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 Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  This is the key to understanding the distinctive challenge of preventing child abuse in totalist groups."" Siskind herself grew up in the Sullivanians, which Janet Joyce wrote about in Chapter 2. Siskind concurs with us and many other professionals who assert that children raised in such groups may be at risk for specific types of psychological problems and tend to face difficult problems of adjustment if they later leave the group. Calling for more research and more in-depth examination of child-rearing practices in these closed groups, Siskind writes, "Not only would further research be useful for academic reasons, but it might also prove valuable to those who are charged with helping children who live in totalist groups."19 It is unrealistic to expect that all the effects of cultic emotional, physical, and sexual abuse can be easily undone. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to note that many children can and do recover. Singer interviewed many abused former cult members who grew up to be well-adjusted, fully functioning adults.20 However, more research is needed to assess the postcult recovery needs of second- and third-generation cult members.21 Psychological EffectsMental health professionals note patterns of aftereffects in children who have endured abusive, violent, or extremely frightening experiences. Unfortunately children experience these aftereffects with an intensity unmoderated by growth and maturity. "Repeated trauma in adult life erodes the structure of the personality already formed, but repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality," writes Judith Herman. "The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses."22 Professor of psychiatry Lenore Terr studied twenty-five children who were kidnapped aboard their school bus in Chowchilla, California, in 1976. They were held in an underground vault for sixteen hours until they escaped by digging themselves out. Their post-traumatic symptoms were intense, despite the relative brevity of captivity and lack of physical or sexual abuse. Terr identified symptoms that parallel the emotional trauma suffered by children in cultic situations:23 Terror. This may include the fear of helplessness; fear of another, more fearful event (fear of fear); fear of separation from loved ones; or fear of death. Often such ordinary childhood fears as fear of the dark, of strangers, and of being alone are magnified and retained throughout childhood; sometimes they are never outgrown. Children in cults may fear the devil, outsiders, their parents, other adult members, leaving the group, or displeasing the leader. Rage. Children who are abused or terrorized may have difficulty controlling their anger, which may be expressed as rage when they are frustrated, bored, or annoyed.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Some battered women speak of entering a kind of exclusive, almost delusional world, embracing the grandiose belief system of their mates and voluntarily suppressing their own doubts as a proof of loyalty and submission.' An abused partner must generally submit to the following abuses and/or behaviors: • Early verbal, physical, and/or [sexual] dominance • Fear arousal and maintenance • Guilt induction • Contingent expressions of "love" • Enforced loyalty to the aggressor and self-denunciation • Promotion of powerlessness and helplessness • Pathological expressions of jealousy • Hope-instilling behaviors • Isolation/imprisonment • Required secrecy' Several additional behaviors are seen in cultic abusive relationships: • Coerced adulation of the abuser, who self-proclaims godlike qualities • Excessive use of manipulative methods of persuasion and control • Enforced adherence to a doctrine or belief system that justifies the abusive behaviors • Severe loss of self, and merging of identities, with the subordinate one merging into the superior one • Insistence on carrying out the "plan" of the master The story of Hedda Nussbaum and Joel Steinberg illustrates how these behaviors take shape in one-on-one cults. Hedda Nussbaum: "He Was the Center of My Universe"In late 1987, America was shocked by the news of the horrific death of a sixyear-old child who was beaten unconscious in New York City by her father. Police were alerted after the girl's mother called 911, concerned about her nonresponsive child. From news reports and later trial testimony, we learned of the nightmarish existence of Hedda Nussbaum, a shy children's book editor, and her two illegally adopted children, all of whom were living in fear and druginduced squalor. This twisted, perverse world was the creation of Nussbaum's abusive common-law husband, wealthy attorney Joel Steinberg. He had killed the young child earlier that night before Hedda called for help, and about a year later he was convicted of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter. He was given a maximum twenty-five-year sentence; he served about twothirds of it and was released in 2004 (news reports indicate that he continues to deny responsibility for the child's death'). Hedda had met Joel thirteen years earlier, in 1975, and they began living together shortly afterward. They never married because Joel said that a so-called piece of paper wasn't necessary if two people were truly committed to each other. The emotional abuse and control began almost immediately. During an interview on Larry King Live in June 2003, Hedda explained that Steinberg was not overtly abusive at first, but focused on molding her personality. She was shy and compliant, believing the changes he urged were for her own good. "Almost every night he would work with me like a therapist," she said. After social outings, he would critique Hedda in detail: "You should have done this, you should have said that," he'd say.' Three years into the relationship, the physical abuse started. At first, the beatings were occasional, but they soon became more frequent and intense. Like many other victims of abusive relationships, Hedda was hospitalized numerous times.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  While the therapist needs to respect the client's wish to stop therapy, it may also be a propitious opportunity to examine related issues, such as conflicts that are interfering with functioning, difficulties in expressing disappointment or anger at the therapist, unresolved financial issues, and so on. While exploring possible problems, the therapist can raise the possibility of "shelving the issues for now" and stopping therapy. If the therapist does not respond to the client's termination request, the client may equate the therapist with the cult leader. Cult leaders often point to members' unresolved conflicts as proof that they should stay in the cult. The cult holds out the promise of perfection if members stay in the group. It's important to help the client understand that nobody is ever cured in a cult, by psychotherapy, or in life. We are all more or less adjusted to our circumstances. We are all more or less satisfied with ourselves. When I work with someone who has reached her goals, I ask if she has thought about ending therapy. This is useful with all clients who may feel fearful about raising the idea of stopping therapy. Psychotherapy clients often feel relational guilt or fear about leaving someone who has been parental. Broaching the subject is particularly important in relation to former cult members, who may feel they will be punished for thoughts of leaving. It is useful to point out that they are not leaving, per se, but rather they are stopping the regular sessions. I point out that I am always here if they would like to call and let me know how they are doing. Also I tell them they are welcome to consult with me in the future if they have something they want to work on. I let them know that even if they don't call me to tell me about themselves or call for appointments, I am still here. They can return for any amount of time at any time. They can be out of touch for years, or forever, and I will still be available. Their comings and goings can be no different than their hiring a handyperson they trust. One may want to call or send a holiday card (or not) to a trusted handyperson. And one would certainly call such a person if some-, thing needed attention, whether it was two weeks or five years from the last visit. When the therapist and client achieve a solid demystification of the relationship, talking about stopping sessions can be one of the most fruitful periods in the therapeutic relationship. This is particularly true for former cult members. These clients can observe the myriad feelings they have toward the therapist, and the fears they have about being on their own. Some of the so-called transference distortions that can arise during this period can help the client work through old parental issues and powerful conflicts about the cult.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Therapist Shelly Rosen points out that, contrary to uninformed opinion, these women are not frail and weak-minded, but "strong, ambitious, and intelligent."" In abusive relationships, manipulative and controlling persuasion techniques begin to replace wholesome two-way communication between equals. Sometimes the abuser, or leader, intentionally seeks out a partner or follower whom he believes he can shape into submissiveness. In those cases, the courtship phase is a type of recruitment: prospective lovers are carefully screened and chosen. Once the leader makes a selection, usually based on knowledge of the individual's needs and vulnerabilities, courtship begins. Although the public tends to think, wrongly, that only those who are stupid, weird, crazy, and aimless get involved in cults, this is simply untrue. Based on studies and the professional experience of those working in this field, we know that many cult members went to the best schools in the country, have advanced academic or professional degrees, and had successful careers and lives prior to their involvement in a cult or cultic abusive relationship. But at a vulnerable moment, and we all have plenty of those in our lives (a lost love, a lost job, a rejection, a death in the family, and so on), a person can fall under the influence of someone who appears to offer answers or a sense of direction. The case of Lee Boyd Malvo illustrates the kind of violence that a person trapped in a cultic relationship can be influenced to commit. Deviant behavior can easily flourish in these closed, controlling relationships that are outside the norms of society and tend to remain hidden from view until too late. Lee Boyd Malvo. "Like a Puppet"All one-on-one cults do not necessarily involve sex or sexual intimacy. Some are controlling in other ways, such as when a subordinate person is dominated by a powerful older figure. One example is the relationship between Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, the two responsible for ten sniper slayings in the area around the nation's capital in October 2002.12 Sadly, Malvo was enlisted in the psychopathic Muhammad's plot to terrorize and kill innocent citizens across the country. The overbearing Muhammad coercively influenced young Malvo to the point where the boy could not tell right from wrong. Malvo, a teenager more or less abandoned by his mother, was completely under the spell of forty-two-year-old Muhammad. Muhammad had been in a brief relationship with Malvo's mother, and when that relationship ended, Muhammad invited Lee to live with him and trained him to be his "shadow." A former army soldier, trained in weaponry, Muhammad forced the slight-built and shy teen to live under various strict regimes in a perverse version of military boot camp. As many other cult followers do in relation to their leader, Malvo referred to Muhammad as his father, and was dependent on him for everything. Muhammad's constant surveillance kept the malleable teenager in check.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  They are left to process old losses that don’t fully belong to them and to mourn what originally was ungrievable. LEONARDO AND I begin to piece together a picture of the context of his loss of Milo: his grandfather’s struggle with his homosexuality and his identity; his inability to mourn the loss of his illicit love; his suicide, leaving behind a devastated little boy, Jim, who believed that if his dad had only loved him enough he wouldn’t have left him. Many layers of unprocessed loss. A known secret that shelters another secret, a forbidden one. For years, Leonardo’s father kept the gift he had made for his father for his birthday, just a few days before he died. He had created a small ceramic vase in the futile hope of making his father happy for a day and keeping him alive. Jim had clung to this vase as a child, and then for the rest of his life. When Jim died, Leonardo inherited it, and he kept it on a shelf in his clothes closet. But it wasn’t only the vase that he had inherited. It was also the trauma and the losses of earlier generations, unprocessed losses that were held in his closet and in symbolic ways lived with his own belongings, until it was too hard to differentiate what was his and what wasn’t. Leonardo picks up his bag. “Maybe I’m not cursed after all,” he says as he heads to the door. “Maybe this is just a sad story with a hopeful ending.” HE WALKS INTO the next session looking pleased. “I had a good week and I even met someone,” he says. “I feel encouraged.” He opens his bag. “Also, I brought something to show you.” He pulls out a small box wrapped in layers of newspaper. “I had to bring it in, just to show you how amazing this is.” There it is, a small blue ceramic vase: his father’s vase. “For years,” Leonardo says, “I imagined my father as a boy, holding in his hands this gift he made at school for his father’s birthday in his favorite color, blue. That gift that I saw so many times as a child, and that I kept in my closet after my father’s death.” Leonardo pauses and then exhales deeply in relief. “Only after our last session,” he says, “did I realize what I’ve been using it for.” He hands me the vase and I peek inside, where I see three single, mismatched cuff links. I look at Leonardo, puzzled. He explains that he stored each of them there when they lost their mate.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Shortly thereafter, up the secret staircase, the same way the prostitutes had crept to visit the king, came a priest, who administered the last rites. Afterward, Charles said of Louise, “I have always loved her, and I die loving her.”11 Upon hearing the news of Charles’s death, a panicked Louise found sanctuary in the house of the French ambassador. Knowing she had never been popular, had meddled in politics, and was hated as a Whig, a papist, and a foreign spy, Louise feared the new government as well as the mob. She tried to sail for France at once. King James, fearing the wrath of her powerful protector Louis XIV, ensured her safety and guaranteed her a pension of three thousand pounds a year. But he also demanded that she stay in England to pay her creditors and return certain of the crown jewels in her possession. Smoothing down her ruffled feathers, Louise returned to court squawking for the pensions Charles had awarded her—nineteen thousand pounds yearly as his mistress as well as twenty-five thousand a year from the Irish revenue. James allowed her to keep the nineteen thousand but pocketed the twenty-five thousand himself. Six months after Charles’s death, she sailed for France in an armada stuffed with her possessions—two hundred thousand gold francs, oaken chests of jewels and plate, furniture, coaches, sedan chairs, and works of art. Used to living extravagantly and gambling wildly, Louise soon parted ways with her riches. Pressed by creditors, she bounced between London and Versailles, clamoring for pensions from both nations for services rendered, and usually obtaining them. But Charles’s death had forced her from the stage; in one instant she went from leading lady to reluctant spectator. Much to her chagrin, for nearly fifty years she lived as an interesting artifact from a bygone reign, still attractive but indisputably irrelevant. The initial virulent bout of venereal disease she had caught from the king seems never to have returned. She died in 1734 at the age of eighty-five. Unlike Louise de Kéroualle, Nell Gwynn’s pensions were set up to end upon Charles’s death. She had no ducal estates or income in perpetuity. As Charles lay dying, he must have wished he had rewarded her better for her seventeen years of faithful service. “Let not poor Nelly starve,” Charles implored his brother James shortly before he expired.12 Nell suffered financial problems immediately after Charles’s death. Her creditors, a variety of shopkeepers with whom she had kept large accounts, beat against her door demanding payment. Initially King James turned a deaf ear to her urgent pleas for assistance. While Nell owned numerous valuable properties, they were entailed to her son with Charles and she was not permitted to sell them.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  In our society, we tend to "live and let live," which can mean that the most astounding abuse of adults and/or children can be going on right under our noses without anyone sounding the alarm. Here are two recent examples. Patriarch Marcus WessonIn June 2005 in Fresno, California, ultra-authoritarian family patriarch Marcus Wesson was convicted of nine counts of murder for killing nine of his children and grandchildren, and fourteen counts of sexual abuse for molesting and raping seven of his underage nieces and daughters." The jury recommended the death penalty for Wesson. Nine bodies, all of them either his children or grandchildren between the ages of one and twenty-five years old, were found in a bloody heap in the back of the house where this polygamous, incestuous family lived. Each victim had been shot once in the eye. Through DNA testing, authorities discovered that Wesson had fathered babies with his own daughters. During the trial, witnesses who grew up in the household testified that sexual abuse of girls started when they were seven or eight. Most people who knew the fifty-eight-year-old leader of this clan considered him harmless, while some folks in the neighborhood regarded the family as "an odd, patriarchal mini-commune." Others remarked upon the enormous control Wesson had over the women and children. Apparently Wesson preached daily to his family, expounding on a homemade doctrine of polygamy and incest based on his distorted Biblical interpretations. Witnesses at Wesson's trial, including one of his surviving daughters, gave graphic testimony, describing "years of strict discipline, repeated rape, and lengthy discussions about `having babies for the Lord.""' After the trial, prosecutors said, "Wesson had such control over his family that some of the young women he fathered still defend him. [One] daughter testified that there was nothing wrong with sexual contact between a father and daughter, and she defended Wesson even though her children were killed."" "The Family" of Winifred WrightA few years before the Wesson case, in San Rafael, California, a toddler starved to death in another cultic patriarchal clan 20 This clan was known as The Family, and had been around for more than a decade. The leader, Winifred Wright, had fathered at least sixteen children with his female devotees. Under Wright's rule, bolstered by a philosophy of vegetarianism and disdain for mainstream society, the children were kept in complete isolation from sunlight and other people, fed a sparse diet, and regularly tied up and whipped. One of these children had died in infancy a few years before, but medical examiners could not ascertain the cause of her death. At the time of his second child's death, Wright had four female followers, all from well-to-do backgrounds, including the granddaughter of the founder of the Xerox Corporation. One of these women had seven children with Wright; another had six; and the newest member of the clan, a twenty-yearold, had only one child so far. All of the children were deformed and malnourished.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  She realized that this is not an uncommon wish, but that it was now okay to put the group in the past and acknowledge her own life and achievements. Also, she could now admit to her negative thoughts and feelings about her leader. She had mourned over her losses and expressed anger at having been used; now, she could put all that in the past. Be patient with yourself. When you make an effort to disarm your triggers, you will most likely make huge strides in regaining freedom from your cult's influence. Here is another illustration of an ex-member disarming a trigger: Monica Z. was born into a cult that used flowers as a symbol for silence and death. A gift of flowers, even a greeting card with flowers, particularly roses, represented a dire warning. After leaving the cult, Monica avoided anything to do with flowers. Her apartment even lacked green plants. In therapy, she began working through her beliefs, recalling an old medicine woman who had befriended her in a time of need. The woman used plants, specifically aloe, for healing. A piece of aloe was torn off and the dripping sap was used to alleviate the pain of minor burns and insect bites. Monica bought an aloe plant. Next she tried tomato plants. The meaning of flowers was changed as the tomato flowers led to tomatoes, a favorite food of hers. Not long after, she was able to bring nonflowering plants into her home and, finally, flowering ones. This change took place over a period of several months. Now, years later, Monica has a garden with roses, annuals, and perennials; she is able to enjoy their beauty without being constantly afraid. Monica's case demonstrates how cult conditioning can seriously distort even normal, everyday objects. It also offers a positive illustration of self-rejuvenation and a rewarding challenge to unwanted cult messages and residues. Examining and challenging your cult's beliefs is a useful process in regaining your sense of confidence and autonomous thinking. If obsessive thinking troubles you, try using a version of the triggers log to lessen the effect of these thoughts. Awareness and mental exercises are key to combating persistent disturbing thoughts, and specific questions may help demystify the thoughts. Ask yourself the following questions: • Does the same thought come up repeatedly under similar circumstances? • What was happening immediately prior to the thought coming up? • What meaning does the thought have for me? • Is it attached to something I witnessed or experienced in the group? • Does it feel like a compulsion to obey or do something the group wanted? • What feelings are attached to the thought? Am I numb? Angry? Frightened? Overwhelmed? Triggers and AnxietySometimes you may respond to a trigger with a rush of anxiety instead of dissociation. At first, you may or may not be aware of what triggered you, but the uncomfortable physical sensations of rapid heart rate, dizziness, difficulty breathing, even chills or chest pain are extremely unpleasant.

• From Less (2017)

  SR. ESS —he anagrams in his mind what he took, in his lingering hypnosis and pride, for signor and a childlike misspelling of Less. Sriramathan Ess? Srovinka Esskatarinavitch? SRESS —Società di la Repubblica Europea per la Sexualité Studentesca? Almost anything makes sense to Less at this altitude. But it is obvious: having cleared the problems of travel, he let his guard slip, waved at the first sign resembling his name, and was whisked away to an unknown location. He knows life’s commedia dell’arte and how he has been cast. He sighs in his seat. Staring out at a shrine to an auto accident, placed at a particularly rough curve in the road. He feels the Madonna’s plastic eyes meet his for an instant. And now the signs for a particular town become more frequent, and a particular hotel: something called Mondolce Golf Resort. Less stiffens in fear. His narrating mind whittles the possibilities down: he had taken the car of a Dr. Ludwig Ess, some vacationing Austrian doctor who is off to a golf resort in Piemonte with his wife. He: brown skulled, with white hair in puffs over his ears, little steel glasses, red shorts and suspenders. Frau Ess: short, blond hair with a streak of pink, rough linen tunics and chili pepper leggings. Walking sticks packed in their luggage for jaunts to the village. She has signed up for courses in Italian cooking, while he dreams of nine holes and nine Morettis. And now they stand in some hotel lobby in Turin, shouting with the proprietor while a bellboy waits, holding the elevator. Why did Less come a day early? There will be no one from the prize foundation to straighten out the misunderstanding; the poor Ess voices will echo emptily up to the lobby chandelier. BENVENUTO, a sign reads as they pull into a drive, A MONDOLCE GOLF RESORT. A glass box on a hill, a pool, golf holes all around. “Ecco,” the driver announces as they pull to the front; the last sunlight flashes on the pool. Two beautiful young women emerge from the entryway’s hall of mirrors, hands clasped. Less readies himself for full mortification. But life has pardoned him at the scaffold steps: “Welcome,” says the tall one in the sea-horse-print dress, “to Italy and to your hotel! Mr. Less, we are greet you from the prize committee…”

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  “Don’t you think there was a reason that I forgot it here? There must be a reason, right?” I see that he invites me to look deeper, to search for more. “What do you think the reason is?” I ask. Jon smiles. “That I’m a baby?” I smile back and he continues. “I feel like such a baby. Maybe what I wanted was to forget the pacifier here and go home like a grown-up.” “That makes sense,” I say. “But is it possible that you wanted to both forget and also remember?” He is intrigued, and I continue. “Maybe you wanted to forget the baby part of yourself here, but also to come back in order to dig and discover it. Maybe you want those lost parts to be found, to uncover your own life story.” Jon nods. “And what if it’s not so interesting?” I pause. I hear how afraid he is to remember how uninteresting and rejected he felt as a child. He doesn’t want to feel the injury of his childhood and to get in touch with how much he needed his mother. I think about the word “pacifier,” recognizing that as a child Jon tried to pacify himself rather than cry for his mother. As an adult, he presents as an easygoing guy who doesn’t need anyone to take care of him or even understand him. He doesn’t get upset or express feelings of frustration, but instead tries to manage his feelings on his own and push down any emotions. Jon feels that he shouldn’t depend on anyone. In his sessions, he makes sure to not feel too dependent on me, too. Donald Winnicott, a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, wrote that one of the most meaningful maternal functions is “emotional holding.” He related that function, in parents of any sex, to the significance of the physical aspect of holding a baby. Emotional holding is the steady emotional arms and available presence of the parents that allow the baby to feel safe and protected. The parent holds the baby in his or her mind, available to tolerate the baby’s emotions, tuned in to her signals. When a baby feels safe both physically and emotionally, she develops a sense of a safe world, where she can rely on the parent and trust that her needs will be met. But when emotional holding collapses, the baby usually stops turning to others and instead turns inward. When the baby feels dropped she might experience what Winnicott called “falling forever.” It is the feeling of emotional collapse, an endless downfall with no bottom. Jon learned not to reach out to his parents for soothing and to hold himself emotionally. I sense that he protected himself by giving up on his parents’ comforting and responsiveness. He became a boy and later on a man who didn’t ask for much. He was able to manage his feelings until one day it all broke and he fell apart.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I find myself wondering if his birth was planned, if his parents wanted to have another baby. “Don’t worry, it’s fine,” he says, both to me and to himself. “You don’t have to look forward to seeing me. You are my therapist, not my mother,” he adds firmly, making sure both of us know that he remembers that. “But maybe you feel hurt because in that moment I do become like your mother, a woman who doesn’t expect you, whom you think might reject you or prefer to be with someone else.” Jon looks serious. “That’s possible,” he says. “You know, right before I had that breakdown, I used to have those kind of thoughts and it was crazy. “At night, before I went to sleep, I used to ruminate, thinking that my boss wanted to fire me and hire someone else. I told Bella that I had a bad feeling, a feeling that he didn’t want me. In retrospect that wasn’t true but for some reason I was sure that he was planning to drop me.” “To drop you.” I repeat his words and point out that this is a reminder of the only story he heard about his childhood. “You thought that your boss wanted to get rid of you, or was maybe planning to drop you, like your mother did,” I note. Jon looks at me, fascinated. “I see what you mean,” he says. “It’s like I repeated the feeling that I’m not wanted, even now, with you.” I nod and Jon continues, “I swear to you, I was such a hard worker. I was the first one to come to the office in the mornings and the last one to leave at night. I thought I was a good employee but then I started to feel that they didn’t like me and were planning to get rid of me. It all started right after Jenny was born.” He pauses and I see him thinking, making connections. “What do you have in mind?” I ask. Jon looks sad. He explains to me how important it was for him to feel appreciated by his boss but that as time passed, he felt more and more rejected and frightened. “I woke up every morning scared, feeling that I wanted to die. It was awful, but it became even worse on that morning, when something really traumatic happened.” Jon takes a deep breath. He looks hesitant, as if not sure he is able to keep talking. “Can I tell you what happened?” he asks, and I am aware that it’s not me he is referring this question to, but, again, himself. He doesn’t wait for my answer. “I had just arrived at the office when my phone rang. It was Bella.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I was a nineteen-year-old soldier when the Gulf War started . We were on the road and the rock-and-roll music we played was loud, so loud that we had to make sure we didn’t miss the sound of the sirens and could run to the shelters to put on our gas masks in time. At some point, we decided to give up on the masks and the shelters and instead ran to the roofs every time there was a siren so we could watch the missiles from Iraq and try to guess where they would fall. After each thunderous explosion, we would go back to our music and play it even louder. We sang for the soldiers, who were also our childhood friends, neighbors, and siblings. And when they teared up, as they often did, I felt the power of touching another heart with my own, voicing the unspeakable. Our music expressed so much of what no one could say out loud: that we were scared but were not allowed to admit it even to ourselves, that we were still too young and wanted to go home, fall in love, travel far away. That we wanted normal lives but we were not sure what “normal” meant. Making music and singing out loud were meaningful and liberating. It was the beginning of my journey of a search for truths, the unveiling of the emotional inheritance within me. Eventually, some years later, I left my homeland, moved to New York City, and began studying the unspeakable—all those silent memories, feelings, and desires that are outside awareness. I became a psychoanalyst, exploring the unconscious . The analysis of the mind, like a mystery story, is an investigation. We know that Sigmund Freud, the great sleuth of the unconscious mind, was a big fan of Sherlock Holmes and maintained a large library of detective fiction. In some ways, Freud borrowed Holmes’s method: gathering evidence, searching for a truth beneath the surface truth, seeking out hidden realities. Like detectives, my patients and I try to follow the signs and listen not only to what they say but also to their pauses, to the music of that which is unknown to both of us. It is delicate work, collecting reminiscences of childhood, of what was said or done, listening to the omissions, to stories untold. Looking for clues, piecing these together into a picture, we ask, What really happened and to whom? The secrets of the mind include not only our own life experiences but also those that we unknowingly carry with us: the memories, feelings, and traumas that we inherit from previous generations. It was after World War II when psychoanalysts first began examining the impact of trauma on the next generation.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The following century was only slightly more civilized. After the death of Edward IV of England in 1483, court and public opinion were so violently hostile to his final mistress, Jane Shore, that she was forced to march through London wearing the white shroud and dunce cap of a penitent, holding a candle. Though there is evidence that she survived another forty years, a legend sprung up that she died on a dunghill, pelted by stones, and many subsequent royal mistresses were heartily wished the death of Jane Shore. The new king, usually the son of the former monarch, often ached to punish the woman who had hurt his mother the queen. Charles VII’s son and heir Louis often bristled at the insults offered his long-suffering mother by his father’s mistress Agnes Sorel. One day in 1444, Louis, running into Agnes, cried, “By our Lord’s passion, this woman is the cause of all our misfortunes,” and punched her in the face.2 Perhaps it was lucky for Agnes that she predeceased her royal lover; one cannot imagine a peaceful existence for her under Louis XI. In 1760, as King George II of England lay dying, his beloved mistress was nowhere near his deathbed. Lady Yarmouth, who knew the future George III was no admirer of hers, was quietly stuffing ten thousand pounds into a strongbox to take back to her native land of Hanover, where young George couldn’t get her. Upon hearing of a monarch’s serious illness, friends deserted his mistress in waves in an effort to ingratiate themselves with the future king. Madame de Pompadour experienced this in 1757, when a madman stabbed Louis XV as he entered his carriage at Versailles. Though superficial, the wound in his side was bloody, and Louis thought death was imminent. Madame de Pompadour, whose rooms were always filled with simpering courtiers, suddenly found fewer visitors, and those with gloating faces. “They came to see how she took it,” wrote her lady’s maid.3 Her enemy the marquis d’Argenson could not conceal his glee when he reported, “She pretends not to feel her disgrace, but little by little people are forsaking her.”4 Crying, deserted, the royal mistress packed her bags and prepared to flee to her safe haven in Paris in the event of the king’s death. But after several days Louis, rallying, grabbed a cane, called “Don’t you come” to his son, and hobbled down the private staircase to her rooms.5 Madame de Pompadour’s position was once more secure, and the obsequious courtiers once again waited in her antechamber for an audience.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  He tells the harrowing story of the years he spent in what he calls a "wilderness sex cult" led by an unethical psychotherapist who called his ranch his "human relations laboratory." Steve was nineteen when he met the man he describes as a "charismatic charlatan" who "highjacked [sic] my youth in exchange for saving my life."4 Though the following accounts focus mostly on female victims, we are by no means slighting male victims of sexual abuse. Seduction, rape, drug abuse, induced altered states, fear, manipulation of emotions, and misuse of power all surround the sexual abuse perpetrated in cults and cultic relationships. We explain here some of the main categories of sexual exploitation and abuse. Reproductive, Marital, and Sexual ControlIn a broad sense, reproductive, marital, and sexual control through enforced celibacy or mandated relationships are forms of sexual abuse. In many groups, husbands are given absolute control over their wives (and usually also their children), including a license for sexual conduct without consent. In these situations, marital rape becomes an accepted standard. Sometimes the leader will dictate exactly when and how sexual activity between married couples is supposed to occur. Some groups demand sexual abstinence or celibacy, or enforce certain sexual prohibitions, for example, against homosexual relations or unsanctioned relationships. Cults may also control reproduction and childrearing. At first glance, such rules may provide some relief from the confusion of trying to master the intricacies of sexuality and intimate relationships. In reality, however, they are clearly manipulations. By controlling sex, marriage, and procreation, the cult is better able to influence and manage its members. In some cults, women are discouraged from bearing children, with sterilization and abortion used as means of birth control. In others, childbearing is expected and sometimes ordered by the leadership. For example, Alexandra Stein describes both an arranged marriage and being instructed by the leader to adopt children in her book, Inside Out. A Memoir of Entering and Breaking Out of a Minneapolis Political Cult (North Star Press of St. Cloud). Sex as an "Honor"In many cults, members are led to believe that a sexual encounter with the leader is an honor, a special gift, or a way of achieving further growth. A devotee may be asked, for example, to help the leader relax or feel better. In cults where the leader is regarded as God, sex with him may be interpreted and rationalized as being spiritually beneficial to the devotee. Often members submit to a leader's advances out of pure fear. Given the imbalance of power, it is difficult to say no. The mask of honor is merely a cover for the blatant abuse taking place. Sex as a TestSome abusive leaders test members' commitment and loyalty, often to achieve their own sexual satisfaction. The more a leader demands, the more power he gets, until he intrudes in and controls every aspect of life. The justification is that nothing is too sacred to withhold from the leader.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Intensity and Severity of IndoctrinationEach cult has its own methods for persuading recruits to make a commitment. Although different at first glance, many influence processes are basically similar: their purpose and outcome are the same. For example, hours spent meditating or speaking in tongues to commune with one's god may initially appear different from, say, hours of group criticism sessions. Nevertheless, these techniques have a common goal: to enhance recruitment, conversion, and retention-that is, to keep members loyal, bound to the group, and subservient to its goals and its leader. However, the intensity and severity of conversion and control techniques vary in different groups and may even vary in the same group at different times. Plus members who have peripheral or associate status may have hugely different experiences from those who are full-time, inner-core members. Specific indoctrination methods will also vary in their effect. For instance, an intense workshop over a week or weekend that includes sleep deprivation, forms of hypnosis, and self-exposure coupled with a high degree of supervision and lack of privacy is likely to produce rapid changes. Conversely, participation in a group using more subtle and long-term methods will likely produce more subtle changes. Some cults also use intrusive methods that affect members on an intimate and/or sexual level. For example, there might be mandated relationships, either with leaders or other members, which can be a source of great discomfort and misery. Physical Harm and Threats of ViolenceMany groups use the threat of violence as a control mechanism. Sometimes it is more than a threat when violent behaviors are integral to a group's dynamics. Witnessing the death or injury of another may be as traumatic as being harmed personally. Sometimes there is involvement with criminal activity, which tends to compound feelings of guilt and shame-and raise fears of legal retribution and blackmail by the cult. Physical and sexual abuses may also increase the risk of emotional trauma and damage. Fear is a most powerful weapon, and living in fear for any length of time has a significant effect on a person's state of mind and well-being. Poor or Inadequate Medical CareA former member's physical condition and attitude toward health care may affect his postcult adjustment. Many former members find it difficult to take a realistic approach to health issues. For example, one young man left a cult that was intensely homophobic, with the leader continually deriding lesbians and gays. After he left the group, this young man contracted HIV, but denied himself any of the new medical treatments that could have saved his life because of the residual guilt he carried from his cult involvement. Also, medical, dental, and eye care may be unavailable or even forbidden in groups where attention to personal physical or mental health is always subordinate to the goals of the group or the leader. The lack of such everyday necessities as eyeglasses or hearing aids can have disastrous consequences.

• From Less (2017)

  And he is standing up within his paper room, our brave protagonist. He stands very still, fists clenched. Who knows what is raging through that queer head of his? They seem to echo now, the birds, the wind, the fountain, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel. He turns from the garden, which moves fluidly behind the ancient glass, and faces the paper wall. Here, he supposes, is the door. Not into the garden at all, but out of it. Nothing more than sticks and paper. Any other man could break it with a blow. How old is it? Has it ever seen a snowflake? Of all the absurdities of this trip, perhaps this is the most absurd—to be afraid of this. With one hand, he reaches out to touch the rough paper. The sunlight glows brighter behind it, making the shadow of a tree branch more distinct upon its surface—the Persian silk tree he climbed as a boy? There is no returning there. Or to the beach on a warm San Francisco day. Or to his bedroom and a good-bye kiss. In this room, everything is reflecting, but here is just the blank white wall of the future, on which anything might be written. Some new mortification, some new ridicule, surely. Some new joke to play on old Arthur Less. Why go there? And yet, despite everything, beyond it—who knows what miracle still awaits? Picture him lifting his fists above his head and, now with unconcealed pleasure, laughing, even, with ringing madness and a kind of crazed ecstasy, bringing them down with a splintering noise… …and picture him getting out of a taxi on Ord Street in San Francisco, at the bottom of the Vulcan Steps. His plane has dutifully departed Osaka and landed on time in San Francisco; his crossing was fair, and his neighbor, who was reading the latest by H. H. H. Mandern, was even treated to a little story (“You know, I once interviewed him in New York City; he was sick with food poisoning, and I wore a cosmonaut’s helmet…”) before our protagonist passed out from his pills. Arthur Less has completed his trip around the world; he is finished; he is home.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I didn’t look at him again but went back to Diana at once, and said it was nothing, I was sorry. But when she raised a hand to smooth back the hair I had unsettled, I flinched, feeling Bill’s eyes upon me; and when she pulled my arm through hers, and Maria stepped around me to take my other arm, the flesh upon my back seemed to give a kind of shudder, as if there was a pistol pointed at it.The hall itself, which was so grand and glorious, I only gazed at rather dully. We did not have a box - there had not been time to book a box - but our seats were very good ones, in the centre of one of the front rows of the stalls. I had made us late, however, and the stalls were almost full: we had to stumble over twenty pairs of legs to reach our seats. Dickie spilled her wine. Satin snapped at a lady with a fox-fur around her throat. Diana, when she sat at last, was thin-lipped and self-conscious: this was not the kind of entrance she had planned for us, at all.And I sat, numb to her, numb to all of it. I could think only of Kitty. That she was still in the halls, in her act with Walter. That Bill saw her daily - would see her later, after the show, when he fetched Flora. That even now, while the actors in the opera we had come to see were putting on their grease-paint, she was sitting in a dressing-room three streets away, putting on hers.As I thought all this, the conductor appeared, and was clapped; the lights went down, and the crowd grew silent. When the music started and the curtain went up at last, I gazed at the stage in a kind of stupor. And when the singing began, I flinched. The opera was Figaro’s Wedding.I can remember hardly any of it. I thought only of Kitty. My seat seemed impossibly narrow and hard, and I shifted and turned in it, till Diana leaned to whisper that I must be still. I thought of all the times I had walked through the city, fearful of turning a corner and seeing Kitty there; I thought of the disguise I had adopted, to avoid her. Indeed, avoiding Kitty had become, in my renter days, a kind of second nature to me, so that there were whole areas of London through which I automatically never passed, streets at which I didn’t have to pause, for thought, before I turned away to find another. I was like a man with a bruise or a broken limb, who learns to walk in a crowd so that the wound might not be jostled. Now, knowing that Kitty was so near, it was as if I was compelled to press the bruise, to twist the shrieking limb, myself.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Ellis was an extremely shy child. Despite the prominence and unguarded eccentricities of his adulthood, as a kid he refused to take part in classroom plays and “sweated and sizzled with anxiety” whenever he had to recite a poem or accept an award. So at nineteen, Ellis assigned himself a project—some structure. He decided to talk to as many women as possible. Every day, he took himself to what is now called the New York Botanical Garden. In a 2004 interview with National Public Radio, at the age of ninety, he recalled his project as if it were yesterday: “Whenever I saw a woman sitting on a park bench alone, I’d sit on the same bench and give myself one minute to talk to her. If I die, I die. Fuck it.”1 Over the course of a month, Ellis talked to over 130 women. He was brave for the short time it took to approach, sit down, and say hello. And what happened? Ellis said, “I saw philosophically, cognitively, that nothing happened. Nobody cut my balls off. I had a hundred pleasant conversations.” Nothing happened. This is the ideal outcome: nothing. Nothing our imaginations can conjure. Nothing our Inner Critic can predict. Even rejection, once experienced, is seldom as bad as we imagine. Another thing Ellis discovered is that repetition is key. Like Brandon Stanton’s experience, the first approaches were the hardest. But every time Ellis approached another woman, it got a little easier. With every approach, he was a little less anxious. What’s more, he recovered more quickly—the sweating and sizzling didn’t last as long. Indeed, as your confidence catches up, as you choose your structure and play your roles, here’s what you’ve been waiting for: your anxiety will also ebb away. But don’t take it from me. Take it from none other than Albert Ellis. THE ONLY THREE GRAPHS IN THIS BOOK Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s bring in some visuals to see what was happening to the young Albert Ellis. Take a look at the first graph. The x-axis is time ticking along. The y-axis is anxiety, anchored by the official scientific terms of “chillin’” at the bottom and “freaking out” at the top.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They can fuck upon the streets, like dogs.’ Another lady, very drunk, said that, in that case, at least they should have the thrill of watching us, from a window. But I looked only at Diana; and, for the first time in all that terrible evening, I began to feel afraid. Now Maria returned with Mrs Hooper. Mrs Hooper’s eyes were bright. She held my old sailor’s bag, that I had brought from Mrs Milne’s and cast into the furthest corner of my closet, and a rusty black dress, and a pair of thick-soled boots. While the ladies all looked on, Diana threw the dress and boots at Zena; then she dipped her hand fastidiously into the sailor’s bag, and pulled out a crumpled frock, and some shoes, which she cast at me. The frock was one I had used to wear in my old life, and thought fine enough. Now it was cold and slightly clammy to the touch, and its seams were rimmed with moth-dust. Zena began at once to pull on the dreary black dress, and the boots. I, however, kept my own frock in my hands, and gazed at Diana, and swallowed. ‘I’m not wearing this,’ I said. ‘You shall wear it,’ she answered shortly, ‘or be thrust naked into Felicity Place.’ ‘Oh, thrust her naked, Diana!’ said a woman at her back. It was a Lady from Llangollen, minus her topper. ‘I’m not putting it on,’ I said again. Diana nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘then I shall make you.’ And while I was still too amazed to raise a hand in my defence, she had crossed the room, torn the robe from my fingers, and lowered the hem of its skirts over my head. I writhed, then, and began to kick; she pushed me to the bed, held me fast upon it with one hand and, with the other, continued to tug the folds of cloth about me. I struggled more fiercely; soon there came the rip of a broken hem. Hearing it, Diana gave a shout: ‘Help me with her, can’t you? Maria! Mrs Hooper! You girl — ’ she meant Zena. ‘Do you want to go back to that damn reformatory?’ Instantly, there came upon me what felt like fifty hands, all pulling at the dress, all pinching me, all grasping at my kicking legs. For an age, they seemed to be upon me. I grew hot and faint beneath the layers of wool. My swollen head was knocked, and began to pulse and ache. Someone placed her thumb — I remember this very clearly — at the top of my thigh, in the slippery hollow of my groin. It might have been Maria. It might have been Mrs Hooper, the housekeeper. At last I lay panting upon the bed, the dress about me.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  One hot summer day when Jim was fourteen, the call went out. In a neighborhood of 90 percent boys, a family with two girls had moved in down the block. Deena and her sister had arrived. Deena was also fourteen, with long brown hair and a wide, open smile. She was strikingly pretty, and, as the boys in the neighborhood (ahem) quickly noticed, well developed beyond her years. Deena’s house was on the corner, the last on the block before the main drag. It was also right across the street from Jim’s cousin Rosaleen’s house. For Jim to get anywhere—to school, Rosaleen’s, the variety store, or back home again—he had to walk right past Deena’s front steps, where she and her younger sister would often sit, their stork-like legs folded under them. While Jim was as intimidated as most heterosexual boys would be, walking past them five or six times a day meant eventually saying hi to the friendly Deena and her kid sister. Subsequent trips back and forth eventually led to pointing out his blue triple-decker down the street and joking complaints about cantankerous neighbors. One day, Deena’s eyes were red—her grandmother had fallen and broken her hip. Jim listened intently to Deena’s scared and worried rush of thoughts, not knowing what to say, but wishing he could make things better for her. As the year went on, they fell into a kind of ease—the most at ease one can feel during the turmoil of puberty and desperate desire to fit in that comes with being fourteen. “And then one day,” Jim remembers, “one of my friends at school turned to me and said, ‘You know, Jim, Deena really likes you.’ And that was the beginning of the end. I didn’t know what to do or say. From then on, every time I saw her, I’d hide. Behind bushes or a car—it didn’t matter. I avoided her at every turn. I had never avoided anyone until her. Because of her, I taught myself avoidance.” It was the defining moment. If genetics and learning had loaded the gun, Jim’s friend had inadvertently pulled the trigger. Now, we’ve all had that stomach-dropping, cheeks-are-burning, surge-of-adrenaline moment of social mortification. But what turns that onetime jolt into social anxiety that burns on and on? Avoidance. Simply put, avoidance is turning away from what makes you anxious in an effort to feel better. And herein lies the rub: avoiding does make you feel better, at least in the short term. Avoidance makes the anxiety go away temporarily; in Jim’s case, it subsided until the next time he spotted Deena down the block and crouched behind the nearest Chevy Chevelle. But long term, avoidance is disastrous. It is enemy number one of emotional well-being and perpetuates all anxieties, not just social. For social anxiety to become a problem, genetics and learning aren’t enough—the anxiety has to grow and be carefully maintained. Avoidance does just that, and does it perfectly.