scannadio’s body in order to embrace it or put it to bed with the lady. On the contrary, one can only conclude that they want to wreak vengeance upon it in return for some wrong he has done them. She tells me not to make a sound, no matter what may happen; but what if they were to gouge my eyes out, or wrench out my teeth, or cut off my hands, or do me some other piece of mischief, where would I be then? How could I keep quiet? And yet if I open my mouth, they will recognize me and possibly give me a sound hiding. But even if they don’t, I shall have achieved precisely nothing, because they won’t leave me with the lady in any case.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Intellectually, we may believe in an operation, but on a primal level, our bodies do not. Where trauma is concerned, the perception of the instinctual nervous system carries more weigh t much more. This biological fact is a primary reason why surgery will often produce a post-traumatic reaction. In an “ordinary” story from the July, 1993 edition of Reader’s Digest entitled “Everything is not Okay,” a father describes his son Robbie’s “minor” knee surgery: The doctor tells me that everything is okay. The knee is fine, but everything is not okay for the boy waking up in a drug-induced nightmare, thrashing around on his hospital be d — a sweet boy who never hurt anybody, staring out from his anesthetic haze with the eyes of a wild animal, striking the nurse, screaming “Am I alive?” and forcing me to grab his arm s ... staring right into my eyes and not knowing who I am. The boy is taken home, but his fear continues. He awakes fitfully...”only to try to vomit and I [the father] go crazy trying to be useful, so I do what you do in the suburban United State s — buy your kid a toy so that you’ll feel better.” Millions of parents are left feeling helpless, unable to understand the dramatic (or subtle) changes in their children’s behavior following a wide range of traumatic events. In Section Four we will discuss how to prevent these reactions from occurring, both in adults and children. In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality. — Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 5. Healing and Community Shamanic Approaches to Healing Throughout recorded and oral history, it has been the task of the shaman, or tribal healer, to help restore balance and health in individuals and communities where it has been disrupted. In contrast to Western medicine, which has taken its time in recognizing the debilitating impacts of trauma, shamanistic cultures have acknowledged such wounds for a very long time. Shamanistic cultures view illness and trauma as a problem for the entire community, not just for the individual or individuals who manifest the symptoms. Consequently, people in these societies seek healing as much for the good of the whole as for themselves.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Hence, re- enactment rarely accomplishes its intended task. It is to our detriment that we live in a culture that does not honor the internal world. In many cultures, the internal world of dreams, feelings, images, and sensations is sacred. Yet, most of us are only peripherally aware of its existence. We have little or no experience of finding our way around in this internal landscape. Consequently, when our experience demands it, we are unprepared. Rather than negotiating it skillfully, if we attempt it at all, we are more likely to re-enact it. With patience and attention, however, the patterns that drive traumatic re-enactment can be dismantled so that we again access the infinite, feeling tones and behavioral responses that we are capable of executing. Once we understand how trauma begins and develops, we must then learn to know ourselves through the felt sense. All the information that we need to begin renegotiating trauma is available to us. Our bodies (instincts) will tell us where the blockages are and when we are moving too fast. Our intellects can tell us how to regulate the experience so that we are not overwhelmed. When these brain functions work as one, we can establish a special relationship between the mainstream for our internal experience and the turmoil of trauma. Moving slowly and allowing the experience to unfold at each step allows us to digest the unassimilated aspects of the traumatic experience at a rate that we are able to tolerate. In the theater of the body, trauma can be transformed. The fragmented elements that perpetuate traumatic emotion and behavior can be completed, integrated, and made whole again. Along with this wholeness comes a sense of mastery and resolution. Postscript: How Far in Time and Space? No discussion of re-enactment would be complete without at least an acknowledgment of one intriguing aspect of traumatic repetition that defies explanation. Specifically, I am referring to re-enactments of traumatic events that can be tracked back through several generations of a family’s history. In a training class, I was recently asked to see a young woman, “Kelly,” who had been in the Sioux City airplane disaster (upon which the movie Fearless was based). The flight, en route from Denver to Chicago, lost an engine in an explosive blast. The plane tilted and plummeted downward at an angle so steep that a tailspin seemed unavoidable. Remarkably, the pilot, Al Haynes, kept the plane from going into a tailspin and was able to make an emergency landing. Upon impact, the plane split apart. Pieces of the burning fuselage were strewn into the surrounding cornfields. This dramatic event was recorded by one of the decade’s most famous amateur videographers. Kelly had escaped being trapped in a crushed section of the aircraft by crawling through a twisted maze of metal and wires toward a spot of light.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  I pushed through the crowd and collapsed on top of Joey’s still body. The car had dragged his body several feet before it stopped. His body was scratched and bloody, his clothes were torn, and he was so still. Feeling panic-stricken and helpless, I frantically tried to piece him back together. I tried to wipe away the blood, but only succeeded in spreading it. I tried to pat his torn clothes back into place. I kept thinking, “No, this isn’t happening. Breathe, Joey, breathe.” As though my life force could infuse life into his still body, I kept collapsing on top of him, pressing my heart against his. A numbness began to creep over me as I felt myself pulling away from the scene. I was just going through the motions now. I couldn’t feel anymore. People who have experienced trauma of this magnitude really know what it is, and their responses to it are basic and primitive. With this unfortunate woman the symptoms were brutally clear and compelling. For many of us, however, the symptoms are more subtle. We can learn to identify a traumatic experience by exploring our own reactions. It has a feel that is unmistakable once it is identified. Lets look at an event that is clearly outside the range of ordinary experience. Chowchilla, California On a sweltering summer day in 1976, twenty-six children ranging in age from five to fifteen years were kidnapped from their school bus outside a small California town. They were shoved into two dark vans, driven to an abandoned quarry, and then imprisoned in an underground vault for approximately thirty hours. They escaped, and were immediately taken to a local hospital. There, they received treatment for physical injuries, but were returned home without even cursory psychological examinations. As far as the two hospital physicians could tell, the children were “all right.” The doctors simply did not recognize that anything was wrong or that the children’s progress would need to be closely monitored. A few days later a local psychiatrist was asked to address the Chowchilla parents. He stated emphatically that there might be a psychological problem in only one of the twenty-six children. He was expressing the standard psychiatric belief at that time. Eight months after the event, another psychiatrist, Lenore Terr, began one of the first scientific follow-up studies of children who had been traumatized. The study included these children. Rather than one in the twenty-six children showing aftereffects, Terr found the reverse to be tru e nearly all of the children showed severe long-term effects on their psychological, medical, and social functioning. For many of these children the nightmare had just begun. They experienced recurring nightmares, violent tendencies, and impaired ability to function normally in personal and social relations.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Unfortunately, humans often do not completely discharge the vast energies mobilized to protect themselves. Thus, when they enter the second phase, they are reviewing the event, but remain in a highly aroused state. This heightened energy level will not allow the “playful” reviewing to occur. Instead, they may experience often terrifying and compulsive flashbacks that are akin to reliving the event. In Chapter Sixteen, Scenario of Healing from an Accident, the most common response to incomplete discharge is addressed. A majority of people attempt to control their undischarged survival energy by internalizing it. Although this approach is more socially acceptable, it is no less violent than “acting out.” It is also no more effective in dealing with the highly charged activation. It is important for us to understand that the strategy of internalizing instinctive defensive procedures is a form of re-enactmen t- perhaps- it could be called “acting in.” To commit violence on oneself is the method preferred by our culture for several reasons. Obviously, it is easier to maintain a social structure that appears to be in control of itself. However, I think there is another, more compelling reaso n- by internalizing our natural propensity to resolve life-threatening events, we are denying that the need even exist s- it remains hidden. One of the positive aspects in the recent escalation of violent “acting out” is that it is forcing us to face the fact that post traumatic stress, whether it manifests as “acting in” or “acting out,” is a major health issue. Let’s look at an “acted out” scenario: While driving, you see a car coming directly toward you. Your body tenses instantly, then freezes as you feel panic. You brace yourself, feeling resigned to the unavoidable impact. You feel that you have lost control…then, at the last micro-second, you fight off the panic, and swerve out of the path of the oncoming car. As you pass by, you notice that the car is a Mercury Cougar. You pull over to the curb, and stop the car. Your heart is pounding wildly, and you are gasping for breath. As you try to regain control, you have a fleeting moment of “adrenaline rush,” followed by the intense sensation of high arousal. You are frightened by this energy, and feel yourself becoming angry. The anger helps. You focus your rage on the idiot that almost got you killed. Heart and mind still racing, you notice your ice-cold hands are still glued to the steering wheel. You imagine strangling the idiot with all your might. Still wound up, images of the event begin to flash before your eyes. (the second phase begins, but you are still highly charged). The panicky feeling returns, and your heart beats rapidly. You are losing control, and you feel the anger return. Anger has become your frien d- it helps you maintain some semblance of control.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  I’d expected that Anaïs would show me how to die gracefully, with acceptance and wisdom, as she had shown me how to live. Instead, she seemed to be disintegrating like Dorian Gray from an ever-youthful beauty into a terrifying specter. Her ghastly physical decay was accompanied by a psychological deterioration that made me think Freud had been right about Oedipal guilt. What else could her hallucination of her father’s wedding ring mean other than guilt for replacing her mother in his bed? What could her delusion of wearing her father’s ring and reaching, like Faust in the end, for the sacraments mean except that she believed her demon father had come to claim her, as Beelzebub had come for Faust? I was hyperventilating with fear of being swept into the vortex of her damnation. Stop it! I admonished myself. I was doing what I always did, interpreting my experience through some literary reference instead of knowing it directly. I was exaggerating and distancing my feelings as Anaïs had said I did in my diary. I no longer wanted to know myself secondhand. I wanted to know myself directly from my immediate experience and from within. So I asked myself one of the questions I’d been writing in my diary: What is the reality of this present moment? The reality was that Anaïs’s body and mind were being consumed by cancer and that there was nothing that she or I or anyone could do about it and that in itself was terrifying. She wasn’t Dorian Gray, or Faust, or Oedipus. She was Anaïs, frightened and dying (though perhaps not as quickly as I’d imagined), and she needed my comfort as her friend. When Rupert finally returned and brought me again to her bedside, he positioned a chair for me next to her. In addition to having been cleaned up, her sunken cheeks had been rouged. Fortunately, she seemed to have forgotten my woeful faux pas of mentioning Extreme Unction, as well as her delusion of wearing her father’s ring. “Oh, Tristine! I have to tell you!” she chirped. “Last night I dreamt that Rupert and I were making love in the pool, and this morning I told him my dream. You know, before we met Rupert couldn’t recall his dreams, but now we tell them to each other every morning. When I told him the lovemaking dream, he said, ‘Oh, but Anaïs, that was no dream!’” I smiled as if this were a new, delightful story—even though I’d heard it from both Anaïs and Rupert several times before. Nonetheless, it was the confirmation of the credo she wanted to leave me with: Life sets traps for you, and it is your job to escape, even if only by way of the dream.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But they had scarcely set foot inside the bedroom before Zeppa returned home, and as soon as the woman heard him coming, she pretended to be frightened out of her senses and, having persuaded Spinelloccio to take cover in the chest to which her husband had referred, she locked him inside it and left the room. Zeppa came upstairs and asked her whether it was time for breakfast, and on being told that it was, he said: ‘Spinelloccio is taking breakfast with a friend of his this morning, and he’s left his wife all alone in the house. Go and call out to her from the window, and tell her to come and have breakfast with us.’ Still feeling apprehensive on her own account, the woman was only too ready to obey him, and promptly did as she was told. And so, after a good deal of coaxing, Spinelloccio’s wife, hearing that her husband would not be returning home for breakfast, was persuaded by Zeppa’s wife to come and join them. As soon as she set foot inside the house, Zeppa made a great fuss of her and took her tenderly by the hand. Then, having ordered his wife, in a low whisper, to go along to the kitchen, he led the other woman off into the bedroom, and no sooner had they crossed the threshold than he turned round and locked the door on the inside. When she saw him locking the door, the woman said: ‘Come now, Zeppa, what is the meaning of this? Was this, then, your reason for inviting me here? I thought you loved Spinelloccio as a brother, I thought you were his loyal friend.’ Holding her firmly round the waist, Zeppa guided her closer to the chest in which her husband was confined, and said to her: ‘Before you go complaining, my dear, listen to what I have to say to you. I loved Spinelloccio as a brother, and I still do, but yesterday I discovered, without his knowing it, that my trust in him had come to this, that he makes love just as freely to my wife as he does to you. Now, because I love him, the only revenge I propose to take is one that exactly matches the offence. He has possessed my wife, and I intend to possess you.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Extreme imbalance will be reflected in changed patterns of sleep, activity, aggression, eating, and sexuality. Laboratory experiments show that some animals become completely immobile, or alternatively, excessively hyperactive. They may over-or undereat to the point of death, or they will not voluntarily drink water. They may become so obsessed with sex that they are unable to attend to their other needs, or the opposite, so disinterested in sex that they will not mate and reproduce. The changes that occur are so grossly maladaptive that the animal cannot survive under ordinary conditions. These kinds of maladaptions can also be produced by electrically stimulating primitive portions of the brain. They are produced as well (though not necessarily to the same degree) by post-traumatic stress. Regarding trauma, pathology can be thought of as the maladaptive use of any activity (physiological, behavioral, emotional, or mental) designed to help the nervous system regulate its activated energy. Pathology (i.e., symptoms) becomes, in a sense, the organism’s safety valve. This valve lets off just enough pressure to keep the system running. In addition to its survival function and pain-killing effect, the immobility response is also a key part of the nervous system’s circuit breaker. Without it, a human might not survive the intense activation of a serious inescapable situation without risking energetic overload. Indeed, even the symptoms that develop out of the freezing response can be viewed with a sense of appreciation and even gratitude if you consider what might happen if the system did not have this safety valve. In pathology, the organism will enlist the felt sense to experience any thought, feeling, or behavior that it can use in its effort to contain the undischarged energy mobilized for survival. The functions (such as eating, sleeping, sex, and general activity) regulated by the reptilian brain make a broad and fertile place for symptoms to take root. Anorexia, insomnia, promiscuity, and manic hyperactivity are only a few of the symptoms that can ensue when the organism’s natural functions become maladaptive. ... energy is pure delight. — William Blake 9. How Pathology Becomes Biology: Thawing The volcanic energy of trauma discussed in Chapter Eight is bound in the coupling of fear and immobility. The key to moving through trauma is in uncoupling the immobility (which is normally time-limited) from the fear associated with it. When a frightened animal comes out of immobility, it does so with an intense readiness for counter-attack, or in a frantic, non-directed attempt to escape. For the sake of survival, all the energy that was being utilized in desperate fight or flight (before it collapsed or froze) re-emerges explosively as the animal comes out of immobility.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Internal resources. Internally, a person’s experienced sense of self is affected by a complex array of resources. These resources include psychological attitudes and experience, but even more important are the instinctual responses known as innate action plans that are deeply embedded in the organism. All animals, including humans, use these instinctive solutions to improve their chances of survival. They are like the preset programs that govern all of our basic biological responses (e.g., eating, resting, reproducing, and defending). In a healthy person, the nervous system brings these innate defense action plans to the fore whenever a threat is perceived. For example: your arm suddenly raises to protect you from a (consciously) unnoticed ball thrown in your direction; or, when you duck a fraction of a second before you walk into a low-hanging branch. Innate action plans also involve the fight and flight reactions. In a more complex example, I was told the following story by a woman: she is walking home in the dark when she sees two men coming toward her on the opposite side of the street. Something about their demeanor doesn’t feel right, and the woman becomes immediately alert. As they come closer, the two men split up, one angles toward her across the street, the other circles around behind her. What was suspicion before is now confirme d— she is in danger. Her heart rate increases, she feels suddenly more alert, and her mind searches wildly for an optimal response. Should she scream? Should she run? Where should she run to? What should she scream? Choices tumble through her mind at a frenetic rate. She has too many options to choose from and not enough time to consider them. Dramatically, instinct takes over. Without consciously deciding what to do, she suddenly finds herself moving with firm, quick steps straight toward the man angling across the street. Visibly startled by her boldness, the man veers off in another direction. The man behind her melts into the shadows as the man in front of her loses his strategic position. They are confused. She is safe. Thanks to her ability to trust her instinctual flow, this woman was not traumatized. Despite her initial confusion about what to do, she followed one of her innate defense action plans and successfully avoided the attack. A similar behavior was reported of Misha, a two-year-old Siberian Husky described in Elizabeth Thomas’ delightful book, The Hidden Life of Dogs. On one of his evening jaunts, Misha encountered a large, fierce Saint Bernard and was trapped between it and the highway: “…for a few seconds things looked bad for Misha, but then he solved the problem brilliantly. Head up, tail loosely high like a banner of self-confidence, he broke into a canter and bounded straight for the Saint Bernard.” For both the woman on the dark street and for Misha, successful resolutions to their problems emerged from instinctual action plans.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But small Colonel Antrim, who was not always kind, would retort if he heard them: ‘Damn it, no, it’s the riding. The girl rides, that’s the point; as for some of you others—’ And then he would let loose a flood of foul language. ‘If some bloody fools that I know rode like Stephen, we’d have bloody well less to pay to the farmers,’ and much more he would say to the same effect, with rich oaths interlarding his every sentence—the foulest-mouthed master in the whole British Isles he was said to be, this small Colonel Antrim. Oh, but he dearly loved a fine rider, and he cursed and he swore his appreciation. Even in the presence of a sporting bishop one day, he had failed to control his language; indeed, he had sworn in the face of the bishop with enthusiasm, as he pointed to Stephen. An ineffectual and hen-pecked little fellow—in his home he was hardly allowed to say ‘damn.’ He was never permitted to smoke a cigar outside of his dark, inhospitable study. He must not breed Norwich canaries, which he loved, because they brought mice, declared Mrs. Antrim; he must not keep a pet dog in the house, and the ‘Pink ’Un’ was anathema because of Violet. His taste in art was heavily censored, even on the walls of his own water-closet, where nothing might hang but a family group taken sixteen odd years ago with the children. On Sundays he sat in an uncomfortable pew while his wife chanted psalms in the voice of a peacock. ‘Oh come, let us sing unto the Lord,’ she would chant, as she heartily rejoiced in the strength of her salvation. All this and a great deal more he endured, indeed most of his life was passed in endurance—had it not been for those red-letter days out hunting, he might well have become melancholic from boredom. But those days, when he actually found himself master, went far to restore his anæmic manhood, and on them he would speak the good English language as some deep-seated complex knew it ought to be spoken—ruddily, roundly, explosively spoken, with elation, at times with total abandon—especially if he should chance to remember Mrs. Antrim would he speak it with total abandon. But his oaths could not save Stephen now from her neighbours, nothing could do that since the going of Martin—for quite unknown to themselves they feared her; it was fear that aroused their antagonism. In her they instinctively sensed an outlaw, and theirs was the task of policing nature.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  From the house they made their way to the stables, and still grave, Stephen told her friend about Raftery. Angela listened, assuming an interest she was very far from feeling—she was timid of horses, but she liked to hear the girl’s rather gruff voice, such an earnest young voice, it intrigued her. She was thoroughly frightened when Raftery sniffed her and then blew through his nostrils as though disapproving, and she started back with a sharp exclamation, so that Stephen slapped him on his glossy grey shoulder: ‘Stop it, Raftery, come up!’ And Raftery, disgusted, went and blew on his oats to express his hurt feelings. They left him and wandered away through the gardens, and quite soon poor Raftery was almost forgotten, for the gardens smelt softly of night-scented stock and of other pale flowers that smell sweetest at evening, and Stephen was thinking that Angela Crossby resembled such flowers—very fragrant and pale she was, so Stephen said to her gently: ‘You seem to belong to Morton.’ Angela smiled a slow, questioning smile: ‘You think so, Stephen?’ And Stephen answered: ‘I do, because Morton and I are one,’ and she scarcely understood the portent of her words, but Angela, understanding, spoke quickly: ‘Oh, I belong nowhere—you forget I’m the stranger.’ ‘I know that you’re you,’ said Stephen. They walked on in silence while the light changed and deepened, growing always more golden and yet more elusive. And the birds, who loved that strange light, sang singly and then all together: ‘We’re happy, Stephen!’ And turning to Angela, Stephen answered the birds: ‘Your being here makes me so happy.’ ‘If that’s true, then why are you so shy of my name?’ ‘Angela—’ mumbled Stephen. Then Angela said: ‘It’s just over three weeks since we met—how quickly our friendship’s happened. I suppose it was meant, I believe in Kismet. You were awfully scared that first day at The Grange; why were you so scared?’ Stephen answered slowly: ‘I’m frightened now—I’m frightened of you.’ ‘Yet you’re stronger than I am—’ ‘Yes, that’s why I’m so frightened, you make me feel strong—do you want to do that?’ ‘Well—perhaps—you’re so very unusual, Stephen.’ ‘Am I?’ ‘Of course, don’t you know that you are? Why, you’re altogether different from other people.’ Stephen trembled a little: ‘Do you mind?’ she faltered. ‘I know that you’re you,’ teased Angela, smiling again, but she reached out and took Stephen’s hand. Something in the queer, vital strength of that hand stirred her deeply, so that she tightened her fingers: ‘What in the Lord’s name are you?’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know. Go on holding like that to my hand—hold it tighter—I like the feel of your fingers.’ ‘Stephen, don’t be absurd!’ ‘Go on holding my hand, I like the feel of your fingers.’ ‘Stephen, you’re hurting, you’re crushing my rings!’

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Pushing herself up on her bleeding palm, she tightened her bathrobe and trudged up the narrow sidewalk of the dimly lit street. On either side were cottages and run-down apartment buildings with window grates that cast threatening shadows onto the small yards. The street was unfamiliar now, but in her bathrobe she could hardly ask directions to the motel. She heard her own crazy laugh. She was inside her own horror film. Sabina would have swept her cape around her, glad to be rid of Rupert’s homespun earnestness. But where was Sabina’s bravado now when she needed it? Lost to her, disappeared, leaving a helpless, terrified child. Trying to control her rising panic, Anaïs ran up the rest of the street and saw the motel. She would phone Hugo; she needed to speak to Hugo. When she discovered that the motel had no phone, she dressed hastily, found a phone booth on Sunset Boulevard, and dialed Hugo. The unanswered ring intensified to a shriek. Hugo should have been there at that hour. The last two times they had spoken, he’d cut the phone call short, and she’d heard the anger in his voice. He must have learned that she had lied to him about the trip. Hugo was done with her too. She remembered the sleeping pills in her suitcase. She had brought them to help her fall asleep while on the road, but lovemaking with Rupert had made them unnecessary. In the motel room, her hand trembling, she emptied the bottle onto the scarred desk. She counted twenty-seven capsules. Enough to silence the piercing shriek cutting through her veins, bleeding into her muscles and nerves. She’d believed she would not relapse with Rupert because he was younger, because he was not the father image. But she had fallen in love with him, and he had walked out on her. It was enough to set off the cruel mechanism. She found a chipped drinking glass and filled it from the bathroom faucet. She felt a cold detachment because she had enough pills to end the shriek and the door banging, banging. She could barely hear the gentle voice beneath the cacophony. Take three pills, Anaïs. Just three. Try to rest until morning. Wait until daylight. She recognized the voice as that of Djuna. She followed its wise instruction like a child who has cried herself into a daze, though she tossed and turned and her blood howled all night. She gave up hoping for sleep at 6 a.m., showered, and carefully made up her stricken face, on which fine lines had spun overnight. Whatever happens, whatever Rupert says, she promised herself, I will not lose control again.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Andreuccio, hearing this, raised his eyes and saw at the window one who, by what little he could make out, himseemed should be a very masterful fellow, with a bushy black beard on his face, and who yawned and rubbed his eyes, as he had arisen from bed or deep sleep; whereupon, not without fear, he answered, 'I am a brother of the lady of the house.' The other waited not for him to make an end of his reply, but said, more fiercely than before, 'I know not what hindereth me from coming down and cudgelling thee what while I see thee stir, for a pestilent drunken ass as thou must be, who will not let us sleep this night.' Then, drawing back into the house, he shut the window; whereupon certain of the neighbours, who were better acquainted with the fellow's quality, said softly to Andreuccio, 'For God's sake, good man, begone in peace and abide not there to-night to be slain; get thee gone for thine own good.' Andreuccio, terrified at the fellow's voice and aspect and moved by the exhortations of the neighbours, who seemed to him to speak out of charity, set out to return to his inn, in the direction of the quarter whence he had followed the maid, without knowing whither to go, despairing of his money and woebegone as ever man was. Being loathsome to himself, for the stench that came from him, and thinking to repair to the sea to wash himself, he turned to the left and followed a street called Ruga Catalana,[101] that led towards the upper part of the city. Presently, he espied two men coming towards him with a lantern and fearing they might be officers of the watch or other ill-disposed folk, he stealthily took refuge, to avoid them, in a hovel, that he saw hard by. But they, as of malice aforethought, made straight for the same place and entering in, began to examine certain irons which one of them laid from off his shoulder, discoursing various things thereof the while. [Footnote 101: _i.e._ Catalan Street.]

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  If, in contrast, the body/mind succeeds in locating the source of its distress (as in the example of Nancy in Chapter Two), the primitive need to identify some source of danger is satisfied. A natural, successful defensive response will then arise to complete the experience. For many of us, this is a giant step toward healing trauma. Typically, however, we use our cognitive abilities to push the matter further – to figure it out and give it a name (or remember it). In so doing we separate ourselves even further from the experience. In that separateness, the seeds of trauma have fertile ground in which to root and grow. The animal that is unable to locate a source of arousal will freeze rather than flee. When the freezing response begins to override Mrs. Thayer’s extreme im-pulse to flee, she rationalizes (using her neo-cortex) that she will die if she tries to escape the house. She is not only without explanation for her extreme physiological arousal, but she also sets up her own dilemma by convincing herself that if she escapes she will die. Mrs. Thayer then enters into a tight, self- made web of fear-induced immobility. Like the Chowchilla children (Chapter Two), Mrs. Thayer is more afraid to escape than to remain trapped. Her neo-cortex tries in vain to explain, while her reptilian brain compels her to act. In the clutch of her terror and self-defeating confusion, Mrs. Thayer will finally focus on her frantic breathing to the exclusion of all else. When she finally suspends her need to understand, she allows her reptilian brain to complete its course of actio n — that of discharging the extraordinary level of energy that has built up inside of her. We are not told why the energy is there. Perhaps even Mrs Thayer does not consciously know. Fortunately for her (and for us), it does not matter. By focusing on the felt sense of her own breath, Mrs Thayer discharges the energy that was the source of her panic attack. Can’t Synthesize New Informatio n/ Can’t Learn An inherent quality of hypervigilance is the absence of the normal orienting responses (Chapter Seven). This has serious ramifications for traumatized people. Primarily, it will impair our overall ability to function effectively in any situation, not just those that require active defense. Part of the function of the orienting response is to identify new information as we become aware of it. If this function is impaired, any amount of new information leads to confusion and overload. Instead of being assimilated and available for future use, new information tends to stack up. It becomes disorganized and unusable. Important pieces of data are misplaced or forgotten. The mind then becomes unable to organize details in a way that makes sense. Rather than retain information that does not make sense, the mind “forgets” it.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Unfortunately, humans often do not completely discharge the vast energies mobilized to protect themselves. Thus, when they enter the second phase, they are reviewing the event, but remain in a highly aroused state. This heightened energy level will not allow the “playful” reviewing to occur. Instead, they may experience often terrifying and compulsive flashbacks that are akin to reliving the event. In Chapter Sixteen, Scenario of Healing from an Accident, the most common response to incomplete discharge is addressed. A majority of people attempt to control their undischarged survival energy by internalizing it. Although this approach is more socially acceptable, it is no less violent than “acting out.” It is also no more effective in dealing with the highly charged activation. It is important for us to understand that the strategy of internalizing instinctive defensive procedures is a form of re-enactmen t- perhaps- it could be called “acting in.” To commit violence on oneself is the method preferred by our culture for several reasons. Obviously, it is easier to maintain a social structure that appears to be in control of itself. However, I think there is another, more compelling reaso n- by internalizing our natural propensity to resolve life-threatening events, we are denying that the need even exist s- it remains hidden. One of the positive aspects in the recent escalation of violent “acting out” is that it is forcing us to face the fact that post traumatic stress, whether it manifests as “acting in” or “acting out,” is a major health issue. Let’s look at an “acted out” scenario: While driving, you see a car coming directly toward you. Your body tenses instantly, then freezes as you feel panic. You brace yourself, feeling resigned to the unavoidable impact. You feel that you have lost control…then, at the last micro-second, you fight off the panic, and swerve out of the path of the oncoming car. As you pass by, you notice that the car is a Mercury Cougar. You pull over to the curb, and stop the car. Your heart is pounding wildly, and you are gasping for breath. As you try to regain control, you have a fleeting moment of “adrenaline rush,” followed by the intense sensation of high arousal. You are frightened by this energy, and feel yourself becoming angry. The anger helps. You focus your rage on the idiot that almost got you killed. Heart and mind still racing, you notice your ice-cold hands are still glued to the steering wheel. You imagine strangling the idiot with all your might. Still wound up, images of the event begin to flash before your eyes. (the second phase begins, but you are still highly charged). The panicky feeling returns, and your heart beats rapidly. You are losing control, and you feel the anger return. Anger has become your frien d- it helps you maintain some semblance of control.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Finally, however, with the approach of evening, the scholar, feeling he had done enough, sent for her clothes and wrapped them in his servant’s cloak, after which he made his way to the hapless lady’s house, where he found her maid sitting sadly and forlornly on the doorstep, not knowing what she should do. ‘My good woman,’ he said, ‘tell me, what has become of your mistress?’ ‘Sir,’ replied the maidservant, ‘I cannot rightly say. I was convinced that I saw her going to bed last night, and thought I should find her there this morning. But she was nowhere to be seen, and I have no idea what has become of her. I am dreadfully worried about her, but perhaps you, sir, have brought me some news of her whereabouts?’ ‘Would to God,’ replied the scholar, ‘that I had been able to put you in the place where I have put your mistress, so that I could punish you for your sins as I have punished your mistress for hers! But I assure you that you shan’t escape from my clutches until I have paid you back with so much interest that you’ll never make a fool of any man again without remembering me first.’ Then, turning to his servant, he said: ‘Give her these clothes and tell her to go and fetch her, if she wants to.’ The servant did as he was bidden, and the maid, having seized the clothes from his hands, and recognized them, turned pale with terror, strongly suspecting, in view of what she had been told, that they had murdered her. Scarcely able to prevent herself from screaming, she burst into tears, and, the scholar having now departed, she immediately set off at a run towards the tower, with the clothes under her arm. That same afternoon, a swineherd from the lady’s estate had had the misfortune to lose two of his pigs, and, searching all over for them, he arrived at the tower shortly after the scholar had left. Peering into every nook and cranny to see whether his pigs were anywhere to be found, he heard the unfortunate lady’s despairing moans, and climbing as far up the tower as he could, he called out: ‘Who is it that is crying up there?’ Recognizing the swineherd’s voice, the lady called to him by name, and said: ‘Alas! go fetch my maid and tell her to come up here.’ ‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed, seeing who it was. ‘How ever did you get up there, ma’am? Your maid has been searching high and low for you the whole day. But who would have thought of looking for you here?’ Seizing the ladder by the two uprights, he set it in the proper position and began to tie on the rungs by means of withies.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Since the nervous system only recognizes that the threat has passed when the mobilized energy has been discharged, it will keep mobilizing energy indefinitely until the discharge happens. At the same time, the nervous system recognizes that the amount of energy in the system is too much for the organism to handle and it applies a brake so powerful that the entire organism shuts down on the spot. With the organism completely immobilized, the tremendous energy in the nervous system is held in check. The helplessness that is experienced at such times is not the ordinary sense of helplessness that can affect anyone from time to time. The sense of being completely immobilized and helpless is not a perception, belief, or a trick of the imagination. It is real. The body cannot move. This is abject helplessnes s — a sense of paralysis so profound that the person cannot scream, move, or feel. Of the four key components that form the core of the traumatic reaction, helplessness is the one you are least likely to have experienced, unless you have suffered an overwhelming threat to your life. Yet, this profound sense of helplessness is nearly always present in the early stages of “overwhelm” resulting from a traumatic event. If you closely examine your reactions to the three scenarios in the exercise at the beginning of the chapter, you may be able to identify a very mild version of helplessness. When the event is real and unfolding in a truly disastrous way, the effect of helplessness is drastically amplified. Later, when the threat is over, the intense helplessness and immobilization effects will wear off, but not completely. When we are traumatized, an echo of this feeling of being frozen remains with us. Like hyperarousal and constriction, helplessness is an overt reflection of the physiological processes happening in the body. When our nervous systems shift into an aroused state in response to danger, and we cannot defend ourselves or flee, the next strategy the nervous system employs is immobilization. Nearly every creature that lives has this primitive response wired into its repertoire of defensive strategies. We will return again and again to this intriguing response in the chapters that follow. It plays a leading role in both the development and transformation of trauma. And Then There Was Trauma Hyperarousal, constriction, helplessness, and dissociation are all normal responses to threat. As such, they do not always end up as traumatic symptoms. Only when they are habitual and chronic do symptoms develop. As these stress reactions remain in place, they form the groundwork and fuel for the development of subsequent symptoms. Within months, these symptoms at the core of the traumatic reaction will begin to incorporate mental and psychological characteristics into their dynamics until eventually they reach into every corner of the trauma sufferer’s life.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  That is why I feel that the study of wild animal behavior is essential to the understanding and healing of human trauma. The involuntary and instinctual portions of the human brain and nervous system are virtually identical to those of other mammals and even reptiles. Our brain, often called the triune brain, consists of three integral systems. The three parts are commonly known as the reptilian brain (instinctual), the mammalian or limbic brain (emotional), and the human brain or neo-cortex (rational). Since the parts of the brain that are activated by a perceived life- threatening situation are the parts we share with animals, much can be learned by studying how certain animals, like the impala, avoid traumatization. To take this one step further, I believe that the key to healing traumatic symptoms in humans lies in our being able to mirror the fluid adaptation of wild animals as they shake out and pass through the immobility response and become fully mobile and functional again. Unlike wild animals, when threatened we humans have never found it easy to resolve the dilemma of whether to fight or flee. This dilemma stems, at least in part, from the fact that our species has played the role of both predator and prey. Prehistoric peoples, though many were hunters, spent long hours each day huddled together in cold caves with the certain knowledge that they could be snatched up at any moment and torn to shreds. Our chances for survival increased as we gathered in larger groups, discovered fire, and invented tools, many of which were weapons used for hunting and self-defense. However, the genetic memory of being easy prey has persisted in our brains and nervous systems. Lacking both the swiftness of an impala and the lethal fangs and claws of a stalking cheetah, our human brains often second guess our ability to take life-preserving action. This uncertainty has made us particularly vulnerable to the powerful effects of trauma. Animals like the agile, darting impala know they are prey and are intimate with their survival resources. They sense what they need to do and they do it. Likewise, the sleek cheetah’s seventy-miles-an-hour sprint and treacherous fangs and claws make it a self-assured predator. The line is not so clearly delineated for the human animal. When confronted with a life-threatening situation, our rational brains may become confused and override our instinctive impulses. Though this overriding may be done for a good reason, the confusion that accompanies it sets the stage for what I call the “Medusa Comple x ” — the drama called trauma. As in the Greek myth of Medusa, the human confusion that may ensue when we stare death in the face can turn us to stone.