Relief

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 Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  STEP 4 | Agree to revisit the conversation and, if the benchmarks for success haven’t been met, you’ll have a serious discussion about quitting. Implicit in steps 3 and 4 is that the person you’re counseling has now given you permission to speak freely and bluntly about abandoning course. Of course, all the while, you should remind them that life’s too short. Permission on both sides of the equation is key to a fruitful relationship between a coach and the person seeking the coaching. Even when someone seeking that advice gives permission, it’s still better when you can help them get to the decision for themselves, as opposed to telling them what to do. When Sarah Olstyn Martinez reached out to me, she gave me permission to have an honest conversation. Even so, I didn’t tell her what decision she should make. I just asked her questions that helped her by framing her choice as an expected-value problem. That allowed her to see it for herself quite quickly. If you’re in a leadership position, Astro Teller provides an outstanding example of how to be a great quitting coach. He helps the people at X be better at shutting things down by tackling monkeys, avoiding pedestals, and setting kill criteria that increase the chances that they’ll get to a rational decision faster. This is all part of his creating a culture that doesn’t just destigmatize quitting but celebrates it. Quitting is hard, too hard to do entirely on our own. We as individuals are riddled by the host of biases, like the sunk cost fallacy, endowment effect, status quo bias, and loss aversion, which lead to escalation of commitment. Our identities are entwined in the things that we’re doing. Our instinct is to want to protect that identity, making us stick to things even more. If there’s one thing that you’ve learned from this book, it’s that just knowing about the problem, doing a thought experiment of taking somebody else’s perspective and trying to see it from the outside, looking in on yourself, is something you cannot do. That’s why Daniel Kahneman thinks he needs a quitting coach, and why we all ought to see that need. Life is just too short to be spending our time on things that aren’t worthwhile. We all need people around us who will tell us when we’re on the wrong path.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  His statement was basically, I'm sorry you felt that way, but I didn't do anything. He still maintains his innocence the entire time. [Narrator] For his litany of crimes, Raniere is sentenced to 120 years in prison. [Seth] To have a jury of peers hear what had happened to the victims, and to say, essentially, that will not stand, was very satisfying, you know, for the government, and I hope--hope-- gave some measure of justice to the victims. [Narrator] Nancy Salzman's daughter Lauren turns state witness against Raniere. She receives no jail time, only probation. [Robert] There are people that'll sometimes say to me, how come she got no time in jail? Well, because she basically took a knife and cut the snake's head off. That's why Lauren Salzman got no time in jail. You can question whether or not she deserved to go to jail or not. You can't question the job she did at trial. I mean, she destroyed NXIVM and Keith Raniere. [Narrator] Clare Bronfman is sentenced to 81 months in prison for conspiracy to conceal and harbor aliens for financial gain and fraudulent use of personal identification information. Nine former NXIVM members testify against Clare. [Rick] Clare Bronfman was an enabler. She was the one that kept the machine running. She lubricated it with her money-- over $100 million, according to many reports. [Robert] Without the Bronfman money, I think we can certainly wonder if NXIVM ever becomes what it became. And I do think that's probably a big reason why the judge gave her 81 months, three times the maximum of her guideline sentence. [Narrator] Authorities determine Sarah Bronfman, Clare's sister, was not as involved in the organization, and therefore declined to charge her. In the end, the devastation Raniere inflicted on all those in his orbit far exceeds the cult's 20-year existence. [Dr. Lauch] I've been doing this for close to 40 years, and I've studied and heard about so many cults. But he's at the top of my list of really abusive, evil cult leader. He's a pedophile, a sexual abuser, a misogynist. There's hardly a label you can't apply to him, [laughs] I'm sorry to say. [Rick] When it came to being a manipulator, he was a savant. He could smell weakness. He could really identify what were the critical weaknesses in people, their vulnerabilities, and he would drill down into that and crack them open. He was very, very adept at that. [Kelly] There's no one person or one thing out there that's gonna have the answer for you. It's all right here. And I learned that the hard way. [music] ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh [ding ding]

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  "Eighty-eight," the assistant barked to the school doctor. This assistant had formerly been an orderly in a military hospital and still retained the bearing. As the doctor entered the figure on my card, he was mumbling to himself : "Wish he'd get to ninety pounds at least." I had become used to undergoing this treatment at every physical examination. But today I was so relieved that Omi was not present to witness my humiliation that the doctor's words did not cause me the usual anguish. For an instant my feeling of relief amounted almost to joy. . . . "All right—next!" The assistant shoved my shoulder impatiently. But this time I did not glare back at him with the hateful and irritable look I usually gave him. Nevertheless, even though dimly, I must have foreseen the ending of my first love. In all likelihood it was the uneasiness created by this foreboding that formed the nucleus of my pleasure.There came a day in late spring that was like a tailor's sample cut from a bolt of summer, or like a dress rehearsal for the coming season. It was that day of the year that comes as Summer's representative, to inspect everyone's clothing chest and make sure all is in readiness. It was that day on which people appear in summer shirts to show they have passed muster. Despite the warmth of the day, I had a cold, and my bronchial tubes were irritated. One of my friends happened to be suffering with an upset stomach, and we went together to the medical office to get written excuses that would permit us merely to watch gymnastic exercises without having to participate. On our way back, we walked along toward the gymnasium as slowly as possible. Our visit to the medical office provided us with a good reason for being tardy, and we were anxious to shorten even by a little the boring time we would have to spend watching the gymnastics. "My, it's hot, isn't it?" I said, taking off the jacket of my uniform. "You'd better not do that, not with a cold. And they'll make you do gymnastics anyway if they see you that way." I put my jacket on again hurriedly. "But it'll be all right for me, because its only my stomach." And, instead of me, it was my friend who ostentatiously took off his jacket, as though taunting me. Arriving at the gymnasium, we saw by the clothing hanging on the hooks along the wall that all the boys had taken off their sweaters, and some even their shirts. The area round the outdoor exercise bars, where there was sand and grass, seemed to be blazing brightly as we looked out at it from the dark gymnasium. My sickly constitution produced its usual reaction, and I walked toward the exercise bars giving my petulant little coughs. The insignificant gymnastics instructor scarcely glanced at the medical excuses which we handed him.

• From Post Office (1971)

  Here look.” And I would hand him the six-page scheme, stapled together at the top, small print on both sides. He would flip through the pages. “And you are supposed to memorize all this?” “Yes, Doctor.” “Well, my boy,” handing the sheets back, “you’re not crazy for not wanting to study this. I’d be more apt to say that you were crazy if you wanted to study this. That’ll be $25.” So I analyzed myself and kept the money. But something had to be done. Then I had it. It was about 9:10 a.m. I phoned the Federal Building, Personnel Department. “Miss Graves. I’d like to speak to Miss Graves, please.” “Hello?” There she was. The bitch. I fondled myself as I spoke to her. “Miss Graves. This is Chinaski. I filed an answer to your charge that I had a bad record. I don’t know if you remember me?” “We remember you, Mr. Chinaski.” “Has any decision been rendered?” “Not yet. We’ll let you know.” “All right, then. But I have a problem.” “Yes, Mr. Chinaski?” “I am now studying the CP1.” I paused. “Yes?” she asked. “I find it very difficult, I find it almost impossible to study this scheme, to put in all that extra time when it might be of no avail. I mean, I may be removed from the postal service at any moment. It is not fair to ask me to study the scheme under these conditions.” “All right, Mr. Chinaski. I’ll phone the scheme room and instruct them to take you off the scheme until we have reached a decision.” “Thank you, Miss Graves.” “Good day,” she said, and hung up. It was a good day. And after fondling myself while on the phone I almost decided to go downstairs to 309. But I played it safe. I put on some bacon and eggs and celebrated with an extra quart of beer. 8Then there were only six or seven of us. The CP1 was simply too much for the rest. “How you doing on your scheme, Chinaski?” they asked me. “No trouble at all,” I said. “O.K., break Woodburn Ave.” “Woodburn?” “Yes, Woodburn.” “Listen, I don’t like to be bothered with that stuff while I’m working. It bores me. One job at a time.” 9On Christmas I had Betty over. She baked a turkey and we drank. Betty always liked huge Christmas trees. It must have been seven feet tall, and half as wide, covered with lights, bulbs, tinsel, various crap. We drank from a couple of fifths of whiskey, made love, ate our turkey, drank some more. The nail in the stand was loose and the stand was not big enough to hold the tree. I kept straightening it. Betty stretched out on the bed, passed out. I was drinking on the floor with my shorts on. Then I stretched out. Closed my eyes. Something awakened me. I opened my eyes.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  At the beginning of therapy, on a visit to her parents, Irene had come upon an old illustrated Frank Baum Oz book that she had read as a child. On her return she had told me that I had an uncanny physical resemblance to the Wizard of Oz. Now, after three years of therapy, she looked again at the illustration and found the resemblance less striking. I sensed that something important was happening when she mused, “Maybe you’re not the wizard. Maybe there is no wizard. Perhaps,” she went on, more to herself than to me, “I should simply accept your idea that you and I are just fellow travelers through this life, both of us listening to the bell tolling.” And I had no doubt that a new phase of therapy was beginning when she came into my office one afternoon in our fourth year looking straight at me, sat down, looked at me again, and said, “It’s strange, Irv, but you seem to have gotten a lot smaller.” Lesson 7: Letting Go Our final session was unremarkable except for two events. First, Irene had to phone to inquire about its time. Though our meeting time had often changed because of her surgical schedule, she had not once, in five years, forgotten it. Second, I developed a splitting headache just before the session. Since I rarely get headaches, I suspect that this one was in some way related to Jack’s brain tumor, which had first made its presence known via a severe headache. “I’ve been wondering about something all week,” Irene began. “Do you plan to write about any aspect of our work together?” I had not thought of writing about her, and at that time was immersed in planning a novel. I told her so, adding, “And anyway, I’ve never written about therapy as current as ours. In Love’s Executioner, I had usually waited years, sometimes a decade or more, after a particular patient’s therapy ended before writing about it. And let me reassure you, if I ever did consider writing about you, I’d seek your permission before beginning—” “No, no, Irv,” she broke in, “I’m not worried about your writing. I’m worried about your not writing. I want my story to be told. There’s too much that therapists don’t know about treating the bereaved. I want you to tell other therapists not only what I’ve learned but what you’ve learned.” In the weeks following termination, I not only missed Irene but, again and again, found myself musing about writing her story. Soon my interest in other writing projects waned and I began to sketch an outline, at first in a desultory manner, then with increasing commitment.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  1598 01:19:59,094 --> 01:20:00,996 ♪ Well, you know 1599 01:20:01,096 --> 01:20:03,231 ♪ I hurt myself as well 1600 01:20:03,331 --> 01:20:04,966 [Female reporter] Actress Allison Mack leaving court 1601 01:20:05,066 --> 01:20:06,968 with her head down after being sentenced to 1602 01:20:07,068 --> 01:20:10,305 three years in prison for her role in NXIVM. 1603 01:20:10,405 --> 01:20:14,876 [Allison] ♪ Is that any way for a woman to carry on ♪ 1604 01:20:17,846 --> 01:20:20,048 [Narrator] Then, on May 7, 2019, 1605 01:20:20,148 --> 01:20:23,518 over two decades after NXIVM first began, 1606 01:20:23,618 --> 01:20:29,024 the man once known as Vanguard finally stands trial. 1607 01:20:29,124 --> 01:20:32,160 [Robin] He was indicted on seven counts. 1608 01:20:32,260 --> 01:20:37,899 There was human trafficking and sex trafficking. 1609 01:20:37,999 --> 01:20:40,402 The interesting thing is that 1610 01:20:40,502 --> 01:20:44,573 they did not try to prove it was a cult. 1611 01:20:44,673 --> 01:20:49,044 That would've been a losing argument from the start. 1612 01:20:49,144 --> 01:20:54,015 There is no criminal statute 1613 01:20:54,115 --> 01:20:56,751 that makes a cult a crime. 1614 01:20:56,852 --> 01:20:58,420 It was about coercion. 1615 01:20:58,520 --> 01:21:00,155 It was about sex. 1616 01:21:00,255 --> 01:21:02,958 It was about Keith Raniere's pleasures. 1617 01:21:03,058 --> 01:21:04,426 It was a business. 1618 01:21:04,526 --> 01:21:09,097 And...it was a con job. 1619 01:21:09,197 --> 01:21:11,166 [Narrator] Even Daniela, the Mexican teen 1620 01:21:11,266 --> 01:21:14,703 Raniere kept sequestered in a windowless bedroom, 1621 01:21:14,803 --> 01:21:18,039 testifies against the cult leader. 1622 01:21:18,139 --> 01:21:21,042 For his part, Raniere chooses not to testify 1623 01:21:21,142 --> 01:21:24,579 in his own defense. 1624 01:21:24,679 --> 01:21:27,782 Then, on June 19, 2019, 1625 01:21:27,883 --> 01:21:29,751 after a six-week trial, 1626 01:21:29,851 --> 01:21:34,389 the jury begins deliberating the alleged cult leader's fate. 1627 01:21:35,523 --> 01:21:38,260 [music] 1628 01:21:38,360 --> 01:21:40,762 [Narrator] On June 19, 2019, 1629 01:21:40,862 --> 01:21:46,234 a jury of his peers lowers the boom on Keith Raniere. 1630 01:21:46,334 --> 01:21:49,204 [Armando] Keith was convicted on multiple felonies, 1631 01:21:49,304 --> 01:21:51,539 including trafficking, sex trafficking, 1632 01:21:51,640 --> 01:21:54,476 trafficking for forced labor, conspiracy. 1633 01:21:54,576 --> 01:21:57,279 They hit him with a racketeering charge. 1634 01:21:57,379 --> 01:22:00,048 They really got him for everything. 1635 01:22:06,621 --> 01:22:10,258 [Tabitha] I was speechless. Not a lot of cult leaders, 1636 01:22:10,358 --> 01:22:13,128 or coercive control leaders, have actually been convicted 1637 01:22:13,228 --> 01:22:14,930 for...their crimes. 1638 01:22:15,030 --> 01:22:19,634 So, it was really landmark in that case. 1639 01:22:19,734 --> 01:22:22,771 [Dr. Joseph] For his victims, when you see this person 1640 01:22:22,871 --> 01:22:26,808 in a court of law, he just looks like a mere mortal. 1641 01:22:26,908 --> 01:22:30,512 And that leads you to realize that you were traumatized, 1642 01:22:30,612 --> 01:22:32,080 that you were victimized. 1643 01:22:32,180 --> 01:22:34,282 And so it's powerful to be held accountable

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A synchronous and full-cycle return occurred several years ago. I was presenting my work at a conference titled “Frontiers in Psychotherapy,” put on by the Psychiatry Department at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. At the end of my talk, a lively, impish man jumped up to introduce himself: “Hi, I’m Jack Maser!” I shook my head, dubious at first; not quite believing my ears, I burst into spontaneous laughter. After exchanging a few words, we arranged to lunch together. At this time he shared with me his delight in discovering that his animal work had found a clinical application in real-life therapy. I was sort of a clinical godchild to his experimental godfather. In 2008, Jack Maser forwarded to me an article that he and a colleague, Stephen Bracha, had just published. In this article they proposed a fundamental change to the “Bible” of psychiatric diagnosis. They wanted to include the concept of tonic immobility in explaining trauma.8 My jaw dropped so far that a bird might have flown in and nested there. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, is the encyclopedic book that psychologists and psychiatrists use to diagnose “mental disorders,” including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. (The DSM is now in its “IV-R” edition, the “R” denoting a partial revision of the fourth edition.) The next edition—the DSM-V—will (ideally) be a significant step forward. The previous versions of the PTSD diagnosis have been careful not to suggest a mechanism (or even a theory) to explain what happens in the brain and body when people become traumatized. This absence is important for more than academic reasons: a theory suggests rationales for treatment and prevention. This avoidance, and sole reliance on taxonomy, is an understandable overreaction to the Freudian theory’s previous stranglehold on psychology. I believe that it is only with intimate collaboration that science and praxis will co-evolve into a lively, vibrant partnership capable of generating truly innovative therapies. An open multidisciplinary effort could begin to help us discern what is or is not effective and to improve at our primary aim of helping suffering people heal! The article by Jack Maser and Steven Bracha offers a spirited challenge to those entrusted to write the DSM-V. In their audacious commentary, these two researchers put forth the bold premise that there exists a theoretical basis for the mechanisms underlying PTSD: an evolutionary (instinctual) basis for trauma, similar to what I had observed with Nancy in 1969. With this article, I had come full circle. Gallup and Maser’s 1977 experimental studies on fear and “animal paralysis” had inspired my explanation for her behavior. Now Maser and Bracha concluded their 2008 article with these tickling couple of sentences:

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This was the beginning of Sharon’s separating the powerful biological urge to escape from her mental and emotional expectation that she would again be trapped and overwhelmed. By imagining—with full engagement in her bodily experience—the sense that she was running, unfettered, in a safe place, she was able to complete the frozen action locked in her body.g Just having Sharon imagine running would not have had much of an effect. However, first approaching the place where she was trapped, revisiting (touching into) that moment of terror and then experiencing the (new) possibility of completing that motor act was the therapeutic denouement.98 Having felt her highly charged physically sensations, just as they were, not as she feared or imagined they were, was the linchpin to uncoupling the catastrophic thoughts, as well as the emotions of terror and panic, from her actual physical experience. During this process, which lasted almost two hours, and which was punctuated with cycles of soft trembling and gentle sweating, she gradually developed the capacity to tolerate her sensations until they came to their natural completion. I believe evidence exists supporting the idea that this fulfilled and successful action “switched” certain critical brain circuits, allowing her to experience the possibility of meaningful, effective action rather than helpless anxiety.99 In this way her immobilizing anxiety transformed into a “flowing wave of warm energy.” The vast “life or death” energy of survival had metamorphosed, through cycles of trembling discharge, into feelings of aliveness and goodness. After directly experiencing this relief as a sensation in her body (a sensation that directly contradicted her paralyzing terror) Sharon regained a sense of aliveness and the felt reality that she had, indeed, survived and that her life had a future with expanding possibilities. She no longer felt trapped in the horror of the event; it began to recede to the past where it belonged. And it was now possible to travel on the subway to hear her favorite music at Lincoln Center. A new and different meaning for her life arose out of a new and different experience at the instinctual bodily level. This was the story Sharon’s body told. It is reminiscent of Antonio Damasio’s prose: We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of the things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day.100 EpilogueOur feelings and our bodies are like water flowing into water. We learn to swim within the energies of the [body] senses. —Tarthang Tulku

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “You have my word, Merges,” Ernest called after him. “You’ll eat well here. Roast crab—and cilantro—every night.” Darkness again. The next thing Ernest saw was the roseate glow of dawn. Now I know the meaning of a “hard day’s night,” he thought as he sat up in bed, stretched, and contemplated the sleeping Artemis. He felt certain that Merges would now depart from the dream dimension. But what about the rest of the cat curse? None of that had been discussed. For a few minutes Ernest considered the prospect of being involved with a woman who might, every so often, be sexually ferocious and voracious. Quietly he slipped out of bed, dressed, and went downstairs. Artemis, hearing his footsteps, called out, “Ernest, no! Something’s changed. I’m free. I know it. I feel it. Don’t go, please. You don’t need to go.” “Be right back with breakfast. Ten minutes,” he called from the front door. “I have an urgent need for an extra-seedy bagel and cream cheese. Yesterday I spotted a deli down the street.” He was just opening his car door when he heard the bedroom window go up and Artemis’s voice. “Ernest, Ernest, remember I’m a vegan. No cream cheese. Can you get—” “I know—avocado. It’s on my list.” Afterword to the Perennial Edition Are these six psychotherapy tales true? Or fictional? The first story (“Momma and the Meaning of Life”) is a true autobiographical fantasy—that is, the dream and the events in the story are true, the precise conversation is a fantasy. The next three (“Southern Comfort,” “Seven Advanced Lessons,” and “Travels with Paula”) are pure nonfiction flecked only with fiction to conceal the patients’ identities. And the final two (“Double Exposure” and “The Hungarian Cat Curse”) contain a nonfictional nucleus around which I constructed a fictional tale. But a confusion inheres in any fiction-nonfiction codification. Not only does fiction have its own truth, but every story, no matter how “true,” is a lie because it omits so much. In each narrative I have eliminated the quotidian details of the therapy encounter. Not only is such close-cropping required for dramatic impact, but for vision as well. As Nietzsche put it, we must blind ourselves to many things in order to see the one thing. Hence, to uncover underlying truths we must clear away obscuring distractions. The narrowing of focus, the core lie of storytelling, is always an attempt to see better—to achieve a clearer and deeper vision of the world.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I see more clearly and “softly.” I have the deeply reassuring sense that I am no longer frozen, that time has started to move forward, that I am awakening from the nightmare. (35. The image is continuing to expand, allowing a deeper level of completion with the detailed linking of the visual and auditory elements. I have now moved through the moment of impact, t = 0. I have gone from t – 1 (the moment before impact) to t = 0 (the moment of impact) to t + 1, the moment of time just after t = 0, exiting from the shock core—see Figure 9.1 . I have emerged through the “eye of the needle,” returning and orienting to present time and to the remembrances of that perfect winter morning.) I gaze at the paramedic sitting by my side. Her calmness reassures me. (36. This reassurance reinforces my felt experience that I have woken up from this nightmare and that I can extend my sense of resource and support to include the woman in the ambulance.) Reestablishing Continuity of Experience Figure 9.1 This shows movement toward, and then through, the core moment of shock. This dissolves immobility. After a few bumpy miles, I feel another strong tension pattern developing from the spine in my upper back. I sense my right arm wanting to extend outward—I see a momentary flash; the black asphalt road rushes toward me. I hear my hand slapping the pavement and feel a raw burning sensation on the palm of my right hand. I associate this with the perception of my hand extending to protect my head from smashing onto the road. I feel tremendous relief, along with a deep sense of gratitude that my body did not betray me, knowing exactly what to do to guard my fragile brain from a potentially mortal injury. (37. I am now beginning to process the event in sequential time—from t – 1 to t + 1—and have a growing self-confidence in my body’s ability to protect me.) As I continue to gently tremble, I sense a warm tingling wave along with an inner strength building up from deep within my body. As the shrill siren blasts away, the ambulance paramedic takes my blood pressure and records my EKG. When I ask her to tell me my vital signs, she informs me in a gentle professional manner that she cannot give me that information. I feel a subtle urge to extend our contact, to engage with her as a person. Calmly, I tell her that I’m a doctor (a half-truth). There is the light quality of a shared joke. (38.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Then, to my relief, Ela tuka he said, come here, having decided to keep me, at least for a while. When I began to rise he snapped Dolu, stay down, and I moved across the space on all fours, the carpet featureless and gray and coarse. When I reached him he took my hair in his hand and lifted me up onto my knees, not roughly, maybe just as a means of communication more efficient than speech. I had told him I wasn’t Bulgarian in one of our online chats, warning him that when we met there might be things I wouldn’t understand, but he had asked none of the usual questions, he seemed not to care why I had come to his country, where so few come and fewer still stay long enough to learn the language, which is spoken nowhere else, which even here, as the country shrinks, is spoken by fewer people each day; it’s not difficult to imagine it disappearing altogether, the language and the country both. We’ll understand each other, he had said, don’t worry, and maybe it was just to ensure this understanding that he had taken me in hand, firmly but not painfully guiding me to my knees.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  As the shrill siren blasts away, the ambulance paramedic takes my blood pressure and records my EKG. When I ask her to tell me my vital signs, she informs me in a gentle professional manner that she cannot give me that information. I feel a subtle urge to extend our contact, to engage with her as a person. Calmly, I tell her that I’m a doctor (a half-truth). There is the light quality of a shared joke. She fiddles with the equipment and then indicates that it might be a false reading. A minute or two later she tells me that my heart rate is 74 and my blood pressure is 125/70. “What were my readings when you first hooked me up?” I ask. “Well, your heart rate was 150. The guy who took it before we came said it was about 170.” I breathe a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you,” I say, then add: “Thank God, I won’t be getting PTSD.” “What do you mean?” she asks with genuine curiosity. “Well, I mean that I probably won’t be getting posttraumatic stress disorder.” When she still looks perplexed, I explain how my shaking and following my self-protective responses had helped me to “reset” my nervous system and brought me back into my body. “This way,” I go on, “I am no longer in fight-or-flight mode.” “Hmm,” she comments, “is that why accident victims sometimes struggle with us—are they still in fight-or-flight?” “Yes, that’s right.” “You know,” she adds, “I’ve noticed that they often purposely stop people from shaking when we get them to the hospital. Sometimes they strap them down tight or give them a shot of Valium. Maybe that’s not so good?” “No, it’s not,” the teacher in me confirms. “It may give them temporary relief, but it just keeps them frozen and stuck.” She tells me that she recently took a course in “trauma first-aid” called Critical Incident Debriefing. “They tried it with us at the hospital. We had to talk about how we felt after an accident. But talking made me and the other paramedics feel worse. I couldn’t sleep after we did it—but you weren’t talking about what happened. You were, it seemed to me, just shaking. Is that what brought your heart rate and blood pressure down?” “Yes,” I told her and added that it was also the small protective spontaneous movements my arms were making. “I’ll bet,” she mused, “that if the shaking that often occurs after surgery were allowed rather than suppressed, recovery would be quicker and maybe even postoperative pain would be reduced.” “That’s right,” I say, smiling in agreement.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This terrified him, causing him to believe that he would end up on a cross if he were caught lying. He was then taken to a concentration camp. “Being delivered alive to the concentration camp,” he said, “was a relief; at least I was with other Jews.” Upon entering the camp, one of the prisoners from the village asked Adam his name. Now among his own people, Adam gave the name he had grown up with, and the names of those whom he believed to be his parents. The man then exclaimed, “No, no, that’s not your real family name.” And he told him the names of his biological parents and how they had both died. Adam remembered being unspeakably relieved to know that the cruel mother he had experienced was not his real mother. While in the concentration camp, Adam witnessed people being brutally beaten, tortured and shot. Many others succumbed to suicide, often by hanging themselves. During his internment, Adam was without any real comfort or support to help him deal with such terror and horror. For most of us, Adam’s experience is unimaginable. If we were to honestly ponder the effect it would have had on us, we would be deeply disturbed by such terrible knowledge. Yet, to observe Adam in his life, he appeared, at least on the surface, little different from you or me, only more successful by modern-day standards. As an orphan from birth and a survivor of the most unimaginable atrocities and human suffering, Adam had risen above this torment. He immigrated to South America at the age of nineteen, hoping “to escape his past.” There he settled and built his business, becoming a powerful, financially successful, international entrepreneur. Yet, when this extraordinary human being was referred to me, he had been reduced to a broken man. He was stooped over and shuffled as he entered the room. His posture and movements reminded me of patients I have seen in the back wards of psychiatric hospitals. His eyes looked blankly at the floor, and he seemed not to notice that I was even present. I had no idea where to begin. On the one hand, he was so shut down that it seemed like nothing I could say or do would reach him; but on the other hand, I feared that if I were able to bring up feelings, they might overwhelm him so completely that he would collapse into a bottomless catatonic despair. How could I reach this man without destroying him? I felt lost and intimidated by the scope and delicate challenge of my task.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  What Goes Up … Can Come DownIn 1998, Arieh Shalev carried out a simple and important study in Israel, a country where trauma is all too common.2 Dr. Shalev noted the heart rates of patients seen in the emergency room (ER) of a Jerusalem hospital. These data were easy to collect, as charting the vital signs of anyone admitted to the ER is standard procedure. Of course, most patients are upset and have a high heart rate when they are first admitted to the ER, since they are most likely there as victims of some terrifying incident such as a bus bombing or motor vehicle accident. What Shalev discovered was that a patient whose heart rate had returned to near normal by the time of discharge from the ER was unlikely to develop posttraumatic stress disorder. On the other hand, one whose heart rate was still elevated upon leaving was highly likely to develop PTSD in the following weeks or months.† Thus, in my accident, I felt profound relief when the paramedic in the ambulance gave me the vital signs that indicated my heart rate had returned to normal. Briefly, heart rate is a direct window into the autonomic (involuntary) branch of our nervous system. A racing heart is part of body and mind readying for the survival actions of fight-or-flight mediated by the sympathetic-adrenal nervous system (please see Diagram A after this page for a detailed depiction of the physiological pathways underlying the classic fight or flight response). Simply, when you perceive threat, your nervous system and body prepare you to kill or to take evasive countermeasures to escape, usually by running away. This preparation for action was absolutely essential on the ancient savannahs, and it is “discharged” or “used up” by all-out, meaningful action. In my case, however, lying injured on the road and then in the confines of the ambulance and the ER—where action was simply not an option—could have entrapped me. My global activation was “all dressed up with nowhere to go.” If, rather than fulfilling its motoric mission in effective action, the preparation for action was interfered with or had lain dormant, it would have posed a great potential to trigger a later expression as the debilitating symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  The road curved toward the town, following the river, and both of us looked down at the water. We had just come from Rousse, a city three hours to the north, where I had finally seen the Danube, the first river I had encountered in Europe on the scale of those I had grown up beside in America. The town had little in the way of a riverfront, just a desolate patch of green like a stain seeping from the city’s largest building, a Soviet-era hotel that stood guard on the bank. The river was swollen with summer rains, and we watched the huge weight of it slide silently past, watching too the swallows twisting above us in the darkening air; and then the river was something we felt more than saw, in the darkness it was indistinguishable from the woods on the Romanian bank. There was nothing so impressive about the Yantra, a narrow river so shallow in places it seemed barely to cover its bed; but there was a kind of drama in the winding shape it cut through the land, at one point almost looping back upon itself as it twisted among the hills that gave the city both its character and its purpose. Atop the largest of those hills sat the jagged ruins of Tsarevets, Turnovo’s main attraction, a medieval fortress that fell to the Ottomans five centuries ago, a symbol of former greatness that’s at once a source of pride and a shadow cast over the present. A view of Tsarevets, and of the rest of the town from a neighboring hill, was the primary draw of the hotel where the taxi dropped us off. It was a nice hotel, it cost more than I would usually have wanted to pay, but its luxury was like a grand gesture abandoned, the large room with its gorgeous view filled with furniture and linens in various stages of disrepair. Even so, we felt a little flare of happiness on entering it; R. dropped his bags and stepped onto the bed, jumping up and down a few times, and I laughed with him, even as I sensed, just past the edges of what we felt, a hovering dread. It was a habit of mine, to rush toward an ending once I thought I could see it, as if the fact of loss were easier to bear than the chance of it. I didn’t want that to happen with R., I struggled against it; he was worth struggling for, I thought, as was the person I found I was with him. Then R. stopped jumping and stood at the foot of the bed, throwing his arms wide, and I stepped toward him for the second half of our ritual of homecoming in these temporary homes; and as I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face to his chest, I felt a flood of relief, the release of something increasingly tightly wound.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  And she feels a renewed respect for him when, “For a change, he knows what to do.” His control offers her a safe container in which she can release her lusty self. The imbalance of power is both safe and sexy—at once protective and liberating. Subverting Power Some would say that Elizabeth’s desire for submission is nothing more than a reenactment of traditional male domination. They would claim that sexual arrangements in which one partner is dominant and controlling, the other passive and weak, are inherently hierarchical and oppressive, nothing more than a sexist replay of patriarchy. But prisoners rarely have the desire to pretend they are prisoners. Only the free can choose to make believe. To my thinking, being able to play with roles goes some way toward indicating that you’re no longer controlled by them. Play has the potential to disrupt the very notion of gender categorization. For Elizabeth, being controlled sexually is itself a subversive act that is ultimately liberating. The same is true for Marcus, who heads the research and development unit of a large international software company. He is a classic type A man: competitive, ambitious, spending more time in the air than on the ground. His tough-mindedness and aggressiveness have made him a natural leader in his highly competitive field. The word “power” is attached to many of his activities and often turns up in his conversation. He takes power walks, drinks power drinks, does power lunches, and recharges during ten-minute power naps. And in his free time, he likes a good spanking. When Marcus arrives at the house of his girlfriend, it’s after a long day of being the boss. With a sexually powerful woman, a dominating woman, he gets a respite from having to be in control. With his girlfriend in charge, in the role of dominatrix, he can give it up, for he knows that she can withstand the intensity of his urges. The surrender not only pleases him erotically, it nurtures him emotionally as well. Like Elizabeth, Marcus gets to experience a submerged but vital facet of himself in the erotic mirror. In our culture, passivity is perceived as female and weak. Consequently, it generates great emotional conflict for men (and for many women). But that doesn’t eradicate it from our psyche, or make it any less desirable. Marcus fears surrender as much as he craves it. His fantasy permits a bounded passivity, a safe but masked return to the mother’s arms. And while he is not interested in intellectual or heavy-duty psychological explanations of his “motivation,” his erotic inclinations challenge the stereotypical power distribution that always sees the man on top. There Is No Love Without Hate The defenders of modern intimacy—with marital counselors and self-help authors on the front line—have continuously sought to neutralize the thorny issue of power in committed relationships.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Her calmness reassures me. After a few bumpy miles, I feel another strong tension pattern developing from the spine in my upper back. I sense my right arm wanting to extend outward—I see a momentary flash; the black asphalt road rushes toward me. I hear my hand slapping the pavement and feel a raw burning sensation on the palm of my right hand. I associate this with the perception of my hand extending to protect my head from smashing onto the road. I feel tremendous relief, along with a deep sense of gratitude that my body did not betray me, knowing exactly what to do to guard my fragile brain from a potentially mortal injury. As I continue to gently tremble, I sense a warm tingling wave along with an inner strength building up from deep within my body. As the shrill siren blasts away, the ambulance paramedic takes my blood pressure and records my EKG. When I ask her to tell me my vital signs, she informs me in a gentle professional manner that she cannot give me that information. I feel a subtle urge to extend our contact, to engage with her as a person. Calmly, I tell her that I’m a doctor (a half-truth). There is the light quality of a shared joke. She fiddles with the equipment and then indicates that it might be a false reading. A minute or two later she tells me that my heart rate is 74 and my blood pressure is 125/70 . “What were my readings when you first hooked me up?” I ask. “Well, your heart rate was 150. The guy who took it before we came said it was about 170.” I breathe a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you,” I say, then add: “Thank God, I won’t be getting PTSD.” “What do you mean?” she asks with genuine curiosity. “Well, I mean that I probably won’t be getting posttraumatic stress disorder.” When she still looks perplexed, I explain how my shaking and following my self-protective responses had helped me to “reset” my nervous system and brought me back into my body. “This way,” I go on, “I am no longer in fight-or-flight mode.” “Hmm,” she comments, “is that why accident victims sometimes struggle with us—are they still in fight-or-flight?” “Yes, that’s right.” “You know,” she adds, “I’ve noticed that they often purposely stop people from shaking when we get them to the hospital. Sometimes they strap them down tight or give them a shot of Valium. Maybe that’s not so good?” “No, it’s not,” the teacher in me confirms. “It may give them temporary relief, but it just keeps them frozen and stuck.”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  I tell them I want to know how, or if, we can hold on to a sense of aliveness and excitement in our relationships. Is there something inherent in commitment that deadens desire? Can we ever maintain security without succumbing to monotony? I wonder if we can preserve a sense of the poetic, of what Octavio Paz calls the double flame of love and eroticism. I’ve had this conversation many times, and the comments I heard at this party were hardly novel. “Can’t be done.” “Well, that’s the whole problem of monogamy, isn’t it?” “That’s why I don’t commit. It has nothing to do with fear. I just hate boring sex.” “Desire over time? What about desire for one night?” “Relationships evolve. Passion turns into something else.” “I gave up on passion when I had kids.” “Look, there are men you sleep with and men you marry.” As often happens in a public discussion, the most complex issues tend to polarize in a flash, and nuance is replaced with caricature. Hence the division between the romantics and the realists. The romantics refuse a life without passion; they swear that they’ll never give up on true love. They are the perennial seekers, looking for the person with whom desire will never fizzle. Every time desire does wane, they conclude that love is gone. If eros is in decline, love must be on its deathbed. They mourn the loss of excitement and fear settling down. At the opposite extreme are the realists. They say that enduring love is more important than hot sex, and that passion makes people do stupid things. It’s dangerous, it creates havoc, and it’s a weak foundation for marriage. In the immortal words of Marge Simpson, “Passion is for teenagers and foreigners.” For the realists, maturity prevails. The initial excitement grows into something else—deep love, mutual respect, shared history, and companionship. Diminishing desire is inescapable. You are expected to tough it out and grow up. As the conversation unfolds, the two camps eye each other with a complex alloy of pity, tenderness, envy, exasperation, and outright scorn. But while they position themselves at opposite ends of the spectrum, both agree with the fundamental premise that passion cools over time. “Some of you resist the loss of intensity, some of you accept it, but all of you seem to believe that desire fades. What you disagree on is just how important the loss really is,” I comment. Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  * Cannon also mounted a well-reasoned critique of James’s theory by arguing that feedback from the viscera would be too slow and not specific enough to account for different emotions. (These questions will be addressed in Chapter 13.)† In psychology, appetitive means acquiring.‡ For an authoritative memoir see M. Macmillan, “Restoring Phineas Gage: A 150th Retrospective,” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences (2000), 9, 42–62.PART IV Embodiment, Emotion and Spirituality: Restoring GoodnessMy belief is in the blood and flesh as being wiser than the intellect. The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos. —D. H. Lawrence CHAPTER 12 The Embodied SelfThe Body is the Shore on the Ocean of Being. —Sufi saying Let’s now return for a moment to my personal story of being struck by the teenager’s car. The outcome of my accident could easily have been horrific, utterly devastating. Instead it turned out to be transformative. Despite having been acutely terrified, disoriented and dissociated, I was spared the dreadful repercussions of PTSD. What saved me from succumbing to prolonged trauma symptoms? Along with the method I have described throughout this book were the conjoined twin sisters of embodiment and awareness. This asset, even beyond its crucial role in regulating stress and healing trauma, is a master tool for personal enrichment and self-discovery. My job here is to entice you to take your body seriously enough to learn a bit more about its promptings. Yet I also want to encourage you to hold it lightly enough to engage it as a powerful ally in transforming intense “negative” or uncomfortable emotions—and so to experience what it’s like to truly embody goodness and joy. Since these twin sisters of mercy are so essential to the prevention and healing of trauma, let’s consider what embodied awareness looks like and feels like. Though we don’t usually bring conscious awareness to the multitude of internal bodily sensations happening moment by moment, these experiences are frequently referred to in common parlance. We “bite into and chew on” tough issues. There are things that we cannot “swallow or stomach,” while others make us “want to puke.” And of course most of us have experienced “butterflies in our stomachs.” Surely the sensation of being bloated, constricted or “tight-assed” catches our awareness and has its emotional meaning. We may be “tight-lipped” on one occasion and “loose-lipped” on another. Or we may just feel open in our bellies and chest or even “breathless with excitement.” Such are the poignant messages from our muscles and viscera.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  In other cultures, respect is more likely to be expressed with gentle untruths that aim at preserving the partner’s honor. A protective opacity is preferable to telling truths that might result in humiliation. Hence concealment not only maintains marital harmony but also is a mark of respect. Informed by my own cultural influences, I defer to Doug’s decision to remain silent, and at the same time I encourage him to pursue other ways to reconnect with his wife. His marriage has been on “pause” for a long time; now he needs to push the “play” button. Doug reinvests in his relationship with Zoë. With more time on his hands, and being generally more available, he begins to redirect his abundant resources toward his wife. She feigns surprise at the sudden return of her Odysseus, but beneath her wisecracking “Howdy Stranger” attitude, Doug knows that she is relieved. I encourage him to pump up his involvement with the kids, the house, and the social calendar, hoping that relieving Zoë of some domestic burdens may open her to the erotic. In his attempts to be more forthcoming, Doug even asks Zoë if she ever finds herself attracted to other men. Her answer is elusive, “Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. What’s it to you?” This leaves him slightly rattled. “When someone is as wrapped up in secrecy as you’ve been,” I remark, “it’s easy to imagine that you’re the mysterious one, the rebel, and she’s Penelope sitting at her loom, waiting for you to come home. So maybe she has a few secrets of her own, fantasies of men who can give her what you can’t.” Marriage is imperfect. We start with a desire for oneness, and then we discover our differences. Our fears are aroused by the prospect of all the things we’re never going to have. We fight. We withdraw. We blame our partners for failing to make us whole. We look elsewhere. Sadly, too many of us stay stuck in this place until we’re bald or gray. Others mourn the loss of the dream, then come to terms with the choice they made. Love is anchored in acceptance. When Doug comes to know himself, and to recognize Zoë for who she is, he can finally turn their differences into riches. The Shadow of the Third