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 The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The Source of Human Aggression Unlike any other animal, we humans are aware of our own mortality, and that we could die at any moment. Consciously and unconsciously this thought haunts us throughout our lives. We are aware that our position in life is never secure—we can lose our job, our social status, and our money, often for reasons beyond our control. The people around us are equally unpredictable—we can never read their thoughts, anticipate their actions, or totally rely on their support. We are dependent on others, who often don’t come through. We have certain innate desires for love, excitement, and stimulation, and it is often beyond our control to satisfy these desires in the way we would like. In addition, we all have certain insecurities that stem from wounds in our childhood. If events or people trigger these insecurities and reopen old wounds, we feel particularly vulnerable and weak. What this means is that we humans are continually plagued by feelings of helplessness that come from many sources. If this feeling is strong enough or lasts for too long, it can become unbearable. We are willful creatures who crave power. This desire for power is not evil or antisocial; it is a natural response to the awareness of our essential weakness and vulnerability. In essence, what drives much of our behavior is to have control over circumstances, to feel the connection between what we do and what we get—to feel that we can influence people and events to some extent. This mitigates our sense of helplessness and makes the unpredictability of life tolerable. We satisfy this need by developing solid work skills that help us secure our career status and give us a feeling of control over the future. We also try to develop social skills that allow us to work with other people, earn their affection, and have a degree of influence over them. When it comes to our needs for excitement and stimulation, we generally choose to satisfy them through various activities—sports, entertainment, seduction—that our culture provides or accepts. All of these activities help us to have the control that we crave, but they require that we recognize certain limits. To gain such power in our work and relationships, we must be patient. We cannot force things. It takes time to secure our career position, to develop genuine creative powers, to learn how to influence people and charm them. It also requires abiding by certain social codes and even laws. We cannot do just anything to get ahead in our careers; we cannot force people to do our bidding. We can call these codes and laws guardrails that we carefully stay within in order to gain power while remaining liked and respected.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Authority can be an eminently democratic phenomenon. We must realize that much of what is behind progressive ideas of consensus, the minimal leader, and the parent as friend, is actually a great fear of responsibility, of the tough choices that must be made, of standing out and taking the heat. We must move in the opposite direction, embracing the risks and dangers that come with leadership and authority. In the world today, we humans have become more self-absorbed, more tribal and tenacious in holding on to our narrow agendas; we have become consumed by the barrage of information inundating us; we are even more fickle when it comes to leaders. And so the need for true figures of authority—with an elevated perspective, a high attunement to the group, and a feel for what unifies it—has never been greater. And because of that, we are tasked with establishing our authority and assuming such a necessary role. Strategies for Establishing Authority Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead. They choose to adhere to your words and advice. They want your wisdom. Certainly at times you may have to use force, rewards and punishments, and inspiring speeches. It is only a matter of degree. The less your need of such devices, the greater your authority. And so you must think of continually striving to engage people’s willpower and overcome their natural resistances and ambivalence. That is what the following strategies are designed to do. Put them all into practice. Find your authority style: Authenticity. The authority you establish must emerge naturally from your character, from the particular strengths you possess. Think of certain archetypes of authority: one of them suits you best. A notable archetype is the Deliverer , such as Moses or Martin Luther King Jr., an individual determined to deliver people from evil. Deliverers have an acute dislike of any kind of injustice, particularly those that affect the group they identify with. They have so much conviction, and most often such a way with words, that people are drawn to them. Another archetype would be the Founder . These are the ones who establish a new order in politics or business. They generally have a keen sense of trends and a great aversion to the status quo. They are unconventional and independent minded. Their greatest joy is to tinker and invent something new. Many people naturally rally to the side of Founders, because they represent some form of progress. Related to this archetype would be the Visionary Artist , such as Pablo Picasso or the jazz artist John Coltrane or the film director David Lynch.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Many elegant mansions of former millionaires on Euclid Avenue were now being sold or boarded up, as Rockefeller had carefully knocked them out of the business. He had acted as if the railroads were calling all the shots with the SIC, but perhaps it had been the other way around. — In the years to come, those in the railroad business began to greatly fear the growing power of Standard Oil. After the Cleveland Massacre, Rockefeller applied the same tactics to refineries in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York. His method was always the same: aiming first for the biggest refineries in the respective town, showing them his books, which were now even more impressive, getting a few big fish to surrender, and instilling panic in the others. Those who held out he would ruthlessly undersell and drive out of the market. By 1875, Rockefeller controlled all of the major refining centers in the United States and virtually monopolized the worldwide market for kerosene, the principal product used for lighting. Such power gave him far too much leverage over railroad rates, but to make matters worse, Rockefeller had begun to dominate the pipeline business, the other way of transporting oil. He built up a whole series of pipelines throughout Pennsylvania and had gained control of several railroads that helped ship the oil the rest of the way to the East Coast, giving him his own transportation networks. If he continued unimpeded in this campaign, his position would be impregnable. And nobody was more afraid of this prospect than Tom Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, at the time the largest and most powerful corporation in America. Scott had led a most distinguished life. During the Civil War, he had served as Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, in charge of ensuring the smooth functioning of the railroads in aiding the North’s effort. As head of the Pennsylvania Railroad, he had ambitions of endlessly expanding the company’s reach, but Rockefeller stood in the way, and it was time to do battle with Standard Oil. Scott had all the necessary resources to take on Rockefeller, and he had a plan. For the past few years, anticipating Rockefeller’s maneuvers, he had built up his own enormous network of pipelines that would work in conjunction with his railroad to move oil to refineries. He would ramp up the construction of new pipelines and purchase new refineries that sprang up, creating his own rival network, ensuring his railroad enough business to check Rockefeller’s progress, then work to weaken him further.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  288 The History of Christianity II understand the second key piece of the Quiet Revolution: the rise of a secular form of Quebec nationalism to replace the ardent Catholic nationalism that had previously defined French Canada. õ In the 1960s, a powerful and sometimes violent strain of nationalism arose in Quebec, an ideology that promised empowerment, that proclaimed that only native-born French speakers were “real Quebeckers” and that English speakers were agents of a foreign imperialist power. õ Between 1963 and 1970, the radical terrorist group Front de Libération du Québec regularly bombed government offices, mailboxes, railroads, and other targets, mainly targeting wealthy English-speaking communities. English-speaking Canadians began to flee Quebec in droves. This nationalist ardor inspired separatist political parties that still campaign today on the promise to work for Quebec’s independence from Canada. õ Since the Quiet Revolution, Quebec has come to adopt secularism as public policy. Specifically, Quebec has adopted the French ideology of church and state, laïcité, which strives to virtually banish the trappings of religion from public spaces and keep public policy free of religious ideas. õ Critics have suggested that when advocates of laïcité campaign to ban, for example, Muslim women who work in Quebec government offices from wearing a headscarf, it’s not just about religion. To critics, laïcité has fused with French-Canadian nationalism into a fiercely xenophobic attitude toward immigrants. õ The Quiet Revolution is a story that is particular to Quebec. But it points to some broader features in the history of secularization. In Quebec, the Catholic Church simply was not up to the challenges of the 20th century. 289Lecture 29—Secularism and the Death of God STRIPPING THE PUBLIC SQUARE õ From the 1960s onward, across Western Europe, most Brits, Danes, West Germans, and others still baptized their babies, got married in church, and wanted a church burial, but these rituals seemed to hold cultural rather than theological power. õ In the United States, church attendance rates were more buoyant, but a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s prohibited public school officials from requiring Bible reading or prayer in the classroom. Traditional Christian teachings about the subservient role of women in church and at home began to lose their hold. Practices outlawed by traditional Christianity, like abortion and homosexual activity, gained more social acceptance.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  101 The fact that Josephus, and even rabbinic texts, remember the family of Annas as “whisperers,” that is, promoters of envy, is probably significant in this regard. For the references and for the role of “envy,” see L. Gregory Bloomquist, “Eyes Wide Open, Seeing Nothing: The Challenge of the Gospel of John’s Nonvisualizable Texture for Readings Using Visual Texture,” in Robbins et al., Art of Visual Exegesis, 156 n. 86. 102 Kuruvil a is right to suggest a “pragmatic” reading of Mark’s text, that is, a reading that asks “what is Mark doing?” (“Naked Runaway,” 535–6). SRI suggests an answer to Kuruvil a’s assertion: Mark is getting his readers to go back and read the prophetic texts. 176 176 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles for the oral–scribal intertextural prophetic unit that portends the impending “day of the Lord.” Such a reader, who then digs deep and recal s not only the Amos text, but is from there reminded of the Judges text, and perhaps others, “understands” yet one more clue of what is coming. Such a reader “gets it” in a way that the three disciples on the Mount of Olives (Mark 13)—the same three who flee and abandon Jesus on the same Mount only a day later—did not, such that when the “day” did come (at least appeared) they are entirely unprepared to stand firm in the violent, chaotic, and confusing time. 103 Doubtless they had not realized that the same kind of wild violence that had felled the Amorites, and Babylon (LXX Isa 13:10), was now going to fell Jerusalem. When it begins proleptical y in the garden, they fail utterly.104 As such, while the Markan narrative of chapter 13 and the later narrative of 14 present the final judgment in such a way that even the High Priest himself understands perfectly well what is being foretold (14:62), Mark 14:51–52, and the narrative immediately on either side of it, presents us with an especial y ominous word for those who are associated with Jesus, either as followers or as bystanders. In the chaos and confusion all will flee from Jesus, including the disciples who accompanied him. True, Peter returns to the narrative but only to deny Jesus and then disappear from the pages of the gospel. In the end even the last characters of the gospel, the women who come to the tomb, flee, just as the young man had from the garden, presumably out of fear. The women’s one commission—to tell Jesus’ disciples that he would meet them in Galilee (Mark 16:7)—remains unfulfilled in the Gospel of Mark, unlike the other gospels. In this light, one may ask whether even the νεανίσκος in the tomb—depicted in Matthew (like an angel) or in Luke (like two men garbed in transfiguration-like clothes)—is, like other νεανίσκοι, rhetorical y associated with violence and chaos. 105 Therefore, our analysis of Mark 14:51–52 leaves us with a question rather than an answer: when the

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  He was depressed and sinking deeper into an emotional crisis. From the time he was burned as a child, he had always feared fire, heat, and small spaces. As the prisoners talked more and more about the details of the Evans’s execution and Wayne Ritter’s impending execution, Myers became more and more distraught. On the night of the Ritter execution, Myers was in full crisis, sobbing in his cell. There is a tradition on death row in Alabama that, at the time scheduled for the execution, the condemned prisoners bang on their cell doors with cups in protest. At midnight, while all the other prisoners banged away, Myers curled up on the floor in the corner of his cell, hyperventilating and flinching with each clang he heard. When the stench of burned flesh that many on the row claimed they could smell during the execution wafted into his cell, Myers dissolved. He called Tate the next morning and told him that he would say whatever he wanted if he would get him off death row. Tate initially justified keeping Myers and McMillian on death row for safety reasons. But Tate immediately picked Myers up and brought him back to the county jail the day after the Ritter execution. Tate didn’t appear to discuss with anyone the decision to move Myers off death row. Ordinarily, the Alabama Department of Corrections couldn’t just put people on death row or let them off without court orders or legal filings—and certainly no prison warden could do so on his own. But nothing about the prosecution of Walter McMillian was turning out to be ordinary. Once removed from death row and back in Monroe County, Myers affirmed his initial accusations against McMillian. With Myers back as the primary witness and Bill Hooks ready to say that he saw Walter’s truck at the crime scene, the district attorney believed that he could proceed against McMillian. The case was scheduled for trial in February 1988. Ted Pearson had been the district attorney for nearly twenty years. He and his family had lived in South Alabama for generations. He knew the local customs, values, and traditions well and had put them to good use in the courtroom. He was getting older and had plans to retire soon, but he hated that his office had been criticized for failing to solve the Morrison murder more quickly. Pearson was determined to leave office with a victory and likely saw the prosecution of Walter McMillian as one of the most important cases of his career. In 1987, all forty elected district attorneys in Alabama were white, even though there are sixteen majority-black counties in the state. When African Americans began to exercise their right to vote in the 1970s, there was deep concern among some prosecutors and judges about how the racial demographics in some counties would complicate their reelections. Legislators had aligned counties to maintain white majorities for judicial circuits that included a majority-black county.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Now stroke the back of your neck. What do these two gestures convey to you? Do they make you feel more or less secure? How about when you are wringing your hands versus when they are steepled, fingertip to fingertip? What differences do you notice? Emotion Facial expressions are at the next level of behavior and are generally considered to be largely involuntary. These micro-expressions are what the renowned Paul Ekman 88 studied in his pioneering research spanning over four decades. With practice and patience, one can develop the skills necessary to observe these very brief changes of muscle tension (often in a fraction of a second) throughout parts of the face. ‖ The specific patterns of these muscle contractions communicate the full range of emotional nuances to oneself and to others. a Giving clients feedback about their facial expressions can help them contact emotions of which they may be partially or fully unaware. Posture The third level of less conscious awareness in the behavior category is posture. Here I’m not referring to gross voluntary postural adjustments like those demanded by parents or teachers, such as “sit-up straight,” “don’t slump” or “shoulders back,” which refer to voluntary movements. These belong instead to the category of voluntary gestures. Sir Charles Sherrington, the grandfather of modern neurophysiology, alleges that “much of the reflex reaction expressed by the skeletal musculature is not motile, but postural, and has as its result not a movement but the steady maintenance of an attitude.” 89 I would add that postures are the platforms from which intrinsic movement is initiated. In the words of A. E. Gisell, a student of Sherrington’s, “the requisite motor equipment for behavior is established well in advance of the behavior itself.” In underscoring how important posture is in the generation of new behaviors, sensations, feelings and meanings, Gisell added, “The embryogenesis of mind must be sought in the beginnings of postural behavior.” 90 Although relatively few therapists have cultivated the precise reading of postures, they are still being impacted by them. We all subconsciously mirror the postures of others and register them as sensations in our own bodies. This occurs presumably through the operation of mirror neurons and postural resonance. Since spontaneous postural changes are generally subtle, it takes a lot of practice to observe them. Resonance is particularly compelling with survival-based postures such as the nuanced varieties associated with the premovements and movements of flight, fight, freeze/fright and collapse. If a posture is rigid from bracing or is collapsed, we can assume that it was a preparation for some particular action, an action that was thwarted and that the muscles are still programmed to complete. If this dormant sensorimotor trajectory had not been impeded, it would most likely have had a more triumphant outcome—as it still can retroactively.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Déjà VuShe says she loves you, sometimes. She sees your qualities, and you should be ashamed of them. If only you were the only one for her. She’d keep you safe, she’d grow old with you, if she could trust you. You’re not sexy, but she will have sex with you. Sometimes when you look at your phone, she has sent you something stunningly cruel, and there is a kick of fear between your shoulder blades. Sometimes when you catch her looking at you, you feel like she’s determining the best way to take you apart. Dream House as Murder MysteryLightning flashes, the power dies, and when the electricity comes back on again a dinner guest is folded over the dessert course with a dagger in her back. The handle of the blade is inlaid with precious gems, but her tiara is missing. When the undercover detective reveals herself—the plucky reporter, of course!—the mystery deepens: the cost of the gems in the handle of the knife far outweighs the value of the stolen tiara, whose diamonds were merely glass. Who among them would give up a tool of such immeasurable value to take something so worthless? And so boldly, in front of so many people? The plucky reporter paces on the Persian carpet in front of the suspects. Was it Heathcliff, the brawny dockworker turned mob boss? Ethan, the foppish social climber with eyes like the distant radiance of Mars? Samson, the experimental artist with a murky and enigmatic past? The reporter crosses dozens of times in front of a slight, blonde woman sitting in the corner, but never includes her on the list. The blonde woman is leaning back with flinty cool, following the action. She nods and listens, and every so often tilts her chin in the direction of the plucky reporter and lets loose a dazzling smile. The plucky reporter turns to Samson with a trembling, gloved finger. Samson stands to defend himself. Ethan begins shouting, Heathcliff glowers. And no one pays attention to the blonde woman, who stands and walks toward the corpse of the dinner guest. She grips the blade with both hands and pulls it out like King Arthur deflowering the stone. The body of the dinner guest, whose eyes are wide and wet with betrayal, lifts with the movement and then slams back down on the place setting, lemon cake squashed against her bosom. The blonde woman wipes the blood off the blade onto the dinner guest’s dress and replaces it in her purse. Everyone continues to argue as she walks out the front door and into the night. IVThe trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn’t that they’ll remember; it’s that you’ll remember. —Sarah Manguso

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  “Let’s get the fancy chocolates,” you’d say, pointing to the Godiva chocolatier. We would get a small paper bag containing maybe five or six squares of chocolate we had picked at random. This was often all we bought at the mall. Then we’d walk, passing one back and forth until our fingers shone inky and sweet. “This is how you enjoy your life,” you’d say, sucking your fingers, their pink nail polish chipped from a week of giving pedicures. The time with your fists, shouting in the parking lot, the late sun etching your hair red. My arms shielding my head as your knuckles thudded around me. Those Saturdays, we’d stroll the corridors until, one by one, the shops pulled shut their steel gates. Then we’d make our way to the bus stop down the street, our breaths floating above us, the makeup drying on your face. Our hands empty except for our hands. — Out my window this morning, just before sunrise, a deer stood in a fog so dense and bright that the second one, not too far away, looked like the unfinished shadow of the first. You can color that in. You can call it “The History of Memory.” — Migration can be triggered by the angle of sunlight, indicating a change in season, temperature, plant life, and food supply. Female monarchs lay eggs along the route. Every history has more than one thread, each thread a story of division. The journey takes four thousand eight hundred and thirty miles, more than the length of this country. The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past. What is a country but a borderless sentence, a life? That time at the Chinese butcher, you pointed to the roasted pig hanging from its hook. “The ribs are just like a person’s after they’re burned.” You let out a clipped chuckle, then paused, took out your pocketbook, your face pinched, and recounted our money. What is a country but a life sentence? — The time with a gallon of milk. The jug bursting on my shoulder bone, then a steady white rain on the kitchen tiles. The time at Six Flags, when you rode the Superman roller coaster with me because I was too scared to do it alone. How you threw up afterward, your whole head in the garbage can. How, in my screeching delight, I forgot to say Thank you.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  331Lecture 33—Prophetic Religion in Modern Africa õ When things get hard—when immigrants struggle to find work, or their children start acting out—the theology of spiritual warfare can be a seductive tool for survival in this totally alien, secular culture. The church may tell them that Satan is behind a deportation order, or that their unruly nine-year-old has become possessed by a demon— and for a hefty fee, church elders can take that child away and perform an exorcism. õ Western authorities have struggled to stop the child abuse that happens under the guise of these “exorcisms,” while also battling the tendency of the Western media to sensationalize these stories and play into racist stereotypes of African immigrant religion as a primitive and violent sort of sorcery. SUGGESTED READING Gifford, Christianity, Development, and Modernity in Africa. Hastings, A History of African Christianity . Jenkins, The Next Christendom . QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER ä Why might the Aladura movement have appealed to Nigerians in the 1920s? ä Why did government officials in the Belgian Congo respond to a nonviolent religious movement with violent suppression? ä Why has the prosperity gospel become a worldwide movement, while so many Christians denounce it as a heresy? 332 LECTURE 34 CHINESE CHRISTIANITY: MISSIONARIES TO MAO T he Taiping Rebellion threw China into chaos between 1850 and 1864, almost toppled the Qing emperor, and killed somewhere between 20 and 30 million people. From one perspective, the Taiping Rebellion was a peasant revolt against an incompetent regime. But from another angle, this was a religious movement. The leader of the rebellion, Hong Xiuquan, wanted to establish God’s kingdom on earth following a vision that compelled him to rid the world of demons.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Army suggests that the speed with which the brain reads emotions in the body language of others and interprets sensations in one’s own body is central to avoiding imminent threats like hidden booby traps, who might be carrying a hidden bomb or who had recently buried one. 17 In this same article, the neurologist Antonio Damasio adds that “emotions are practical action programs that work to solve a problem, often before we’re conscious of it. These processes are at work continually, in pilots, leaders of expeditions, parents, in all of us.” Therapeutic approaches that neglect the body, focusing mainly on thoughts (top-down processing), will consequently be limited. I propose instead that, in the initial stages of restorative work, bottom-up processing needs to be standard operating procedure. In other words, addressing a client’s “bodyspeak” first and then, gradually, enlisting his or her emotion, perception and cognition is not merely valuable, it’s essential. The “talking cure” for trauma survivors should give way to the unspoken voice of the silent, but strikingly powerful, bodily expressions as they surface to “sound off” on behalf of the wisdom of the deeper self. Challenges of Therapy Therapists working with traumatized individuals frequently “pick up” and mirror the postures of their clients and hence their emotions of fear, terror, anger, rage and helplessness. The way we respond to these signifiers will be pivotal in helping traumatized individuals deal with those difficult sensations and emotions. If we recoil because we cannot contain and accept them, then we abandon our clients ... if we are overwhelmed, then we are both lost. If we embody some small portion of a Dalai Lama–like equanimity and “composure,” we are able to share and help contain our client’s terrors in a “blanket of compassion.” We should not underestimate how compelling instinctual fear reactions are and how readily they can become maladaptive. In the event of a fire, for example, people will tend to adopt the uptight, frightened body posture of the person next to them. They are then readied to spring into action and flee the movie theater. However, such behavior can also set the ground for contagious panic. As each person mirrors the fear posture of those nearby, he or she simultaneously senses fear and transmits that fear-posture to others in the group. Transmittance of fear through postural resonance creates an escalating situation, a positive feedback loop (with negative consequences). Panic contagion can spread to the whole group almost instantly. FDR presciently warned us about avoiding this kind of contagion. If a moment presents itself, we may beneficially ask ourselves, is there really something threatening?

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  It becomes a container that surrounds the child with a feeling of confidence. This may be particularly difficult if the child resists your attempts to renegotiate the trauma. If the child resists, be patient and reassuring. The instinctive part of your child wants to rework this experience. All you have to do is wait for that part to feel confident and safe enough to assert itself. If you are excessively worried about whether the child’s traumatic reaction can be transformed, you may inadvertently send a conflicting message. Adults with their own unresolved childhood trauma may be particularly susceptible to falling into this trap. 5. Stop if you feel that the child is genuinely not benefiting from the play. In Too Scared to Cry, Lenore Terr, 107 the brilliant and esteemed child psychologist, warns clinicians about allowing children to engage in traumatic play “therapy” that reenacts the original horror. She describes the responses of three-and-a-half-year-old Lauren as she plays with toy cars. “The cars are going on the people,” Lauren says as she zooms two racing cars toward some finger puppets. “They’re pointing their pointy parts into the people. The people are scared. A pointy part will come on their tummies, and in their mouths, and on their ... [she points to her skirt]. My tummy hurts. I don’t want to play anymore.” Lauren stops herself as her bodily sensation of fear abruptly surfaces. This is a typical reaction. She may return over and over to the same play, each time stopping when the fearful sensations in her tummy become uncomfortable. Some therapists would say that Lauren is using her play as an attempt to gain some control over the situation that traumatized her. Her play does resemble “exposure” treatments used routinely to help adults overcome phobias. But Terr cautions that such play ordinarily doesn’t yield much success. Even if it does serve to reduce a child’s distress, this process is quite slow in producing results. Most often, the play is compulsively repeated without resolution. Unresolved, repetitious, traumatic play can reinforce the traumatic impact in the same way that reenactment and cathartic reliving of traumatic experiences can reinforce trauma in adults. The reworking or renegotiation of a traumatic experience, as we saw with Sammy, represents a process that is fundamentally different from traumatic play or reenactment. Left to their own devices, most children, not unlike Lauren in the above example, will attempt to avoid the traumatic feelings that their play evokes. But with guided play, Sammy was able to “live his feelings through” by gradually and sequentially mastering his fear. Using this stepwise renegotiation of the traumatic event and Pooh Bear’s companionship, Sammy was able to emerge as the victor and hero.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  When, on the other hand, these “discharges” are inhibited or otherwise resisted and prevented from completion, our natural rebounding abilities get “stuck.” Being stuck, after an actual or perceived threat, means that one is likely to be traumatized or, at least, to find that one’s resilience and sense of OK-ness and belonging in the world have been diminished. Again, in the prescient words of the I Ching: This pictures a situation in which a shock endangers a man and he suffers great losses. Resistance would be contrary to the movement of the time and for this reason unsuccessful.5 On that sunny winter morning of my accident, I was able—with the help of the kind pediatrician—to allow those physiological processes to complete moment-by-moment, moving time forward and releasing the highly charged “survival energy” lurking in my body and seeking its intended expression. This immediate emotional and “physical” first-aid prevented me from getting “stuck,” or locked in a vicious cycle of suffering and disability. How did I know what to do, as well as what to avoid, in this extremely stressful and disorienting situation? The short answer is that I have learned to embrace and welcome, rather than to fear and suppress, the primitive trembles, shakes and spontaneous body movements. The longer answer takes me back to the beginning of my last forty years of professional life as a scientist, a therapist and a healer. [image file=image_rsrc2N1.jpg] Diagram A This is a detailed depiction of the physiological pathways underlying the classic fight-or-flight response. The illustrator was the late Dr. Frank Netter, one of the foremost medical illustrators. [image file=image_rsrc2N2.jpg] Diagram B This Netter illustration shows the intricate and robust relationship between the viscera and the brain. The dorsal vagus nerve (the tenth cranial nerve at the back/dorsal part of the brain stem) mediates the immobilization system. It acts upon most of the visceral organs. The (ventral/front) nucleus ambiguus mediates the social engagement system through its connections with the middle ear, face and throat.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  While directed to clinicians, physicians and scientists, as well as to interested laymen, ultimately this book is dedicated to those who have been tormented by the hungry ghosts of trauma. To these people, who live in a cage of anxiety, fear, pain and shame, I hope to convey a deeper appreciation that their lives are not dominated by a “disorder” but by an injury that can be transformed and healed! This capacity for transformation is a direct consequence of what I describe in the next section. The Self-Regulating, Self-Knowing BodyIn spite of my confusion and disorientation after the crosswalk accident, it was my thoroughly ingrained knowledge of trauma that led me first to request that the off-duty paramedic back off and allow me some space, and then to trust my body’s involuntary shaking and other spontaneous physical and emotional reactions. However, even with my extensive knowledge and experience, I doubt whether I could have done this alone. The importance of the graceful pediatrician’s quiet support was enormous. Her noninvasive warmth, expressed in the calm tone of her voice, her gentle eyes, her touch and scent, gave me enough of a sense of safety and protection to allow my body to do what it needed to do and me to feel what I needed to feel. Together, my knowledge of trauma and the support of a calm present other allowed the powerful and profoundly restorative involuntary reactions to emerge and complete themselves. In general, the capacity for self-regulation is what allows us to handle our own states of arousal and our difficult emotions, thus providing the basis for the balance between authentic autonomy and healthy social engagement. In addition, this capacity allows us the intrinsic ability to evoke a sense of being safely “at home” within ourselves, at home where goodness resides. This capacity is especially important when we are frightened or injured. Most every mother in the world, knowing this instinctively, picks up her frightened child and soothes him or her by rocking and holding the child close to her body. Similarly, the kind eyes and pleasant scent of the woman who sat by my side bypassed the rational frontal cortex to reach directly into the recesses of my emotional brain. Thus, it soothed and helped to stabilize my organism just enough so that I could experience the difficult sensations and take steps toward restoring my balance and equanimity.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The public can now identify with them despite the obvious contradictions. But the grandiosity of this goes beyond merely gaining more attention. These leaders become vastly enlarged by this identification with the masses. They are not merely one man or woman but embody an entire nation or interest group. To follow them is to be loyal to the group itself. To criticize them is to want to crucify the leader and betray the cause. Even in the prosaic corporate world of business we find such religious-style identification: Eisner, for instance, liked to present himself as embodying the entire Disney spirit, whatever that meant. If you notice such paradoxes and primitive forms of popular association, stand back and analyze the reality of what is going on. You will find at the core something quasi-mystical, highly irrational, and quite dangerous in that the grandiose leader now feels licensed to do whatever he or she wants in the name of the public. I will deliver you. These types often rise to power in times of trouble and crisis. Their self-confidence is comforting to the public or to shareholders. They will be the ones to deliver the people from the many problems they are facing. In order to pull this off, their promises have to be large yet vague. By being large they can inspire dreams; by being vague, nobody can hold the person to account if they don’t come to pass, since there are no specifics to get hold of. The more grandiose the promises and visions of the future, the more grandiose the faith they will inspire. The message must be simple to digest, reducible to a slogan, and promising something large that stirs the emotions. As part of this strategy these types require convenient scapegoats, often the elites or outsiders, to tighten the group identification and to stir the emotions even further. The movement around the leader begins to crystallize around hatred of these scapegoats, who begin to stand for every bit of pain and injustice each person in the crowd has ever experienced. The leader’s promise to bring these invented enemies down increases the leader’s power exponentially. What you will find here is that they are creating a cult more than leading a political movement or a business. You will see that their name, image, and slogans must be reproduced in large numbers and assume a godlike ubiquity. Certain colors, symbols, and perhaps music are used to bind the group identity and appeal to the basest human instincts. People who now believe in the cult are doubly mesmerized and ready to excuse any kind of action.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  A few months before our talk at Dunkin’ Donuts, a fourteen-year-old boy in rural Vietnam had acid thrown in his face after he slipped a love letter into another boy’s locker. Last summer, twenty-eight-year-old Florida native Omar Mateen walked into an Orlando nightclub, raised his automatic rifle, and opened fire. Forty-nine people were killed. It was a gay club and the boys, because that’s who they were—sons, teenagers—looked like me: a colored thing born of one mother, rummaging the dark, each other, for happiness. Sometimes, when I’m careless, I believe the wound is also the place where the skin reencounters itself, asking of each end, where have you been? Where have we been, Ma? — The weight of the average placenta is roughly one and a half pounds. A disposable organ where nutrients, hormones, and waste are passed between mother and fetus. In this way, the placenta is a kind of language—perhaps our first one, our true mother tongue. At four or five months, my brother’s placenta was already fully developed. You two were speaking—in blood utterances. “He came to me, you know.” The rain outside had stopped. The sky an emptied bowl. “He came to you?” “My boy, he came to me in a dream, about a week after the hospital. He was sitting on my doorstep. We watched each other for a while, then he just turned and walked away, down the alley. I think he just wanted to see what I looked like, what his mom looked like. I was a girl. Oh god . . . Oh god, I was seventeen.” — In college a professor once insisted, during a digression from a lecture on Othello, that, to him, gay men are inherently narcissistic, and that overt narcissism might even be a sign of homosexuality in men who have not yet accepted their “tendencies.” Even as I fumed in my seat, the thought wouldn’t stop burrowing into me. Could it be that, all those years ago, I had followed Gramoz in the schoolyard simply because he was a boy, and therefore a mirror of myself? But if so—why not? Maybe we look into mirrors not merely to seek beauty, regardless how illusive, but to make sure, despite the facts, that we are still here. That the hunted body we move in has not yet been annihilated, scraped out. To see yourself still yourself is a refuge men who have not been denied cannot know.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  THE MENNONITES õ Perhaps the most well known branch of the Anabaptist movement is the Mennonites, named for their founder, the Dutch priest Menno Simons. Originally a Catholic, he pored over the Bible and came to the same conclusion that Conrad Grebel had: No one in the Bible baptizes babies, so Christians shouldn’t do it either. 36 The History of Christianity II õ Simons renounced his Catholic ordination and became an Anabaptist. But he was horrified by the violence of the Münster episode. It did no good, and violence was no way to imitate Christ. õ Simons joined the Anabaptist movement at a crucial moment, when Anabaptists were recovering from the shock of Münster and splitting apart into smaller sects. It didn’t take long for some people to realize that Simons was a natural leader who put the faith ahead of his own ego. A group of them approached him and asked him to become an elder, an Anabaptist church office almost equivalent to that of a bishop. õ By the 1540s, Simons was often representing the Anabaptists as their spokesman in debates with other Protestants, or as a theological diplomat who was sent to rein in radicals. He was always on the move, leading followers (soon called Mennonites) from city to city throughout Germany and the Netherlands, trying to both spread the Anabaptist message and find a safe haven that wouldn’t boot them out. õ When it came to running a Christian community, the Mennonites were strict about church discipline. If someone went too far in challenging the leaders’ theology or broke any church rules, the entire community shunned them, cutting off all contact, even among family members. õ Mennonites would come to experience as many internal feuds and schisms as any other Protestant group. For example, take the Amish, the Anabaptists who live in tight-knit, isolated communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio. õ Their origins lie more than 300 years ago in a disagreement between their founder, Jakob Ammann, and some other Mennonites over the question of isolation from the outside world. Ammann excommunicated all the people who disagreed with him and led his followers—the Amish—to found their own church. õ Questions of how much to engage with people who don’t share your beliefs and how much can you change the traditions of your ancestors without deviating from true faith still preoccupy Anabaptists today. Lecture 4—The Anabaptist Radicals 37

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The knee is fine, but everything is not okay for the boy waking up in a drug-induced nightmare, thrashing around on his hospital bed—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 arms ... staring right into my eyes and not knowing who I am. 43 The immobilization effects Levy observed in children also occur in adult patients. In a recent medical study, more than 52% of orthopedic patients being treated for broken bones were shown to develop full-blown posttraumatic stress disorder, with a majority not recovering and worsening over time. 44 This result should come as no real surprise when one recognizes that many orthopedic procedures follow frightening accidents, stressful ambulance rides endured while one is strapped down and terrifying and depersonalizing emergency room visits. Further, many of these patients have also undergone immediate surgeries, and often in an agitated state. This chain of events often precedes immobilization and is followed by painful rehabilitation regimens. In a recent study of children undergoing even “minor” orthopedic procedures, to quote the authors, “High levels of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (in over 33% of all children studied) are common in the recovery period after pediatric orthopedic trauma, even among patients with relatively minor injury. Children admitted to the hospital after injury are at high risk for such symptoms.” 45 Although hospitals have become more humane (particularly for children—though from the above study not nearly enough), there is still inadequate attention to preventing undue fear in people who must undergo painful procedures or general anesthesia. Indeed, some of those ill-fated individuals partially “awaken” during anesthesia and many develop some of the most horrific and complex PTSD symptoms. 46 In the words of one survivor (a surgical nurse herself), “I feel a cosmic hollowness, as if my soul has left my body and can’t return ... horrifying nightmares are my companion ... often shocking me wide awake. When my eyes pop open, there is still no respite because the walls and ceiling turn blood red.” 47 This riveting description illustrates the horror of enduring the combination of terror, extreme pain, and being unable to move or to communicate one’s situation. Biologically, the orthopedic patients, soldiers, rape victims and hospitalized children are reacting like wild animals fighting for their life after being frightened and captured. Their impulse to attack in an “aggravated rage” or to flee in frantic desperation is not only biologically appropriate; in fact, it is a frequent biological outcome. As a captured and terrified animal comes out of immobility, its survival may depend on its violent aggression toward the still-present predator.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In combination, a fearful face, hypervigilance and a tight constricted posture are powerfully compelling. They trigger us to prepare our bodies for action, to locate the source of threat and then to respond immediately. Perhaps a perceived threat comes from an “uptight” person readying to strike out in aggravated fear. In our day-to-day life, most of us deal with chronically fearful or angry people by simply avoiding them whenever we can. On the other hand, when you meet people whose posture expresses grace and acceptance, you are calmed by their ease. Thus, we are particularly affected by the serenity, compassion and profound quiet of people like Nelson Mandela, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama or a loving mother peacefully nursing her infant. Gelder’s research shows the power of fearful postures in activating specific areas of an observer’s brain—areas that happy and neutral postures leave inactive.‡ In addition, these brain regions, stimulated by the recognition of frightened body stances, are further differentiated from regions involved in the reading of fearful faces. Postural recognition centers include multiple brain regions, some that process emotions and others that primarily prepare us for action. According to Gelder, “You could almost say that when you see a fearful body you react with your whole body.” This observation supports the basic Darwinian tenet that the human ability to rapidly read bodies and to respond both unequivocally and instantaneously is highly advantageous. Reading others’ bodies predisposes us to actions that increase our chances of survival. In order to be effective and immediate, such postural resonance bypasses the conscious mind. Rational deliberation could compromise survival by confusing and slowing us down. Survival reactions under threatening circumstances generally need to be swift and sure, not pondered. According to researchers Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, “our perceptions of the motor acts and emotive reactions [italics mine] of others appear to be united by a mirror mechanism that permits our brain to immediately understand what we are seeing, feeling, or imagining others to be doing, as it triggers the same neural structures … that are responsible for our own actions and emotions.”16 Had our neocortical (thinking) brain preempted our instinctual lower (action-based) circuitry, you might have an inner dialogue something like this: “That guy’s jaw and shoulders look tight and angry as he comes near. His eyes are shifty … but his shirt—well, it’s certainly a pleasant color and looks like the one I almost bought at Macy’s.” While your survival “bottom-up” processing center is alerting your body (Avoid this guy, period—no discussion!), your “top-down” processing is meandering through a much slower language-based analysis.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  On the other hand, people who are chronically flooded by emotional eruptions can be just as limited in life. While they are less inhuman (like the Gage-Elliot zombie “body-snatchers”), their explosions can be just as corrosive to the maintenance of intimate and professional relationships, and—it goes without saying—to a coherent sense of self. Traumatized individuals are imprisoned with the proverbial worst of both worlds. At one moment, they are flooded with intrusive emotions like terror, rage and shame, while alternately being shut down, alienating them from feeling-based instinctual grounding, rendering them incapable of a sense of purpose and inept in finding a direction. These may be our clients, relatives, friends or acquaintances who are caught in either extreme, endlessly swinging between emotional convulsion and coma (blandness/shutdown). As such, they are unable to make use of their emotional intelligence. To some degree they represent, when we are under the influence of chronic stress or trauma, the Phineas Gages in all of us. Wholeness as BalanceAs above, so below. As below, so above. —Kybalion We are more than speaking animals; we are language creatures. However, whether we are confined by the tyranny of language, or liberated by it, is a question that is up for grabs. How we use, or abuse, language has a good deal to do with how we live our lives. Words, in and of themselves, are of little importance to an infant when it is upset. Language needs to be accompanied by close physical soothing in the form of holding, rocking and gentle sounds such as coos and ahs. It is our use of nonverbal tone and cadence that gives language its power to calm and dulcify a baby’s upset. As children develop, they begin both to understand the actual words and to be soothed by the mode in which they are uttered. However, words must still have a physical context in order for them to be healing and salubrious. You may recall a young boy named Elian Gonzalez, who became the pawn in an outrageous political battle in the state of Florida. Elian’s distant cousins (Cuban exiles living in Miami), supposedly concerned for the boy’s welfare, fought vehemently against Elian’s own father (who was living in Cuba) for custody of this young child. As in Bertolt Brecht’s play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, they were literally pulling this bewildered six-year-old child apart. Eventually, the Supreme Court interceded and blocked Governor Jeb Bush’s efforts to keep Elian in the United States as a “model anti-Castro citizen” and returned him to the custody of his father.