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.

Page 395 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Por reflejo, doy un paso atrás, pero no consigo ir más lejos. Aferrándose a mi cintura, me lleva hacia él, rodeándome con un brazo y tomando mi mandíbula en su mano entre su pulgar y los otros cuatro dedos. Jadeo, amando la sensación de su cuerpo duro contra el mío, pero también asustada, porque se ve muy enojado. —No —gruñe, mostrando sus dientes y mirándome con furia en sus ojos—. ¿Lo entiendes? Esto no va a suceder. No vas a conseguir eso de mí. Lágrimas llenan mis ojos y apenas puedo seguir viéndolo mientras mi cuerpo se sacude con un sollozo silencioso. Su brazo es como el acero a mi alrededor y puedo sentir el calor de su furia saliendo por su piel. Me sacude. —Quieres tener sexo, entonces ve a conseguirlo en otro lugar. Inhalo y me giro para alejarme de él, empujando su cuerpo. Está en lo correcto. ¿Qué estoy haciendo? ¿Por qué habría de hacer eso? Me siento tan estúpida y me agacho, recogiendo rápidamente mi camiseta y mis zapatos. Pero no me lo estaba imaginando, ¿verdad? Hubo algo entre nosotros y venía tanto de él como de mí. ¿Solo vi lo que quería ver? Quiero gritar. Lágrimas bajan por mi rostro y simplemente se queda ahí parado, fulminándome con la mirada. —Ve a tu habitación —ordena. Se me sale una risa, el sonido es amargo goteando con incredulidad. —¡Vete a la mierda! —Me enderezo, endureciendo mi voz—. Esta noche encontraré otra cama, gracias. Cualquiera lo haría con una puta como yo, ¿verdad? Me giro rápidamente y corro hacia la puerta trasera, pero agarra el interior de mi codo y me arrastra hacia la pared de su pecho. Dejo caer mi camiseta y mis zapatos y nos obliga a movernos hacia adelante contra la pared de la casa. Estiro mis manos rápidamente, chocando contra el revestimiento. Jesús. Tiemblo, respirando entrecortadamente mientras mi corazón se acelera y mi sangre corre caliente bajo mi piel. ¿Qué demo...? Su mano me rodea, tomando mi rostro y su aliento caliente en mi oreja. —No me amenaces con una mierda como esa. Si quieres actuar como una mocosa, entonces tal vez debería castigarte como una, ¿eh? Casi me río a través de las lágrimas secándose en mi rostro. —Por supuesto —me burlo—. Me muero por ver cómo intentas controlarme. Ni siquiera puedes hacer que Cole haga sus quehaceres y ¿cuándo fue la última vez que una mujer consiguió excitarse en tu cama? Ni siquiera eres un hombre. Gruñe y su palma choca contra la casa frente a mí. Salto. Y lo siguiente que sé es que su mano está en mi cabello y mi cabeza está siendo girada hacia el costado mientras sus labios se estrellan contra los míos.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “I didn’t mean …” Damn! He’d taken it personally. “Bru … this has nothing to do with you. It’s just that sometimes, when I start thinking about all there is that I don’t know … I get scared. That’s all I meant.” “Why don’t you start thinking of all you do know. I’ll bet you know more about life than any of your new friends.” “That’s probably true.” “Don’t you ever wonder what you’re doing here?” “All the time.” She stepped out of the tub and he watched as she rubbed herself down with a towel. “You still love me?” he asked. “Of course I still love you,” she told him. “Did you think I wouldn’t?” “I wasn’t sure, to tell the truth.” “Here, let me prove it …” she said, sinking to her knees. A week later a package came from Vineyard Health. Six different kinds of vitamins and minerals with a personal note from the owner, someone named Star . 27THOUGH PHILOSOPHY was a favorite topic, they were not above discussing Men and Sex. Maia was still a virgin. That might explain her fascination with Bru. Maybe she was more curious than meddlesome. When Maia decided it was time to take action, Paisley and her roommate, Debra, encouraged her. “Winter is long and hard up here,” Paisley said in her southern drawl. She was a big, rawboned girl from Charleston, with the kind of looks Abby would describe as handsome. “You might as well find a warm body to make the dreary nights more exciting.” Debra was Korean, educated at international schools, already a published poet. “If you consider YM being published. But I’m not Sylvia Plath. I don’t want to be Sylvia Plath. I mean, really, look how she wound up.” “Because of some guy,” Maia said. “Most people say it was her mother,” Debra said. “She didn’t stick her head in the oven over her mother,” Maia argued. “She might have,” Debra said. “She might have had some innate imbalance.” “They’re developing drugs for that,” Paisley said. “Soon none of us will be imbalanced. Unless we want to be.” “And creativity will go right down the tubes,” Debra said, which got them talking about the neurotic personality and creativity for the next hour. The warm body Maia found belonged to Wally, a guy she met in Justice, another coveted freshman elective. He was a virgin, too. They saw a lot of one another, spending hours analyzing their situation. Vix suggested maybe they were overanalyzing, maybe it would be better if they just went with their feelings. Maia accused Vix of being the least analytical person she’d ever met. Vix thought that was probably true, given the people Maia knew. Before the blessed event Debra and Paisley presented Maia with an explicit how-to video. Maia sat stiffly, her hands ready to cover her eyes just in case, but instead of being grossed out by what she saw, Maia was turned on. So was Vix.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  You do, of course, need to keep your wits about you as you tune in to positivity’s navigation system. Sure enough, peddlers are forever standing by to tempt you to find your bliss in commercial goods and services, both legal and illegal. Such commerce is often carefully engineered to set off the emotional fireworks that create brand loyalty, and even addictions. With conscious effort, you can override these impulses. If you couldn’t, you’d be a hapless product of past conditioning. Yet overriding hedonist impulses isn’t always a wise move. Discerning which pleasure-seeking urges actually represent healthy pursuits, like the age-old cellular cry to connect, is foundational to emotional intelligence. All it may take is to step out of the marketplace, and to trust the wisdom inherent in your body to draw you to connect with others in meaningful ways. Infants and toddlers follow their positivity instincts as a matter of course. Yet once impulse control becomes possible, all bets are off as to when and whether people of any age will tune in to and prioritize their own good feelings. Evidence suggests that it isn’t until midlife or beyond that people develop true wisdom about positivity’s quiet cues. This delay may well reflect the strong supporting role that families and educational institutions play in the lives of younger people. Many families and schools are organized around ways to help younger people find ready sources of positivity resonance. Parents and teachers, coaches and resident assistants, provide scaffolding to support positive connections between and among young people. When you were growing up, for instance, far beyond providing you shelter, meals, and clothing, your parents likely stoked your opportunities to share positivity-laced moments with them and others. At first it was simply through tickles and grins, and later it was through setting up playdates and creating family rituals around mealtime, bedtime, weekends, and holidays. Many schools, colleges, and universities strive to provide similar structural support. Through icebreakers and other experiential activities, both within and outside classrooms, through sporting and artistic events, these places create entire webs of people, institutional practices, and rituals that may have provided additional external support for the positivity resonance that nourished you through your youth. Jeremy, whose story I told in chapter 8, likened all this structural support to an external navigation system. As he put it, “Your path up through college is kind of decided for you and then it is like the navigation system turns off and you have to pilot yourself and that’s when it gets scary.” Being released into the so-called real world, absent the scaffolding to support ready connection, can leave recent graduates wondering why their life suddenly seems less sparkly, their days more life-draining than life-giving.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Upon taking in world news on any given day, you can come away feeling that people in general are more fearful, aggressive, and greedy than ever before. As a global society, we’re also feeling more stress, gaining more weight, and being diagnosed with more chronic illnesses year by year. In the United States, life expectancies have actually declined for kids today, relative to their parents, for the first time in centuries. How many of these ills, I wonder, stem from our collective denial of who we are and how we got here? Like all other living things, you are a collection of cells. The ways your cells form, the ways they operate and grow, and the ways they’ll be continually replaced by fresh cells until you take your last breath reflect the deeply encoded ancestral knowledge embedded within your DNA. You are a unique and ingenious animal, to be sure, but an animal nonetheless. Sometimes you forget this basic truth. You can get so caught up in the booming, buzzing world around you that your animal identity slips out of view. You forget how you—and every other human animal—got here, how we collectively arrived in this messy, overtaxed world that we inherited and will one day pass on. The history of your cells is one of adaptation, of change. Adaptation is both quick and slow. It’s quick because in a heartbeat your actions adapt to your ever-changing circumstances—you leap away from dangers, for instance, and lean in toward opportunities. As particular dangers and opportunities recur, your body begins to anticipate them. Springtime, for instance, opens up opportunities to walk barefoot. As you take those opportunities, calluses emerge to protect your feet and your metabolism rises as you become leaner from increased activity. Adaptation is extremely slow, on the other hand, because the wisdom in you that guides your quick responses to dangers, opportunities, and any ensuing physiological adjustments was sculpted, little by little, over millennia by the discerning chisel of Darwinian natural selection. Your animal ancestors were the ones whose quick actions saved their skin. That’s how fear, anger, disgust, and other negative emotions evolved over countless generations. Yet your animal ancestors were also the ones whose opportunistic actions added to their reserves of resources—their toolkits—upon which they drew to navigate and survive future threats, so that they might live long enough to successfully raise their young. That’s how love and other positive emotions evolved. Prominent within your ancestor’s toolkit—among the life-saving and life-giving resources upon which they could time and again draw—were the strong bonds that they’d forged with those with whom their genetic survival was yoked: their mates, kin, and coalition members. These were the ones in whom they could place their trust and loyalty, the ones to whom they became irresistibly drawn. Without bonds, an ancient animal died young or failed to reproduce. With bonds, an ancient animal stood a chance to become one of your ancestors.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  He raised her skirt and exposed such a luxuriant tuft of curled hair that the three men whistled. She kept her legs tightly closed, her feet against the Basque’s trousers, where he suddenly felt a swarming sensation, like a hundred ants traveling over his sex. He asked the three men to hold her. Bijou squirmed at first and then realized it was less dangerous to lie still, for he was carefully shaving her pubic hair, beginning at the edges, where it lay sparse and shining on her velvety belly. The belly came down in a soft curve there. The Basque lathered, then shaved gently, wiping off the hair and soap with a towel. With her legs tightly closed the men could not see anything but the hair, but as the Basque shaved on and reached the center of the triangle, he exposed a mount, a smooth promontory. The feeling of the cold blade there agitated Bijou. She was half-angry, half-stirred, intent on not showing her sex, but the shaving revealed where the smoothness descended into a fine incurving line. It revealed the bud of the opening, the soft folded flesh that enclosed the clitoris, the tip of the more intensely colored lips. She wanted now to move away but she was afraid of being hurt by the blade. The three men held her and bent down over her to watch. They thought the Basque would stop there. But he ordered her to part her legs. She shook her feet against him, which only excited him more. He said again: “Part your legs. There are some more hairs down there.” She was forced to open them, and he gently began to shave off the hairs, sparse again, delicately curled, on each side of the vulva. And now everything was exposed—the long vertically placed mouth, a second mouth, which opened not like the mouth of the face, but which opened only if she chose to push out a little. But Bijou would not push, and they could see just the two lips, closed, barring the way. The Basque said, “Now she looks like the paintings by that woman, doesn’t she?” But in the paintings, the vulva was open, the lips parted, showing the paler inner layer like the inside of the lips of the mouth. This, Bijou would not show. Once shaved, she had closed her legs again. The Basque said: “I will make you open there.”

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Does the wingèd life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise. This four-line poem is the reason I have had the courage day after day, month after month, to lay aside my fear of loss and proceed with A-Man in the present, the only place we exist together. In these lines I find the courage to shave my pussy, risking my dignity with every passage of the razor. Each swipe of the blades reveals my vulnerability far more than my sex. I bet Bill Blake never thought his profound little ditty would find such practical use for so profane an act on such sacred ground. Never mind, he is my seer. Now, pussy trimming is an interesting subject. I am a complete believer. Trim down that wild bush, girls, let him get a view, let him get access. Waxing doesn’t really work. It’s good for a week, but then there’s three weeks of bumps and stubble till you can wax again. I cannot tolerate bumps and stubble for three weeks. So I shave, every single time. I do it dry, using lots of baby powder and two new two-blade disposable razors each time. Against the grain, but gently. It never cuts and never takes off a layer of skin like wet shaving. Then there’s shape. I began with the simple side trims, the tutu trim, from my ballet-dancing days—a nice isosceles triangle. But then I went to a few strip clubs and got jealous of those very exposed, hairless pussies. Now I shave everything in between, smooth, smooth lips, and leave a nice little triangle on top—though carefully, carefully I trim on either side of the top of my slit, just to highlight and expose the magic crevice—very sexy, very porn. On the bed, legs over the head, mirror in hand, I shave the few hairs around my ass—smooth as a baby. I have, with this view, really come to see what he sees, what he loves, where he goes. My rosebud—not Citizen Kane’s. I dress. There are three firm knocks on the door. I’m ready. New Year’s Arithmetic Eighty-four anal fucks this year—that averages 7 per month, that’s 1.75 a week, one every 4.3 days. But he was out of town 21 weeks, in town 31 weeks, which averages 2.7 ass-fucks a week, which makes one every 2.6 days. I like the math; I do it to believe. Me and the Marquis de Sade: he counted, too. HIS COCK

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  In spite of the opposition, the young people carried out their engagement ceremony among their friends. The girl’s father came in during the festivities and threatened that, if he ever met the Indian wearing the chain ring the girl had already given him, he would tear it from his finger in the bloodiest manner, and if necessary cut his finger off. The festivities were spoiled by this incident. Everybody went home, and the young people separated with promises to meet secretly. They met one evening after many difficulties, and kissed fervently for a long while. The woman was exalted by his kisses. She was ready to give herself, feeling that this might be their last moment together, for her father’s anger was growing every day. But the Indian was determined to marry her, determined not to possess her in secrecy. Then she noticed that he did not have the ring on his finger. Her eyes questioned him. He said in her ear, “I am wearing it, but not where it can be seen. I am wearing it where no one can see it, but where it will prevent me from taking you or any other woman until we are married.” “I don’t understand,” said the woman. “Where is the ring?” Then he took her hand, led it to a certain place between the legs. The woman’s fingers felt his penis first of all, and then he guided her fingers and she felt the ring there at the base of it. At the touch of her hand, however, the penis hardened and he cried out, because the ring pressed into it and gave him excruciating pain. The woman almost fainted with horror. It was as if he wanted to kill and mutilate the desire in himself. And at the same time the thought of this penis bound and encircled by her ring roused her sexually, so that her body became warm and sensitive to all kinds of erotic fantasies. She continued to kiss him, and he begged her not to, because it brought him greater and greater pain. A few days later the Indian was again in agony, but he could not get the ring off. The doctor had to be called, and the ring filed away. The woman came to him and offered to run away with him. He accepted. They got on horses and traveled for a whole night together to a nearby town. There he concealed her in a room and went out to get work on an hacienda. She did not leave the room until her father tired of searching for her. The night watchman of the town was the only one aware of her presence. The watchman was a young man and had helped to conceal her. From her window she could see him walking back and forth carrying the keys of the houses, and calling, “The night is clear and all is well in the town.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The monk threatens me with all his rage if I do not acquiesce; I have to obey. The perfidious machine penetrates to the two-thirds mark and the tearing it causes combined with its extreme heat are about to deprive me of the use of my senses; meanwhile, the superior, showering an uninterrupted stream of invectives upon the parts he is molesting, has himself excited by his follower; after fifteen minutes of rubbing which lacerates me, he releases the spring, a quart of nearly boiling water is fired into the last depths of my womb... I fall into a faint. Severino was in an ecstasy... he was in a delirium at least the equal of my agony. "Why," said the traitor, "that's nothing at all. When I recover my wits, we'll treat those charms much more harshly... a salad of thorns, by Jesus! well peppered, a copious admixture of vinegar, all that tamped in with the point of a knife, that's what they need to buck them up; the next mistake you make, I condemn you to the treatment," said the villain while he continued to handle the object of his worship; but two or three homages after the preceeding night's debauches had near worked him to death, and I was sent packing. Upon returning to my chamber I found my new companion in tears; I did what I could to soothe her, but it is not easy to adjust to so frightful a change of situation; this girl had, furthermore, a great fund of religious feeling, of virtue, and of sensitivity; owing to it, her state only appeared to her the more terrible. Omphale had been right when she told me seniority in no way influenced retirement; that, simply by the monks' caprice, or by their fear of ulterior inquiries, one could undergo dismissal at the end of a week as easily as at the end of twenty years. Octavie had not been with us four months when Jerome came to announce her departure; although 'twas he who had most enjoyed her during her sojourn at the monastery, he who had seemed to cherish her and seek her more than any other, the poor child left, making us the same promises Omphale had given; she kept them just as poorly. From that moment on, my every thought was bent upon the plan I had been devising since Omphale's departure; determined to do everything possible to escape from this den of savages, nothing that might help me succeed held any terrors for me. What was there to dread by putting my scheme into execution? Death.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "This torture is sweeter than you may imagine, Therese," says Roland; "you will only approach death by way of unspeakably pleasurable sensations; the pressure this noose will bring to bear upon your nervous system will set fire to the organs of voluptuousness; the effect is certain; were all the people who are condemned to this torture to know in what an intoxication of joy it makes one die, less terrified by this retribution for their crimes, they would commit them more often and with much greater self-assurance; this delicious operation, Therese, by causing, as well, the contraction of the locale in which I am going to fit myself," he added as he presented himself to a criminal avenue so worthy of such a villain, "is also going to double my pleasure." He thrusts, he sweats, 'tis in vain; he prepares the road, 'tis futile; he is too monstrously proportioned, his enterprises are repeatedly frustrated; and then his wrath nails, his hands, his feet fly to revenge him upon the opposition Nature puts up against him; he returns to the assault, the glowing blade slides to the edge of the neighboring canal and smiting vigorously, penetrates to nigh the midway mark; I utter a cry; Roland, enraged by his mistake, withdraws petulantly, and this time hammers at the other gate with such force the moistened dart plunges in, rending me. Roland exploits this first sally's success; his efforts become more violent; he gains ground; as he advances, he gradually tightens the fatal cord he has passed round my neck, hideous screams burst from my lips; amused by them, the ferocious Roland urges me to redouble my howlings, - for he is but too confident of their insufficiency, he is perfectly able to put a stop to them when he wishes; their shrill sharp notes inflame him, the noose's pressure is modulated by his degrees of delight; little by little my voice waxes faint; the tightenings now become so intense that my senses weaken although I do not lose the power to feel; brutally shaken by the enormous instrument with which Roland is rending my entrails, despite my frightful circumstances, I feel myself flooded by his lust's jetted outpourings; I still hear the cries he mouths as he discharges; an instant of stupor followed, I knew not what had happened to me, but soon my eyes open again to the light, I find myself free, untied, and my sensory organs seem to come back to life. "Well, Therese," says my butcher, "I dare swear that if you'll tell the truth you'll say you felt pleasure only?"

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Several months passed before the flabbergasted citizens discovered that Clearwater had become the Flag Land Base for the Church of Scientology. (Scientologists would simply call it Flag.) Hubbard had been keeping a low profile in a condominium nearby, but in January 1976 his tailor leaked the news to a St. Petersburg Times reporter that the leader of Scientology was in town. As soon as Hubbard heard this, he grabbed twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, collected Kima Douglas, his medical officer, and her husband, Michael, and lit out in his Cadillac for Orlando. The next day, he announced that they were going to his old hideout in Queens. The Cadillac was too conspicuous, so he sent Michael out to buy a nondescript Chevy hatchback. The trip to New York took three days, with Hubbard smoking continuously in the backseat and crying, “ There they are! They’re after us!” every time he saw a police car. When they finally arrived, Kima judged Queens too depressing, so they turned around and went to Washington, DC. Meanwhile, agents from the Guardian’s Office raced to Southern California to look for remote properties where Hubbard could operate more discreetly. Soon, Hubbard and Mary Sue, along with her Tibetan terriers, Yama and Tashi, set up in their new quarters on three large properties in La Quinta, California, a desert town south of Palm Springs. Hubbard grew a goatee and let his hair hang down to his shoulders. “ He looked like Wild Bill Hickok,” one Sea Org member recalled. He kept a hopped-up Plymouth and half a million dollars in cash ready for a quick getaway. Left behind in Clearwater, and without his father hovering over him, Quentin became freer and more assertive. He befriended an older Scientologist from New Zealand, Grace Alpe, who arrived at Flag Base with terminal cancer. “ She looked like a witch, with gray hair and a hooked nose, like she was in a haunted house,” said Karen de la Carriere, who was Alpe’s auditor. During auditing sessions Alpe would just rock back and forth, crying, “I’m going to die! I’m going to die!” Everyone kept a distance from the woman, except Quentin, who took over her case. He actually let her move into his room and sleep in his bed, while he slept on the floor. Then he made a catastrophic mistake. Dennis Erlich, the chief “cramming officer” at Flag, who supervised the upper-level auditors, noted jarring disparities between Quentin’s upbeat reports on Alpe and her glaring lack of progress. Erlich called Quentin in for a meeting. “Quentin, or ‘Q’ as his friends called him, was 22 at the time,” Erlich later wrote. “He looked 15 and acted 5.” During the interview, Quentin continually zoomed his hand through the air and made airplane noises. He calmly told Erlich that he had falsely reported the results. “ I think a lot of my father’s stuff doesn’t work,” he said. “So I false report whenever I need to.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Strip. Instantly." And thereupon the libertine slid one hand beneath her skirts while he grasped her with the other. Clement approached, he raised Octavie's clothes to above her waist and by this maneuver exposed the softest, the most appetizing features it is possible anywhere to find; Severino touches, perceives nothing, bends to scrutinize more narrowly, and all four agree they have never seen anything as beautiful. However, the modest Octavie, little accustomed to usage of this sort, gushes tears, and struggles. "Undress, undress," cries Antonin, "we can't see a thing this way." He assists Severino and in a trice we have displayed to us all the maiden's unadorned charms. Never, without any doubt, was there a fairer skin, never were there more happily modeled forms.... God! the crime of it!... So many beauties, such chaste freshness, so much innocence and daintiness Ä all to become prey to these barbarians! Covered with shame, Octavie knows not where to fly to hide her charms, she finds naught but hungering eyes everywhere about, nothing but brutal hands which sully those treasures; the circle closes around her, and, as did I, she rushes hither and thither; the savage Antonin lacks the strength to resist; a cruel attack determines the homage, and the incense smokes at the goddess' feet. Jerome compares her to our young colleague of sixteen, doubtless the seraglio's prettiest; he places the two altars of his devotion one next to the other. "Ha! what whiteness! what grace!" says he as he fingers Octavie, "but what gentility and freshness may be discerned in this other one: indeed," continues the monk all afire, "I am uncertain"; then imprinting his mouth upon the charms his eyes behold, "Octavie," he cries, "to you the apple, it belongs to none but you, give me the precious fruit of this tree my heart adores.... Ah, yes! yes, one of you, give it me, and I will forever assure beauty's prize to who serves me sooner." Severino observes the time has come to meditate on more serious matters; absolutely in no condition to be kept waiting, he lays hands upon the unlucky child, places her as he desires her to be; not yet being able to have full confidence in Octavie's aid, he calls for Clement to lend him a hand. Octavie weeps and weeps unheeded; fire gleams in the impudicious monk's glance; master of the terrain, one might say he casts about a roving eye only to consider the avenues whereby he may launch the fiercest assault; no ruses, no preparations are employed; will he be able to gather these so charming roses? will he be able to battle past the thorns?

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

  These were my demons to slay. I could have listed “sing karaoke” or “do improv comedy,” but even though these make me want to play dead, they weren’t the things that were holding me back in life. However, my unwillingness to cold-contact experts in positions of authority, speak live on camera to an unseen audience of thousands, and make myself vulnerable to criticism and lousy reviews by sending a book with my name on it into the world was definitely holding me back. These were the things that, if I didn’t do them, would most definitely get in the way of living the life I wanted to live. I was torn between the gauntlet of facing down fears (which, rationally, I knew were overblown and distorted) and the specter of regret. Now it’s your turn. If you’re not ready, that’s totally okay. Go back to the beginning or middle of your Challenge List and knock off a few more of those. Getting a running start can bolster confidence and make the scariest stuff a little less toe curling. So what are the things that scare you a lot? What is holding you back? Ask him out. Dance at your daughter’s wedding. Change your job. Move out. Speak up. Show up. Fill them in below. Do these and your confidence will catch up. Move forward by living your life. 8. ____________________ 9. ____________________ 10. ____________________ What will working your way through your Challenge List be like? Most of the time, it will be tough but well worth it. You’ll find that your confidence catches up. You’ll discover what you never knew was in you all along. But other times it may not go so well. You’ll disappoint yourself. You’ll pull out all the stops of your bravery, and nothing will change. You’ll feel like trying to stretch your range is futile. Your Inner Critic will tell you to sit down, shut up, and keep your head down. This isn’t for you, it will say. You weren’t built to have confidence. Plus, once in a while, something bad will happen. People are judgy; people talk. There are haters out there. But if your practice doesn’t go as planned, ask yourself who was acting inappropriately. For her Challenge List, Camilla asked a stranger for the time, but the stranger ignored her. Who was out of line, Camilla or the stranger? Julio asked a question in a meeting and his boss blew him off. Again, who acted poorly, Julio or his boss?

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

  The neighborhood was close, both literally and figuratively. “I could have jumped from my bedroom window into the window of the house next door if I wanted to,” Jim remembers. “The houses were that close together.” But the tightness of the houses reflected the tight-knit community. If a stranger appeared in the neighborhood, locals would take notice and approach, asking, “May I help you?” There were eyes on the street, eyes on the kids. “It was so safe,” remembers Jim. “Though sometimes it would get me into trouble. My brother and I would go out to play, and our mother would tell us not to go past Linden Street. And of course we’d go past Linden Street. So when we got home she’d ground us. I’d say, ‘How did you know?’ And she would say, ‘Mrs. O’Neill saw you and called.’ We couldn’t get away with anything. But it meant we were safe no matter where we went. I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up anywhere else.” But while the Irish eyes peering from the triple-decker windows meant safety for Jim and his friends, for Jim’s mother, Maeve, they meant something entirely different. Whether Jim and Ryan were headed to school, church, a family gathering, or just outside to play hockey, before they ricocheted down the stairs and out the door Maeve would put them through her usual paces. Jim remembers, “She’d say, ‘Come here, let me look at you.’” She’d peer at them, giving the boys the once-over from head to toe, smoothing unruly hair and spit-shining smudged faces. “We had to look good,” Jim said. “There was always a fear. A fear of being judged. Fear that the neighbors would talk. That the ladies would get together, shake their heads, cluck their tongues, and say, ‘Oh my goodness, did you see those Nolan boys the other day?’” When the boys came home, there was another ritual. As they rifled through the cabinets for a snack, Maeve would ask: Did you run into anyone? Did you see any of the neighbors? Jim remembers, “There was just a sense of being in a fishbowl. Of always being scrutinized. She lived in fear that a neighbor would see one of us playing in the dirt or being disrespectful or who knows what. But she could never articulate it.”

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

  Remember the two swim coaches? Both coaches ostensibly wanted the same thing: for the kids to learn how to swim. Even the first coach, in a way, was trying to help. When we’re tempted to bail on the neighborhood cookout because we’re worried we’ll be awkward and the neighbors will think we’re weird, we can ask the Inner Critic how it’s trying to help. The answer? Almost always, it will be, I’m trying to keep you safe. Like a neurotic mother hen, the Inner Critic will say, If you don’t go, they can’t hurt you. Just sit this one out and you guarantee you won’t be ridiculed. Better safe than sorry, so why don’t you just stay home this time? But using self-compassion, you might then tell yourself, Oh, sweetheart, I know you’re scared. You don’t know the neighbors very well and this is intimidating. You’re not alone—everyone feels awkward and weird sometimes and everyone was new to the neighborhood at one point. You know from experience that just showing up is the worst part. It gets better from there. You’ve done hard things before, and I know you can do this, too, even while you’re feeling nervous. Now, if you feel corny calling yourself sweetheart, don’t. The point is to be kind and supportive and, most important, brave. Notice self-compassion didn’t say, Oh, sweetheart, I know you’re scared. Why don’t you stay home and eat a pint of Cherry Garcia instead? Just as the second coach didn’t offer empty praise or let the kid go on kicking incorrectly, neither does self-compassion let you off the hook. Just as the second coach gave our struggling swimmer a gentle, friendly nudge in the right direction, self-compassion can do the same for you. Self-compassion knows we all have our stuff, so why bother pretending we don’t? Self-compassion sees our inadequacies and failures and not only is cool with them but also provides a safe and caring place for them. Self-compassion loves the package deal that is you, or me. When you talk to yourself with compassion, you invert the Golden Rule—rather than treating others as you would like to be treated, you also treat yourself as well as you would treat others. Self-compassion is different from self-esteem. According to Dr. Neff, self-esteem is a label: I’m great! I’m beautiful! But even the positive labels we have for ourselves, if we are lucky enough to have them—I’m smart, I’m successful—are still just labels. The danger is that we tend to cling to positive labels and avoid trying new things that might threaten the label. There’s that word again: “avoid.” Indeed, a 2015 study showed that among those who practiced self-compassion even low self-esteem had little effect on their mental health, suggesting that self-compassion creates a buffer, a safety net of kindness, that keeps those on this high wire we call life from crashing down.

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

  Vigilius, a pliant creature of Theodora, ascended the papal chair under the military protection of Belisarius (538–554). The empress had promised him this office and a sum of money, on condition that he nullify the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, and pronounce Anthimus and his friends orthodox. The ambitious and doubled-tongued prelate accepted the condition, and accomplished the deposition, and perhaps the death, of Silverius. In his pontificate occurred the violent controversy of the three chapters and the second general council of Constantinople (553). His administration was an unprincipled vacillation between the dignity and duties of his office and subservience to an alien theological and political influence; between repeated condemnation of the three chapters in behalf of a Eutychianizing spirit, and repeated retraction of that condemnation. In Constantinople, where he resided several years at the instance of the emperor, he suffered much personal persecution, but without the spirit of martyrdom, and without its glory. For example, at least according to Western accounts, he was violently torn from the altar, upon which he was holding with both hands so firmly that the posts of the canopy fell in above him; he was dragged through the streets with a rope around his neck, and cast into a common prison; because he would not submit to the will of Justinian and his council. Yet he yielded at last, through fear of deposition. He obtained permission to return to Rome, but died in Sicily, of the stone, on his way thither (554). Pelagius I. (554–560), by order of Justinian, whose favor he had previously gained as papal legate at Constantinople, was made successor of Vigilius, but found only two bishops ready to consecrate him. His close connection with the East, and his approval of the fifth ecumenical council, which was regarded as a partial concession to the Eutychian Christology, and, so far, an impeachment of the authority of the council of Chalcedon, alienated many Western bishops, even in Italy, and induced a temporary suspension of their connection with Rome. He issued a letter to the whole Christian world, in which he declared his entire agreement with the first four general councils, and then vindicated the fifth as in no way departing from the Chalcedonian dogma. But only by the military aid of Narses could he secure subjection; and the most refractory bishops, those of Aquileia and Milan, he sent as prisoners to Constantinople. In these two Justinian-made popes we see how much the power of the Roman hierarchy was indebted to its remoteness from the Byzantine despotism, and how much it was injured by contact with it.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Love unfolds and reverberates between and among people— within interpersonal transactions—and thereby belongs to all parties involved, and to the metaphorical connective tissue that binds them together, albeit temporarily. The biology of love, as you’ll see in chapter 3 , concurs. Love alters the unseen activity within your body and brain in ways that trigger parallel changes within another person’s body and brain. More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections. It extends beyond personal boundaries to characterize the vibe that pulsates between and among people. It can even energize whole social networks or inspire a crowd to get up and dance. Positivity resonance doesn’t spring up at random. It emerges within certain circumstances, stemming from particular patterns of thought and action. These are love’s bedrock prerequisites. The first precondition is a perception of safety. If you assess your current circumstances as threatening or dangerous in any way, love is not at that moment a possibility for you. Indeed, your brain has been shaped by the forces of natural selection to be exquisitely attuned to threats. Your innate threat detection system even operates outside your conscious awareness.You could be engrossed in conversation, or enjoying a blissful run in the woods, for instance, and still instantaneously spot that writhing snake on your path. Although true threats are rare, not everyone can trust the world this way. People who suffer from anxiety, depression, or even loneliness or low self-esteem perceive threats far more often than circumstances warrant. Sadly, this overalert state thwarts both positivity and positivity resonance. Feeling unsafe, then, is the first obstacle to love. True Connection Matters Love’s second precondition is connection, true sensory and temporal connection with another living being. You no doubt try to “stay connected” when physical distance keeps you and your loved ones apart. You use the phone, e-mail, and increasingly texts or Facebook, and it’s important to do so. Yet your body, sculpted by the forces of natural selection over millennia, was not designed for the abstractions of long-distance love, the XOXs and LOLs. Your body hungers for more. It hungers for moments of oneness. Feelings of oneness surface when two or more people “sync up” and literally come to act as one, moving to the same hidden beat. You can sync up like this with a stranger just as you can with a lifelong companion. When positivity resonance moves between you and another, for instance, the two of you begin to mirror each other’s postures and gestures, and even finish each other’s sentences. You feel united, connected, of a piece.

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

  (d) It qualifies the idea of a future state by the doctrine of sin and redemption, and thus makes it to the believer a state of absolute holiness and happiness, to the impenitent sinner a state of absolute misery. Death and immortality are a blessing to the one, but a terror to the other; the former can hail them with joy; the latter has reason to tremble. (e) It gives great prominence to the general judgment, after the resurrection, which determines the ultimate fate of all men according to their works done in this earthly life. But we must distinguish, in this mysterious article, what is of faith, and what is private opinion and speculation. The return of Christ to judgment with its eternal rewards and punishment is the centre of the eschatological faith of the church. The judgment is preceded by the general resurrection, and followed by life everlasting. This faith is expressed in the oecumenical creeds. The Apostles’ Creed: "He shall come to judge the quick and the dead," and "I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting." The Nicene Creed: "He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end." "And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." The Athanasian Creed, so called, adds to these simple statements a damnatory clause at the beginning, middle, and end, and makes salvation depend on belief in the orthodox catholic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, as therein stated. But that document is of much later origin, and cannot be traced beyond the sixth century. The liturgies which claim apostolic or post-apostolic origin, give devotional expression to the same essential points in the eucharistic sacrifice. The Clementine liturgy: "Being mindful, therefore, of His passion and death, and resurrection from the dead, and return into the heavens, and His future second appearing, wherein He is to come with glory and power to judge the quick and the dead, and to recompense to every one according to his works." The liturgy of James: "His second glorious and awful appearing, when He shall come with glory to judge the quick and the dead, and render to every one according to his works." The liturgy of Mark: "His second terrible and dreadful coming, in which He will come to judge righteously the quick and the dead, and to render to each man according to his works."

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  You may not fully apprehend how these tableaux help toward the development of the human spirit; our backwardness in this branch of learning may very well be due to the stupid restraint of those who venture to write upon such matters. Inhibited by absurd fears, they only discuss the puerilities with which every fool is familiar, and dare not, by addressing themselves boldly to the investigation of the human heart, offer its gigantic idiosyncrasies to our view." "Very well, Monsieur, I shall proceed," Therese resumed, affected, "and proceeding as I have done until this point, I will strive to offer my sketches in the least revolting colors." Roland, with whose portrait I ought to begin, was a short, heavy-set man, thirty-five years old, incredibly vigorous and as hirsute as a bear, with a glowering mien and fierce eye; very dark, with masculine features, a long nose, bearded to the eyes, black, shaggy brows; and in him that part which differentiates men from our sex was of such length and exorbitant circumference, that not only had I never laid eyes upon anything comparable, but was even absolutely convinced Nature had never fashioned another as prodigious; I could scarcely surround it with both hands, and its length matched that of my forearm. To this physique Roland joined all the vices which may be the issue of a fiery temperament, of considerable imagination, and of a luxurious life undisturbed by anything likely to distract from one's leisure pursuits. From his father Roland very early on in life he had become surfeited by ordinary pleasures, and begun to resort to nothing but horrors; these alone were able to revive desires in a person jaded by excessive pleasure; the women who served him were all employed in his secret debauches and to satisfy appetites only slightly less dishonest within which, nevertheless, this libertine was able to find the criminal spice wherein above all his taste delighted; Roland kept his own sister as a mistress, and it was with her he brought to a climax the passions he ignited in our company. He was virtually naked when he entered; his inflamed visage was evidence simultaneously of the epicurean intemperance to which he had just given himself over, and the abominable lust which consumed him; for an instant he considers me with eyes that unstring my limbs. "Get out of those clothes," says he, himself tearing off what I was wearing to cover me during the night...

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Beth looked away, spots of color livid in her pale, hollow cheeks. “I’m fine.” Fran thought of the man coming over the ridge of the roof, of the way he’d crouched down low and shaken his hindquarters like a cat about to pounce. She thought of her voice caught frozen in her throat and Beth tumbling over the gutters, tearing one of them loose with a flailing arm or leg so that it swung with a groan of twisting metal and pinched itself shut under its own weight. I tried to warn you. Did I shout? Did I reach for you? Did your fingers slip through mine? There was nothing but a tangle of adrenaline and fear and the sight of rotten teeth bared in excitement as the men closed over Beth, swarming and clawing with mindless insect intent. That had happened. That was what was real. Downtown was deserted. This early, everyone would be at the power plant or inland, working on one of the town’s farms. Seabrook didn’t have much soil worth growing in, but there were a few strains of beans and sprouts that did all right, and one town over in Exeter was the sprawling pig-and-chicken outfit owned by a bunker brat, Sophie Widdel, whose billionaire parents had vanished on T-Day and left her with an armed security detail, a vault full of nonperishables and potable water, and the perfect sprawling underground complex to house it all. The town had to treat her like something between a CEO and a feudal baroness, which was a better deal than you got with most brats. Fran had heard there was a Gates baby somewhere in Connecticut who kept a big pit full of men in her bunker and fed them anyone who pissed her off, like Jabba the Hutt serving his dancers up raw to the stop-motion monster under his palace. In the parking lot of the gutted CVS, they passed a pair of black girls no older than five or six throwing a tennis ball for a gangly, speckle-coated mutt. Fran smiled and waved. The taller of the two returned her gesture shyly while the other hid behind her. She wondered what it was like to be a kid in this world, to have no memory of the civilization that had come and gone before they had fine motor control, to have no knowledge of men but the slavering, screeching face of t. rex. We outlived every dad in the world.

• From Between Us

  It is very plausible, therefore, that strong fear is related to aggression proneness even among the Bara. What may be different for the Bara is that this proneness is not considered antisocial; instead, it can be funneled into socially normative behavior, first by beating up peers from competing patrilineages, and later into socializing new generations of Bara children that need to be socialized to feel tahotsy. Finally, fear may hamper closeness in the child-parent relationships, true even among the Bara. But who says the relationship between parents and children needs to be close? Bara parents meet their children’s physical needs as long as the latter are not able to take care of themselves, and after that, they make their offspring fit for the social demands of a hierarchical society, and protect them from the wrath of the ancestral spirits. What more could a Bara child wish for? We need not go to cultures remote from our own to find this type of emotion socialization. A very similar approach was found in the United States before nineteenth-century Victorian norms came into vogue. Anger and punishment were used “in defense of hierarchy and religious orthodoxy” and to instill in children the respect for elders (including their parents), the fear of doom in eternity, and the fear of God. Child-rearing practices across the Atlantic were hardly different at that time. Louis XIII, a seventeenth-century French king, was brought up in a similar fashion: “[T]he whippings the child constantly received were designed, in some way, to suppress his sense of autonomy, and to prepare him for a role of submissiveness.” Regardless of class, the goal of childrearing was to combat pride, and instill feelings of submission. Even a king would have to be servile and please the potentially angry deity. Only in the nineteenth century did attacks on the disciplinary uses of fear emerge in American middle-class contexts. As historian Peter Stearns eloquently describes in his 1994 book American Cool: As the God-fearing qualities of religious virtue began to decline in mainstream American Protestantism, a fearful individual was no longer considered appropriately pious. Rather, he or she was emotionally crippled, incapable of taking the kinds of initiatives or displaying the kinds of confidence desirable in middle-class life. Most obviously, if fear became an emotional link between parent and child, long-term affection would be excluded even if short-term discipline was served. Fear, quite simply, became an emotional abuse of parental authority. It was around this time that affection trumped servitude, and that parent-child relations came to be seen as “loving” in the first place. Maternal love played a central role in this new model of child-rearing, as it contributed to raising a moral child. “God planted this deep, this unquenchable love for her offspring, in the mother’s heart,” a reverend wrote in an 1839 issue of The Mother’s Magazine.