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 Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The fighter planes! We forced our swollen feet to run and threw ourselves into the ditches. Intelligently and diabolically, the planes passed over us, changed their minds, came back, then swooped and fired wherever they saw any sign of life. A German courier was racing past on his motorcycle, both he and his machine wrapped in striped oilskin camouflage like a fabulous caparisoned beast, when suddenly a Spitfire dived and flew low, riddling him with bullets till it rose again and left behind a flaming human torch. I closed my eyes. But there were neither screams nor spectacular convulsions. The machine silently went on, left the road, cut straight across a field, then lay down on its side, still burning. So the war had caught up with us; any encounter now was dangerous. Outside Bir M’Cherga there was again some traffic. Without quite losing sight of it, we left the road and cut across country. Armored cars, tanks, and trucks formed an endless procession. The bombers resumed their relays. At each alarm, the drivers and their assistants left their vehicles and dashed for the ditches. We threw ourselves flat on the earth which shook hard beneath us. When it was over, each of us glanced at the others to count the survivors, and we then set forth again, uncuriously following the road. Vehicles were burning, and soldiers were trying to save them. I can no longer recall each attack separately: the roar of motors, the screams of warning of the men, their flight, and the silent anxiety as death took its pick, then the thuds of the bombs that shook the ground beneath us, the din of explosions, and again silence, with a gun still rumbling in the distance, and our departure once more. I was no longer surprised to find myself still alive, and the fear of death was no longer so acute. My mind was detached from my body, which lived on and automatically looked after itself.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  22. These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. 23. Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lviii. 1) The Pharisees being unable, by intimidation, to deter the blind man from publicly proclaiming his Benefactor, try to nullify the miracle through the parents: But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they had called the parents of him that had received his sight. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xliv. s. 10) i. e. had been blind, and now saw. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lviii. 3) But it is the nature of truth, to be strengthened by the very snares that are laid against it. A lie is its own antagonist, and by its attempts to injure the truth, sets it off to greater advantage: as is the case now. For the argument which might otherwise have been urged, that the neighbours knew nothing for certain, but spoke from a mere resemblance, is cut off by introduction of the parents, who could of course testify to their own son. Having brought these before the assembly, they interrogate them with great sharpness, saying, Is this your son, (they say not, who was born blind, but) who ye say was born blind? Say. Why what father is there, that would say such things of a son, if they were not true? Why not say at once, Whom ye made blind? They try two ways of making them deny the miracle: by saying, Who ye say was born blind, and by adding, How then doth he now see? THEOPHYLACT. Either, say they, it is not true that he now sees, or it is untrue that he was blind before: but it is evident that he now sees; therefore it is not true that he was born blind. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lviii. 2) Three things then being asked,—if he were their son, if he had been blind and how he saw,—they acknowledge two of them: His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind. But the third they refuse to speak to: But by what means he now seeth, we know not. The enquiry in this way ends in confirming the truth of the miracle, by making it rest upon the incontrovertible evidence of the confession of the healed person himself; He is of age, they say, ask him; he can speak for himself. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xliv. 10) As f to say, We might justly be compelled to speak for an infant, that could not speak for itself: but he, though blind from his birth, has been always able to speak.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I hear my shirt ripping. I am startled and again jump to the vantage of an observer hovering above my sprawling body. I watch uniformed strangers methodically attach electrodes to my chest. The Good Samaritan paramedic reports to someone that my pulse was 170. I hear my shirt ripping even more. I see the emergency team slip a collar onto my neck and then cautiously slide me onto a board. While they strap me down, I hear some garbled radio communication. The paramedics are requesting a full trauma team. Alarm jolts me. I ask to be taken to the nearest hospital only a mile away, but they tell me that my injuries may require the major trauma center in La Jolla, some thirty miles farther. My heart sinks. Surprisingly, though, the fear quickly subsides. As I am lifted into the ambulance, I close my eyes for the first time. A vague scent of the woman’s perfume and the look of her quiet, kind eyes linger. Again, I have that comforting feeling of being held by her presence. Opening my eyes in the ambulance, I feel a heightened alertness, as though I’m supercharged with adrenaline. Though intense, this feeling does not overwhelm me. Even though my eyes want to dart around, to survey the unfamiliar and foreboding environment, I consciously direct myself to go inward. I begin to take stock of my body sensations. This active focusing draws my attention to an intense, and uncomfortable, buzzing throughout my body.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  … The next moment, paralyzed and numb, I’m lying on the road, unable to move or breathe. I can’t figure out what has just happened. How did I get here? Out of a swirling fog of confusion and disbelief, a crowd of people rushes toward me. They stop, aghast. Abruptly, they hover over me in a tightening circle, their staring eyes fixed on my limp and twisted body. From my helpless perspective they appear like a flock of carnivorous ravens, swooping down on an injured prey—me. Slowly I orient myself and identify the real attacker. As in an old-fashioned flashbulb photo, I see a beige car looming over me with its teeth-like grill and shattered windshield. The door suddenly jerks open. A wide-eyed teenager bursts out. She stares at me in dazed horror. In a strange way, I both know and don’t know what has just happened. As the fragments begin to converge, they convey a horrible reality: I must have been hit by this car as I entered the crosswalk. In confused disbelief, I sink back into a hazy twilight. I find that I am unable to think clearly or to will myself awake from this nightmare. A man rushes to my side and drops to his knees. He announces himself as an off-duty paramedic. When I try to see where the voice is coming from, he sternly orders, “Don’t move your head.” The contradiction between his sharp command and what my body naturally wants—to turn toward his voice—frightens and stuns me into a sort of paralysis. My awareness strangely splits, and I experience an uncanny “dislocation.” It’s as if I’m floating above my body, looking down on the unfolding scene. I am snapped back when he roughly grabs my wrist and takes my pulse. He then shifts his position, directly above me. Awkwardly, he grasps my head with both of his hands, trapping it and keeping it from moving. His abrupt actions and the stinging ring of his command panic me; they immobilize me further. Dread seeps into my dazed, foggy consciousness: Maybe I have a broken neck, I think. I have a compelling impulse to find someone else to focus on. Simply, I need to have someone’s comforting gaze, a lifeline to hold onto. But I’m too terrified to move and feel helplessly frozen.

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  I still had plenty of options for solo exploration. Murray told me that, during lockdown, a friend of hers taught herself how to rig rope and do “self-ties.” I figured I would start even simpler. I ordered a sexy satin blindfold to test Simone Justice’s claim that taking away one sense (or more) could enhance feeling in others. The idea made intellectual sense: I often close my eyes before orgasm because I’m so easily distracted by the things I can see. That’s why the visuals of porn so rarely move me, because I get sidetracked by details like production value and poetic license. The blindfold would ensure my eyes stayed closed, so I could remain focused on the sensations in my body—while also channeling a little sexiness and novelty because I do not wear blindfolds in my day-to-day goings-on. At first: panic. I had to remind myself that I could take off the blindfold; there was no lock. It took a few moments for me to settle into the comfort of the restriction, the freedom to stop grasping at total control. As Simone had told me, “As a submissive, you practice experiencing pleasure, and feeling that sense of, ‘Oh, I don’t have to do anything right now except receive.’” Blacking out my apartment and even the vision of my body, I slipped into a sense of pure expansiveness—my connection to the world hinged only on sensation. Later that day, I wondered if I could ever trust someone enough to put a blindfold on me, given all the sexual nightmares I’ve endured, nightmares that still live in my body. With the right negotiation, it seemed possible. There’s always some fear in pleasure—that if you fully surrender, it cannot be contained. Restraints contain it, encourage surrendering. Maybe I’d try more with a friend. “There is so much room for platonic play,” Murray told me. “It doesn’t need to be in a romantic or in a sexual relationship as we’ve talked about. I could get a new toy and a friend could be like, ‘You know what? I’ve never tried a paddle that’s like that before. Would you be comfortable? Can we do a small scene?’ Yeah, of course. No problem. I’ll happily give you a few strikes with this paddle.” During BDSM play, Murray says she gets a full reprieve from her anxiety. “It’s really grounding because you can’t fake it till you make it the same way you can in sex. You could try, but you would have a completely unfulfilling experience and it would be so incredibly performative and hard to sustain, because how are you going to pretend that you like being hit by something? You can’t. It’s not going to work.” She finds BDSM grounding because of its sensory richness, with every prop and garment conveying symbolic significance. When she puts on her collar, she becomes present. Tools are powerful. 8 TOY STORY “What do you expect, Mother? I’m half machine.” —Buster Bluth

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  After my sessions with Weissfeld, I realized I needed extra help with “embodiment,” that therapy buzzword signifying something essential, in life and in sex: our ability to be present in our bodies. Countless sex educators and therapists had spoken to me about kink as a tool to access this sense of presence, and I would always nod knowingly, not knowing. People have choked me without my permission, I’d think, but the absence of permission distances this act from kink entirely. Many people in the BDSM community are concerned by the growing misconception that choking is “light BDSM”; sex educator Lola Jean says we’re in a “choking epidemic,” and most people aren’t doing it properly (read: safely, pleasurably). Once again, mass porn illiteracy is making sex worse—and misrepresenting kink. Most kinky people have an exceedingly sophisticated vocabulary for consent and boundary negotiation; in fact, as kink educator Aoife Murray explained to me, the BDSM community has been decades ahead of mainstream society when it comes to consent, recognizing that it must be ongoing and freely given. This is not how kink is portrayed in most mass media and porn—one of the more flagrant examples being Fifty Shades of Grey, a coercive, hardly consensual nightmare wherein the submissive’s needs are systemically subdued. Murray, who is a switch, has been a submissive in a relationship with her dom for four years, and wants to push back against the misconception that subs (or any person, in any role) would have to sacrifice their well-being. “Yes, you want to offer submission to your partner if you’re a sub, but that’s not at the expense of your basic needs. You might prioritize their wants before yours, like, ‘Oh, we’re going to order takeaway. I might prefer pizza but I think he’d prefer Chinese. We’ll get Chinese,’ that kind of thing. But this isn’t like, ‘I need this for my emotional stability but I’ll put that to one side.’ That’s not what we do.” This popular misunderstanding extends to specific acts, as well. (BDSM is an acronym that refers to play that involves bondage, discipline [or domination], sadism [or submission], and masochism.) “Unfortunately now as BDSM has entered more into the mainstream, there’s more BDSM porn and more people going online and finding BDSM, entering it through that kind of lens,” said Simone Justice, an internationally renowned BDSM educator and former pro-domme. “Negotiation and consent is one aspect of BDSM that I would love to spread outside of BDSM and into more of sexuality, so that it becomes comfortable and standard for people.” Kink isn’t for everyone, nor is it any one thing, but the structure of kink, defined loosely as an unconventional sexual preference or behavior, has allowed many people I interviewed to experience more pleasure, joy, and intimacy, during sex and elsewhere. In addition to providing a framework for negotiating boundaries, kink, and especially BDSM, have been shown to engender a deeper sense of embodiment—the exact thing I, and many of my peers, struggle with.

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  A few weeks later, after shaving off half my hair to establish I was misunderstood, I met a tall, handsome cruise ship worker at the same club and brought him home to my rental apartment. We sat on the stony stretch of Adriatic that was my backyard; the sea was inky black. He kept asking me if I’d seen Californication, and reciting lines from it that I found inscrutable, as he was translating the Croatian translation back into English. Hooking up with him felt exciting and odd. The make-out was frenetic as we tore off each other’s clothes, knocking over abandoned water glasses left and right. I asked him to get a condom. He refused; he said he could not have sex with a condom, that it was agonizing for him. So we didn’t have sex. We simply laid there on the bed, each of us hoping the other would fold; people had clearly folded to him before. (His jawline could have sliced an apple.) But unprotected sex with a stranger was off-limits to me. He continued trying to convince me to forgo the condom, citing low pregnancy rates. This is when I should have sent him home. After explaining the premise of Californication again, he hoisted himself up from the bed and peed into the sink, looking at me through the mirror as he did it. A few nights later, head throbbing from supermarket wine, I invited him back. For years, retelling these stories to myself and others, I’d recall the first sexual encounter as bad and the second one as good, sexy, and fun—a disturbing testament to the skill with which I cling to scraps of intrigue to fill the void. The first guy was textbook inappropriate, and I was textbook unattracted to him, from the tip of his ponytail to the butt flap of his onesie. He used me as a prop for his satisfaction, and I complied, sustained by novelty and an eagerness to feel something, anything. The second guy was stoic and aggressive in a way that aroused me, despite his rudeness around condoms, which I too quickly brushed aside. In both cases I understood there was a possibility I could be killed and didn’t care; in both cases, I understood I wouldn’t get off and didn’t care. In that era of my life, sex hadn’t been about pleasure. It was a means to feel desired and less alone. And it didn’t even work!

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  If you hide from yourself the fact that an uncle molested you when you were young, you are vulnerable to react to triggers like an animal in a thunderstorm: with a full-body response to the hormones that signal “danger.” Without language and context, your awareness may be limited to: “I’m scared.” Yet, determined to stay in control, you are likely to avoid anybody or anything that reminds you even vaguely of your trauma. You may also alternate between being inhibited and being uptight or reactive and explosive—all without knowing why. As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. Hiding your core feelings takes an enormous amount of energy, it saps your motivation to pursue worthwhile goals, and it leaves you feeling bored and shut down. Meanwhile, stress hormones keep flooding your body, leading to headaches, muscle aches, problems with your bowels or sexual functions—and irrational behaviors that may embarrass you and hurt the people around you. Only after you identify the source of these responses can you start using your feelings as signals of problems that require your urgent attention. Ignoring inner reality also eats away at your sense of self, identity, and purpose. Clinical psychologist Edna Foa and her colleagues developed the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory to assess how patients think about themselves.[4] Symptoms of PTSD often include statements like “I feel dead inside,” “I will never be able to feel normal emotions again,” “I have permanently changed for the worse,” “I feel like an object, not like a person,” “I have no future,” and “I feel like I don’t know myself anymore.” The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Vietnam veteran Karl Marlantes grapples with his memories of belonging to a brilliantly effective Marine combat unit and confronts the terrible split he discovered inside himself: For years I was unaware of the need to heal that split, and there was no one, after I returned, to point this out to me.…Why did I assume there was only one person inside me?…There’s a part of me that just loves maiming, killing, and torturing. This part of me isn’t all of me. I have other elements that indeed are just the opposite, of which I am proud. So am I a killer? No, but part of me is. Am I a torturer? No, but part of me is. Do I feel horror and sadness when I read in the newspapers of an abused child? Yes. But am I fascinated?[5] Marlantes tells us that his road to recovery required learning to tell the truth, even if that truth was brutally painful. Death, destruction, and sorrow need to be constantly justified in the absence of some overarching meaning for the suffering. Lack of this overarching meaning encourages making things up, lying, to fill the gap in meaning.[6]

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  “Even slower, this time, Vince … Let’s see what happens this time … I want you to really give it your full attention; focus your mind into your arm now.” Moving slowly allows awareness to be brought to the arm. Just moving it quickly, without mindfulness, is likely to re-create the protective holding pattern. His hand begins to tremble, and he looks to me for some reassurance. “Yes, Vince, just let that happen. It’s a good thing. It’s your muscles starting to let go. Try to keep your mind focused there, with your arm and with the trembling. Just let your arm move the way it wants to.” The trembling goes on for a while and then stops; Vince’s forehead breaks out in sweat. As Vince moves to the edge of the bracing pattern, some of the “energy” held in his muscular-defense pattern begins to release. This includes the involuntary autonomic nervous system reactions, such as shaking, trembling sweating and temperature changes.m Because these are subcortically based actions, the person does not have a feeling of control over their reactions. This may be quite unsettling. My function here is that of a coach and midwife, helping Vince to befriend these “ego alien” sensations, especially since he is wholly unaccustomed to involuntary reactions that he can’t control. “What is this, why is it happening?” Vince asks me in the voice of a frightened child. “Vince, I’m going to ask you to just close your eyes for a minute now and go inside your body. I’ll be right here if you need me.” After some moments of silence his hands and arm begin to extend outward, his whole arm, shoulders and hands are now shaking more intensely. “It’s OK for that to happen,” I encourage; “just let it do what it needs to do and keep feeling your body.” “It feels cold then hot,” he replies as he continues to reach out, moving now to about forty-five degrees. Then he halts abruptly. Amazed that he can reach out so far, his eyes open wide. At the same time, he seems agitated; his face suddenly turns pale. He complains of feeling sick. Instead of backing off, I coach him to stay present with his physical sensations. He starts to breathe rapidly. “Oh my god, I know what this is.” “Yes, good,” I interrupt, “but let’s just stay with the sensations for a little longer, then we’ll talk about it—is that OK?”n

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Briefly, Porges’s theory states that, in humans, three basic neural energy subsystems underpin the overall state of the nervous system and correlative behaviors and emotions. The most primitive of these three (spanning about 500 million years) stems from its origin in early fish species.† The function of this primitive system is immobilization, metabolic conservation, and shutdown. Its target of action is the internal organs. Next in evolutionary development is the sympathetic nervous system. This global arousal system has evolved from the reptilian period about 300 million years ago. Its function is mobilization and enhanced action (as in fight or flight); its target in the body is the limbs. Finally, the third, and phylogenetically most recent, system (deriving from about 80 million years ago) exists only in mammals. This neural subsystem shows its greatest refinement in the primates, where it mediates complex social and attachment behaviors. It is the branch of the parasympathetic nervous system that regulates the so-called mammalian or “smart” vagus nerve, which is neuroanatomically linked to the cranial nerves that mediate facial expression and vocalization. This most recently acquired system animates the unconsciously mediated muscles in throat, face, middle ear, heart and lungs, which together communicate our emotions, both to others and to ourselves.59 This most refined system orchestrates relationship, attachment and bonding and also mediates emotional intelligence. Figure 6.1 summarizes the basic mammalian nervous subsystems. For more detail, see Diagram B after this page, which shows the complex wandering of the vagus nerve affecting and being affected by most of the internal organs. The basic functions of these phylogenetic systems are summarized in Figures 6.2a through 6.2d. Nervous systems are tuned to assess potential risk in the environment—an unconscious evaluative process that Porges calls “neuroception.”‡ If one perceives the environment to be safe, one’s social engagement system inhibits the more primitive limbic and brain stem structures that control fight or flight. After being moderately startled, you might, for example be calmed by another person—as when a mother says to her child, “It’s ok; that was only the wind blowing.” Generally, when threatened or upset, one first looks to others, wishing to engage their faces and voices and to communicate one’s feelings to secure collective safety. These are called attachment behavior. Attachment is virtually the only defense young children have, as they cannot usually protect themselves by fighting or fleeing. Attachment for security is a general mammalian and primate survival strategy against predation. By dealing with threat in quantity, the individual is less likely to be “picked off.” In addition, if someone in your own group is threatening you, you may first try to “make nice” before resorting to fighting or fleeing. Simplified Block Diagram of the Polyvagal Components [image file=image_rsrc2NC.jpg] Figure 6.1

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  There is no need to call to mind the whole theory of consciousness in order to understand this principle clearly. A few simple observations will suffice, and it is remarkable that the psychologists of emotion have never thought of making them. It is obvious indeed that the man who is frightened is afraid of something. Even if it is a case of one of those indefinite anxieties that one feels in the dark, in a sinister and deserted alley, etc., it is still of certain aspects of the night, or of the world, that one is afraid. And without doubt, all the psychologists have noted that emotion is touched off by some perception — a representative signal, etc. But for them, as it appears, emotion then parts company with the object to become absorbed in itself. Little reflection is needed to discover that, on the contrary, emotion returns to the object every moment and feeds upon it. They describe flight in fear, for instance, as though the flight were not first and foremost a flight from a certain object, as though that object did not remain constantly in the act of flight as its theme, the reason for it, as what one is fleeing from. And how can we speak about anger, in which one strikes, reviles and threatens, without mentioning the person who represents the objective unity of all those insults, menaces and blows? In a word, the emotional subject and the object of the emotion are united in an indissoluble synthesis. Emotion is a specific manner of apprehending the world. That is what Dembo alone has a glimpse of, although he does not give a reason for it. The subject who is seeking the solution of a practical problem is outside in the world, he is aware of the world at every moment throughout all his actions. If he fails in his attempt and grows irritated, the irritation itself is still a way in which the world appears to him. And it is not necessary that the subject, between his failure in action and his anger, should turn back upon himself and interpose a reflective consciousness, There may be continuous passage from the nonreflective consciousness 'instrumental world' (action) to the non-reflective consciousness 'hateful world' (anger). The latter is a transformation of the former.

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  Secondly, that the consciousness is caught in its own snare. Precisely because it is living in the new aspect of the world by believing in it, the consciousness is captured by its own belief, exactly as it is in dreams and hysteria. The consciousness of the emotion is captive, but by this it must not be understood to be fettered by anything whatever outside itself. It is captive to itself in this sense — that it does not dominate the belief that it is doing its utmost to live, and this precisely because it is living that belief and is absorbed in living it. It must not be imagined that consciousness is spontaneous in the sense that it is always free to deny a thing and to affirm it at one and the same moment. Such a spontaneity would be self-contradictory. It is of the essence of consciousness to transcend itself, and it is therefore impossible for it to withdraw within itself and to doubt whether it is outside in the object. It knows itself only in the world. And doubt, of its very nature, can be nothing but the constitution of an existential quality of the object; the doubtful, or the reflective activity of reduction — that is, the property of a new consciousness directed towards the positional consciousness. Thus, when consciousness is living the magical world into which it has precipitated itself, it tends to perpetuate that world, by which it is captivated: the emotion tends to perpetuate itself. It is in this sense that we may say it is undergone; the consciousness is moved by its emotion and heightens it. The faster one flees the more one is afraid. The magical world appears, takes form, and then closes in on the consciousness and clutches it: it cannot even wish to escape, it may seek to flee from the magical object, but to flee from it is to give it more magical reality than ever. And this very condition of captivity is not in itself realized by the consciousness, which attributes it to the objects — it is they that are captivating, imprisoning it, they have taken possession of the consciousness. Liberation can come only from a purifying reflection or from the total disappearance of the emotional situation.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  One morning my mother forgot and left the door ajar. I opened it wide and found myself, for the first time in my life, alone facing the goats, those monsters with their long silky hair, black and rust-colored, that stood taller than I by a whole head plus their horns. I hesitated on the threshold, but a plan that had long been maturing within me, though I had always postponed its execution, now pushed me ahead: at last, I had an opportunity to test the world all by myself and, at the same time, to revenge myself on these goats that seemed to challenge me. Without moving, I selected with a glance the most terrifying and most maternal of them all, the one with the most swollen dugs. The beast was turning its head away from me. Softly, I came a few steps closer, stretched out my hand and, suddenly seizing a fistful of the heavy fur of its haunches, pulled as hard as I could. Then something happened that I had not allowed myself to foresee, for courage demands contempt for consequences: the beast did not try to escape, did not utter a cry of anguish, but suddenly turned around, lowered its head, aimed its sharp horns at me, and charged, the bell at its neck furiously ringing. I uttered a horrifying howl and threw myself toward the door. I no longer know — indeed, I never knew — whether the horns really grazed me. But I slammed the door and, still howling with all my might, propped myself with both hands against the panel, as if I were holding back the whole of Hell. Avowing my distress by my cries, I automatically called on my guardian angels for protection. At once my mother, the neighbors, and my father, holding up his unbuttoned pants, rushed to my rescue, while heads appeared at the balconies and galleries of the upper stories of the house. Someone caught hold of me, lifted me up, and I closed my eyes, yielded entirely, my legs suddenly weak, my heart in anguish. But I was safe, no matter how painfully my heart beat against my ribs, no matter how weakly my legs failed to carry me. My mother gave me a glass of sugar and water and told me to go and urinate. “But I don’t feel like it.” “One always feels like making pee-pee. Go ahead and do it, or else you’ll catch jaundice.” I pissed and didn’t catch jaundice. But my mother attributed to this scare an abscessed gum that I developed later. In all the history of my early childhood, this incident stands out as one of the few unpleasant ones that I remember. And the few small dangers that ever dared disturb my day-to-day happiness were immediately dispelled by the all-powerful appearance of my parents.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  The old, beautiful ruins (the first text) of her old life? Or the deplorably ugly new life she saw stretching ahead of her? But it also suggested a new aspect of our work together. In the earlier dreams I am inept: I lose the path in the forest; I take Irene up a fire escape that leads to a ceiling with no escape; I do not know the answers to the examination. In this dream, however, not only am I inept and fail to protect her, I am also dangerous —I lead Irene to the brink of death. A couple of nights later she dreamed that she and I embrace and gently kiss. But what starts off sweetly turns to terror when my mouth opens wider and wider and I begin to devour her. “I struggle and struggle,” she reported, “but cannot wrench free.” “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Thus, as John Donne observed nearly four hundred years ago in these now familiar lines, the funeral bell tolls not only for the dead but also for you and me—survivors, yes, but for a limited time. This insight is as old as history. Four thousand years ago in a Babylonian epic, Gilgamesh realized that the death of his friend Enkidu foreshadowed his own: “Enkidu has become dark and cannot hear me. When I die shall I not be like unto Enkidu? Sorrow enters my heart. I am afraid of death.” The death of the other confronts us with our own death. Is this a good thing? Should such a confrontation be encouraged in the psychotherapy of grief? Question: Why scratch where it doesn’t itch? Why fan the flame of death anxiety in bereaved individuals already bowed low by loss? Answer: Because the confrontation with one’s own death may generate positive personal change. My first awareness of the therapeutic potential of an encounter with death in the therapy of grief occurred decades ago when a sixty-year-old man described to me his terrible nightmare the night after learning that his wife’s cervical cancer had dangerously metastasized and was no longer treatable. In the nightmare he’s running through an old deteriorating house—broken windows, crumbling tiles, leaking roof—pursued by a Frankenstein monster. He defends himself: he hits, he kicks, he stabs, he throws the monster off the roof. But—and this is the central message of the dream— the monster is unstoppable: it instantly reappears and continues the pursuit. The monster is no stranger to him, having first invaded his dreams when he was a boy of ten, shortly after his father’s funeral.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Although Tom was the first veteran I had ever encountered on a professional basis, many aspects of his story were familiar to me. I grew up in postwar Holland, playing in bombed-out buildings, the son of a man who had been such an outspoken opponent of the Nazis that he had been sent to an internment camp. My father never talked about his war experiences, but he was given to outbursts of explosive rage that stunned me as a little boy. How could the man I heard quietly going down the stairs every morning to pray and read the Bible while the rest of the family slept have such a terrifying temper? How could someone whose life was devoted to the pursuit of social justice be so filled with anger? I witnessed the same puzzling behavior in my uncle, who had been captured by the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and sent as a slave laborer to Burma, where he worked on the famous bridge over the river Kwai. He also rarely mentioned the war, and he, too, often erupted into uncontrollable rages. As I listened to Tom, I wondered if my uncle and my father had had nightmares and flashbacks—if they, too, had felt disconnected from their loved ones and unable to find any real pleasure in their lives. Somewhere in the back of my mind there must also have been my memories of my frightened—and often frightening—mother, whose own childhood trauma was sometimes alluded to and, I now believe, was frequently reenacted. She had the unnerving habit of fainting when I asked her what her life was like as a little girl and then blaming me for making her so upset. Reassured by my obvious interest, Tom settled down to tell me just how scared and confused he was. He was afraid that he was becoming just like his father, who was always angry and rarely talked with his children—except to compare them unfavorably with his comrades who had lost their lives around Christmas 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. As the session was drawing to a close, I did what doctors typically do: I focused on the one part of Tom’s story that I thought I understood—his nightmares. As a medical student I had worked in a sleep laboratory, observing people’s sleep/dream cycles, and had assisted in writing some articles about nightmares. I had also participated in some early research on the beneficial effects of the psychoactive drugs that were just coming into use in the 1970s. So, while I lacked a true grasp of the scope of Tom’s problems, the nightmares were something I could relate to, and as an enthusiastic believer in better living through chemistry, I prescribed a drug that we had found to be effective in reducing the incidence and severity of nightmares. I scheduled Tom for a follow-up visit two weeks later.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Nonetheless, psychedelic substances are powerful agents with a troubled history. They can easily be misused through careless administration and poor maintenance of therapeutic boundaries. It is to be hoped that MDMA will not be another magic cure released from Pandora’s box. What About Medications?People have always used drugs to deal with traumatic stress. Each culture and each generation has its preferences—gin, vodka, beer, or whiskey; hashish, marijuana, cannabis, or ganja; cocaine; opioids like oxycontin; tranquilizers such as Valium, Xanax, and Klonopin. When people are desperate, they will do just about anything to feel calmer and more in control.[50] Mainstream psychiatry follows this tradition. Over the past decade the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs combined have spent over $4.5 billion on antidepressants, antipsychotics, and antianxiety drugs. A June 2010 internal report from the Defense Department’s Pharmacoeconomic Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio showed that 213,972, or 20 percent of the 1.1 million active-duty troops surveyed, were taking some form of psychotropic drug: antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedative hypnotics, or other controlled substances.[51] However, drugs cannot “cure” trauma; they can only dampen the expressions of a disturbed physiology. And they do not teach the lasting lessons of self-regulation. They can help to control feelings and behavior, but always at a price—because they work by blocking the chemical systems that regulate engagement, motivation, pain, and pleasure. Some of my colleagues remain optimistic: I keep attending meetings where serious scientists discuss their quest for the elusive magic bullet that will miraculously reset the fear circuits of the brain (as if traumatic stress involved only one simple brain circuit). I also regularly prescribe medications. Just about every group of psychotropic agents has been used to treat some aspect of PTSD.[52] The serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, and Paxil have been most thoroughly studied, and they can make feelings less intense and life more manageable. Patients on SSRIs often feel calmer and more in control; feeling less overwhelmed often makes it easier to engage in therapy. Other patients feel blunted by SSRIs—they feel they’re “losing their edge.” I approach it as an empirical question: Let’s see what works, and only the patient can be the judge of that. On the other hand, if one SSRI does not work, it’s worth trying another, because they all have slightly different effects. It’s interesting that the SSRIs are widely used to treat depression, but in a study in which we compared Prozac with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) for patients with PTSD, many of whom were also depressed, EMDR proved to be a more effective antidepressant than Prozac.[53] I’ll return to that subject in chapter 15.[54]

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Flooded by Sensations and ImagesOn February 11, 2001, Julian was serving as a military policeman at an air force base. During his daily phone conversation with his girlfriend, Rachel, she mentioned a lead article she’d read that morning in the Boston Globe. A priest named Shanley was under suspicion for molesting children. Hadn’t Julian once told her about a Father Shanley who had been his parish priest back in Newton? “Did he ever do anything to you?” she asked. Julian initially recalled Father Shanley as a kind man who’d been very supportive after his parents got divorced. But as the conversation went on, he started to go into a panic. He suddenly saw Shanley silhouetted in a doorframe, his hands stretched out at forty-five degrees, staring at Julian as he urinated. Overwhelmed by emotion, he told Rachel, “I’ve got to go.” He called his flight chief, who came over accompanied by the first sergeant. After he met with the two of them, they took him to the base chaplain. Julian recalls telling him: “Do you know what is going on in Boston? It happened to me, too.” The moment he heard himself say those words, he knew for certain that Shanley had molested him—even though he did not remember the details. Julian felt extremely embarrassed about being so emotional; he had always been a strong kid who kept things to himself. That night he sat on the corner of his bed, hunched over, thinking he was losing his mind and terrified that he would be locked up. Over the subsequent week images kept flooding into his mind, and he was afraid of breaking down completely. He thought about taking a knife and plunging it into his leg just to stop the mental pictures. Then the panic attacks started to be accompanied by seizures, which he called “epileptic fits.” He scratched his body until he bled. He constantly felt hot, sweaty, and agitated. Between panic attacks he “felt like a zombie”; he was observing himself from a distance, as if what he was experiencing were actually happening to somebody else. In April he received an administrative discharge, just ten days short of being eligible to receive full benefits. When Julian entered my office almost a year later, I saw a handsome, muscular guy who looked depressed and defeated. He told me immediately that he felt terrible about having left the air force. He had wanted to make it his career, and he’d always received excellent evaluations. He loved the challenges and the teamwork, and he missed the structure of the military lifestyle.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I kept a diary regularly, and it filled three books, but if I were to try to sum up this period today I would not be able to do it. Naturally, there were the few episodes of sheer horror that I can never forget. The vision, for instance, of a comrade who, stripped to the waist and attached to a wrecked tank, had become delirious in the middle of the night. And the sight too of the two machine gun volleys at night, one of which killed a wretched escaping worker while the other killed poor Basmouth in his own excrement because he had dared to leave his tent during curfew. Then there was also the stupid allied Spitfire attack which, having spared the guards, left two perfectly silent corpses in the middle of the deathly consternation of the landscape; and a few other incidents besides. But on the whole, this period remains a solid and alien block within my memory. Events helped to speed my decision. The Germans were yielding ground every day with their backs to the sea, and the camps accordingly retreated northwards. In two months we moved five times and were obviously becoming useless. Rumor had it, and this was confirmed by discreet information in letters we received, that we were to be shipped to Germany. We dared not consider the more probable alternative of extermination on the spot, but we were reminded of it by a Czech noncommissioned officer in a German uniform whose Volkswagen we retrieved from a ditch. He confirmed the signs of the coming Nazi collapse and the preparations for a retreat. The Germans no longer had enough ships and would certainly not set us free. We should therefore expect the worst and escape immediately. One morning, we thought the hour for our mass executions had struck. The whistle which usually roused us at dawn failed to sound. From habit we awoke at the same hour, surprised at such a respite. Soon the camp began to buzz, but no one moved, of course, so as to avoid the beginning of work. We formulated hundreds of suppositions as to the cause of our luck: our whistling guard had had a stroke, Germany had been defeated, the Nazis had suddenly become humanitarian, our guards had all gone out of their minds together... We joked as though we were in a holiday camp, and we had difficulty in refraining from pillow fights. At last, as time passed, we risked a few steps outside the tents. Our new camp was on a bare slope with an open horizon at the bottom of the valley. The army huts had been built a few yards higher up; to get out of their field of vision and escape being shot, one would have to run for several miles. Up there, nothing had moved.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Harvard Medical School was and is at the forefront of the neuroscience revolution, and in 1994 a young psychiatrist, Scott Rauch, was appointed as the first director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Neuroimaging Laboratory. After considering the most relevant questions that this new technology could answer and reading some articles I had written, Scott asked me whether I thought we could study what happens in the brains of people who have flashbacks. I had just finished a study on how trauma is remembered (to be discussed in chapter 12), in which participants repeatedly told me how upsetting it was to be suddenly hijacked by images, feelings, and sounds from the past. When several said they wished they knew what trick their brains were playing on them during these flashbacks, I asked eight of them if they would be willing to return to the clinic and lie still inside a scanner (an entirely new experience that I described in detail) while we re-created a scene from the painful events that haunted them. To my surprise, all eight agreed, many of them expressing their hope that what we learned from their suffering could help other people. My research assistant, Rita Fisler, who was working with us prior to entering Harvard Medical School, sat down with every participant and carefully constructed a script that re-created their trauma moment to moment. We deliberately tried to collect just isolated fragments of their experience—particular images, sounds, and feelings—rather than the entire story, because that is how trauma is experienced. Rita also asked the participants to describe a scene where they felt safe and in control. One person described her morning routine; another, sitting on the porch of a farmhouse in Vermont overlooking the hills. We would use this script for a second scan, to provide a baseline measurement. After the participants checked the scripts for accuracy (reading silently, which is less overwhelming than hearing or speaking), Rita made a voice recording that would be played back to them while they were in the scanner. A typical script: You are six years old and getting ready for bed. You hear your mother and father yelling at each other. You are frightened and your stomach is in a knot. You and your younger brother and sister are huddled at the top of the stairs. You look over the banister and see your father holding your mother’s arms while she struggles to free herself. Your mother is crying, spitting and hissing like an animal. Your face is flushed and you feel hot all over. When your mother frees herself, she runs to the dining room and breaks a very expensive Chinese vase. You yell at your parents to stop, but they ignore you. Your mom runs upstairs and you hear her breaking the TV. Your little brother and sister try to get her to hide in the closet. Your heart pounds and you are trembling.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Artemis? Nada. I wouldn’t go near her again. She’s poison. Even now, just talking about her is starting to bring back some of that panic. I think that’s why I buried all of this so deeply in my mind.” Halston quickly checked his pulse. “See, I’m racing right now—twenty-eight in fifteen seconds—approximately one hundred twelve.” “But how did she feel about your suddenly running out?” “I don’t know. Or care. She slept right through everything.” “So she went to sleep next to you and woke up with you gone, and she has no idea why.” “And it’s going to remain that way! I tell you, Doctor—that dream was from another world, another reality—from hell.” “Halston, we’ve got to stop. We’re running way late, but it’s clear there’s much to work on. Most obviously, your feelings toward women—you make love to a woman, then encounter this cat that personifies danger and punishment, and then desert her with no word of explanation. And then the breasts that promise nurturance but instead squirt poison. Tell me, where are you in your wishes to stop therapy?” “It is obvious even to me, Doctor, that there is much to explore. Same time available next week?” “Yes. And—good work today. I’m pleased, Halston, honored, that you trusted me enough to remember and reveal to me this whole remarkable and frightening incident.” Two hours later, on his walk to Jasmine, a Clement Street Vietnamese restaurant where he often lunched, Ernest had time to think about his session with Halston. On the whole, he was satisfied with the way he had handled Halston’s inclination to terminate. Even though he was overscheduled, he would not have liked himself if he had just let his patient walk out. Halston was struggling to break through to something important, and Ernest knew that his concerned, methodical, but not overly aggressive tactics had saved the day. It was remarkable how, Ernest thought, as he grew more experienced, fewer and fewer patients terminated prematurely. How threatened he had been, as a young therapist, by termination, taking everything personally and regarding every patient who quit as a personal defeat, a mark of ineffectiveness, a public disgrace. And he was grateful to Marshal, his former supervisor, for teaching him that such a reaction ensures ineffectiveness. Whenever therapists have too much ego riding on a patient’s decision, whenever they need a patient to stay in therapy, that’s when they lose their effectiveness: they begin to wheedle, to be seductive, to give patients exactly what they wish—anything to get them to return the following week.