Shame

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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

  Triggered responses manifest in various ways. Veterans may react to the slightest cue—like hitting a bump in the road or seeing a kid playing in the street—as if they were in a war zone. They startle easily and become enraged or numb. Victims of childhood sexual abuse may anesthetize their sexuality and then feel intensely ashamed if they become excited by sensations or images that recall their molestation, even when those sensations are the natural pleasures associated with particular body parts. If trauma survivors are forced to discuss their experiences, one person’s blood pressure may increase while another responds with the beginnings of a migraine headache. Still others may shut down emotionally and not feel any obvious changes. However, in the lab we have no problem detecting their racing hearts and the stress hormones churning through their bodies. These reactions are irrational and largely outside people’s control. Intense and barely controllable urges and emotions make people feel crazy—and makes them feel they don’t belong to the human race. Feeling numb during birthday parties for your kids or in response to the death of loved ones makes people feel like monsters. As a result, shame becomes the dominant emotion and hiding the truth the central preoccupation. They rarely are in touch with the fact that these sensations have their origins in traumatic experiences. That is where therapy comes in—therapists can assist people to mindfully observe their emotions and sensations and help them get in touch with the context from which they emerge. However, the bottom line is that the threat-perception system of the brain has changed, and people’s physical reactions are dictated by the imprint of the past. The trauma that started “out there” is now played out on the battlefield of their own bodies, usually without a conscious connection between what happened back then and what is going on right now inside. The challenge is not so much learning to accept the terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one’s internal sensations and emotions. Sensing, naming, and identifying what is going on inside is the first step to recovery. The Smoke Detector goes on OverdriveStan’s brain scan shows his flashback in action. This is what reliving trauma looks like in the brain: the brightly lit area in the lower right-hand corner, the blanked-out lower left side, and the four symmetrical white holes around the center. (You may recognize the lit-up amygdala and the off-line left brain from the Harvard study discussed in chapter 3.) Stan’s amygdala made no distinction between past and present. It activated just as if the car crash were happening in the scanner, triggering powerful stress hormones and nervous-system responses. These were responsible for his sweating and trembling, his racing heart and elevated blood pressure: entirely normal and potentially lifesaving responses if a truck has just smashed into your car.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I noted that I too wore new clothes only rarely and was forced to receive, like Fraji, bundles that stank of mildew and dirty linen and from which all the expensive buttons had been removed. I now understood his suffering fully, the shame that I had poured forth upon him in the presence of Chouchane and the other kids. His suffering and shame were my own too; on my own shoulders I now felt the burden of the same contempt, as if I had his hair, all clammy with filth, and his eyes like the headlights of a car. I felt that I had become Fraji. Since that day, I have slowly acquired the uneasiness about my clothes that characterizes the poor who are ashamed. I was no longer at my ease in any suit: I felt that I was badly dressed and that I attracted the attention of all. I feared, even when wearing a new suit, the mockery of others at my unsuccessful attempts. That is how I became what is known as careful of my clothes. Before going to bed, I folded my suit with care and set it tidily on the back of a chair. To avoid dirt-stains, I examined each chair before sitting on it, and I often preferred to keep my annual new suit in the closet rather than face the wearisome responsibility of wearing it with the respect that it deserved. ~ 4. THE TWO PENNIES ~ The very existence of kindergarten was unknown in Tarfoune Street, and school, as a whole, did not assume there, as in middle-class homes, the character of an absolute necessity. I was already quite a grown boy, seven years old, I think, when my parents decided to send me to school. Whereas school seems mere play to most young children, the news of this decision made me cry. My mother tongue is the Tunisian dialect, which I speak with the proper accent of the young Moslem kids of our part of town and of the drivers of horse-trucks who were customers of our shop. The Jews of Tunis are to the Moslems what the Viennese are to other Germans: they drag out their syllables in a singsong voice and soften and make insipid the guttural speech of their Mohammedan fellow-citizens. The relatively correct intonations of my speech earned me the mockery of all: the Jews disliked my strange speech and suspected me of affectation, while the Moslems thought that I was mimicking them.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I imagined my mother’s sneer. Joan was writing a screenplay about her experiences as a caseworker for DCS. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen. It’s incredible.” Her boyfriend, Marsh, was also a screenwriter; he worked for Kinko’s Copies. They had a white dog named Casper. She wanted to win my trust so I would tell her things about my life to include in her screenplay. Research, she called it. She was hip, working for the county, she knew where it was at, I could tell her anything. It was a game. She wanted me to strip myself bare, I lifted my long sleeve to the elbow, let her see a few of my dogbite scars. I hated her and needed her. Joan Peeler never ate a stick of margarine. She never begged for quarters in a liquor store parking lot to make a phone call. I felt like I was trading pieces of myself for hamburgers. Strips of my thigh to bait the hook. While we talked, I sketched naked Carnival dancers wearing elaborate masks. 16 [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] JOAN PEELER found me a new placement. The girls pointedly ignored me as Joan helped me carry my stuff out to her red dented Karmann Ghia with bumper stickers that said, Love Your Mother, Move to the Light, Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican. Silvana sniffed that it was because I was white, I got special treatment. Maybe she was right. She probably was. It wasn’t fair at all. It wasn’t. But that March day, one of those perfect March days in L.A. when every photographer in town was out scrambling for shots of the city with a bluebird sky and white-capped mountains and hundred-mile views, I didn’t care why. All I cared was that I was leaving. There was snow on Baldy, and you could see every palm tree on Wilshire Boulevard five miles away. Joan Peeler played a Talking Heads tape for the drive. “You’ll like these people, Astrid,” she said as we drove west on Melrose, past body shops and pupuserias. “Ron and Claire Richards. She’s an actress and he does something with television.” “Do they have kids?” I asked. Hoping they didn’t. No more babysitting, or 99-cent gifts when the two-year-old gets a ride-in Barbie car. “No. In fact, they’re looking to adopt.” That was a new one, something I never considered. Adoption. The word rattled in my head like rocks in an oatmeal box. I didn’t know what to think. We passed Paramount Studios, the big triple-arched gate, parking kiosk, people riding around on fat-tired bicycles. The longing in her eyes. “Next year, I’ll be in there,” Joan said. Sometimes I didn’t know who was younger, her or me. I handled the word adoption in my mind like it was radioactive, saw my mother’s face, pulpy and blind in sunken-cheeked fury.

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

  The sexually abused girls have an entirely different developmental pathway. They don’t have friends of either gender because they can’t trust; they hate themselves, and their biology is against them, leading them either to overreact or numb out. They can’t keep up in the normal envy-driven inclusion/exclusion games, in which players have to stay cool under stress. Other kids usually don’t want anything to do with them—they simply are too weird. But that’s only the beginning of the trouble. The abused, isolated girls with incest histories mature sexually a year and a half earlier than the nonabused girls. Sexual abuse speeds up their biological clocks and the secretion of sex hormones. Early in puberty the abused girls had three to five times the levels of testosterone and androstenedione, the hormones that fuel sexual desire, as the girls in the control group. Results of Putnam and Trickett’s study continue to be published, but it has already created an invaluable road map for clinicians dealing with sexually abused girls. At the Trauma Center, for example, one of our clinicians reported on a Monday morning that a patient named Ayesha had been raped—again—over the weekend. She had run away from her group home at five o’clock on Saturday, gone to a place in Boston where druggies hang out, smoked some dope and done some other drugs, and then left with a bunch of boys in a car. At five o’clock Sunday morning they had gang-raped her. Like so many of the adolescents we see, Ayesha can’t articulate what she wants or needs and can’t think through how she might protect herself. Instead, she lives in a world of actions. Trying to explain her behavior in terms of victim/perpetrator isn’t helpful, nor are labels like “depression,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” “intermittent explosive disorder,” “bipolar disorder,” or any of the other options our diagnostic manuals offer us. Putnam’s work has helped us understand how Ayesha experiences the world—why she cannot tell us what is going on with her, why she is so impulsive and lacking in self-protection, and why she views us as frightening and intrusive rather than as people who can help her. The DSM-5: A veritable Smorgasbord of “Diagnoses”When DSM-5 was published in May 2013 it included some three hundred disorders in its 945 pages. It offers a veritable smorgasbord of possible labels for the problems associated with severe early-life trauma, including some new ones such as Disruptive Mood Regulation Disorder,[26] Non-suicidal Self Injury, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Dysregulated Social Engagement Disorder, and Disruptive Impulse Control Disorder.[27]

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Awareness might be likened to seeing a glowing ember emanating the light of its own internal combustion. Introspection, on the other hand, is like viewing an object illuminated by an external light source, such as a flashlight. With awareness one directly experiences one’s life energy as it pulsates and glows. In introspection, one sees only a reflection of the contents of one’s life. Confusing thought and awareness, of equating them, is at the root of so much unnecessary human suffering.136 Insight, while important, has rarely cured a neurosis or healed a trauma. In fact, it often makes matters worse. After all, knowing why one reacts to a person, place or thing is not, in itself, helpful. Indeed, it is potentially harmful. For example, breaking out in a cold sweat when your lover touches you is distressing enough. Yet, having this same reaction, over and over, even after understanding why it occurs, can be further demoralizing. Comprehending that what happened was merely triggered by an earlier event, while repeatedly having to endure its uninvited intrusion, can add crippling feelings of failure, shame and helplessness. On the other hand, “simple” awareness, along with a fortified tolerance for bewildering and frightening physical body sensations, can seemingly, as if by magic, prevent or dissolve entrenched emotional and physical symptoms. A deeply focused awareness is what allowed me to survive my accident without being emotionally scarred. It is also what allowed the young samurai to find peace in the midst of his emotional hell. However, let it be said that in actuality, it may not be so easy to experience the potent simplicity of awareness—especially in the beginning. This trial is described by one young man learning to contact the essence of awareness: Deepening awareness is a challenge. It isn’t a challenge because my parents didn’t love me enough. It’s a challenge because it’s a challenge. I don’t need to take it personally. I’ve spent years excavating my past, sorting and cataloguing the wreckage. But who I really am, the essential truth of my being, can’t be grasped by the mind, no matter how acute my insights. I’ve confused introspection with awareness, but they’re not the same. Becoming the world’s leading expert on myself has nothing to do with being fully present.137

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Red cheeks were something that characterized an ideal child, the average notion of the well-fed high-school kid, of the young French boy returning from his vacation in France, of the model child in handbooks on hygiene and the huge Nestlé baby advertisements that were placarded all over the city’s walls. In addition, we all thought, though we may not have said it, that what was now offered us was free, wonderfully free. One cannot hesitate to take what is free and all profit. I was getting ready to raise my hand as soon as Monsieur Chouk finished his speech. Of course, he added rather clumsily, only those children would be acceptable whose parents could not afford any other vacation for them. My hand then seemed to become paralyzed. In any case, only three or four pupils proposed themselves as candidates: on the whole, we didn’t like living among non-Jews. “Is that all?” our instructor insisted, with his overemphatic voice. “It would do you a lot of good. Come, Lussato, Lévi, Spinoza...” His eyes wandered over the whole class and his chin pointed in turn at each one of the more puny or poorer pupils. I lowered my head and tried to make myself very small, as I always did when I wanted to avoid being questioned. “Talk to your parents about it,” he concluded. “I’ll turn in the list tomorrow evening. All those of you who decide that they want to go can come and see me after class.” Now that it was no longer necessary to confess one’s status as a pauper in public, I allowed myself to hope again. At noon I asked for permission to put my name down for the summer camp. My mother angrily refused. Was I undernourished? Did I find fault with the quality of my bed? Nowhere can one be happier than at home! The mere thought of wanting to leave my parents proved that I was a selfish son. This accusation of selfishness — I’ll hear it from my mother’s lips until her dying day, and always as a comment on actions that seemed to me to be legitimate enough, in fact necessary as far as my own life is concerned. For all petty crimes, careless hurts, expressions of self-centered forgetfulness, all the peccadillos that weigh on my conscience, she was nevertheless indulgent enough. Here too, her primitive Bedouin mind and heart had unerringly distinguished what was essential from what was accessory. My father didn’t come home at noon for lunch. So we waited until the evening, sulking at each other, my mother as childish about it as I. But my father immediately hit upon the essential argument: it cost nothing.

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

  As we organized our findings, we discovered a consistent profile: (1) a pervasive pattern of dysregulation, (2) problems with attention and concentration, and (3) difficulties getting along with themselves and others. These children’s moods and feelings rapidly shifted from one extreme to another—from temper tantrums and panic to detachment, flatness, and dissociation. When they got upset (which was much of the time), they could neither calm themselves down nor describe what they were feeling. Having a biological system that keeps pumping out stress hormones to deal with real or imagined threats leads to physical problems: sleep disturbances, headaches, unexplained pain, oversensitivity to touch or sound. Being so agitated or shut down keeps them from being able to focus their attention and concentration. To relieve their tension, they engage in chronic masturbation, rocking, or self-harming activities (biting, cutting, burning, and hitting themselves, pulling their hair out, picking at their skin until it bled). It also leads to difficulties with language processing and fine-motor coordination. Spending all their energy on staying in control, they usually have trouble paying attention to things, like schoolwork, that are not directly relevant to survival, and their hyperarousal makes them easily distracted. Having been frequently ignored or abandoned leaves them clinging and needy, even with the people who have abused them. Having been chronically beaten, molested, and otherwise mistreated, they cannot help but define themselves as defective and worthless. They come by their self-loathing, sense of defectiveness, and worthlessness honestly. Was it any surprise that they didn’t trust anyone? Finally, the combination of feeling fundamentally despicable and overreacting to slight frustrations makes it difficult for them to make friends. We published the first articles about our findings, developed a validated rating scale,[18] and collected data on about 350 kids and their parents or foster parents to establish that this one diagnosis, Developmental Trauma Disorder, captured the full range of what was wrong with these children. It would enable us to give them a single diagnosis, as opposed to multiple labels, and would firmly locate the origin of their problems in a combination of trauma and compromised attachment. In February 2009 we submitted our proposed new diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder to the American Psychiatric Association, stating the following in a cover letter:

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  parture, asked after his host, and was told he was so ill he could not bear to see the light or hear anyone speak. Surprised at this sudden malady, the prince would hav^e gone to see him, but hearing that he was asleep, and not wishing to disturb him, he went away with his wife and sister without bidding him farewell. His sister, con eluding that the gentleman's illness was only a pretence to avoid showing the marks she had left upon his face, was now assured beyond all doubt that it was he who had been her nightly assailant. The prince repeatedly sent word to him to return to court, but he did not obey until he had been thoroughly cured of all his wounds, except those which love and vexation had made in his heart. On his return to court, he could not sustain the presence of his victorious enemy without blushing. Though he had been possessed of more assurance than any man at court, he was so disconcerted that he often appeared before her quite abashed — a new proof that her suspicions were well founded. She broke with him, therefore, little by little. Adroitly as she did this, he failed not to perceive it, but durst not remonstrate for fear of worse. He kept his love concealed, and endured patiently a disgrace he had well merited.* There, ladies, is a story which should strike fear into * The princess and the gallant spoken of jn this novel are none other than the Queen of Navarre herself and Guillaume de Bonni- vet, Admiral of France, as we are informed by Brantome [Datnes Galantcs, Discours iv. t. vii.). He states the fact upon the au- thority of his grandmother, who> as well as his mother, Anne de Vivonne, was about Margaret's person, and it is generally regard- ed as true. It is to be observed, however, that Margaret has pur- posely introduced into her narrative several circumstances calcu lated to disguise her own identity ; the second widowhood, for in- stance, for the King of Navarre survived her, and the absence of children by both marriages, for Margaret had a surviving daughter by her second husband. The handsome and gallant Bonnivet fig- ures repeatedly in the Heptameroa 42 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE {Novel i, those who would seize what does not belong to them, and which should inspire ladies with courage, consider- ing the virtue of the young princess and the good sense of her lady of honour. Should a similar thing befall one of you, here you see how it is to be remedied.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: We are united to God by the habit of grace and by the act of contemplation and love. Therefore whatever severs the former of these unions is always a sin, but not always that which severs the latter, since a lawful occupation about lower things distracts the mind so that it is not fit for actual union with God; and this is especially the case in carnal intercourse wherein the mind is withheld by the intensity of pleasure. For this reason those who have to contemplate Divine things or handle sacred things are enjoined not to have to do with their wives for that particular time; and it is in this sense that the Holy Ghost, as regards the actual revelation of hidden things, did not touch the hearts of the prophets at the time of the marriage act. Reply to Objection 3: The shamefulness of concupiscence that always accompanies the marriage act is a shamefulness not of guilt, but of punishment inflicted for the first sin, inasmuch as the lower powers and the members do not obey reason. Hence the argument does not prove. Reply to Objection 4: Properly speaking, a thing is said to be excused when it has some appearance of evil, and yet is not evil, or not as evil as it seems, because some things excuse wholly, others in part. And since the marriage act, by reason of the corruption of concupiscence, has the appearance of an inordinate act, it is wholly excused by the marriage blessing, so as not to be a sin. Reply to Objection 5: Although they are the same as to their natural species, they differ as to their moral species, which differs in respect of one circumstance, namely intercourse with one’s wife and with another than one’s wife; just as to kill a man by assault or by justice differentiates the moral species, although the natural species is the same; and yet the one is lawful and the other unlawful. Reply to Objection 6: The excess of passions that corrupts virtue not only hinders the act of reason, but also destroys the order of reason. The intensity of pleasure in the marriage act does not do this, since, although for the moment man is not being directed, he was previously directed by his reason. Whether the marriage act is meritorious?Objection 1: It would seem that the marriage act is not meritorious. For Chrysostom [*Hom. i in the Opus Imperfectum, falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] says in his commentary on Matthew: “Although marriage brings no punishment to those who use it, it affords them no meed.” Now merit bears a relation to meed. Therefore the marriage act is not meritorious. Objection 2: Further, to refrain from what is meritorious deserves not praise. Yet virginity whereby one refrains from marriage is praiseworthy. Therefore the marriage act is not meritorious.

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

  REMIGIUS. Spiritually; By Peter’s denial before the cock-crow, are denoted those who before Christ’s resurrection did not believe Him to be God, being perplexed by His death. In his denial after the first cock-crow, are denoted those who are in error concerning both Christ’s natures, His human and divine. By the first handmaid is signified desire; by the second, carnal delight; by them that stood by, the dæmons; for by them men are led to a denial of Christ. ORIGEN. Or, By the first handmaid is understood the Synagogue of the Jews, which oft compelled the faithful to deny; by the second, the congregations of the Gentiles, who even persecuted the Christians; they that stood in the hall signify the ministers of divers heresies, who also compel men to deny the truth of Christ. AUGUSTINE. (Quæst. Ev. i. 45.) Also Peter thrice denied, because heretical error concerning Christ is limited to three kinds; they are in error respecting His divinity, His humanity, or both. RABANUS. After the third denial comes the cock-crow; by which we may understand a Doctor of the Church who with chiding rouses the slumbering, saying, Awake, ye righteous, and sin not. (1 Cor. 15:14.) Thus Holy Scripture uses to denote the merit of divers cases1 by fixed periods, as Peter sinned at midnight and repented at cock-crow. JEROME. In another Gospel we read, that after Peter’s denial and the cock-crow, the Saviour looked upon Peter, (Luke 22:61.) and by His look called forth those bitter tears; for it might not be that he on whom the Light of the world had looked should continue in the darkness of denial, wherefore, he went out, and wept bitterly. For he could not do penitence sitting in Caiaphas’ hall, but went forth from the assembly of the wicked, that he might wash away in bitter tears the pollution of his timid denial. LEO. (Serm. 60. 4.) Blessed tears, O holy Apostle, which had the virtue of holy Baptism in washing off the sin of thy denial. The right hand of the Lord Jesus Christ was with thee to hold thee up before thou wast quite thrown down, and in the midst of thy perilous fall, thou receivedst strength to stand. The Rock quickly returned to its stability, recovering so great fortitude, that he who in Christ’s passion had quailed, should endure his own subsequent suffering with fearlessness and constancy. CHAPTER 27 27:1–51. When the morning was come, all the Chief Priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: 2. And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor. 3. Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the Chief Priests and elders, 4. Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

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

  Many patients who come to my office are unable to make eye contact. I immediately know how distressed they are by their difficulty meeting my gaze. It always turns out that they feel disgusting and that they can’t stand having me see how despicable they are. It never occurred to me that these intense feelings of shame would be reflected in abnormal brain activation. Ruth Lanius once again showed that mind and brain are indistinguishable—what happens in one is registered in the other. Ruth bought an expensive device that presents a video character to a person lying in a scanner. (In this case, the cartoon resembled a kindly Richard Gere.) The figure can approach either head on (looking directly at the person) or at a forty-five-degree angle with an averted gaze. This made it possible to compare the effects of direct eye contact on brain activation with those of an averted gaze.[28] The most striking difference between normal controls and survivors of chronic trauma was in activation of the prefrontal cortex in response to a direct eye gaze. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) normally helps us to assess the person coming toward us, and our mirror neurons help to pick up his intentions. However, the subjects with PTSD did not activate any part of their frontal lobe, which means they could not muster any curiosity about the stranger. They just reacted with intense activation deep inside their emotional brains, in the primitive areas known as the Periaqueductal Gray, which generates startle, hypervigilance, cowering, and other self-protective behaviors. There was no activation of any part of the brain involved in social engagement. In response to being looked at they simply went into survival mode. What does this mean for their ability to make friends and get along with others? What does it mean for their therapy? Can people with PTSD trust a therapist with their deepest fears? To have genuine relationships you have to be able to experience others as separate individuals, each with his or her particular motivations and intentions. While you need to be able to stand up for yourself, you also need to recognize that other people have their own agendas. Trauma can make all that hazy and gray. Part ThreeThe Minds of Children Chapter 7Getting on the Same Wavelength: Attachment and Attunement The roots of resilience…are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-possessed other. —Diana Fosha

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

  Tom kept showing up faithfully for his appointments, as I had become for him a lifeline—the father he’d never had, an Alex who had survived the ambush. It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember. One of the hardest things for traumatized people is to confront their shame about the way they behaved during a traumatic episode, whether it is objectively warranted (as in the commission of atrocities) or not (as in the case of a child who tries to placate her abuser). One of the first people to write about this phenomenon was Sarah Haley, who occupied an office next to mine at the VA Clinic. In an article entitled “When the Patient Reports Atrocities,”[4] which became a major impetus for the ultimate creation of the PTSD diagnosis, she discussed the well-nigh intolerable difficulty of talking about (and listening to) the horrendous acts that are often committed by soldiers in the course of their war experiences. It’s hard enough to face the suffering that has been inflicted by others, but deep down many traumatized people are even more haunted by the shame they feel about what they themselves did or did not do under the circumstances. They despise themselves for how terrified, dependent, excited, or enraged they felt. In later years I encountered a similar phenomenon in victims of child abuse: Most of them suffer from agonizing shame about the actions they took to survive and maintain a connection with the person who abused them. This was particularly true if the abuser was someone close to the child, someone the child depended on, as is so often the case. The result can be confusion about whether one was a victim or a willing participant, which in turn leads to bewilderment about the difference between love and terror; pain and pleasure. We will return to this dilemma throughout this book. NumbingMaybe the worst of Tom’s symptoms was that he felt emotionally numb. He desperately wanted to love his family, but he just couldn’t evoke any deep feelings for them. He felt emotionally distant from everybody, as though his heart were frozen and he were living behind a glass wall. That numbness extended to himself, as well. He could not really feel anything except for his momentary rages and his shame. He described how he hardly recognized himself when he looked in the mirror to shave. When he heard himself arguing a case in court, he would observe himself from a distance and wonder how this guy, who happened to look and talk like him, was able to make such cogent arguments. When he won a case he pretended to be gratified, and when he lost it was as though he had seen it coming and was resigned to the defeat even before it happened. Despite the fact that he was a very effective lawyer, he always felt as though he were floating in space, lacking any sense of purpose or direction.

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

  Julian was born in a Boston suburb, the second-oldest of five children. His father left the family when Julian was about six because he could not tolerate living with Julian’s emotionally labile mother. Julian and his father get along quite well, but he sometimes reproaches his father for having worked too hard to support his family and for abandoning him to the care of his unbalanced mother. Neither his parents nor any of his siblings has ever received psychiatric care or been involved with drugs. Julian was a popular athlete in high school. Although he had many friends, he felt pretty bad about himself and covered up for being a poor student by drinking and partying. He feels ashamed that he took advantage of his popularity and good looks by having sex with many girls. He mentioned wanting to call several of them to apologize for how badly he’d treated them. He remembered always hating his body. In high school he took steroids to pump himself up and smoked marijuana almost every day. He did not go to college, and after graduating from high school he was virtually homeless for almost a year because he could no longer stand living with his mother. He enlisted to try to get his life back on track. Julian met Father Shanley at age six when he was taking a CCD (catechism) class at the parish church. He remembered Father Shanley taking him out of the class for confession. Father Shanley rarely wore a cassock, and Julian remembered the priest’s dark blue corduroy pants. They would go to a big room with one chair facing another and a bench to kneel on. The chairs were covered with red and there was a red velvet cushion on the bench. They played cards, a game of war that turned into strip poker. Then he remembered standing in front of a mirror in that room. Father Shanley made him bend over. He remembered Father Shanley putting a finger into his anus. He does not think Shanley ever penetrated him with his penis, but he believes that the priest fingered him on numerous occasions.

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

  On the contrary, It is written (1 Cor. 7:10,11): “Not I, but the Lord, commandeth that the wife depart not from her husband. and, if she depart, that she remain unmarried.” Further, no one should gain advantage from sin. But the adulteress would if she were allowed to contract another and more desired marriage; and an occasion of adultery would be afforded those who wish to marry again. Therefore it is unlawful both to the wife and to the husband to contract a second marriage. I answer that, Nothing supervenient to marriage can dissolve it: wherefore adultery does not make a marriage cease to be valid. For, according to Augustine (De Nup. et Concup. i, 10), “as long as they live they are bound by the marriage tie, which neither divorce nor union with another can destroy.” Therefore it is unlawful for one, while the other lives, to marry again. Reply to Objection 1: Although no one is absolutely bound to continence, he may be bound accidentally; for instance, if his wife contract an incurable disease that is incompatible with carnal intercourse. And it is the same if she labor under a spiritual disease, namely fornication, so as to be incorrigible. Reply to Objection 2: The very shame of having been divorced ought to keep her from sin: and if it cannot keep her from sin, it is a lesser evil that she alone sin than that her husband take part in her sin. Reply to Objection 3: Although after divorce the wife is not bound to her husband as regards paying him the marriage debt and cohabiting with him, the marriage tie, whereby she was bound to this, remains, and consequently she cannot marry again during her husband’s lifetime. She can, however, take a vow of continence, against her husband’s will, unless it seem that the Church has been deceived by false witnesses in pronouncing the divorce; for in that case, even if she has made her vow of profession she ought to be restored to her husband, and would be bound to pay the marriage debt, but it would be unlawful for her to demand it. Reply to Objection 4: The exception expressed in our Lord’s words refers to the putting away of the wife. Hence the objection is based on a false interpretation. Whether husband and wife may be reconciled after being divorced?Objection 1: It would seem that husband and wife may not be reconciled after being divorced. For the law contains the rule (Can. Quod bene semel, Caus. vi, qu. iv): “That which has been once well decided must not be subsequently withdrawn.” Now it has been decided by the judgment of the Church that they ought to be separated. Therefore they cannot subsequently be reconciled.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  There is no place in the public domain where failure can be faced. Witness the squirming anguish of Richard Nixon—who was more like us than different from us—during the Watergate investigations, or Bill Clinton in his tortured posturing throughout the impeachment process. Ultimately, we are incapable of facing our own death. All these denials about endings are necessary in the royal community because it is too costly to face and embrace them. It would suggest that we are not in charge, that things will not forever stay the manageable way they are, and that things will not finally all work out. It is the business of kings to attach the word “forever” to everything we treasure. The great dilemma is that religious functionaries are expected to use the same “forever,” to attach it to things and make it sound theologically legitimated. But “forever” is always the word of Pharaoh, and as such it is the very word against which Yahweh and Moses did their liberating thing. In a St. Louis radio station there was a cleaning lady who one day walked through a studio during a program offering advice on marital problems. In an offhand way she simply provided advice on her way to do her work. Her advice turned out to be more sound and clever than what was officially offered, and as a result, she was made a part of the regular programming. Miss Blue became a feature, and the words with which she began and ended were “All is well.” Sometimes, depending on the mood of the announcer, she was invited to say it repeatedly, perhaps only to cause a chuckle, probably a bit of mockery, even self-mockery, but also to practice the religion of deception. From the ghetto community out of which she spoke, it could be that “all is well” is a trusting affirmation that enables persons to cope. But when the same phrase is co-opted for the media, it becomes an endorsement of the status quo that serves further to deny and numb. It is like a king who says “forever” to keep all the serious questions in check. The chant of Miss Blue, now co-opted, is not unlike the mocked statement of Jeremiah concerning the numbed self-deception of the temple: “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” (Jer 7:4). Nor is it unlike Toots Shor, that most famous saloon-keeper who died of cancer. In his last days, when his death was imminent, he said, “I don’t want to

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  Thomas’s discussion of merit alone should help to answer the question. But he has at least two more answers. First, the saints, with infused virtues, judge themselves by higher standards than pagans. Because they measure themselves by the rule of divine law, they inevitably see more shortcomings in themselves. 40 Second, naturally acquired, infused moral virtues have different effects on one’s emotions. Like Aristotle, Thomas holds that virtues acquired naturally, through long practice, work to eliminate contrary emotions. In time the agent feels much less troubled by his emotions and comes to find virtuous actions pleasant. Infused moral virtues, Thomas explains, can indeed have such an effect (that they can is important), but they might not have it immediately. Christians can continue to feel internal conflict and have difficulty in exercising the virtues given by God (Ia IIae, q. 65, a. 3, ad 23).41 Infused moral virtues nonetheless provide a Christian with the strength to lead a good life (emotionally tumultuous or not) and keep her from feeling distress (tristitia). Should anyone object that virtues are supposed to make the possessor find virtuous actions uniformly enjoyable, Thomas reminds us that even Aristotle defended a more qualified position.42 Many of Thomas’s contemporaries believed it sufficient to posit only naturally acquired virtues and the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.43 In contrast to Augustine, they acknowledged naturally acquired habits as genuine (albeit limited) virtues in pagans; in support of Augustine, they suggested that Christians do not have such virtues—because any virtues naturally acquired by Christians are redirected to the end of charity (in effect, “supernaturalized”) through divine infusion of the theological virtues. I have already presented various reasons why Thomas declined to adopt this view. The one point that remains to be considered is his concern for a fine-grained analysis of moral actions. According to Thomas, we should distinguish between the love of God produced by charity and actions of other virtues performed for the sake of God. For example, when a Christian abstains from food, drink, or sex, she might well do so for the sake of God; but having God as the final cause of such actions does not prevent them from being acts of temperance. Of course, the same acts “elicited” by the virtue of temperance may be “commanded” by the virtue of charity. Perfection in charity may also be needed extrinsically for perfection in temperance. Nevertheless, Thomas wants us to be precise in describing the moral actions of Christians. Should one blur the distinctions among formal, final, and material causes; between intrinsic and extrinsic perfections of virtues, one runs the risk of having distinct virtues collapse into just so many different aspects of charity.44 A plurality of virtues, related and interdependent, but each with its specific goods, would become essentially one and the same virtue.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  My shame hangover—there was no Excedrin for this one—was partly due to the fact that I had allowed my anger to erupt in unconstructive ways. Yes, I wish I had made different choices earlier on in that bathroom and with Grabby Hands, but I tried to look on the bright side: at least my therapist got some great new material to work with. But what rattled me was my complete and utter lack of control. I’d been desperately trying to make Dad think I was OK, that he didn’t have to worry about me. He could trust me to be responsible when he was gone. I’d take care of things like he taught me. I’d be steady. Unrattled. Holding fast. While I hesitated to share these “unbecoming stories,” they are real examples of what the “fight” response can look like in grief. They’re not pretty, but they’re also nothing to be ashamed of. Instead, they’re more examples of why it’s so important to understand the many shapes and sizes of our feelings and how they work together. THE UPSIDE AND DOWNSIDE OF ANGERNow that I got all that gunk out (phew!), let’s take a step back and get to know the so-called monster: anger. What it is, why we have it, why it isn’t all bad, and how we can respect and better channel it. Because here’s the sitch: You better believe that when your world falls apart, there’s a good chance that you’re going to be angry—and rightly so. But as I’ve learned, it’s better to care for our anger than to allow it to simmer, seethe, and spew. Anger is an instinctive response to a perceived threat, violation, or injustice. It isn’t a character defect to avoid. It’s a blinking red light telling us that something is not OK. Anger’s job is to protect us at all costs. It does that in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. We’re more familiar with the obvious ways—tick, tick, boom! It’s the covert stuff that can sideswipe us. For example, anger can shield us from feelings that feel way too big and scary to accept or tend to. Don’t worry, anger says. I got this. And while some folks are quick to anger, others may have a hard time even identifying that they’re angry at all. You’re likely familiar with those seemingly gentle creatures. Everyone knows they’re angry but them. Or no one knows they’re angry until they have either a heart attack or a playdate with an axe. Regardless of how anger manifests, it’s always trying to protect us—even from itself. Anger affects you physically, too. Your heart rate speeds up, you sweat, a surge of adrenaline blasts through your body, your face turns red, your jaw clenches—readying to defend. Then, once the real or perceived threat passes, there’s a physiological wind-down period. If you’ve ever been steaming mad, you know that it’s near impossible to chill out right away. It takes time to calm down all that powerful energy.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  ginity without violence and without love, but through a stupid fear, and she burst into such a violent fit of tears that it seemed as if her heart would break. The monk, who heard her sobs from a distance, suspected her con- version, and was afraid he should not again enjoy the same pleasure. To prevent that untoward contingency, he went up to her as she lay prostrate before the image, reproved her sharply, and told her if her conscience re- proached her at all, she might confess to him and not repeat the act if she did not think proper, for she was free either to do it or not without sin. The silly nun, thinking to expiate her sin, confessed to the monk, and all the penance he imposed on her was to swear that it was no sin in her to love, and that some holy water would be sufficient to wash out so trifling a peccadillo. She believed him rather than God, and relapsed some time after. Finally she became pregnant, and her re- morse was so great that she entreated the prioress to have that monk expelled, for she knew he was so crafty that he would not fail to seduce her. The prioress and the prior, who agreed together, treated her with con- tempt, and told her she was big enough to defend herself against a man, and that he of whom she spoke was a most excellent man. Urged at last by her remorse, she earnestly implored their leave to go to Rome, where she believed she should recover her virginity by confess- ing her sin at the Pope's feet. The prior and the prior- ess very willingly granted her request, liking better she should be a pilgrim contrary to the rule of her order than cloistered with the scruples she had. Fearing, too, lest in a fit of despair she should reveal the sort of life that was led there, they gave her money for her journey. Now God so ordered it that the nun arrived in Lyon at the time when the Duchess of Alen^on, who was after- Eighth day ?^ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 553 wards Queen of Navarre, was secretly performing a no- vaine in the church of St. John with some of her women. One evening after vespers, when that princess was kneel- ing before the crucifix, she heard some one going up the steps, and perceiving by the light of the lamp that it was a nun, the duchess withdrew to the corner of the altar to hear her devotions. The nun, thinking herself alone, knelt down, and, beating her breast, began to weep most piteously, crying constantly, " Alas, my God ! have pity on this poor sinner ! " The duchess, wishing to know what was the matter, went up to her, and said, " What is the matter, my dear ? Whence come you, and who brought you here .-' "

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

  I was riveted by Maier’s account. What they had done to these poor dogs was exactly what had happened to my traumatized human patients. They, too, had been exposed to somebody (or something) who had inflicted terrible harm on them—harm they had no way of escaping. I made a rapid mental review of the patients I had treated. Almost all had in some way been trapped or immobilized, unable to take action to stave off the inevitable. Their fight/flight response had been thwarted, and the result was either extreme agitation or collapse. Maier and Seligman also found that traumatized dogs secreted much larger amounts of stress hormones than was normal. This supported what we were beginning to learn about the biological underpinnings of traumatic stress. A group of young researchers, among them Steve Southwick and John Krystal at Yale, Arieh Shalev at Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Frank Putnam at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and Roger Pitman, later at Harvard, were all finding that traumatized people keep secreting large amounts of stress hormones long after the actual danger has passed, and Rachel Yehuda at Mount Sinai in New York confronted us with her seemingly paradoxical findings that the levels of the stress hormone cortisol are low in PTSD. Her discoveries only started to make sense when her research clarified that cortisol puts an end to the stress response by sending an all-safe signal, and that, in PTSD, the body’s stress hormones do, in fact, not return to baseline after the threat has passed. Ideally our stress hormone system should provide a lightning-fast response to threat, but then quickly return us to equilibrium. In PTSD patients, however, the stress hormone system fails at this balancing act. Fight/flight/freeze signals continue after the danger is over, and, as in the case of the dogs, do not return to normal. Instead, the continued secretion of stress hormones is expressed as agitation and panic and, in the long term, wreaks havoc with their health.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  There was silence. He sat staring out of the window, with a faint grin, half mockery, half bitterness, on his face. She hated his grin. "You've not taken any precautions against having a child then?" he asked her suddenly. "Because I haven't." "No," she said faintly. "I should hate that." He looked at her, then again with the peculiar subtle grin out of the window. There was a tense silence. At last he turned to her and said satirically: "That was why you wanted me then, to get a child?" She hung her head. "No. Not really," she said. "What then, _really_?" he asked rather bitingly. She looked up at him reproachfully, saying: "I don't know." He broke into a laugh. "Then I'm damned if I do," he said. There was a long pause of silence, a cold silence. "Well," he said at last. "It's as your Ladyship likes. If you get the baby, Sir Clifford's welcome to it. I shan't have lost anything. On the contrary, I've had a very nice experience, very nice indeed!" and he stretched in a half suppressed sort of yawn. "If you've made use of me," he said, "it's not the first time I've been made use of; and I don't suppose it's ever been as pleasant as this time; though of course one can't feel tremendously dignified about it." He stretched again, curiously, his muscles quivering, and his jaw oddly set. "But I didn't make use of you," she said, pleading. "At your Ladyship's service," he replied. "No," she said. "I liked your body." "Did you?" he replied, and he laughed. "Well then, we're quits, because I liked yours." He looked at her with queer darkened eyes. "Would you like to go upstairs now?" he asked her, in a strangled sort of voice. "No, not here. Not now!" she said heavily, though if he had used any power over her, she would have gone, for she had no strength against him. He turned his face away again, and seemed to forget her. "I want to touch you like you touch me," she said. "I've never really touched your body." He looked at her, and smiled again. "Now?" he said. "No! No! Not here! At the hut. Would you mind?" "How do I touch you?" he asked. "When you feel me." He looked at her, and met her heavy, anxious eyes. "And do you like it when I feel you?" he asked, laughing at her still. "Yes, do you?" she said. "Oh, me!" Then he changed his tone. "Yes," he said. "You know without asking." Which was true. She rose and picked up her hat. "I must go," she said. "Will you go?" he replied politely. She wanted him to touch her, to say something to her, but he said nothing, only waited politely. "Thank you for the tea," she said. "I haven't thanked your Ladyship for doing me the honours of my teapot," he said.