Brain Freeze Quotes

in her dreams, blood tasted like fizzy strawberry soda. If you drank it too fast, you got brain freeze. When she was older, after she'd licked a cut on her finger, the taste of that became the taste in her dreams: copper and tears.

The moment Emma came into view, my entire world slipped into slow motion. My brain took a screenshot. I felt the moment freeze and save. She was beautiful.

The ice cream is worth the brain freeze

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnotised by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! 'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'What used the darling ones to do? 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching 'round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How the Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did.

Ah, God. Brain freeze!” Trey yelled and covered his eye with his free hand. “Fuck. Why does that hurt so bad?” Reagan laughed at him. “Suck it more slowly next time,” she advised. He had fifteen lines he could have used at that moment.

Dissociation exists for a reason. For millennia, our brains and bodies have removed us from our pain so we can keep moving forward. A tiger just ate your wife? Bummer, but breaking down or freezing up is not an option. You better go out hunting today or your kids will starve. Your house was just destroyed in an air raid? Okay, but you have to pack up what’s left and find new shelter, now. Feelings are a privilege.

If bones could freeze, then the brain could also be dulled and the soul could freeze over. And the soul shuddered and froze- perhaps to remain frozen forever.

Ghosts can haunt damned near anything. I have heard them in the breathy voice of a song and seen them between the covers of a book. They have hidden in trees so that their faces peer out of the bark, and hovered beneath the silver surface of water. They disguise themselves as cracks in concrete or come calling in a delirium of fever. On summer days they keep pace like the shadow of our shadow. They lurk in the breath of young girls who give us our first kiss. I've seen men who were haunted to the point of madness by things that never were and things that should have been. I've seen ghosts in the lines on a woman's face and heard them in the jangling of keys. The ghosts in fire freeze and the ghosts in ice burn. Some died long ago; some were never born. Some ride the blood in my veins until it reaches my brain. Sometimes I even mistake myself for one. Sometimes I am one.

I remember being unusually pensive that May evening, perhaps it was the heat of Spring's first warm day which, encountering my thick winter blood, forced a dilution upward into a brain weary of straining the last six months to overcome freezing and the long absent thinning of blood stirred a weakening desire for the softer things, a nostalgia, yet a death, a precognition, if you will...

They ought to put a statement on the Bible just like they put on cigarettes - like, the contents of this book may freeze-dry your brains.

Exposure to nature - cold, heat, water - is the most dehumanizing way to die. Violence is passionate and real - the final moments as you struggle for your life, firing a gun or wrestling a mugger or screaming for help, your heart pumps loudly and your body tingles with energy; you are alert and awake and, for that brief moment, more alive and human than you've ever been before. Not so with nature. At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your sense fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that stat you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction - an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.

The more I need my brain to be on top of its game, the higher the probability that it will freeze on me.

Suddenly she lets go of my ear and opens the front door. “Get out!” she screeches. “Get out of my house! I don’t like you! I don’t want you! I never loved you! Get the hell out of my house!” I freeze. I’m not sure of this game. My brain begins to spin with all the options of what Mother’s real intentions may be. To survive, I have to think ahead. Father steps in front of me. “No!” he cries out. “That’s enough. Stop it, Roerva. Stop the whole thing. Just let The Boy be.

Lately, it had been an endless procession of long, black nights and gray mornings, when her sense of failure swept over her like a five-hundred-pound wave; and she was scared. But it wasn't death that she feared. She had looked down into that black pit of death and had wanted to jump in, once too often. As a matter of fact, the thought began to appeal to her more and more. She even knew how she would kill herself. It would be with a silver bullet. As round and as smooth as an ice-cold blue martini. She would place the gun in the freezer for a few hours before she did it, so it would feel frosty and cold against her head. She could almost feel the ice-cold bullet shooting through her hot, troubled brain, freezing the pain for good. The sound of the gun blast would be the last sound she would ever hear. And then... nothing. Maybe just the silent sound that a bird might hear, flying in the clean, cool air, high above the earth. The sweet, pure air of freedom. No, it wasn't death she was afraid of. It was this life of hers that was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care waiting room.

To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation.11

No, it's because every goddamned winter, the brain cells that know how miserable it is here freeze and die. It takes 'em all summer to grow back, and then it's winter all over again and the whole ugle process starts over.

I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven - the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it - it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition - make haste - oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still - ubi saeoa indignatio ulterius cor lacerate nequit; the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them ("The Lifted Veil")

Imprisoned within the impassable walls of the locked, lifeless polar world, all that is left for her is a deathly cold isolation, numbing her senses and freezing her brain. The world lost, the light lost, the mind lost, the coldly gleaming, relentlessly moving ice has become her sole and final reality.

Vision’s mostly a lie anyway,” he continued. “We don’t really see anything except a few hi-res degrees where the eye focuses. Everything else is just peripheral blur, just … light and motion. Motion draws the focus. And your eyes jiggle all the time, did you know that, Keeton? Saccades, they’re called. Blurs the image, the movement’s way too fast for the brain to integrate so your eye just … shuts down between pauses. It only grabs these isolated freeze-frames, but your brain edits out the blanks and stitches an … an illusion of continuity into your head.

Time if the inner form of animal sense that animates events-the still frames-of the spatial world. The mind animates the world like the motor and gears of a projector. Each weaves a series of still pictures-a series of spatial states-into an order, into the 'current' of life. Motion is created in our minds by running "film cells" together. Remember that everything you perceive-even this page-is actively, repeatedly, being constructed inside your head. It's happening to you right now. Your eyes cannot see through the wall of the cranium; all experience including visual experience is an organized whirl of information in your brain. If your mind could stop its "motor" for a moment, you'd get a freeze frame, just as the movie projector isolated the arrow in one position with no momentum. In fact, time can be defined as the inner summation of spatial states.

He realized that all men were like this; that each person was to himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid. Like here, standing. If he should scream, if he should holler for help, would it matter? Blackness could come swiftly, swallowing; in one titanically freezing moment all would be concluded. Long before dawn, long before police with flashlights might probe the dark, disturbed pathway, long before men with trembling brains could rustle down the pebbles to his help. Even if they were within five hundred yards of him now, and help certainly was, in three seconds a dark tide could rise to take all ten years from him and— The essential impact of life’s loneliness crushed his beginning-to-tremble body. Mother was alone, too. She could not look to the sanctity of marriage, the protection of her family’s love, she could not look to the United States Constitution or the City Police, she could not look anywhere, in this very instant, save into her heart, and there she would find nothing but uncontrollable repugnance and a will to fear. In this instant it was an individual problem seeking an individual solution. He must accept being alone and work on from there.

To judge from the entrance the dawn was making, it promised to be a very iffy day -- that is, blasts of angry sunlight one minute, fits of freezing rain the next, all of it seasoned with sudden gusts of wind -- one of those days when someone who is sensitive to abrupt shifts in weather and suffers them in his blood and brain is likely to change opinion and direction continuously, like those sheets of tin, cut in the shape of banners and roosters, that spin every which way on rooftops with each new puff of wind.

Simply put, a woman’s brain is not her friend when it comes to confidence. We think too much and we think about the wrong things. Thinking harder and harder and harder won’t solve our issues, though, it won’t make us more confident, and it most certainly freezes decision making, not to mention action. Remember, the female brain works differently from the male brain; we really do have more going on, we are more keenly aware of everything happening around us, and that all becomes part of our cognitive stew. Ruminating drains the confidence from us. Those negative thoughts, and nightmare scenarios masquerading as problem solving, spin on an endless loop. We render ourselves unable to be in the moment or to trust our instincts because we are captive to those distracting, destructive thoughts, which gradually squeeze all the spontaneity out of life and work. We have got to stop ruminating.

Say something, Jess. Say anything. And just when I'm about to think of what I should say next, my mouth goes into whacked overdrive like I'm possessed. “The graphic art in Clone Wars is my favorite,” I say. “I love how they drew the characters. You know—how everything looks so angular and—” My words tangle and freeze when my brain finally arrives to shut it down. Say something but NOT THAT, you psycho! “Clone Wars. Love it, do I? Yesss.” He's actually responded in a Yoda voice! I blink. His eyes are kind, sparkling with laughter and still, all too green. Yoda green!

Jayden’s brain stalled. He just called you fit! the voice shrieked. It was beside itself. He just called you fit! That settles it, he’s gay, gay as a christening robe, now get your head out of the sink and kiss him! “Um,” he said instead. “You get brain freeze under there?

IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK—HE ONLY SEES!

freezing bodies while their brains still worked

It’s freezing and Alex is only wearing his suit jacket, but his chest feels warmed from the inside with liquor and something heady his brain keeps stumbling over, trying to name.

FREEZE-FRAME also creates a mood shift to harmonious feeling states such as care and appreciation, which helps to create and sustain entrainment between heart and brain.

Right-brain dissociation can be seen as classical dissociation and as the defense most common to freeze types. It is the right-brain process of numbing out against intense feeling or incessant inner critic attack. Dissociation is once again a process of distraction. Survivors commonly experience it as getting lost in fantasy, fogginess, TV, tiredness or sleep.

Freeze happens when the brain assesses the threat and decides you’re too slow to run and too small to fight, and so your best hope for survival is to “play dead” until the threat goes away or someone comes along to help you. Freeze is your last-ditch stress response, reserved for threats that the brain perceives as life-threatening, when fight or flight don’t stand a chance.

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly – yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think. From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. “Don’t ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!” – “Who are you to think? It’s so, because I say so!” – “Don’t argue, obey!” – “Don’t try to understand, believe!” – “Don’t struggle, compromise!” – “Your heart is more important than your mind!” – “Who are you to know? Your parents know best!” – “Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!” – “Who are you to object? All values are relative!” – “Who are you to want to escape a thug’s bullet? That’s only a personal prejudice!” Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival – yet that was what they did to their children.

Porges’s theory provides an explanation: The autonomic nervous system regulates three fundamental physiological states. The level of safety determines which one of these is activated at any particular time. Whenever we feel threatened, we instinctively turn to the first level, social engagement. We call out for help, support, and comfort from the people around us. But if no one comes to our aid, or we’re in immediate danger, the organism reverts to a more primitive way to survive: fight or flight. We fight off our attacker, or we run to a safe place. However, if this fails—we can’t get away, we’re held down or trapped—the organism tries to preserve itself by shutting down and expending as little energy as possible. We are then in a state of freeze or collapse.

When we are stuck in fight/flight/freeze mode, we devote our resources to managing stress, and, to put it simply, our child brain suffers. Childhood is a time of great vulnerability. Unable to survive on our own, a parent-figure’s withholding of anything perceived to hinder our survival sends stress signals flooding through our bodies. The resulting ‘survival brain’, as I call it, is hyperfocused on perceived threats, sees the world in black and white, and is often obsessive, panic driven, and prone to circular reasoning. We can break down or shut down when faced with stress.

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.

I encourage you to try cold therapy yourself, but before you do, let me offer a note of caution: safe cold thermogenesis protocols involve gradually increasing your exposure to cold over time. Start off by simply putting your face in cold water for a few minutes, then if you choose you can graduate to using soft-gel ice packs that won’t freeze your skin, and then sitting in an ice bath for up to an hour.

The ghosts in fire freeze and the ghosts in ice burn. Some died long ago; some were never born. Some ride the blood in my veins until it reaches my brain. Sometimes I even mistake myself for one. Sometimes I am one.

Every social interaction is a collision of frames, and the stronger frame always wins. Frame collisions are primal. They freeze out the neocortex and bring the crocodile brain in to make decisions and determine actions.

I wanted peace and quiet, tranquillity, but was too much aboil inside. Somewhere beneath the load of the emotion-freezing ice which my life had conditioned my brain to produce, a spot of black anger glowed and threw off a hot red light of such intensity that had Lord Kelvin known of its existence, he would have had to revise his measurements. A remote explosion had occurred somewhere, perhaps back at Emerson's or that night in Bledsoe's office, and it had caused the ice cap to melt and shift the slightest bit. But that bit, that fraction, was irrevocable. Coming to New York had perhaps been an unconscious attempt to keep the old freezing unit going, but it hadn't worked; hot water had gotten into its coils. Only a drop, perhaps, but that drop was the first wave of the deluge. One moment I believed, I was dedicated, willing to lie on the blazing coals, do anything to attain a position on the campus -- then snap! It was done with, finished, through. Now there was only the problem of forgetting it. If only all the contradictory voices shouting inside my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn't care as long as they sang without dissonance; yes, and avoided the uncertain extremes of the scale. But there was no relief. I was wild with resentment but too much under "self-control," that frozen virtue, that freezing vice. And the more resentful I became, the more my old urge to make speeches returned. While walking along the streets words would spill from my lips in a mumble over which I had little control. I became afraid of what I might do. All things were indeed awash in my mind. I longed for home.

The problem with many to-do lists is that when we write down a series of short-term objectives, we are, in effect, allowing our brains to seize on the sense of satisfaction that each task will deliver. We are encouraging our need for closure and our tendency to freeze on a goal without asking if it’s the right aim.

The AVP often has intestinal issues. The intestines are indeed a second brain and need a significant amount of support. It may be interesting to note the polyvagal theory of Steven Porges (2011), who wrote about the tenth cranial nerve, which runs from the brain to the gut. Negative responses in the gut can occur when flight/fight/freeze responses are automatically activated.

Once, some friends and I were driving back from partying up there, in the middle of winter, on one of those perfectly clear and freezing nights. It was four in the morning and I was nodding in and out of hammered sleep, my vision mashed potatoes, we stopped so I could throw up at least twice. But as we drove with my face smushed on the window I noticed the field of snow along that stretch of the highway, all still and unmucked with. It looked brushed, almost. Or whipped. Designed. The patterns were the kind you'd see up close in a big rock. Sometimes you see that for far distances out here on the prairie, like a long white-blue sea. It's so gorgeous. And even with my brain's skeleton-crew state, I just thought, man. Everyone calls our part of the world bleak. But it's not bleak. I don't think it's bleak.

It was then you'd have thought I'd been shot by a Taser, as paralyzed as I was at the sight of her - the perfect feminine form, the image hitting me with the velocity of a Slurpee-like brain-freeze, rendering me again the helpless, hapless male. Any trace of rationality or logic or even common sense that might've been there before is quickly abandoning ship, leaving Dickbrain at the helm and Lust navigating,

When children experience trauma, they are faced with something so terrible or extreme that it overwhelms their ability to cope. The traumatic event activates a fight, flight, or freeze response, which can affect children’s bodies, brains, emotions, and behavior. (Researchers have recently noted a possible fourth response to trauma called the fawn response, where victims respond to trauma by trying to appease or please the threatening person.3)

Servings: 6 Prep Time: 12 hours (vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free) This is another way to get your fix for a frozen, slightly sweet treat without going overboard on dairy and sugar. 8 extremely ripe bananas, peeled and diced 1 tablespoon honey ½ cup unsweetened almond, cashew, oat, or coconut milk, as needed to achieve desired consistency Place the banana pieces on a sheet pan and freeze overnight. Place the frozen banana pieces in a blender

Fafhrd felt as if he had walked unsuspecting into the jaws of a gigantic serpent. His barbaric mind was stirred to the deeps. He thought of the grim god Kos brooding alone in the icy silence of the Cold Waste. He thought of the masked powers Fate and Chance, and of the game they play for the blood and brains of men. And he did not will these thoughts. Rather did the freezing fear seem to crystallize them, so that they dropped into his consciousness like snowflakes.

As in other animals, the nerves and chemicals that make up our basic brain structure have a direct connection with our body. When the old brain takes over, it partially shuts down the higher brain, our conscious mind, and propels the body to run, hide, fight, or, on occasion, freeze. By the time we are fully aware of our situation, our body may already be on the move. If the fight/flight/freeze response is successful and we escape the danger, we recover our internal equilibrium and gradually “regain our senses.

As a consequence of natural analgesic actions or as a result of the administration of drugs that interfere with body signaling (painkillers, anesthetics), the brain receives a distorted view of what the body state really is at the moment. We know that in situations of fear in which the brain chooses the running option rather than freezing, the brain stem disengages the part of the pain-transmission circuitry, a bit like pulling the plug. The periqueductal gray, which controls these responses, can also command the secretion of natural opioids and achieve precisely what taking an analgesic would achieve -- elimination of pain signals. In the strict sense, we are dealing here with a hallucination of the body because what the brain registers in its maps and the conscious mind feels do not correspond to the reality that might be perceived. Whenever we ingest molecules the have the power to modify the transmission or mapping of body signals, we play on this mechanism. Alcohol does it; so do analgesics and anesthetics, as well as countless drugs of abuse. It is patently clear that, other than out of curiousity, humans are drawn to such molecules because of their desire to generate feelings of well-being, feelings in which pain signals are obliterated and pleasure signals induced.

But suppose the stressor is one that your brain determines you can’t survive by escaping and you can’t survive by conquering—you feel the teeth of the lion bite into you from behind. This is when you get the brakes stress response—the parasympathetic nervous system, the “STOP!” activated by the most extreme distress. Your body shuts down; you may even experience “tonic immobility,” where you can’t move, or can move only sluggishly. Animals in the wild freeze and fall to the ground as a last-ditch effort to convince a predator they’re already dead; Stephen Porges has hypothesized that freeze is a stress response that facilitates a painless death.1

You ever choked? You know what I mean, fumbled at the goal line, stuck your foot in your mouth when you were trying to ask that girl on a date, had a brain freeze on the final exam you were totally prepared for, lipped out a three-foot putt to win the golf tournament, or been paralyzed by the feeling of “Oh my god life can’t get any better, do I really deserve this?” I have. What happens when we get that feeling? We clench up, get short of breath, self-conscious. We have an out-of-body experience where we observe ourselves in the third person, no longer present, now not doing well what we are there to do. We become voyeurs of our moment because we let it become bigger than us, and in doing so, we just became less involved in it and more impressed with it. Why does this happen? It happens because when we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we then create a fictitious ceiling, a restriction, over the expectations we have of our own performance in that moment. We get tense, we focus on the outcome instead of the activity, and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result, or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t, and it isn’t, and it’s not our right to believe it does or is. Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great

Lost Wax" My love gives me some wax, so for once instead of words I work at something real; I knead until I see emerge a person, a protagonist; but I must overwork my wax, it loses it's resiliency, comes apart in crumbs. I take another block; this work, I think, will be a self; I can feel it forming, brow and brain; perhaps it will be me, perhaps, if I can create myself, I'll be able to amend myself; my wax, though, freezes this time, fissures, splits. Words or wax, no end to our self-shaping, our forlorn awareness at the end of which is only more awareness. Was ever truth so malleable? Arid, inadhesive bits of matter. What might heal you? Love. What might make you whole? Love. My love.

A great liberal betrayal is afoot. Unfortunately, many “fellow-travelers” of Islamism are on the liberal side of this debate. I call them “regressive leftists”; they are in fact reverse racists. They have a poverty of expectation for minority groups, believing them to be homogenous and inherently opposed to human rights values. They are culturally reductive in how they see “Eastern”—and in my case, Islamic—culture, and they are culturally deterministic in attempting to freeze their ideal of it in order to satisfy their orientalist fetish. While they rightly question every aspect of their “own” Western culture in the name of progress, they censure liberal Muslims who attempt to do so within Islam, and they choose to side instead with every regressive reactionary in the name of “cultural authenticity” and anticolonialism. They claim that their reason for refusing to criticize any policy, foreign or domestic—other than those of what they consider “their own” government—is that they are not responsible for other governments’ actions. However, they leap whenever any (not merely their own) liberal democratic government commits a policy error, while generally ignoring almost every fascist, theocratic, or Muslim-led dictatorial regime and group in the world. It is as if their brains cannot hold two thoughts at the same time. Besides, since when has such isolationism been a trait of liberal internationalists? It is a right-wing trait. They hold what they think of as “native” communities—and I use that word deliberately—to lesser standards than the ones they claim apply to all “their” people, who happen to be mainly white, and that’s why I call it reverse racism. In holding “native” communities to lesser—or more culturally “authentic”—standards, they automatically disempower those communities. They stifle their ambitions. They cut them out of the system entirely, because there’s no aspiration left. These communities end up in self-segregated “Muslim areas” where the only thing their members aspire to is being tin-pot community leaders, like ghetto chieftains. The “fellow-travelers” fetishize these “Muslim” ghettos in the name of “cultural authenticity” and identity politics, and the ghetto chieftains are often the leading errand boys for them. Identity politics and the pseudo-liberal search for cultural authenticity result in nothing but a downward spiral of competing medieval religious or cultural assertions, fights over who are the “real” Muslims, ever increasing misogyny, homophobia, sectarianism, and extremism. This is not liberal. Among the left, this is a remnant of the socialist approach that prioritizes group identity over individual autonomy. Among the right, it is ironically a throwback from the British colonial “divide and rule” approach. Classical liberalism focuses on individual autonomy. I refer here to liberalism as it is understood in the philosophical sense, not as it’s understood in the United States to refer to the Democratic Party—that’s a party-political usage. The great liberal betrayal of this generation is that in the name of liberalism, communal rights have been prioritized over individual autonomy within minority groups. And minorities within minorities really do suffer because of this betrayal. The people I really worry about when we have this conversation are feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, ex-Muslims—all the vulnerable and bullied individuals who are not just stigmatized but in many cases violently assaulted or killed merely for being against the norm.

To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK – HE ONLY SEES! “All right!” you’ll cry. “All right!” you’ll say, “But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children! Please explain!” We’ll answer this by asking you, “What used the darling ones to do? How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?” Have you forgotten? Don’t you know? We’ll say it very loud and slow: THEY … USED … TO … READ! They’d READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed TO READ some more.

It is from motion that we gain our sense of both space and time. The right hemisphere seems to be essential for both, and the capacity for each is linked with the other.69 The left hemisphere’s focus, however, narrows both. If I want to focus precisely on a particular element in my environment, clearly and in sharp detail, I have not just to home in on it in space, but to immobilise or freeze it in time, too. It becomes like a snapshot (what the French call, suggestively, a cliché). The more precise anything is, the less content it has: ‘the more certain our knowledge the less we know.’ The left hemisphere’s experience is fragmentary and therefore taken out of the flow of experiential life, and tends towards stasis. It is concerned with the moment of the ‘kill’. However, outside of this glare of the spotlight, things carry on living, moving and changing.

They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keep them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? It rots the senses in the head! It kills imagination dead! It clogs and clutters up the mind! It makes a child so dull and blind He can no longer understand A fantasy, a fairyland! His brain becomes as soft as cheese! His powers of thinking rust and freeze! He cannot think-he only sees! 'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read, And read and read, and then proceed To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books!... Oh books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall... ...They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something good to read. And once they start-oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did...

That night, I took a while falling asleep and when I did, I had a strange dream. She was sitting in my rocking chair and rocking herself, her dead eyes fixed on me. I lay on my bed, paralysed with fear, unable to move, unable to scream, my limbs refusing to move to my command. The room was suddenly freezing cold, the heater had probably stopped working in the night because the electricity supply had been cut and the inverter too had run out. At one point, I was uncertain whether I was dreaming or awake, or in that strange space between dreaming and wakefulness, where the soul wanders out of the body and explores other dimensions. What I knew was that I was chilled to the bones, chilled in a way that made it impossible for me to move myself, to lever myself to a sitting position in order to switch the bedside lamp on and check whether this was really happening. I could hear her in my head. Her voice was faint, feathery, and sibilant, as if she was whispering through a curtain of rain. Her words were indistinct, she called my name, she said words that pierced through my ears, words that meshed into ice slivers in my brain and when I thought finally that I would freeze to death an ice cold tiny body climbed into the quilt with me, putting frigidly chilly arms around me, and whispered, ‘Mother, I’m cold.’ Icicles shot up my spine, and I sat up, bolt upright in my bed, feeling the covers fall from me and a small indent in the mattress where something had been, a moment ago. There was a sudden click, the red light of the heater lit up, the bed and blanket warmer began radiating life-giving heat again and I felt myself thaw out, emerge from the scary limbo which marks one’s descent into another dimension, and the shadow faded out from the rocking chair right in front of me into complete transparency and the icy presence in the bed faded away to nothingness.

So which theory did Lagos believe in? The relativist or the universalist?" "He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning." "But it seems to me there is a key difference," Hiro says. "The universalists think that we are determined by the prepatterned structure of our brains -- the pathways in the cortex. The relativists don't believe that we have any limits." "Lagos modified the strict Chomskyan theory by supposing that learning a language is like blowing code into PROMs -- an analogy that I cannot interpret." "The analogy is clear. PROMs are Programmable Read-Only Memory chips," Hiro says. "When they come from the factory, they have no content. Once and only once, you can place information into those chips and then freeze it -- the information, the software, becomes frozen into the chip -- it transmutes into hardware. After you have blown the code into the PROMs, you can read it out, but you can't write to them anymore. So Lagos was trying to say that the newborn human brain has no structure -- as the relativists would have it -- and that as the child learns a language, the developing brain structures itself accordingly, the language gets 'blown into the hardware and becomes a permanent part of the brain's deep structure -- as the universalists would have it." "Yes. This was his interpretation." "Okay. So when he talked about Enki being a real person with magical powers, what he meant was that Enki somehow understood the connection between language and the brain, knew how to manipulate it. The same way that a hacker, knowing the secrets of a computer system, can write code to control it -- digital namshubs?" "Lagos said that Enki had the ability to ascend into the universe of language and see it before his eyes. Much as humans go into the Metaverse. That gave him power to create nam-shubs. And nam-shubs had the power to alter the functioning of the brain and of the body." "Why isn't anyone doing this kind of thing nowadays? Why aren't there any namshubs in English?" "Not all languages are the same, as Steiner points out. Some languages are better at metaphor than others. Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Chinese lend themselves to word play and have achieved a lasting grip on reality: Palestine had Qiryat Sefer, the 'City of the Letter,' and Syria had Byblos, the 'Town of the Book.' By contrast other civilizations seem 'speechless' or at least, as may have been the case in Egypt, not entirely cognizant of the creative and transformational powers of language. Lagos believed that Sumerian was an extraordinarily powerful language -- at least it was in Sumer five thousand years ago." "A language that lent itself to Enki's neurolinguistic hacking." "Early linguists, as well as the Kabbalists, believed in a fictional language called the tongue of Eden, the language of Adam. It enabled all men to understand each other, to communicate without misunderstanding. It was the language of the Logos, the moment when God created the world by speaking a word. In the tongue of Eden, naming a thing was the same as creating it. To quote Steiner again, 'Our speech interposes itself between apprehension and truth like a dusty pane or warped mirror. The tongue of Eden was like a flawless glass; a light of total understanding streamed through it. Thus Babel was a second Fall.' And Isaac the Blind, an early Kabbalist, said that, to quote Gershom Scholem's translation, 'The speech of men is connected with divine speech and all language whether heavenly or human derives from one source: the Divine Name.' The practical Kabbalists, the sorcerers, bore the title Ba'al Shem, meaning 'master of the divine name.'" "The machine language of the world," Hiro says.

Also bearing witness to the unbearable nature of the vulnerability experienced by peer-oriented kids is the preponderance of vulnerability-quelling drugs. Peer-oriented kids will do anything to avoid the human feelings of aloneness, suffering, and pain, and to escape feeling hurt, exposed, alarmed, insecure, inadequate, or self-conscious. The older and more peer-oriented the kids, the more drugs seem to be an inherent part of their lifestyle. Peer orientation creates an appetite for anything that would reduce vulnerability. Drugs are emotional painkillers. And, in another way, they help young people escape from the benumbed state imposed by their defensive emotional detachment. With the shutdown of emotions come boredom and alienation. Drugs provide an artificial stimulation to the emotionally jaded. They heighten sensation and provide a false sense of engagement without incurring the risks of genuine openness. In fact, the same drug can play seemingly opposite functions in an individual. Alcohol and marijuana, for example, can numb or, on the other hand, free the brain and mind from social inhibitions. Other drugs are stimulants — cocaine, amphetamines, and ecstasy; the very name of the latter speaks volumes about exactly what is missing in the psychic life of our emotionally incapacitated young people. The psychological function served by these drugs is often overlooked by well-meaning adults who perceive the problem to be coming from outside the individual, through peer pressure and youth culture mores. It is not just a matter of getting our children to say no. The problem lies much deeper. As long as we do not confront and reverse peer orientation among our children, we are creating an insatiable appetite for these drugs. The affinity for vulnerability-reducing drugs originates from deep within the defended soul. Our children's emotional safety can come only from us: then they will not be driven to escape their feelings and to rely on the anesthetic effects of drugs. Their need to feel alive and excited can and should arise from within themselves, from their own innately limitless capacity to be engaged with the universe. This brings us back to the essential hierarchical nature of attachment. The more the child needs attachment to function, the more important it is that she attaches to those responsible for her. Only then can the vulnerability that is inherent in emotional attachment be endured. Children don't need friends, they need parents, grandparents, adults who will assume the responsibility to hold on to them. The more children are attached to caring adults, the more they are able to interact with peers without being overwhelmed by the vulnerability involved. The less peers matter, the more the vulnerability of peer relationships can be endured. It is exactly those children who don't need friends who are more capable of having friends without losing their ability to feel deeply and vulnerably. But why should we want our children to remain open to their own vulnerability? What is amiss when detachment freezes the emotions in order to protect the child?

She was too narcoleptic to speak. Or move. How long had this been going on? Was she like this yesterday? Had I missed her illness in my quest to prove to my brain that my dick wasn’t the one behind this train wreck’s wheel? I touched her forehead again. It sizzled. “Sweetheart.” “Please get out.” The words clawed past her throat. “Someone needs to take care of you.” “That someone definitely isn’t you. You made that clear these past couple days.” I said nothing. She was right. I hadn’t bothered to check on her. Perhaps I’d wished she’d check on me. In truth, she’d already gone beyond any expectations in trying to make whatever it was between us work. Meanwhile, I’d shut her down. Repeatedly. “Shortbread, let me get you some medicine and tea.” “I don’t want you to nurse me to health. Do you hear me?” She must have hated that I’d seen her like this. Weak and ill. “Call Momma and Frankie. It’s them I want by my side.” I swallowed but didn’t argue. I understood she didn’t want to feel humiliated. To be taken care of by the man who ensured she understood her insignificance to him. How did her bullshit meter not fry? How could she think I really felt nothing toward her? “First, I’ll get you medicine, tea, and water. Then I’ll call for Hettie to stay with you. Then I’ll notify your mother.” I tugged her comforter up to her chin. “No arguments.” She tried to wave me out, groaning at the slightest movement. “Whatever. Just go. I don’t want to see your face.” I gave her what she wanted, though as always, not in the way she expected. The sequence of actions didn’t proceed as promised. First, I contacted Cara to dispatch the private jet to Georgia. Then I called my mother-in-law and Franklin—separately—demanding their presence. Only then did I enter the kitchen to grab water, tea, and ibuprofen for Shortbread’s fever. Naturally, like the chronic idler he often proved to be, Oliver still sat at the island, now enjoying an extra-large slice of red velvet cake I was pretty sure was meant to be consumed by Dallas. “What are you still doing here?” I demanded, collecting the things I needed for her. He scratched his temple with the handle of his fork, brows pulled together. “You invited me here. You wanted to watch a soccer game, remember?” I did not remember. I didn’t even remember my own address right now. “Get out.” “What about the—” I snatched the plate from his fingers, admitting to myself that I’d treaded into feral grounds. “This cake wasn’t for you to eat.” “You’ve gone insane in the ten minutes you were gone.” Oliver gawked at me, wide-eyed. “What happened to you? Did Durban not get her hands on the latest Henry Plotkin book and take her anger out on you?” Shit. The Henry Plotkin book. I shoved Oliver out with a fork still clutched in his grimy fist, dialing Hettie with my free hand. She half-yawned, half-spoke. “Yes?” “Dallas is ill. You need to come here and take care of her until my in-laws arrive in about two hours.” “Oh, yeah?” Her energy returned tenfold. “And what the hell are you gonna do during this time?” “Freeze my balls off.”(Chapter 58)

Now the muted setting made sense: a neutral setting, soothing light, a book. The deep magic fed the beast within him. It took a monumental effort of will to restrain it. With the flare so close, Curran was a powder keg with a short fuse. I had to be careful not to light that fuse. Nobody outside the Pack, except for Andrea, knew I was here. He could kill me right now and they would never find my body. We shared a silence for a long moment. Magic blossomed, filling me with giddy energy. The short waves again. They would ebb in a minute, and then I’d be exhausted. Guilt gnawed at me. He could control himself in my presence, but I apparently couldn’t control myself in his. “Curran, up on the roof . . . That is, my brakes don’t work sometimes.” He leaned forward, suddenly animated. “Do I smell an apology?” “Yes. I said things I shouldn’t have. I regret saying them.” “Does this mean you’re throwing yourself at my feet?” “No. I pretty much meant that part. I just wish I could’ve put it in less offensive terms.” I glanced at him and saw a lion. He didn’t change, his face was still fully human, but there was something disturbingly lionlike in the way he sat, completely focused on me, as if ready to pounce. Stalking me without moving a muscle. The primordial urge to freeze shackled my limbs. I just sat there, unable to look away. A slow, lazy, carnivorous smile touched Curran’s lips. “Not only will you sleep with me, but you will say ‘please.’” I stared at him, shocked. The smile widened. “You will say ‘please’ before and ‘thank you’ after.” Nervous laughter bubbled up. “You’ve gone insane. All that peroxide in your hair finally did your brain in, Goldilocks.

The technique was simple, but the response was complex. I also discovered that eye wobbles and eye freezes were not the only reflexes that revealed the presence of traumas held deep in the brain; I observed many other reactions when I stopped my hand movement, such as multiple or hard blinks and eye widening or narrowing. Any reflex of the face (or ultimately the body) seemed to manifest when the eyes arrived at a position of relevance. I experimented with stopping my hand when I observed a cough, a deep inhale or exhale, a hard swallow, lip licking, a head tilt, a nostril flare, or a change in facial expression.

Predictable, consistent, and shared procedures for arriving at and starting class, distributing materials, and accomplishing daily routines lower stress and provide a comfortable environment. If we can set up routines and procedures so that the brain does not have to resort to the fight, flight, or freeze response, we will alleviate a lot of stress and distraction.

Get rid of a brain freeze by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Same goes for preventing a sneeze. And I bet the same goes for another thing.

By looking at our actions critically and dispassionately, as if we were observing someone else, we stand a chance of breaking out of the cycle of action followed by self-justification, followed by more committed action. We can learn to put a little space between what we feel and how we respond, insert a moment of reflection, and think about whether we really want to buy that canoe in January, really want to send good money after bad, really want to hold on to a belief that is unfettered by facts. We might even change our minds before our brains freeze our thoughts into consistent patterns.

Runnin'" Can't keep runnin' away..... [Verse 1: Fat Lip] I must admit on some occasions I went out like a punk and a chump or a sucka or something to that effect Respect I usedto never get when all I got was upset when niggas use to be like 'What's up fool!' and tried to seat a nigga like the Lip for no reason at all I can recall crip niggas throwin' c in my face down the hall I'm kickin' it in the back of the school eatin' chicken at three, wonderin' why is everybody always pickin' on me I tried to talk and tell tham chill I did nothing to deserve this But when it didn't work I wasn't scared just real nervous and unprepared to deal with scrappin' no doubt cuz my pappy never told me how to knock a nigga out But now in 95 I must survive as a man on my own Fuck around with Fatlip yes ya get blown I'm not tryin to show no macho is shown but when it's on, if it's on, then it's on! [Verse 2: Slim Kid Tre] There comes a time in every mans life when he's gotta handle up on his own Can't depend on friends to help you in a sqeeze, please they got problems of their own Down for the count on seven chickens shits don't get to heaven til they faced these fears in these fear zones Used to get jacked back in high school I played it cool just so some real shit won't get full blown Being where I'm from they let the smoke come quicker than an evil red-neck could lynch a helpless colored figure And as a victim I invented low-key til the keyhole itself got lower than me So I stood up and let my free form form free I don't sweat it I let the bullshit blow in the breeze in other words just freeze [Verse 3: Knumbskull #1] It's 1995 now that I'm older stress weighs on my shoulders heavy as boulders but I told ya till the day that I die I still will be a soldier and that's all I told ya and that's all I showed ya and all this calamity is rippin' my sanity Can it be I'm a celebrity whose on the brink of insanity Now don't be wishin's of switchin' any positions with me cuz when you in my position, it ain't never easy to do any type of maintaining cuz all this gaming and famin' from entertainin' is hella straining to the brain and... But I can't keep runnin I just gotta keep keen and cunnin'...

I can’t.” I scoot forward on the chair and lean close to Carolyn. She freezes, trying to keep her eyes from meeting mine. “Or maybe you’re not Hunter’s friend and you gave him a hot shot. Is that what you did, Carolyn? Did someone give you a special dose of Akira just for Hunter?” Stop digging, boys, we struck oil. Carolyn’s brain is still humming like a tuning fork, but at least she’s focused on something now. It’s there in her eyes. She’s beating herself silly trying to make all the contradictions and lies in her life add up to something sane. She really believes she’s Hunter’s friend, but the meth fog she lives in lets her justify giving Hunter drugs she knew were bad because someone up the food chain promised her more drugs or more money or the chance to settle a long-standing debt. Whatever her reasons, she feels guilty as hell. The addict self-pity tears start pumping out of her red and bruised eyes. I want to smack her to see if it snaps her brain back into gear, but I just pat her lightly on the shoulder. I keep my voice low, like I’m speaking to a child.

I must have fallen asleep on a rock. It’s digging into my shoulder blade. I scrunch up and start to roll over, but then freeze. It’s not just a single rock. It’s a giant one. Like concrete. I go numb as I realize what this means. It can’t be…I ease open my eye, and then in an instant I’m sitting upright and looking around. And all I see are cars. And people in blue jeans. And street signs. And I smell smog and I hear radios crackling in the passing cabs. I close my eyes for at least ten seconds and then open them again, but it’s all still there. The twenty-first century. I can’t stop my face from falling. I’m back. Just when I’d realized I don’t want this at all, I’m back. My shopping bags are strewn around me. I’m wearing jeans. A T-shirt. My heels. I glance back to realize the Prada shop is still a few yards behind me, just where I’d left it. I’m sitting in the exact spot I’d fallen down. I never left at all. I stay put for a few moments as a pounding headache fades. Alex. Emily. Even Victoria. They were all make-believe. Some figment of my banged-up brain. That means the kiss…God, I made it all up! Every single thing! I want to lie back down, close my eyes, and go back. I want horrible soup and stiff corsets and lump mattresses. I’ll trade it all to see Alex again. To go to Emily’s wedding. A man trips on my foot and then has the nerve to glare at me, even though he basically kicked me in the shin. Yes, I’m definitely in the twenty-first century. I scramble to my feet and wipe the dirt off my jeans and lean over to pick up my bags. And then I notice them. My heels. My beautiful, damaged heels. I glance over my shoulder. Yes, the Prada shop is definitely still behind me. I’ve gone maybe four steps from the door. Nowhere near enough to ruin the heels like this. They’re scuffed, dented, and scratched. I gather up the rest of my bags, my grin in full-force. It wasn’t fake. It wasn’t make-believe or a dream or anything. It happened. As sure as the mud on the heels, it happened. There’s even a dent where the front door of Harksbury bounced off the toe. I don’t know how or why or anything, but somehow, I was there. I danced with Alex and helped Emily. I played a piano for a duke and a countess, and I ate more exotic animals than I ever wanted to. But it happened. I don’t understand it; I only know that the last month was real, and it was the best of my life. I sling the bags over my shoulder and practically skip down the block. No matter what happens next, no matter what happens for the rest of my life, I have something no one else will ever have. An adventure to rival Indiana Jones. A crazy month that can never be replicated.

Oral Sex Won’t Cause Brain Freeze.

Handout The Impact of Stress on Learning … When we experience strong emotions (fear, extreme sadness, anger, embarrassment, etc.), our bodies release the hormone Cortisol, known as the “stress hormone.” This activates the rapid, reflexive responses of the amygdala (located at the back part of the brain), and the thinking part of our brain (the prefrontal cortex where the executive function are), shuts down. Reasoning and decision-making become challenging, we have a hard time considering other people’s perspectives, and we have a harder time accessing our memory. The brain goes into survival mode, which is often experienced as fight, flight, or freeze. Without calm: No learning can take place No problems can be solved Empathy for others becomes difficult

Richard Davidson who is a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin has expertise in the brain and emotion, and he’s found in his research that when we’re agitated, when we are upset and angry and anxious, there’s a lot of activity in the right prefrontal area, just behind the forehead, also the amygdala, the brain’s trigger point for the fight-flight-freeze response, when we’re on the other hand in a really positive state, I feel great, enthusiastic, what a wonderful day, there’s a lot of activity on the left side and no activity on the right side, each of us have a ratio at rest of right-to-left activity that predicts our mood range day to day. He finds there’s a bell curve for this like for IQ, most of us are in the middle, we have bad days, we have good days, if you’re very far to the right you may be clinically depressed or clinically anxious, if you’re very far to the left, you’re very resilient, you bounce right back from setbacks. So Davidson paired up with a fella named Jon Kabat-Zinn who has made mindfulness, as he calls it, very popular, for example, in the medical sector, as a way to manage chronic conditions, and also in the states of business recently, a lot of businesses are bringing it in, and it’s more or less what we just did. Davidson and Kabat-Zinn went to a biotech start-up, a 24/7 you know high pressure environment and they taught people how to do mindfulness which is more or less the exercise of watching the breath, but they did it 30 minutes a day, for 8 weeks. What he found was that before that people’s brains were tilted to the right, they’re pretty hassled and stressed, after eight weeks, 30 minutes a day, they were tilting back towards the left and what’s very interesting is people spontaneously started saying: “Hey, you know, I’m starting to enjoy my work again, I remember what I love about this job”. In other words the positive mood was really making a difference.

Some twenty years ago, Mary Main and her colleagues at Berkeley began to identify a group of children (about 15 percent of those they studied) who seemed to be unable to figure out how to engage with their caregivers. The critical issue turned out to be that the caregivers themselves were a source of distress or terror to the children.16 Children in this situation have no one to turn to, and they are faced with an unsolvable dilemma; their mothers are simultaneously necessary for survival and a source of fear.17 They “can neither approach (the secure and ambivalent ‘strategies’), shift [their] attention (the avoidant ‘strategy’), nor flee.”18 If you observe such children in a nursery school or attachment laboratory, you see them look toward their parents when they enter the room and then quickly turn away. Unable to choose between seeking closeness and avoiding the parent, they may rock on their hands and knees, appear to go into a trance, freeze with their arms raised, or get up to greet their parent and then fall to the ground. Not knowing who is safe or whom they belong to, they may be intensely affectionate with strangers or may trust nobody. Main called this pattern “disorganized attachment.” Disorganized attachment is “fright without solution.

Of course, I’m talking about what most people know as “brain freeze.” Scientists identify it as a stimulus headache, or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia for all you science nerds. You may be surprised to learn that serious studies have been conducted on brain freeze at major institutions such as Harvard University. These studies have shown that brain freeze happens when an extremely cold substance quickly hits the roof of the mouth, causing the capillaries to constrict, followed by an equally quick rewarming when warm air is reintroduced to the mouth. This warming causes vasodilation, or a widening of the blood vessels. The rapid changes in temperature in the upper mouth lead to this painful sensation. Most of this is standard knowledge, but a study by Dr. Jorge Serrador revealed that there is a correlation between brain freeze and migraine sufferers. His research found that those suffering from migraines are more likely to get brain freeze, which suggests that there may be similar biological processes at work. Understanding how the contraction and widening of blood vessels in the brain take place may help scientists develop better headache medicines.

Our brain responds to intense emotions by activating the sympathetic nervous system: our heart rate goes up, stress hormones and/or endorphins are released depending on the emotion, and (when pressured) we prepare to flee or freeze.

Pleasure gives freezing of the brain.

I had no doubt that I could do something, but what, and how? I had no contacts and I believed in nothing. And the obsession with my identity which I had developed in the factory hospital returned with a vengeance. Who was I, how had I come to be? Certainly I couldn’t help being different from when I left the campus; but now a new, painful, contradictory voice had grown up within me, and between its demands for revengeful action and Mary’s silent pressure I throbbed with guilt and puzzlement. I wanted peace and quiet, tranquillity, but was too much aboil inside. Somewhere beneath the load of the emotion-freezing ice which my life had conditioned my brain to produce, a spot of black anger glowed and threw off a hot red light of such intensity that had Lord Kelvin known of its existence, he would have had to revise his measurements.

brain freeze.” Scientists identify it as a stimulus headache, or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia

Once, unfortunately, in a crisis situation (as the Greek poet Archilochus pointed out so long ago) we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. Once again, the issue is fear. The more fear in the equation, the fewer options at our disposal. In times of strife, the brain limits our choices to speed up our reaction times. The extreme example being, fight or flight, where the situation is so dire, that the brain gives us only potential actions. Freezing is the third, yet the same thing happens to a lesser degree under any high stress conditions. And the responses we fall back upon under duress, are the ones we fully automatized: those habitual patterns we've executed over and over again.

if you are unfortunate enough to get hit with a case of brain freeze, put your tongue on the top of your mouth. It works every time.

I’ve never been able to confidently strike up a conversation or randomly make small talk. My brain always freezes in those situations, spending too much time trying to figure out what to say. I typically need the other person to lead the conversation. It allows me to analyse the context of the interaction, which then gives me a chance to ease into it.

Solutions to life-or-death problems faced by our ancient ancestors while swimming in dark oceans, hiding from dinosaurs, or fighting with other Stone Age bands are built into the brain today. While the parts of the brain work together to meet our needs, they do have specialized functions shaped by our evolutionary history. To push the metaphor, it’s as if we each have an inner lizard freezing or fleeing from danger, a mouse sniffing about for cheese, and a monkey looking for its tribe.

To resist, is already to preserve one’s heart and one’s brain. But above all, it must be to act, to do something concrete, to perform reasoned and useful actions.’ There was only one goal, Vildé declared, a goal to be shared by all resisters, regardless of their political beliefs, and that was to bring about the ‘rebirth of a pure and free France’. Here and there, as the freezing winter began to ease, the first acts of armed resistance, of the sabotage of trains and the blowing up of German depots, were being planned. What the occupiers most feared, the transformation of isolated and spontaneous gestures of rebellion into concerted acts of hostility, was just about to start.

Whenever we feel threatened, we instinctively turn to the first level, social engagement. We call out for help, support, and comfort from the people around us. But if no one comes to our aid, or we’re in immediate danger, the organism reverts to a more primitive way to survive: fight or flight. We fight off our attacker, or we run to a safe place. However, if this fails—we can’t get away, we’re held down or trapped—the organism tries to preserve itself by shutting down and expending as little energy as possible. We are then in a state of freeze or collapse.

people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation.

But what do we do about brain freeze right now? Well, that’s easy enough. Slow down when you’re eating ice cream, or if you are unfortunate enough to get hit with a case of brain freeze, put your tongue on the top of your mouth. It works every time.

When the body experiences a sudden shock, it actually freezes for one twenty-fifth of a second and then deploys intense psychological curiosity, mobilizing every neuron and nerve, every sense, every possible input to work out exactly what just happened. In a microsecond or two the brain gathers the intel, sorts it, analyzes it, cross-references it, and is ready to issue directions for what to do next.

I mean, it isn’t like you to forget about food,” he laughed. “Heeey…” “It’s probably because he was too busy stuffing his face at BlockRonald’s,” added Devlin. “Heeeey…” “Or maybe the brain freezes made him forget,” added Hunter. “Heeeeey… stop teaming up on me…

Too much stress literally causes the human brain to freeze and shut down temporarily.

An army! Not an idea in it, not an ideal, not a fighting spark, not a flash of imagination, not a capful of the fresh air of inspiration in it: just a dead, frozen, congealed mass of routine, restriction and prejudice, mud, leaves and dead twigs that any January might freeze together: paltry, petty, incapable, craven, dead-brained: betraying the faith and courage of the soldier: holding together, not by a common aim and a common resolution, but by the sheer weight of inertia and blanco. Blanco, symbol of the corruption of the army, blanco, as stiff as starch, and crumbling to dust under the first pressure.

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.

We fight off our attacker, or we run to a safe place. However, if this fails—we can’t get away, we’re held down or trapped—the organism tries to preserve itself by shutting down and expending as little energy as possible. We are then in a state of freeze or collapse.

My body locks. My bones, my blood, my brain freeze in place, seizing in some kind of sudden, uncontrollable paralysis that spreads through me so quickly I can't seem to breathe. I'm wheezing in deep, strained inhalations, and the walls won't stop swaying in front of me.

That doesn't just explain autistic people's hypersensitivity, but also their apparent insensitivity and limitations in social communication. We close up in the overwhelming storm of stimuli, like a computer that freezes when you give it ten different tasks at the same time. Then our hyper-fanatic brains make sure we remember that scary, nasty experience very well and will try to avoid it in the future.

The next time you see a wee chickadee, calling contentedly and happily while the air makes you shiver from head to foot, think of the hard-shelled frozen insects passing down his throat, the icy air entering lungs and air-sacs, and ponder a moment on the wondrous little laboratory concealed in his mite of a body; which his wings bear up with so little effort, which his tiny legs support, now hopping along a branch, now suspended from some wormy twig. Can we do aught but silently marvel at this alchemy? A little bundle of muscle and blood, which in this freezing weather can transmute frozen beetles and zero air into a happy, cheery little Black-capped Chickadee, as he names himself, whose bravery shames us, whose trustfulness warms our hearts! And the next time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered life, think of the marvellous little engine which your lead will stifle forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear bright eyes of the bird whose body equals yours in physical perfection, and whose tiny brain can generate a sympathy, a love for its mate, which in sincerity and unselfishness suffers little when compared with human affection.

you’re right!’ I yelled. I had to stop the van. I forced myself forward and leapt into the driver’s seat, but at that precise moment the van went BUMP over the speed bump at the bottom of the hill. Now, I know speed bumps are supposed to slow you down, but it turns out that when you’re reversing through time speed bumps work in reverse, and we were whooshed along at a chillingly frightening speed. I caught

The angels and hallucination-like, we were all fighting for me to not be taken in any way by demons, or by the girls, that wanted me for their sexual role-playing games. Yet, the sisters got their way a lot of the time as you know, as luck would have it. We were fighting them off, as well as beating them all off too. I remember the white angels would shock the demons away with their bolt of lightning strikes and the thunder would crack out the glass of the school windows, and spray all over us. Supernaturally all the locker doors would open and close, the papers would fly, the pencils would zip by me like their uniforms and fingers, I was in the storm of their pain, everything was happening so hallucination-like. This is how Kristen told me her rapes were like too, maybe, that is the way it is for all girls, which lived through all that hurt…? Your brain is half on, yet it is like it is wanting to be turned off. The demons have satanic powers, which make angels freeze in mid-fight and flight. They are so strong they could tear the wings off of an Angel with their thought of mind. However, the bolt of lightning can make demons blow up; conversely, they disintegrate and then rise from the ashes once more to fight yet again. They do not go away unless they have bodies to go into, or they are banished back down to hell. Otherwise, to claim the souls they want, you have to agree with what they say; only if you do not deny them, they will remain. Never- ever let them win! The demons can take on any figure or form they want to. Some choose to be animals, and some choose to be human-like beings, like the four sisters and clan, and the only protection was from the angels above me that would fight them off of me. Do you see what I mean- or did I lose you?

believe that if neither option looks appealing, the brain will choose to freeze or do nothing. In the case of a

It was not difficult for an intelligent physicist to understand what was behind his gazes. The longer we sit, the more he looks at my smallest detail, he keeps looking at my lips, my neck, and my shoulders, with a gaze full of passion. Shy but still a female, who will not fail to feel a man’s desires toward her which is one of her most important strengths that was inherited from her ancestors. She looks away, but still sees her surroundings with a wider panoramic view than a man does. her sensors pick up risks, feelings, and repressed desires, many times as much as he can. It is enough for her to stand in front of the wardrobe and without moving her head or her eyes, she sees all its contents, she finds what she wants in a second, while a man has to move his eyes, head, and probably most of his organs and all of his senses to find what he is looking for, and often fails. Thus, our mind has developed these physical abilities, over thousands of years, as needed. The man’s need was to focus on his arrow and his prey, and his foresight has evolved, it has become more focused, while the woman’s need is to protect the home and children from dangers, her panoramic view has evolved to see her surroundings more broadly than the man’s. So, our mind programmed itself, and in this way, it developed our abilities. What it does not need, it leaves or neglects until this thing withers and dies, but what it thinks is important or needed, it keeps, strengthens it. Necessity is the key to evolution. Even athletes are well aware of this: in the body-building halls, they gradually lift weights, to force their brains to feed and build muscles. And as long as they’re still in pain to lift a weight, their brains realize they need more muscle power, so they can handle that weight without danger, and the brain starts to protein the muscles, thereby strengthening them and increasing their size. If it didn’t find enough protein in the diet, it creates it. As the muscles became stronger, and the weight on the trainee became easier to carry, he increased it, and the brain began to strengthen the muscles more to handle the new weight. If the muscle ceases to gain weight, it freezes at enough force and size to carry the current weight. The principle of negligence and usage; what has a need remains, and what has no need perishes. But Mousa’ need recently while going to the bodybuilding gym is not to stimulate the mind to meet his muscular needs. Rather, his causes are more profound, dangerous, and insane… But whom of us would need this?

Scientists have studied this phenomenon, proving that naming a negative emotion zaps some of its strength. Psychiatrist and proponent of mindfulness Dan Siegel3 explains naming your emotions as the “upstairs” brain (where you do your rational thinking and planning) dousing your “downstairs” brain (where those primal fight, flight, or freeze feelings reside) with feel-good chemicals that dampen the fight, flight, or freeze response. Simply saying how you feel out loud helps to take some of the stress away.

The elementary self system in the brain stem and limbic system is massively activated when people are faced with the threat of annihilation, which results in an overwhelming sense of fear and terror accompanied by intense physiological arousal. To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed, and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut those feelings down by freezing and dissociation.11 How do

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.