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)

  Regardless of how we view ourselves, in the most basic sense we literally are human animals. The fundamental challenges we face today have come about relatively quickly, but our nervous systems have been much slower to change. It is no coincidence that people who are more in touch with their natural selves tend to fare better when it comes to trauma. Without easy access to the resources of this primitive, instinctual self, humans alienate their bodies from their souls. Most of us don’t think of or experience ourselves as animals. Yet, by not living through our instincts and natural reactions, we aren’t fully human either. Existing in a limbo in which we are neither animal nor fully human can cause a number of problems, one of which is being susceptible to trauma. In order to stay healthy, our nervous systems and psyches need to face challenges and to succeed in meeting those challenges. When this need is not met, or when we are challenged and cannot triumph, we end up lacking vitality and are unable to fully engage in life. Those of us who have been defeated by war, abuse, accidents, and other traumatic events suffer far more severe consequences. Trauma! Few people question the seriousness of the problems created by trauma, yet we have difficulty comprehending how many people are affected by it. In a recent study of more than one thousand men and women, it was found that forty percent had gone through a traumatic event in the past three years. Most often cited were: being raped or physically assaulted; being in a serious accident; witnessing someone else being killed or injured. As many as thirty percent of the homeless people in this country are thought to be Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. Somewhere between seventy-five and one hundred million Americans have experienced childhood sexual and physical abuse. The conservative AMA estimates that over thirty percent of all married women, as well as thirty percent of pregnant women, have been beaten by their spouses. One woman is beaten by her husband or lover every nine seconds (the beatings of pregnant women are also traumatic to the fetus). War and violence have affected the lives of nearly every man, woman, and child living on this planet. In the last few years, entire communities have been wiped out or devastated by natural disaster s - Hurricane Hugo, Andrew, and Iniki; flooding of the Midwest and California; the Oakland Fire; the Loma Prieta, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Cairo, and Kobe Earthquakes; and many more. All of the people affected by these events are at risk or are already suffering from trauma. Many other people have traumatic symptoms that go unrecognized. For example, ten to fifteen percent of all adults suffer from panic attacks, unexplained anxiety, or phobias. As many as seventy-five percent of the people who go to doctors have complaints that are labeled psychosomatic because no physical explanation can be found for them.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Of these traumatic antecedents, medical procedures are by far the most common and potentially the most impacting. Many clinics (unintentionally) amplify the fear of an already frightened child. In preparation for some routine procedures, infants are strapped into “papooses” to keep them from moving. A child that struggles so much that he or she needs to be tied down, however, is a child too frightened to be restrained without suffering the consequences. Likewise, a child who is severely frightened is not a good candidate for anesthesia until a sense of tranquillity has been restored. A child induced into anesthesia while frightened will almost certainly be traumatize d often severely. Children can even be traumatized by insensitively administered enemas or thermometers. Much of the trauma associated with medical procedures can be prevented if health care providers do the following: 1. Encourage parents to stay with their children. 2. Explain as much as possible in advance. 3. Delay procedures until the children are calm. The problem is that few professionals understand trauma or the lasting and pervasive effects these procedures can have. Although medical personnel are often quite concerned with the children’s welfare, they may need more information from you, the consumer. First Aid for Accidents and Falls Accidents and falls are a normal and often benign part of growing up. However, occasionally a child may experience a traumatic reaction from one of these everyday occurrences. Witnessing a mishap of this sort will not necessarily clue you in to the degree of its severity. A child can be traumatized by events that seem relatively insignificant to an adult. It is important to be aware of the fact that children can be quite adept at covering up the signs of traumatic impact, especially when they feel that “not being hurt” will keep mommy and daddy happy. Your best ally in responding to your child’s needs is an informed perspective. Here are some guidelines: Attend to your own responses first, inwardly acknowledging your concern and fear for the injured child. Take a deep breath and exhale slowly; sense the feelings in your own body. If you feel upset, do it again. The time it takes to establish a sense of calm is time well spent. It will increase your capacity to attend fully to the child, while minimizing the child’s reaction to your own fear or confusion. If you have the time to gather yourself, your own acceptance of the accident will help you focus on the child’s needs. If you are too emotional you carry the potential to frighten the child as much as the accident has. Children are very sensitive to the emotional states of all adults, but particularly their parents.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Fear of so-called negative emotion. When the usual balance of energy shifts, we begin to re-experience the event. Here the picture becomes more complicated because what we are experiencing is due in part to confusion about the nature of the energy that is released. In its pure form, the energy generated by our nervous system to protect us from danger is vital. It feels alive and exhilarating. When this energy is thwarted in its attempt to protect us, a significant portion of it is re-channeled into fear, rage, hatred, and shame as part of the constellation of symptoms that develop to organize the undischarged energy. These so-called “negative” emotions become intimately associated with the vital energy itself, as well as with the other symptoms that form the cluster of traumatic aftereffects. When we suffer from trauma, the association between the life energy and the negative emotions is so close that we cannot distinguish between them. Discharge is precisely what we need, but when it begins to happen, the effect can be terrifying and intolerable, in part because the energy released is perceived to be negative. Because of this fear, we typically suppress the energy or at best discharge it incompletely. Drug therapy and substance abuse. Another means by which traumatized people can attempt to stabilize or suppress symptoms is through drug therapy. We often try this approach at the recommendation of a doctor, or we may attempt to self-medicate (substance abuse). Whatever means of stabilization we employ, our purpose is to create a stable environment. This feat requires a container that is energetically strong enough that the symptoms will not be stressed or challenged. These containers are like dams. They must be engineered well enough to prevent the release of horrible fear and primitive, uncontrollable rage. Trauma sufferers often find ourselves on a treadmill over which we have no control. We may be driven to avoid situations that evoke both authentic excitement and relaxation, because either could disrupt the equilibrium that our symptoms need to maintain their stability. Out of the Loop There are ways out of these self-perpetuating cycles. Somatic Experiencing ® is one of them. In learning to define trauma by its symptoms, rather than by the event that caused it, we can develop perspectives that will help us recognize trauma when it occurs. This will enable us to flow with our natural responses rather than blocking the innate healing process.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Others took the opposite view, and maintained that an infallible way of warding off this appalling evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go round singing and merrymaking, gratify all of one’s cravings whenever the opportunity offered, and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke. Moreover, they practised what they preached to the best of their ability, for they would visit one tavern after another, drinking all day and night to immoderate excess; or alternatively (and this was their more frequent custom), they would do their drinking in various private houses, but only in the ones where the conversation was restricted to subjects that were pleasant or entertaining. Such places were easy to find, for people behaved as though their days were numbered, and treated their belongings and their own persons with equal abandon. Hence most houses had become common property, and any passing stranger could make himself at home as naturally as though he were the rightful owner. But for all their riotous manner of living, these people always took good care to avoid any contact with the sick. In the face of so much affliction and misery, all respect for the laws of God and man had virtually broken down and been extinguished in our city. For like everybody else, those ministers and executors of the laws who were not either dead or ill were left with so few subordinates that they were unable to discharge any of their duties. Hence everyone was free to behave as he pleased. There were many other people who steered a middle course between the two already mentioned, neither restricting their diet to the same degree as the first group, nor indulging so freely as the second in drinking and other forms of wantonness, but simply doing no more than satisfy their appetite. Instead of incarcerating themselves, these people moved about freely, holding in their hands a posy of flowers, or fragrant herbs, or one of a wide range of spices, which they applied at frequent intervals to their nostrils, thinking it an excellent idea to fortify the brain with smells of that particular sort; for the stench of dead bodies, sickness, and medicines seemed to fill and pollute the whole of the atmosphere. Some people, pursuing what was possibly the safer alternative, callously maintained that there was no better or more efficacious remedy against a plague than to run away from it. Swayed by this argument, and sparing no thought for anyone but themselves, large numbers of men and women abandoned their city, their homes, their relatives, their estates and their belongings, and headed for the countryside, either in Florentine territory or, better still, abroad.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  The man could have told her he would cut her up like a rabbit. Or at some other time she could have been frightened by seeing, or even reading about, a rabbit being cut open. Her felt sense may have suggested the image as a metaphor for how she felt. The image does certainly convey the sense of horror a young child might have experienced in such a situation. What really happened is that Margaret, as an adult, was able to follow the creative dictates of her organism. Her consciousness shifted between images that evoked the horror she experienced as a child (the trauma vortex) and other images that allowed her to expand and heal (the healing vortex). By staying in touch with the sensations that accompanied these images, Margaret allowed her organism to experience a rhythmic pulsation between these vortices that helped her synthesize a new reality while discharging and healing her traumatic reaction. Through the guiding languages of felt sensation, Margaret was able to renegotiate the terror that had persisted in her neck and abdomen for decades following this horrific event. The healing was orchestrated by the transformative relationship between the healing and trauma vortices. Before learning the ways of the felt sense, most people respond to the emergence of the healing vortex and the positive sensations that come with it by squelching or ignoring the m by avoiding them. Healing images can be disconcerting when we are fixated on terrifying visions. In our zeal to recover more of the “memory” of what happened, we suppress the expansion that the nervous system so desperately seeks and plunge head on into the trauma vortex. The secret to Margaret’s healing was that she did not do this. When the image of the leaves came, she went with the feelings associated with it fully and completely and moved away from the horrible feelings of being tied to the tree and terrorized. The leaves (associated with the healing vortex) allowed her to face the deepest parts of her trauma without being overwhelmed. As a result, she transformed herself into a more integrated, resourceful person. Renegotiation and Re-enactment About five months before arrival at Jupiter, Galileo’s probe is to separate from the mothership. This maneuver must aim the probe precisely since it has no navigation or propulsion systems...As it plummets toward the planet fast enough to go from Los Angeles to Washington in 90 seconds, a wrong entry could send it skipping off the tip of Jupiter’s atmosphere and careening into space or burning to a cinder (if it enters Jupiter’s atmosphere too directly). — Science Section, International Herald Tribune October 12, 1989, by Kathy Sawyer

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

  Anaïs gave me a weak smile. “So, how did it go with Don afterwards? He’s terribly handsome.” “It didn’t go. He was definitely attracted to you but not me.” “Did you invite him to your room?” “No, you said to remain elusive.” “Elusive, yes. But you can’t expect him to be a mind reader.” My head fell into my hands with relief that her anger had moved to my failure to seduce Don. But I tried again to apologize for Clara’s attack. Anaïs put up an impatient hand. “Forget it. I have much bigger problems.” “What now?” Renate asked. “The I-R-S!” The way Anaïs said the initials made them sound truly frightening. “Oh no!” Renate shook her head. “I tried to warn you.” “I don’t understand,” I said. Renate explained, “Two husbands. Two joint tax returns. One IRS.” Her voice was somber when she turned to Anaïs. “You could be facing criminal charges. What if they put you in prison after all you’ve worked for?” “It would destroy my literary reputation!” “Well, maybe not,” Renate considered. “It didn’t hurt Jean Genet’s. But prison would be extremely unpleasant. No privacy at all. You have to get a lawyer.” A lawyer’s daughter even though I’d been estranged from my father for years, I echoed, “You have to get a lawyer!” CHAPTER 27 Los Angeles, California, 1966–71 ANAÏS RIGHT AFTER NEW YEAR’S, ANAÏS met with a woman attorney who advised her to divorce Rupert. Anaïs begged the lawyer for a different, “creative” solution because she was finally happy with Rupert. When the lawyer mentioned an annulment Anaïs grabbed that alternative because the word was softer than divorce. “Rupert,” she began after their punctual five o’clock dinner, as he was carrying their dishes to the sink. “Remember I asked you several times to drive me to an attorney’s office?” He gave her a distracted smile. “I showed her a notice I received from the IRS. It seems that there is some sort of problem.” Now she had his full attention. He came back to the table and sat opposite her. Anaïs said pleasantly, “We need to dissolve our marriage and sign an annulment, and after the lawyer has cleared up the paperwork, we can get married again.” “An annulment!” Rupert looked in shock. “On what basis?” “Fraud.” “What fraud?” She couldn’t, she just couldn’t go ahead with this. She couldn’t tell him she’d had another husband for the past seventeen years. But she was far out on the ice now. She had accused herself of deception and there was no going back. “I lied to you about my age. You thought I was just a few years older than you.” She reached and stroked his cheek, tenderly. “I’m really … I’m so ashamed to say it … I’m sixteen years older than you!”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  However, there are many ways in which people sin through their desires, and you, gracious ladies, sin above all in one particular way, which is in your desiring to be beautiful, inasmuch as, being dissatisfied with the attractions bestowed upon you by Nature, you go to extraordinary lengths in trying to improve them. And therefore I would like to tell you a story about a Saracen girl’s ill-starred beauty, which in the space of about four years caused her to be newly married on nine separate occasions. A long time ago, Babylon was ruled by a sultan called Beminedab, 1 during whose reign it was unusual for anything to happen that was contrary to his wishes. Apart from numerous other children, both male and female, this man possessed a daughter called Alatiel, 2 who, at that period, according to everybody who had set eyes on her, was the most beautiful woman to be found anywhere on earth. Now, the Sultan had recently been attacked by a great horde of Arabs, and inflicted a major defeat on his aggressors, receiving timely assistance from the King of Algarve, 3 who asked the Sultan, as a special favour, to give him Alatiel as his wife. The Sultan agreed, and having seen her aboard a well-armed and well-appointed ship with a retinue of noblemen and noblewomen and a large quantity of elegant and precious accoutrements, he bade her a fond farewell. Finding the weather favourable, the ship’s crew put on full sail, and for several days after leaving Alexandria the voyage was prosperous. But one day, when they had passed Sardinia and were looking forward to journey’s end, they ran into a series of sudden squalls, each of which was exceptionally violent, and these gave the ship such a terrible buffeting that passengers and crew were convinced time and again that the end had come. But they had plenty of spirit, and by exerting all their skill and energy they survived the onslaught of the mountainous seas for two whole days. However, as night approached for the third time since the beginning of the storm, which showed no sign of relenting but on the contrary was increasing in fury, they felt the ship foundering. Though in fact they were not far from the coast of Majorca, they had no idea where they were, because it was a dark night and the sky was covered with thick black clouds, and hence it was impossible to estimate their position either with the ship’s instruments or with the naked eye. It now became a case of every man for himself, and there was nothing for it but to launch a longboat, into which the ship’s officers leapt, preferring to put their trust in that rather than in the crippled vessel. But they had no sooner abandoned ship than every man aboard followed their example and leapt into the longboat, undeterred by the fact that the earlier arrivals were fighting them off with knives in their hands.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The tales of adventure are frequently spiced with humour, sometimes in the manner of the telling, at other times in the narrative itself. In the account of Landolfo Rufolo’s ordeal in the sea, he is described as ‘having nothing to eat and far more to drink than he would have wished’, and by the following day he ‘had almost turned into a sponge’. The story of Andreuccio (II, 5), set in Naples, includes two splendid comic vignettes of minor characters, to which attention was drawn by Benedetto Croce, himself a Neapolitan, in a well-known essay.77 The first occurs when the hapless Andreuccio, having fallen from an upper storey of the courtesan’s house in the middle of the night into an open sewer, repeatedly hammers on her door to be re-admitted. Various neighbours, awakened by the noise, fling open their windows and advise him to go away, whereupon the woman’s bully sticks out his head and asks who is there ‘in a low, fierce, spine-chilling growl’. Andreuccio looks up and catches sight of a face which … clearly belonged to some mighty man or other, who had a thick black beard and was yawning and rubbing his eyes as though he had just been roused from a deep sleep.78 Andreuccio’s attempt to explain his presence there is cut short by the fearsome-looking newcomer, who showers him with abuse: ‘I don’t know what restrains me from coming down there and giving you the biggest pasting you’ve ever had in your life, you miserable drunken idiot, making all this racket in the middle of the night and keeping everyone awake.’79 Later in the same story, when Andreuccio finds himself imprisoned in a deep tomb with the corpse of a recently dead archbishop, a gang of grave robbers opens the tomb and props up its massive lid. An argument ensues over who should enter the tomb to steal the archbishop’s ruby ring, then a priest steps forward, saying ‘What are you afraid of? Do you think he is going to devour you? Dead men don’t eat the living. I will go in myself.’80 Fortune traditionally favours the brave, but not in this instance. When the priest lays the upper part of his body on the edge of the tomb and swivels round, ready to descend, Andreuccio stands up and grabs one of his legs, giving the priest the impression that he is about to be dragged inside by the corpse. The priest … no sooner felt this happening than he let out an ear-splitting yell and hurled himself bodily out of the tomb. The rest of the gang were terrified by this turn of events, and, leaving the tomb open, they all started running away as though they were being pursued by ten thousand devils.81

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Thayer, a character in “The Wind Chill Factor,” a short story by M.K. Fischer, provides a vivid and accurate example of how hypervigilance operates. Mrs. Thayer is a physician who is staying alone in a friend’s cottage on the ocean during a severe winter blizzard. She “is comfortable and warm and apparently unconcerned with possible consequences of the storm as she drifts off to sleep. Before dawn she is wrenched into the conscious world, as cruelly as if she had been grabbed by the long hairs of her head.” Her heart is pounding against her throat. Her body is hot, but her hands feel cold and clammy. She is in a state of pure panic. It has nothing to do, she reasons, with physical fear. “She was not afraid of being alone, or of being on the dunes in the storm. She was not afraid of bodily attack, rape, all tha t ... She was simply in panic.” Mrs. Thayer fights an overwhelming urge to flee by telling herself “It is here [in the house] that I shall survive it or else run out howling across the dunes and die soon in the waves and wind.” It is obvious that Mrs. Thayer’s panic has an internal source. To paraphrase Dostoevski in Notes from the Undergroun d ; no one can live without being able to explain to themselves what is happening to them, and if one day they should no longer be able to explain anything to themselves, they would say they had gone mad, and this would be for them the last explanation left. Dostoevski’s sentiment has been echoed by modern-day psychologist Paul Zimbardo, who writes “Most mental illness represents, not a cognitive impairment, but an [attempted] interpretation of discontinuous or inexplicable internal states.” Most people regard inexplicable experiences as something which must be explained. Mrs. Thayer’s need to find the source of her panic is a normal biological response to an intense internal arousal. Indeed, the purpose of the orienting response is to identify the unknown in our experience. This is especially important when the unknown may be a threat. When we are unable to correctly identify what is threatening us, all trauma sufferers unwittingly set our own traps. As Dostoevski and Zimbardo point out, humans have great difficulty in accepting that some aspect of our experience simply cannot be explained. Once the primitive orienting response is invoked, we feel compelled to seek an explanation. When an explanation cannot be found, we usually don’t use our powerful cognitive abilities to recognize what is happening. Even if we are able to think clearly, our cognitive powers cannot completely override the primitive need to identify the source of our distress.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  What might have happened if we hadn’t made this intervention? Would Sammy have become more anxious, hyperactive, and controlling? Might the trauma have resulted in restricted and less adaptive behaviors later? Might he have re-enacted the event decades later, or would he have developed inexplicable symptoms (e.g., tummy aches, migraines, anxiety attacks) without knowing why? Clearly, all of these scenarios are possibl e- and equally impossible to pin down. We cannot know how, when, or even whether a child’s traumatic experience will invade his or her life in another form. However, we can help protect our children from these possibilities through prevention. We can also help them develop into surer, more spontaneous adults. Traumatic Play, Re-enactment, and Renegotiation It is important to appreciate the difference between traumatic play, traumatic re-enactment, and the re-working of trauma as we saw with Sammy. Traumatized adults often re-enact an event that in some way represents, at least to their unconscious, the original trauma. Similarly, children re-create traumatic events in their play. While they may not be aware of the significance behind their behaviors, they are deeply driven by the feelings associated with the original trauma to re-enact them. Even if they won’t talk about the trauma, traumatic play is one way a child will tell his or her story of the event. In Too Scared To Cr y [14] , Lenore Terr describes the play and 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 thei r… [she points to her skirt]. My tummy hurts. I don’t want to play any more.” Lauren stops herself as this bodily symptom of fear abruptly surfaces. This is a typical reaction. She may return over and over to the same play, and each time she will stop when fear arises in the form of her tummy hurting. Some psychologists 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. Terr points out, however, that such play is quite slow in healing the child’s distres s if it ever does. Most often, the play is compulsively repeated without resolution. Unresolved, repetitious traumatic play can reinforce the traumatic impact in the same way that re-enactment and cathartic reliving of traumatic experiences can reinforce trauma in adults.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  The duration of the immobility response in animals is normally time-limited; they go in and they come out. The human immobility response does not easily resolve itself because the supercharged energy locked in the nervous system is imprisoned by the emotions of fear and terror. The result is that a vicious cycle of fear and immobility takes over, preventing the response from completing naturally. When not allowed to complete, these responses form the symptoms of trauma. Just as terror and rage figured in the onset of the freezing response, they will now contribute greatly to its maintenanc e- even though there is no longer any actual threat present. When a pigeon is quietly approached from behind (perhaps as it pecks on some grains) and is picked up gently, the bird freezes. If it is turned upside down, it will remain frozen in that position with its feet in the air for several minutes. When it comes out of this trance-like state, it will right itself and hop or fly away as though nothing had happened. However, if the pigeon is first frightened by an approaching person, it will struggle to escape. If it is caught after a frantic pursuit and held down forcibly, it will also succumb to immobilit y- but the terrified bird will remain frozen much longer than in the first scenario. When it comes out of its trance, it will be in a state of frantic excitability. It may thrash about wildly, pecking at almost any possible target, or fly away in a frenzy of uncoordinated movement. Fear greatly enhances and extends (i.e., potentiates) immobility. It also makes the mobilization process a fearful event. “As They Go In, So They Come Out” If we are highly activated and terrified upon entering the immobility state, we will move out of it in a similar manner. “As they go in, so they come out” is an expression that Army M.A.S.H. medics use when speaking of injured soldiers. If a soldier goes into surgery feeling terror and panic, he may abruptly come out of anaesthesia in a state of frantic disorientation. Biologically, he is reacting like the animal fighting for its life after it has been frightened and captured. The impulse to attack in frantic rage, or to attempt a frantic escape is biologically appropriate. When captured prey come out of immobility, their survival may depend on violent aggression if the predator is still present.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Jamie’s studio was large, bare, and swept by draughts. The stove was too small and at times it smelt vilely. The distempered grey walls were a mass of stains, for whenever it hailed or rained or snowed the windows and skylight would always start dripping. The furniture consisted of a few shaky chairs, a table, a divan and a hired grand piano. Nearly every one seated themselves on the floor, robbing the divan of its moth-eaten cushions. From the studio there led off a tiny room with an eye-shaped window that would not open. In this room had been placed a narrow camp-bed to which Jamie retired when she felt extra sleepless. For the rest, there was a sink with a leaky tap; a cupboard in which they kept crème-de-menthe, what remnants of food they possessed at the moment, Jamie’s carpet slippers and blue jean jacket—minus which she could never compose a note—and the pail, cloths and brushes with which Barbara endeavoured to keep down the accumulating dirt and confusion. For Jamie with her tow-coloured head in the clouds, was not only short-sighted but intensely untidy. Dust meant little to her since she seldom saw it, while neatness was completely left out of her make-up; considering how limited were her possessions, the chaos they produced was truly amazing. Barbara would sigh and would quite often scold—when she scolded she reminded one of a wren who was struggling to discipline a large cuckoo. ‘Jamie, your dirty shirt, give it to me—leaving it there on the piano, whatever!’ Or, ‘Jamie, come here and look at your hair-brush; if you haven’t gone and put it next-door to the butter!’ Then Jamie would peer with her strained, red-rimmed eyes and would grumble: ‘Oh, leave me in peace, do, lassie!’ But when Barbara laughed, as she must do quite often at the outrageous habits of the great loose-limbed creature, why then these days she would usually cough, and when Barbara started to cough she coughed badly. They had seen a doctor who had spoken about lungs and had shaken his head; not strong, he had told them. But neither of them had quite understood, for their French had remained very embryonic, and they could not afford the smart English doctor. All the same when Barbara coughed Jamie sweated, and her fear would produce an acute irritation. ‘Here, drink this water! Don’t sit there doing nothing but rack yourself to bits, it gets on my nerves. Go and order another bottle of that mixture. God, how can I work if you will go on coughing!’ She would slouch to the piano and play mighty chords, pressing down the loud pedal to drown that coughing. But when it had subsided she would feel deep remorse. ‘Oh, Barbara, you’re so little—forgive me. It’s all my fault for bringing you out here, you’re not strong enough for this damnable life, you don’t get the right food, or anything proper.’

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  These men were just as honest as Luther, but they occupied the standpoint of the mediaeval Church, and could not appreciate his departure from the beaten track. The archbishop was very kind and gracious to Luther, as the latter himself admitted. He simply required that in Christian humility he should withdraw his objections to the Council of Constance, leave the matter for the present with the Emperor and the Diet, and promise to accept the final verdict of a future council unfettered by a previous decision of the Pope. Such a council might re-assert its superiority over the Pope, as the reformatory Councils of the fifteenth century had done. But Luther had reason to fear the result of such submission, and remained as hard as a rock. He insisted on the supremacy of the word of God over all Councils, and the right of judging for himself according to his conscience.388 He declared at last, that unless convinced by the Scriptures or "clear and evident reasons," he could not yield, no matter what might happen to him; and that he was willing to abide by the test of Gamaliel, "If this work be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, ye will not be able to overthrow it" (Acts 5:38, 39).389 He asked the Archbishop, on April 25, to obtain for him the Emperor’s permission to go home. In returning to his lodgings, he made a pastoral visit to a German Knight, and told him in leaving: "To-morrow I go away." Three hours after the last conference, the Emperor sent him a safe-conduct for twenty-one days, but prohibited him from writing or preaching on the way. Luther returned thanks, and declared that his only aim was to bring about a reformation of the Church through the Scriptures, and that he was ready to suffer all for the Emperor and the empire, provided only he was permitted to confess and teach the word of God. This was his last word to the imperial commissioners. With a shake of hands they took leave of each other, never to meet again in this world.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Without prior agreement but simply by chance, these seven ladies found themselves sitting, more or less in a circle, in one part of the church, reciting their paternosters. Eventually, they left off and heaved a great many sighs, after which they began to talk among themselves on various different aspects of the times through which they were passing. But after a little while, they all fell silent except for Pampinea, who said: ‘Dear ladies, you will often have heard it affirmed, as I have, that no man does injury to another in exercising his lawful rights. Every person born into this world has a natural right to sustain, preserve, and defend his own life to the best of his ability – a right so freely acknowledged that men have sometimes killed others in self-defence, and no blame whatever has attached to their actions. Now, if this is permitted by the laws, upon whose prompt application all mortal creatures depend for their well-being, how can it possibly be wrong, seeing that it harms no one, for us or anyone else to do all in our power to preserve our lives? If I pause to consider what we have been doing this morning, and what we have done on several mornings in the past, if I reflect on the nature and subject of our conversation, I realize, just as you also must realize, that each of us is apprehensive on her own account. This does not surprise me in the least, but what does greatly surprise me (seeing that each of us has the natural feelings of a woman) is that we do nothing to requite ourselves against the thing of which we are all so justly afraid. ‘Here we linger for no other purpose, or so it seems to me, than to count the number of corpses being taken to burial, or to hear whether the friars of the church, very few of whom are left, chant their offices at the appropriate hours, or to exhibit the quality and quantity of our sorrows, by means of the clothes we are wearing, to all those whom we meet in this place. And if we go outside, we shall see the dead and the sick being carried hither and thither, or we shall see people, once condemned to exile by the courts for their misdeeds, careering wildly about the streets in open defiance of the law, well knowing that those appointed to enforce it are either dead or dying; or else we shall find ourselves at the mercy of the scum of our city who, having scented our blood, call themselves sextons and go prancing and bustling all over the place, singing bawdy songs that add insult to our injuries. Moreover, all we ever hear is “So-and-so’s dead” and “So-and-so’s dying”; and if there were anyone left to mourn, the whole place would be filled with sounds of weeping and wailing. ‘And if we return to our homes, what happens?

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Tingoccio called out to him, and Meuccio woke up with a start, saying: ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am Tingoccio,’ he replied, ‘and I have returned, as I promised, to bring you tidings of the other world.’ Having recovered from the shock of seeing him, Meuccio said: ‘My brother, you are welcome.’ He then asked him whether, as he put it, he was ‘lost’, and Tingoccio replied: ‘Lost? If a thing is lost, it can’t be found; so what on earth would I be doing here, if I was lost?’ ‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Meuccio. ‘What I want to know is whether you’re among the souls of the damned, in the scourging fires of Hell.’ ‘Not exactly,’ replied Tingoccio. ‘But I’m being severely punished just the same, because of the sins I committed, and it’s all very painful.’ Then Meuccio questioned him in detail about the punishments that were meted out there for each of the sins committed on earth, and Tingoccio described them one by one. And when Meuccio went on to ask him whether there was anything he could do for him, Tingoccio replied in the affirmative, saying that he should arrange for prayers and masses to be recited on his behalf, and for alms to be given, since these things were highly beneficial to the souls of the dead. All of this Meuccio readily agreed to do. Just as Tingoccio was leaving, Meuccio remembered about Monna Mita, and raising his head a little, he said: ‘By the way, Tingoccio: what punishment have they given you for making love to the mother of your godchild?’ Whereupon Tingoccio replied: ‘My brother, as soon as I arrived down there, I was met by one who seemed to know all of my sins by heart, and who ordered me to proceed to the place where I am being severely punished for my misdeeds. There I found a large company of souls condemned to the same punishment as myself, and as I stood in their midst, I suddenly remembered how I had carried on with my godchild’s mother. And since I was expecting to have to pay a much heavier penalty for this than the one I had been given, I began, even though I was being roasted in a fierce and enormous fire, to tremble all over with fear. On noticing this, one of my fellow sinners said: “Why do you tremble so when standing in the fire? Have you done something worse than the rest of us?” “Oh, my friend,” said I, “it fills me with terror when I think of the judgement that awaits me for a dreadful sin I have committed.” He then asked me which sin I was referring to, and I said: “I made love to the mother of my godchild, and went to it so heartily that I shed my pelt in the process.” He had a good laugh over this, and said: “Be off with you, you fool!

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On opening his eyes and finding that he could not see anything, he groped about with his hands and discovered that he was inside this trunk, whereupon he began to ponder and mutter to himself, saying: ‘What’s all this? Where am I? Am I asleep, or awake? I have a clear recollection of entering my lady’s bedchamber this evening, and now I appear to be inside some sort of chest. What does it mean? Can it be that the doctor returned home, or that something equally unexpected happened, causing my mistress to conceal me here whilst I was asleep? Why of course, that’s the explanation, that’s it exactly.’ And so he kept quiet and listened to see whether he could hear anything. But after remaining stock-still for some considerable time, feeling rather uncomfortable inside the trunk, which was none too big, and getting a pain in the side on which he was lying, he decided to turn over. This operation he performed with such a degree of skill that in pressing his back against one of the sides of the trunk, which had not been placed on an even keel, he caused it to topple over and fall with a resounding crash, waking up the women who were asleep in the adjoining room and giving them such a fright that they hardly dared to breathe, let alone open their mouths. Ruggieri received quite a shock when the trunk toppled over, but on finding that it had burst open in falling, he preferred to clamber out rather than stay where he was, just in case anything worse was about to happen to him. Being at his wits’ end, and not knowing where he was, he began to fumble his way round the premises in order to see whether he could find a door or a staircase that would offer him a means of escape. The women heard these fumbling sounds as they lay there awake, and they began calling out: ‘Who’s there?’ Being unable to recognize their voices, Ruggieri offered no reply, and so the women started calling to the two young men, who, because they had gone to bed so late, were soundly asleep and had heard nothing of all the racket. Feeling more frightened than ever, the women got out of bed and ran to the windows, shouting: ‘Burglars! Burglars!’ And so several of their neighbours rushed into the house from various directions, some by way of the roof, some by the front-door, and others by the entrance at the rear. And the noise reached such a pitch that even the young men woke up and scrambled out of bed. On finding himself in the midst of all this commotion, Ruggieri very nearly collapsed with astonishment.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Ideally, these discussions will help you strengthen your ability to use the felt sense in the land of physiology and sensation. How the Organism Communicates The organism has its own way of communicating, which you’ll learn more about as you continue to read this book. A couple of very important characteristics of how it communicates will already be evident from the exercises above. Think back to the last exercise. Did you notice that when you described sensations, you used words that referred to physiological sensations that were familiar to you? If you have never felt something that is fuzzy, you won’t know what fuzzy is and the organism wouldn’t use fuzzy to describe a sensation. The organism uses what it already knows to describe what it is experiencing. Don’t take it literally. A sensation can feel like it is fuzzy, jagged, made of glass, wood, or plastic. Obviously, “feel like” is a key part of the description. There isn’t anything inside you that is really fuzzy or jagged. You don’t have pieces of wood, glass, or plastic inside you, unless you have suffered some very poorly executed surgical procedures. The sensations just feel like these things. They are metaphors. Sensations, however, can also be literal and correspond with information received from organs, bones, and muscles. The organism doesn’t just use characteristics of physical objects to communicate. It also uses images that can easily be construed as memories. The energetic forces that result in trauma are immensely powerful. The emotions that are generated by trauma include rage, terror, and helplessness. If your body elects to communicate the presence of such energies to you through image s , consider the kinds of images you might see. The possibilities are endless. They will have one thing in commo n - they won’t be pretty. One mistake that is made all too often is that people interpret these visual communications as reality. A traumatized individual may end up believing that he or she was raped or tortured when the actual message the organism is trying to convey is that this sensation you are experiencing feels like rape or torture. The actual culprit could just as easily have been a terrifying medical procedure, an automobile accident, or even childhood neglect. It could literally be anything. Of course, some images really are memories. People who have suffered from rape or torture will draw on those experiences in producing images. It is common for children who have had these experiences not to remember them until years later. Even if the images are “true” memories, we have to understand their role in healing. The explanations, beliefs, and interpretations connected with memories can get in the way of completely entering and deepening the felt sense. The sensations that accompany these images are immensely valuable.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  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. We may literally freeze in fear, which will result in the creation of traumatic symptoms.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  The perception of an actual threat signals danger, as does the activated state (even without the perception). You get the message that you are in danger not only through what you actually see (even peripherally), but through sensations that come from the unconscious visceral experience of your physiological state. The threatening person coming toward you signals danger, but so does the fact that your body is responding with an increased heartbeat, tightened stomach muscles, a heightened and constricted awareness of the immediate environment, and altered muscle tone (in general). When the energy of this highly activated state is not discharged, the organism concludes that it is still in danger. The effect of that perception on the organism is that it continues to re-stimulate the nervous system in order to maintain and augment that level of preparedness and arousal. When this occurs the debilitating symptoms of trauma are born. The nervous system activates all its physiological and biochemical mechanisms for dealing with threat, yet it cannot sustain this heightened level of arousal without the opportunity or means to respond effectively. The nervous system alone is incapable of discharging energy. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of activation that will overload the system if it continues indefinitely. The organism must find a way out of the cycle created by the perception of danger and the accompanying arousal in order to regain its equilibrium. Failure to do so leads to pathology and debilitation as the organism compensates for its aroused state through the manifestations that are now recognized as the symptoms of trauma. Symptoms The nervous system compensates for being in a state of self-perpetuating arousal by setting off a chain of adaptations that eventually bind and organize the energy into “symptoms.” These adaptations function as a safety valve to the nervous system. The first symptoms of trauma usually appear shortly after the event that engendered them. Others will develop over time. As I mentioned earlier, trauma symptoms are energetic phenomena that serve the organism by providing an organized way to manage and bind the tremendous energy contained in both the original and the self-perpetuated response to threat. Due to the uniqueness of each individual’s experience, it would be a prohibitive task to compile a complete list of every known trauma symptom. However, there are symptoms that are indicators of trauma be-cause they are common to most traumatized people. In spite of the vast diversity of possibilities available to it, the nervous system does seem to favor some symptoms over others. Generally, some traumatic symptoms are more likely to appear sooner than others. In the last chapter we discussed the first symptoms to develop. (the core of the traumatic reaction):  hyperarousal  constriction  dissociation (including denial)  feelings of helplessness Other early symptoms that begin to show up at the same time or shortly after those above are:  hypervigilance (being “on guard” at all times)  intrusive imagery or flashbacks  extreme sensitivity to light and sound  hyperactivity

• From The Decameron (1353)

  She meanwhile gave a full account of the affair to her lover, who took it rather amiss and displayed a certain amount of jealousy. And so at length, in order to show him that his jealousy was misconceived, she sent her maid to the scholar, who was bombarding her with entreaties, to tell him on her behalf that albeit since the day he had first declared his love, she had not had a single opportunity to grant his desires, she hoped it would be possible to forgather with him in the immediate future, during Christmastide. If, therefore, he would like to come to the courtyard of her house after dark on the evening of the day after Christmas, she would meet him there as soon as she conveniently could. The scholar was the happiest man in Christendom, and having gone to her house at the time she had specified, he was taken by the maid to a courtyard, where he was locked in and began to wait for the lady. Earlier that evening, the lady had invited her lover to the house, and after they had supped merrily together, she told him what she was proposing to do that night, adding: ‘And you’ll be able to see exactly how much I love this fellow, whom you were foolish enough to regard as your rival.’ These words brought great joy to the heart of her lover, who was impatient to see what the outcome would be. Now, it so happened that earlier in the day there had been a heavy fall of snow, and it lay thick all over the place, so before the scholar had spent much time in the courtyard, he began to feel distinctly chilly. But since he was expecting relief at any moment, he suffered it all in patience. After a while, the lady said to her lover: ‘Let’s go and spy on this precious rival of yours from the little window in the bedroom, and see what he has to say to the maid. I have just sent her down to have a few words with him.’ So off they went to the bedroom, from which they could look down on the courtyard without being seen, and they heard the maid addressing the scholar from another window. ‘Rinieri,’ she said, ‘my mistress is positively at her wits’ end, for one of her brothers called on her this evening and kept her talking for ages, after which he insisted on staying for supper, and he still hasn’t left, though I think he’ll be going quite soon. This explains why she hasn’t been able to come to you; but she’ll be down in a moment, and begs you not to be angry with her for having to wait so long.’ Thinking the maid’s story was true, the scholar replied: