Easily Attached Quotes

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I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue. Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each letter. Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips. A name I won’t throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought. And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar form….. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart.
Coco J. Ginger
I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long …arousing and persuading and reproaching…You will not easily find another like me.
Plato (Apology)
Hearts become attached as easily as they become broken and our minds are left sifting through the pieces, which I fear take a lifetime to put back together to achieve any form of acceptance.
Jaycee Dugard (A Stolen Life)
Women could probably be trained quite easily to see men first as sexual things. If girls never experienced sexual violence; if a girl's only window on male sexuality were a stream of easily available, well-lit, cheap images of boys slightly older than herself, in their late teens, smiling encouragingly and revealing cuddly erect penises the color of roses or mocha, she might well look at, masturbate to, and, as an adult, "need" beauty pornography based on the bodies of men. And if those initiating penises were represented to the girl as pneumatically erectible, swerving neither left nor right, tasting of cinnamon or forest berries, innocent of random hairs, and ever ready; if they were presented alongside their measurements, length, and circumference to the quarter inch; if they seemed to be available to her with no troublesome personality attached; if her sweet pleasure seemed to be the only reason for them to exist--then a real young man would probably approach the young woman's bed with, to say the least, a failing heart.
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
Attached to High Tide?” she echoed, her voice teasing. “Have you grown attached to me, Hong Liwen?” “Yes.” His reply came easily. It didn’t sound like he was teasing her in return. “I have.
Chloe Gong (Foul Lady Fortune (Foul Lady Fortune, #1))
I especially like your autumn trees, gracefully letting their leaves fall. That is how I would like to shed my own leaves in this autumn of life, easily and elegantly. Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway? I suppose I mean youth, which has been so present in our conversations.
Isabel Allende (The Japanese Lover)
We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consumerism needs children who do not stay attached to their toys for very long and learn to expect the next round of presents as soon as possible. When consumerism succeeds, our attachments are shallow, easily broken, so we can move on to the next thing we're supposed to get. Being a good consumer means desiring new things, not cherishing old ones. And the new things you're supposed to desire are not always material things. Spirituality is now a consumerist enterprise, too.
Phillip Cary (Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do)
For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.
Alan W. Watts
I can easily believe it. Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to. Such varieites of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing! And it is not merely in its follies, that they are read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting. What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation-- of all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes.
Jane Austen
We were sisters. Two girls who shared pieces of each other, tied together by an unspoken bond, a warm feeling of attachment, that no amount of bickering could easily sever. We were sisters. Comrades born from the same womb.
June Hur (A Crane Among Wolves)
That is why I take the younger ones, you see. You already give parts of your hearts away so easily--little fragments attached to celebrities, to hobbies, to ill-fated love affairs. Your kind have the best chance at survival.
Emily Lloyd-Jones (The Hearts We Sold)
Machiavelli believed it was better to be feared than loved, because attachment is easily severed, but the terror of pain is ever present.
J.M. Darhower (Torture to Her Soul (Monster in His Eyes, #2))
The idea that women's strong attachments to each other are what make them so vulnerable is horrifying. I count my close friendships with a few girls that I know as one of the best things I have going for me right now. My love for them leaves me open to hurt, but ... all love does, or at least that's the cliche. Perhaps girls and women do come to love each other too quickly, or once they are trapped into appearing as though they love one another, they don't want to back out of it. That is probably true. But a fear of confrontation in relationships is the downside. The ability to love easily is a positive.
Phyllis Chesler (Woman's Inhumanity to Woman)
Hyperarousal causes traumatized people to become easily distressed by unexpected stimuli. Their tendency to be triggered into reliving traumatic memories illustrates how their perceptions have become excessively focused on the involuntary search for the similarities between the present and their traumatic past. As a consequence, many neutral experiences become reinterpreted as being associated with the traumatic past.
Marion F. Solomon (Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
When it comes to sexuality, romantic love plays a large part in feminine sexual scripts. Research suggests that women make sense of sexual encounters in terms of the amount of intimacy experienced; love becomes a rationale for sex. If i am in love, women often reason, sex is okay. Men more easily accept sex for its own sake, with no emotional strings necessarily attached. In this way, sexual scripts for men have involved more of an instrumental (sex for its own sake) approach, whereas for women it tends to be more expressive (sex involving emotional attachments). There is evidence to suggest that women are moving in the direction of sex as an end in itself without the normative constraints of an emotional relationship. By and large, however, women are still more likely than men to engage in sex as an act of love. Many scholars suggest that romance is one of the key ways that sexism is maintained in society.
Susan Shaw (Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings)
Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.
Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose)
How did I become who I am? I have a heart easily hurt. I believed that cruelty was most often caused by ignorance. I thought that if everybody knew, everything would be different. I was a silly child who believed in the revolution. [...] I can`t be bought or intimidated because I`m already cut down in the middle. I walk with women whispering in my ears. Every time I cry there`s a name attached to each tear. [...] I long to touch my sisters; I wish I could take away the pain.
Andrea Dworkin (Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant)
In actual fact, conventions are the death of real tradition as they are of all real life. They are parasites which attach themselves to the living organism of tradition and devour all its reality, turning it into a hollow formality. Tradition is living and active, but convention is passive and dead. Tradition does not form us automatically: we have to work to understand it. Convention is accepted passively, as a matter of routine. Therefore, convention easily becomes an evasion of reality. It offers us only pretended ways of solving the problems of living - a system of gestures and formalities. Tradition really teaches us to live and shows us how to take full responsibility for our own lives. Thus tradition is often flatly opposed to what is ordinary, to what is mere routine. But convention, which is a mere repetition of familiar routines, follows the line of least resistance. One goes through an act, without trying to understand the meaning of it all, merely because everyone else does the same. Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving - born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way. Convention is simply the ossification of social customs. The activities of conventional people are merely excuses for NOT acting in a more integrally human way. Tradition nourishes the life of the spirit; convention merely disguises its interior decay.
Thomas Merton (No Man Is an Island)
We get attached to certain people and forms and things and situations. But the truth is, things will always change and by understanding that on a deep level we won't be surprised when it happens to us. We can more easily face loss and surf the now.
Todd Perelmuter
The demons are not easily dispatched, instead attaching themselves to otherwise beautiful things, a favorite food or a love note left for you, to see how you react when they rear up.
Thomm Quackenbush (Find What You Love and Let It Kill You)
Children happen to be more attached to the female narcissist due to the way our society is still structured and to the fact that women are the ones to give birth and to serve as primary caretakers. It is much easier for a woman to think of her children as her extensions because they once indeed were her physical extensions and because her on-going interaction with them is both more intensive and more extensive. [The] male narcissist is more likely to regard his children as a nuisance than as a Source of Narcissistic Supply - especially as they grow older and become autonomous. With less alternatives than men, the narcissistic woman fights to maintain her most reliable Source of Supply: her children. Through insidious indoctrination, guilt-formation, emotional sanctions and blackmail, deprivation and other psychological mechanisms, she tries to induce in her offspring dependence which cannot easily be unraveled.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
The more I reflect on the elder son in me, the more I realize how deeply rooted this form of lostness really is and how hard it is to return home from there. Returning home from a lustful escapade seems so much easier than returning home from a cold anger that has rooted itself in the deepest corners of my being. My resentment is not something that can be easily distinguished and dealt with rationally. It is far more pernicious: something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue. Isn’t it good to be obedient, dutiful, law-abiding, hardworking, and self-sacrificing? And still it seems that my resentments and complaints are mysteriously tied to such praiseworthy attitudes. This connection often makes me despair. At the very moment I want to speak or act out of my most generous self, I get caught in anger or resentment. And it seems that just as I want to be most selfless, I find myself obsessed about being loved. Just when I do my utmost to accomplish a task well, I find myself questioning why others do not give themselves as I do. Just when I think I am capable of overcoming my temptations, I feel envy toward those who gave in to theirs. It seems that wherever my virtuous self is, there also is the resentful complainer.
Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming)
Wild Spanish cattle were easily acquired with a rope - within a year we had a hundred head. Hogs and mustang horses were also for the taking. There were deer, turkey, bear, squirrel, the occasional buffalo, turtles and fish from the river, ducks, plums and mustang grapes, bee trees and persimmons - the country was rich with life the way it is rotten with people today. The only problem was keeping your scalp attached.
Philipp Meyer (The Son)
But once upon a time - that would be our time - a telephone cord seemed like nothing less than a lifeline. It was your attachment to the outside world and, even more than that, your attachment to the people you loved, or wanted to love, or tried to love. Everything about it was fitting - the way it curled in on itself, the way it got so easily tangled, the way you could pull it only so far before it kept you in place. Twisted and knotted and essential.
David Levithan (Two Boys Kissing)
Working outward in concentric circles from the single mother's situation, we can easily draw a picture of what a 'good' mother-son relationship needs in order to flourish. In its ideal form, mom would be experiencing physical, material, social, and emotional support from four interdependent sources: an intimate partner who is also attached to the child; a select group of close friends and family; a wider community that supports mom's values and goals; and a maternity-flexible workplace.
Michael Gurian (The Wonder of Boys: What Parents, Mentors and Educators Can Do to Shape Boys into Exceptional Men)
Most people are like this. Something they have made in their minds over and over again strongly prevents them from having a complete life. They are desperately trying to get out of a suffering realm that they have made themselves by becoming blindly attached to sensations. But it doesn’t work that easily. The simple reason for their difficulties is that they don’t understand impermanence. This is the path of human beings’ suffering. Everything in this world happens by natural process. You make everything, so you get everything, which means you get some kind of suffering. “I don’t like getting old.” “Oh, my relationship with him ended. I feel so miserable.” “I hate being sick like this.” “I don’t like him.” “I can’t believe my grandmother died.” We all suffer. But if you correctly attain this insight into impermanence, then you can take away these Eight Sufferings. If you don’t understand that all things are impermanent, however, then you become easily attached to things that must eventually pass. As a result, you cannot take away your suffering, and you only continue to make more suffering for yourself and for this whole world.
Seung Sahn (The Compass of Zen (Shambhala Dragon Editions))
Modulation and processing of the range of sensory experiences allows for social engagement and attachment to others. A person who is easily overwhelmed by sounds, touch, movement, or visual stimulation may avoid interactions with persons or situations that are highly stimulating. In contrast, the person who does not process sensory input unless it is very intense may develop a pattern of thrill seeking, high stimulation, and risky behavior.
Georgia A. Degangi (Dysregulated Adult: Integrated Treatment Approaches)
Diagnoses —such as ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, an autism spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, the newly coined disruptive mood regulation disorder, or any other disorder—can be helpful in some ways. They “validate” that there’s something different about your kid, for example. But they can also be counterproductive in that they can cause caregivers to focus more on a child’s challenging behaviors rather than on the lagging skills and unsolved problems giving rise to those behaviors. Also, diagnoses suggest that the problem resides within the child and that it’s the child who needs to be fixed. The reality is that it takes two to tango. Let there be no doubt, there’s something different about your child. But you are part of the mix as well. How you understand and respond to the hand you’ve been dealt is essential to helping your child.
Ross W. Greene (The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children)
SELFHOOD AND DISSOCIATION The patient with DID or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) has used their capacity to psychologically remove themselves from repetitive and inescapable traumas in order to survive that which could easily lead to suicide or psychosis, and in order to eke some growth in what is an unsafe, frequently contradictory and emotionally barren environment. For a child dependent on a caregiver who also abuses her, the only way to maintain the attachment is to block information about the abuse from the mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behaviour.10 Thus, childhood abuse is more likely to be forgotten or otherwise made inaccessible if the abuse is perpetuated by a parent or other trusted caregiver. In the dissociative individual, ‘there is no uniting self which can remember to forget’. Rather than use repression to avoid traumatizing memories, he/she resorts to alterations in the self ‘as a central and coherent organization of experience. . . DID involves not just an alteration in content but, crucially, a change in the very structure of consciousness and the self’ (p. 187).29 There may be multiple representations of the self and of others. Middleton, Warwick. "Owning the past, claiming the present: perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients." Australasian Psychiatry 13.1 (2005): 40-49.
Warwick Middleton
Without ending sorrow there is no love. Sorrow is part of your self-interest, part of your egotistic, self-centred activity. You cry for another, for your son, for your brother, for your mother. Why? Because you have lost something that you are attached to, something which gave you companionship, comfort, and all the rest of it. With the ending of that person, you realize how utterly empty, how lonely your life is. Then you cry. And there are many, many people ready to comfort you, and you slip very easily into that network, that trap, of comfort. There is the comfort in God, which is an image put together by thought, or comfort in some illusory concept or idea. And that’s all you want. But you never question the very urge, the desire for comfort, never ask whether there is any comfort at all. One needs to have a comfortable bed or chair— that’s all right. But you never ask whether there is any comfort at all psychologically, inwardly. Is it an illusion which has become your truth? You understand? An illusion can become your truth— the illusion that you are God, that there is God. That God has been created by thought, by fear. If you had no fear, there would be no God. So this is a very complex problem of our life— why we are so shallow, empty, filled with other people’s knowledge and with books; why we are not independent, free human beings to find out; why we are slaves. This is not a rhetorical question; it is a question each one of us must ask. In the very asking and doubting, there comes freedom. And without freedom there is no sense of truth.
J. Krishnamurti
So the journey is over and I am back again where I started, richer by much experience and poorer by many exploded convictions, many perished certainties. For convictions and certainties are too often the concomitants of ignorance. Those who like to feel that they are always right and who attach a high importance to their own opinions should stay at home. When one is traveling, convictions are mislaid as easily as spectacles; but unlike spectacles, they are not easily replaced.
Aldous Huxley
The more we allow one kind of energy, the more the other can come through. Once a commitment is made, it is easier to allow a partner their solitude or freedom. Once we know our freedom is respected, we can more easily make a commitment. Conversely, the more a partner insists on one aspect, the more his lover will yearn for its opposite. Dynamic balance is a dance between attachment and freedom.
Anodea Judith (Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self)
Children who experience anxious or ambivalent attachments to their primary caregivers may "fall in love" too easily, seeking extreme closeness right off the bat and reacting intensely to any suggestion of abandonment.
Adam Cash
Acedia is not a relic of the fourth century or a hang-up of some weird Christian monks, but a force we ignore at our peril. Whenever we focus on the foibles of celebrities to the detriment of learning more about the real world- the emergence of fundamentalist religious and nationalist movements, the economic factors endangering our reefs and rain forests, the social and ecological damage caused by factory farming - acedia is at work. Wherever we run to escape it, acedia is there, propelling us to 'the next best thing,' another paradise to revel in and wantonly destroy. It also sends us backward, prettying the past with the gloss of nostalgia. Acedia has come so far with us that it easily attached to our hectic and overburdened schedules. We appear to be anything but slothful, yet that is exactly what we are, as we do more and care less, and feel pressured to do still more.
Kathleen Norris (Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life)
We were sisters. Two girls who shared pieces of each other, tied together by an unspoken bond, a warm feeling of attachment, that no amount of bickering could easily sever. We were sisters. Comrades born from the same womb.
June Hur (A Crane Among Wolves)
The third person. There was no sign of this happiness on the outside, she knew. She was bored by this happiness that seemed out of place, impatient to get rid of it. The feeling was less pleasurable than she had imagined it might have been, less well-defined, and when she felt along its strings she found it was not easily traced or attached to the objects she thought it might have been attached to. Perhaps it was not attached to anything at all.
Joanna Walsh (Vertigo)
I especially like your autumn trees, gracefully letting their leaves fall. That is how I would like to shed my own leaves in this autumn of life, easily and elegantly. Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway? I
Isabel Allende (The Japanese Lover)
When we are totally absorbed in our own feelings and attached to our own view and agenda without recognizing it, it is virtually impossible to have a genuine communication. We will easily feel threatened by anyone who doesn't see things our way, and we will tend to be able to relate to only those people whose view of the world coincides with our own. We will find our encounters with people who hold strong opposing views to be stressful. When we react by feeling personally threatened, it is easy to draw battle lines and have the relationship to degenerate into "us" against "them." This makes the possibility of communication very difficult. When we lock in to certain restricted mind-sets, we cannot go beyond the nine dots and perceive the whole system of which we and our views are only a part.
Jon Kabat-Zinn (Full Catastrophe Living)
When the attachment figure is also a threat to the child, two systems with conflicting goals are activated simultaneously or sequentially: the attachment system, whose goal is to seek proximity, and the defense systems, whose goal is to protect. In these contexts, the social engagement system is profoundly compromised and its development interrupted by threatening conditions. This intolerable conflict between the need for attachment and the need for defense with the same caregiver results in the disorganized–disoriented attachment pattern (Main & Solomon, 1986). A contradictory set of behaviors ensues to support the different goals of the animal defense systems and of the attachment system (Lyons-Ruth & Jacobvitz, 1999; Main & Morgan, 1996; Steele, van der Hart, & Nijenhuis, 2001; van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006). When the attachment system is stimulated by hunger, discomfort, or threat, the child instinctively seeks proximity to attachment figures. But during proximity with a person who is threatening, the defensive subsystems of flight, fight, freeze, or feigned death/shut down behaviors are mobilized. The cry for help is truncated because the person whom the child would turn to is the threat. Children who suffer attachment trauma fall into the dissociative–disorganized category and are generally unable to effectively auto- or interactively regulate, having experienced extremes of low arousal (as in neglect) and high arousal (as in abuse) that tend to endure over time (Schore, 2009b). In the context of chronic danger, patterns of high sympathetic dominance are apt to become established, along with elevated heart rate, higher cortisol levels, and easily activated alarm responses. Children must be hypervigilantly prepared and on guard to avoid danger yet primed to quickly activate a dorsal vagal feigned death state in the face of inescapable threat. In the context of neglect, instead of increased sympathetic nervous system tone, increased dorsal vagal tone, decreased heart rate, and shutdown (Schore, 2001a) may become chronic, reflecting both the lack of stimulation in the environment and the need to be unobtrusive.
Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology Book 0))
Imagine that a tribe of ignorant natives find a motor-car, and decide that it makes an ideal storage room for food. So when they set out on a journey, they load it with food, attach ropes to it, and pull it through the jungle as if it was a cart. One of them fiddling about inside it, discovers the hand brake and releases it. Immediately, they find the car much easier to pull. They congratulate the discoverer, tell him he is a genius, and convince themselves that they now know the purpose and use of the car. This is how I feel with my body. Occasionally, as I am dragging it along, it accidentally gets into gear; there is a roar, and the engine starts for a moment. Then, just as quickly, it cuts out. But I know that this body is not merely designed for this boring, irritating, two-dimensional life that so easily becomes a burden to me.
Colin Wilson (Man Without a Shadow)
A consumer-driven, advertising-dominated culture militates daily against ongoing attachments. It is constantly inviting us to switch to a different brand, try something new, go for a better deal elsewhere. It should not come as a surprise that this begins to affect human relationships as well. A society saturated by market values would be one in which relationships were temporary, loyalties provisional and commitments easily discarded.
Jonathan Sacks (The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations)
These initially adaptive responses to immediate danger turn into inflexible and pervasive procedural tendencies when trauma is unresolved. Once these actions have been procedurally encoded, individuals are left with regulatory deficits and “suffer both from generalized hyperarousal [and hypoarousal] and from physiological emergency reactions to specific reminders” (van der Kolk, 1994, p. 254). Traumatized clients often experience rapid, dramatic, exhausting, and confusing shifts of intense emotional states, from dysregulated fear, anger, or even elation, to despair, helplessness, shame, or flat affect. They may continue to feel frozen, numb, tense, or constantly ready to fight or flee. They may be hyperalert, overly sensitive to sounds or movements and easily startled by unfamiliar stimuli. Or they may underreact to stimuli, feel distant from their experience and their bodies, or even feel dead inside.
Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology Book 0))
Loving and letting go are inseparable. You can't love and cling at the same time. Too often we mistake attachment for love...Attachment masquerades as love. It looks and smells like love, but it's a cheap imitation. You can feel how attachment grasps and is driven by need and fear. Love is selfless; attachment is self-centered. Love is freeing; attachment is possessive. When we love, we relax, we don't hold on so tight, and we naturally let go more easily.
Frank Ostaseski (The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully)
Imagine the daughter of a narcissistic father as an example. She grows up chronically violated and abused at home, perhaps bullied by her peers as well. Her burgeoning low self-esteem, disruptions in identity and problems with emotional regulation causes her to live a life filled with terror. This is a terror that is stored in the body and literally shapes her brain. It is also what makes her brain extra vulnerable and susceptible to the effects of trauma in adulthood.                              Being verbally, emotionally and sometimes even physically beaten down, the child of a narcissistic parent learns that there is no safe place for her in the world. The symptoms of trauma emerge: disassociation to survive and escape her day-to-day existence, addictions that cause her to self-sabotage, maybe even self-harm to cope with the pain of being unloved, neglected and mistreated. Her pervasive sense of worthlessness and toxic shame, as well as subconscious programming, then cause her to become more easily attached to emotional predators in adulthood. In her repeated search for a rescuer, she instead finds those who chronically diminish her just like her earliest abusers. Of course, her resilience, adept skill set in adapting to chaotic environments and ability to “bounce back” was also birthed in early childhood. This is also seen as an “asset” to toxic partners because it means she will be more likely to stay within the abuse cycle in order to attempt to make things “work.” She then suffers not just from early childhood trauma, but from multiple re-victimizations in adulthood until, with the right support, she addresses her core wounds and begins to break the cycle step by step. Before she can break the cycle, she must first give herself the space and time to recover. A break from establishing new relationships is often essential during this time; No Contact (or Low Contact from her abusers in more complicated situations such as co-parenting) is also vital to the healing journey, to prevent compounding any existing traumas.
Shahida Arabi (Healing the Adult Children of Narcissists: Essays on The Invisible War Zone and Exercises for Recovery)
I thought again of the mountain climbers we had met as we traveled. They were young and wore brightly colored clothing so as to be easily spotted should they become lost in the snow. They knew the right path to follow to the peaks. The heights were already festooned with aluminum pins; all they had to do was attach their lines to them, and they could climb safely. They were there for a holiday adventure, and on Monday they would return to their jobs with the feeling that they had challenged nature and won. But this wasn't really true. The adventurous ones were those who had climbed there first, the ones who had found the routes to the top.
Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)
It’s funny the things you miss. Like phone cords. Reading this today, you might not even know what a phone cord is. Or it’s a relic that you see in an office, or on that antique phone in the corner of the classroom, used to call the principal’s secretary. But once upon a time—that would be our time—a telephone cord seemed like nothing less than a lifeline. It was your attachment to the outside world and, even more than that, your attachment to the people you loved, or wanted to love, or tried to love. Everything about it was fitting—the way it curled in on itself, they way it got so easily tangled, the way you could pull it only so far before it kept you in place. Twisted and knotted and essential.
David Levithan (Two Boys Kissing)
The more subtle, and often less easily spottable, combination from hell is when partners of different tendencies date but can’t accommodate. Initial attraction may be strong – contrast makes for interest – and when we’re safely in love there may be no trigger for attachment wobbles. But fast forward a little: inject any kind of stress or insecurity and the dynamic will make both sides crazy. Anxious plus avoidant means one of us clings, the other pulls away. Avoidant plus attacking means one of us runs, the other pushes to engage. Attacking plus anxious means one fights, the other fears. The result can be a Tom and Jerry cartoon-type chase, with A emotionally pursuing B round the room of the relationship.
Susan Quilliam (How to Choose a Partner: The School of Life)
Who, then, is superior in your judgment to such a person? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether free from the fear of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either the duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Destiny which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs to scorn, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are free, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach.
Epicurus (Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings)
Creativity is, by its nature, fitful and inconstant, easily upset by constraint, foreboding, insecurity, external pressure. Any great preoccupation with the problems of ensuring animal survival exhausts the energies and disturbs the receptivity of the sensitive mind. Such creativity as was first achieved in the city came about largely through an arrogation of the economic means of production and distribution by a small minority, attached to the temple and the palace. In the epic of creation Marduk remarks of man: "Let him be burdened with the toil of the gods that they may freely breathe." Shall we err greatly if we translate this as: "Let our subjects be burdened with daily toil that the king and the priesthood may freely breathe"?
Lewis Mumford (The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects)
I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company; I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present. "To conclude historically with my own character, I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself); I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men any wise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched or even attacked by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.
David Hume (Essays)
For a long while, I remained still, taking in the weight of her existence. A weight that grounded my spirit. My sister, my sister, my sister. The words that had once felt as forgettably light as air now squeezed my heart tight. We were sisters. Two girls who shared pieces of each other, tied together by an unspoken bond, a warm feeling of attachment, that no amount of bickering could easily sever. We were sisters. Comrades born from the same womb. I glanced at Suyeon for the hundredth time, to convince myself that she was truly by my side. And when realization finally settled, memories unfurled of the long journey I had taken to reach her, of the kind strangers who had become my dearest friends along the way. Prince Daehyun. Yul. Wonsik…
June Hur (A Crane Among Wolves)
The changes can be extremely subtle: something that feels internally like a rock, for example, may suddenly seem to melt into a warm liquid. These changes have their most beneficial effect when they are simply watched, and not interpreted. Attaching meaning to them or telling a story about them at this time may shift the child’s perceptions into a more evolved portion of the brain, which can easily disrupt the direct connection established with the reptilian core. Bodily responses that emerge along with sensations typically include involuntary trembling, shaking, and crying. The body may want, slowly, to move in a particular way. If suppressed or interrupted by beliefs about being strong (grown up, courageous), acting normal, or abiding by familiar feelings, these responses will not be able to effectively discharge the accumulated energy.
Peter A. Levine (Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma)
Bubble: A safe space where people that don't like to be confronted with the consequences of their actions live. Often known as the perfect environment for those that are too immature to assume responsibility for their lack of realistic perception, and instead focus their energy in maintaining an image of perfection to the outside world, while hiding their real thoughts, quite usually very sadistic and selfish. Bubbles can easily blast when a small portion of truth or justified anger hits one, so people that live inside a bubble are particularly sensitive to those that tell them things they can't comprehend, even, and in particular, when such things are correlated with their immoral social behavior. And as people that live inside a bubble need the bubble as much as they fear the outside world, they often blend unrelated words with their own nonsense to keep the danger of having a bubble exploded far from sight. This includes being an hypocrite when calling one ungrateful, offending someone while calling such individual aggressive, and using negative depreciation with arguments that fit their agenda of keeping themselves within ignorance while bringing others further to that paradox. People that live in the bubble believe anything they hear but always assume that their beliefs are independent, as the bubble stops them from seeing further and admitting something they can't see or accept. Therefore, until the moment in which everyone will be happy to have a microchip attached to their brain and google glasses stopping them from seeing the world as it is, the bubble will be known as a transitory stage, between an unempathetic dumbness and being a brainless humanoid vegetal on two legs.
Robin Sacredfire
It developed gradually. Quietly. But I remember the moment I thought to myself, ‘Something is not right with my mind. Something is not right here.’ Admitting this was the first step in my recovery. I didn't need anyone to diagnose me with anxiety or depression to know that this was my struggle. I felt so attached to the feelings, the uncontrollable thoughts, the incessant fear, all of which dictated my everyday experience. I allowed my struggle to become my identity. I didn't know I had any other option. On good days, I feel hopeful. About life. About my recovery. On bad days, I spend my time thinking that life is no better than death. Despite the mental battles I face each day, I remain resilient. Not just for my loved ones, but for myself. Because deep down, I know I deserve it. The relationship I have with myself is one I refuse to give up so easily.
Ally K.
The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another. 'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.
Ashim Shanker (Don't Forget to Breathe (Migrations, Volume I))
Having a TV—which gives you the ability to receive information—fails to establish any capacity for sending information in the opposite direction. And the odd one-way nature of the primary connection Americans now have to our national conversation has a profound impact on their basic attitude toward democracy itself. If you can receive but not send, what does that do to your basic feelings about the nature of your connection to American self-government? “Attachment theory” is an interesting new branch of developmental psychology that sheds light on the importance of consistent, appropriate, and responsive two-way communication—and why it is essential for an individual’s feeling empowered. First developed by John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, in 1958, attachment theory was further developed by his protégée Mary Ainsworth and other experts studying the psychological development of infants. Although it applies to individuals, attachment theory is, in my view, a metaphor that illuminates the significance of authentic free-flowing communication in any relationship that requires trust. By using this new approach, psychologists were able to discover that every infant learns a crucial and existential lesson during the first year of life about his or her fundamental relationship to the rest of the world. An infant develops an attachment pathway based on different patterns of care and, according to this theory, learns to adopt one of three basic postures toward the universe: In the best case, the infant learns that he or she has the inherent ability to exert a powerful influence on the world and evoke consistent, appropriate responses by communicating signals of hunger or discomfort, happiness or distress. If the caregiver—more often than not the mother—responds to most signals from the infant consistently and appropriately, the infant begins to assume that he or she has inherent power to affect the world. If the primary caregiver responds inappropriately and/or inconsistently, the infant learns to assume that he or she is powerless to affect the larger world and that his or her signals have no intrinsic significance where the universe is concerned. A child who receives really erratic and inconsistent responses from a primary caregiver, even if those responses are occasionally warm and sensitive, develops “anxious resistant attachment.” This pathway creates children who feature anxiety, dependence, and easy victimization. They are easily manipulated and exploited later in life. In the worst case, infants who receive no emotional response from the person or persons responsible for them are at high risk of learning a deep existential rage that makes them prone to violence and antisocial behavior as they grow up. Chronic unresponsiveness leads to what is called “anxious avoidance attachment,” a life pattern that features unquenchable anger, frustration, and aggressive, violent behavior.
Al Gore (The Assault on Reason)
What the fuck was that about?” Vaughn said, standing over me. “I pissed him off.” Dark blue eyes flicking to the restroom, Vaughn reached back and scratched at his shoulder. “All I know is when Judd came back from Texas, he was all hollowed out. Like a ghost, I guess. This morning before his bitch fit, he looked alive again. Whatever you said or did, can’t be that big a deal compared to the shit mood he’s been in lately.” Glancing at the restroom, I wanted to go back to before I said the words. My honesty ruined our happy morning. “You can’t take it personally,” Vaughn added when I just stared at the restroom. “You know how moody Judd is. Always crying and bitching about something. A freaking drama queen.” Grinning, I looked up at him. “Thank you.” “Men like us aren’t used to pretty girls looking at them like you look at Judd. He’s not sure what to do with you and you’re just gonna have to be patient while he figures shit out.” “Okay,” I said, studied him. Whereas Judd hid a deep sorrow and iced heart behind his walls, I sensed Vaughn concealed a barely contained rage. He smiled easily enough, but it was a ruse. Just like Judd who acted like the world didn’t touch him, Vaughn faked his exterior to avoid showing anything to the world. “Why do they call you Outlaw?” I asked. Vaughn sighed. “Because it’s better than calling me dead man walking.” “I don’t understand.” “You don’t need to, darlin. The drama queen returns.” When Judd appeared next to me, his expression was unreadable while kissing me softly. When he pulled away, his gaze flickered to Vaughn. “Thanks.” “You are so premenstrual sometimes.” Grinning, Judd sat down across from me then glanced at Vaughn. “Fuck off.” Vaughn leaned his hip against the side of the booth and sized me up. “What is it about the Smith sisters that makes otherwise strong men lose their balls?” “I have no idea and I’m out of sisters, so I guess you’re out of luck.” “Thank the Lord too. I like my balls attached.
Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Knight (Damaged, #2))
When we live intensely, we run more risks and we become more fragile. We already know that people who do nothing suffer nothing. But avoiding doing things out of fear of getting hurt is not a path to growth. When we mix our fears with reality, we are limiting ourselves. Don’t forget that the decisions we don’t make also cause us pain. Be careful about how you interpret what happens to you. If you don’t have an explanation that brings you peace, don’t make one up. What causes one kind of emotional pain to be more intense than another? Well, it depends on the emotional attachment to the source of the pain. What hurts more intensely is what directly affects us or the people we love. What hurts more is what affects our greatest aspirations and objectives. We are more easily hurt by what affects our desires or fears, and the more intense our desire, the more painful our frustration when we do not achieve it. The emotional involvement determines and explains the intensity of our pain. The greater the emotional involvement, the greater the pain. When pain comes in the door, perspective goes out the window, taking with it our ability to reason properly, to analyze events, and to make good decisions. Each time you remember what happened you transform what happened. None of our experiences is in vain if we are capable of learning from what happened to us and from the suffering and pain it caused us. But we won’t be able to learn from what happened if we don’t look back and review our experiences. Carrying your past is like carrying a huge backpack full of stones that prevents you from walking freely. But to walk through life all you need is a bit of water and food, a dream, and a destination—and, in a pinch, you can probably do without a destination. Let bygones be bygones, learn from what happened, and bring that chapter to a close. Your beliefs feed your decisions, your fears, and your desires. Knowledge will set you free, so make an effort to learn, study, read, travel.
Tomás Navarro (Kintsugi: The Japanese Art of Embracing the Imperfect and Loving Your Flaws)
Our failure to keep our children attached to us and to the other adults responsible for them has not only taken away their shields but put a sword in the hands of their peers. When peers replace parents, children lose their vital protection against the thoughtlessness of others. The vulnerability of a child in such circumstances can easily be overwhelmed. The resulting pain is more than many children can bear. Studies have been unequivocal in their findings that the best protection for a child, even through adolescence, is a strong attachment with an adult. The most impressive of these studies involved ninety thousand adolescents from eighty different communities chosen to make the sample as representative of the United States as possible. The primary finding was that teenagers with strong emotional ties to their parents were much less likely to exhibit drug and alcohol problems, attempt suicide, or engage in violent behavior and early sexual activity. Such adolescents, in other words, were at greatly reduced risk for the problems that stem from being defended against vulnerability. Shielding them from stress and protecting their emotional health and functioning were strong attachments with their parents. This was also the conclusion of the noted American psychologist Julius Segal, a brilliant pioneer of research into what makes young people resilient. Summarizing studies from around the world, he concluded that the most important factor keeping children from being overwhelmed by stress was “the presence in their lives of a charismatic adult — a person with whom they identify and from whom they gather strength.” As Dr. Segal has also said, “Nothing will work in the absence of an indestructible link of caring between parent and child.” Peers should never have come to matter that much — certainly not more than parents or teachers or other adult attachment figures. Taunts and rejection by peers sting, of course, but they shouldn't cut to the quick, should not be so devastating. The profound dejection of an excluded child reveals a much more serious attachment problem than it does a peer-rejection problem.
Gabor Maté (Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers)
Just as an adult-oriented child is more vulnerable in relationship to his parents and teachers, peer-oriented kids are more so in relationship to one another. Having lost their parental attachment shields, they become highly sensitized to the actions and communication of other children. The problem is that children's natural interaction is anything but careful and considerate and civilized. When peers replace parents, this careless and irresponsible interaction takes on a potency it was never meant to have. Sensitivities and sensibilities are easily overwhelmed. We have only to imagine how we as adults would fare if subjected by our friends to the kind of social interaction children have to endure each and every day — the petty betrayals, the shunning, the contempt, the sheer lack of dependability. It is no wonder that peer-oriented kids shut down in the face of vulnerability. The literature on the impact of peer rejection on children, based on extensive research, is very clear about the negative consequences, employing words like shattering, crippling, devastating, mortifying. Suicides among children are escalating, and the literature indicates that the rejection of peers is a growing cause.
Gabor Maté (Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers)
The experiment is called the Strange Situation, and you can see variations of it on the Internet. A mother and her toddler are in an unfamiliar room. A few minutes later, a researcher enters and the mother exits, leaving the youngster alone or with the researcher. Three minutes later, the mother comes back. Most children are initially upset at their mother’s departure; they cry, throw toys, or rock back and forth. But three distinct patterns of behavior emerge when mother and child are reunited—and these patterns are dictated by the type of emotional connection that has developed between the two. Children who are resilient, calm themselves quickly, easily reconnect with their moms, and resume exploratory play usually have warm and responsive mothers. Youngsters who stay upset and nervous and turn hostile, demanding, and clingy when their moms return tend to have mothers who are emotionally inconsistent, blowing sometimes hot, sometimes cold. A third group of children, who evince no pleasure, distress, or anger and remain distant and detached from their mothers, are apt to have moms who are cold and dismissive. Bowlby and Ainsworth labeled the children’s strategies for dealing with emotions in relationships, or attachment styles, secure, anxious, and avoidant, respectively.
Sue Johnson (Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships (The Dr. Sue Johnson Collection Book 2))
On the eve of my move to New York, my parents sat me down to talk. “Your mother and I understand that we have a certain responsibility to prepare you for life at a coed institution,” said my father. “Have you ever heard of oxytocin?” I shook my head. “It’s the thing that’s going to make you crazy,” my mother said, swirling the ice in her glass. “You’ll lose all the good sense I’ve worked so hard to build up in you since the day you were born.” She was kidding. “Oxytocin is a hormone released during copulation,” my father went on, staring at the blank wall behind me. “Orgasm,” my mother whispered. “Biologically, oxytocin serves a purpose,” my father said. “That warm fuzzy feeling.” “It’s what bonds a couple together. Without it, the human species would have gone extinct a long time ago. Women experience its effects more powerfully than men do. It’s good to be aware of that.” “For when you’re thrown out with yesterday’s trash,” my mother said. “Men are dogs. Even professors, so don’t be fooled.” “Men don’t attach as easily. They’re more rational,” my father corrected her. After a long pause, he said, “We just want you to be careful.” “He means use a rubber.” “And take these.” My father gave me a small, pink, shell-shaped compact of birth control pills. “Gross,” was all I could say. “And your father has cancer,” my mother said. I said nothing. “Prostate isn’t like breast,” my father said, turning away. “They do surgery, and you move on.” “The man always dies first,” my mother whispered.
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere, Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company, spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of a bus, for they used to explore London and bring back bags full of treasures from the Caledonian market – Clarissa had a theory in those days – they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not 'here, here, here'; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or anyone, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter – even trees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps – perhaps.
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
The Book I am thinking about would not be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned—the universe and man’s place in it, the mysterious center of experience which we call “I myself,” the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word. For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.
Alan W. Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)
Walter was next heard from in September, when he leafleted the neighborhood under cover of night. The Dent and Dolberg houses were standing empty now, their windows darkened like the call-holding lights of emergency-hotline callers who’d finally quietly hung up, but the remaining residents of Canterbridge Estates all awoke one morning to find on their doorsteps a politely worded “Dear Neighbors” letter, rehashing the anticat arguments that Walter had presented twice already, and four attached pages of photographs that were the opposite of polite. Walter had apparently spent the entire summer documenting bird deaths on his property. Each picture (there were more than forty of them) was labeled with a date and a species. The Canterbridge families who didn’t own cats were offended to have been included in the leafleting, and the families who did own them were offended by Walter’s seeming certainty that every bird death on his property was the fault of their pets. Linda Hoffbauer was additionally incensed that a leaflet had been left where one of her children could easily have been exposed to traumatizing images of headless sparrows and bloody entrails. She called the county sheriff, with whom she and her husband were social, to see whether perhaps Walter was guilty of illegal harassment. The sheriff said that Walter wasn’t, but he agreed to stop by his house and have a word of warning with him—a visit that yielded the unexpected news that Walter had a law degree and was versed not only in his First Amendment rights but also in the Canterbridge Estates homeowners covenant, which contained a clause requiring pets to be under the control of their owners at all times; the sheriff advised Linda to shred the leaflet and move on.
Jonathan Franzen (Freedom)
As in everything, nature is the best instructor, even as regards selection. One couldn't imagine a better activity on nature's part than that which consists in deciding the supremacy of one creature over another by means of a constant struggle. While we're on the subject, it's somewhat interesting to observe that our upper classes, who've never bothered about the hundreds of thousands of German emigrants or their poverty, give way to a feeling of compassion regarding the fate of the Jews whom we claim the right to expel. Our compatriots forget too easily that the Jews have accomplices all over the world, and that no beings have greater powers of resistance as regards adaptation to climate. Jews can prosper anywhere, even in Lapland and Siberia. All that love and sympathy, since our ruling class is capable of such sentiments, would by rights be applied exclusively—if that class were not corrupt—to the members of our national community. Here Christianity sets the example. What could be more fanatical, more exclusive and more intolerant than this religion which bases everything on the love of the one and only God whom it reveals? The affection that the German ruling class should devote to the good fellow-citizen who faithfully and courageously does his duty to the benefit of the community, why is it not just as fanatical, just as exclusive and just as intolerant? My attachment and sympathy belong in the first place to the front-line German soldier, who has had to overcome the rigours of the past winter. If there is a question of choosing men to rule us, it must not be forgotten that war is also a manifestation of life, that it is even life's most potent and most characteristic expression. Consequently, I consider that the only men suited to become rulers are those who have valiantly proved themselves in a war. In my eyes, firmness of character is more precious than any other quality. A well toughened character can be the characteristic of a man who, in other respects, is quite ignorant. In my view, the men who should be set at the head of an army are the toughest, bravest, boldest, and, above all, the most stubborn and hardest to wear down. The same men are also the best chosen for posts at the head of the State—otherwise the pen ends by rotting away what the sword has conquered. I shall go so far as to say that, in his own sphere, the statesman must be even more courageous than the soldier who leaps from his trench to face the enemy. There are cases, in fact, in which the courageous decision of a single statesman can save the lives of a great number of soldiers. That's why pessimism is a plague amongst statesmen. One should be able to weed out all the pessimists, so that at the decisive moment these men's knowledge may not inhibit their capacity for action. This last winter was a case in point. It supplied a test for the type of man who has extensive knowledge, for all the bookworms who become preoccupied by a situation's analogies, and are sensitive to the generally disastrous epilogue of the examples they invoke. Agreed, those who were capable of resisting the trend needed a hefty dose of optimism. One conclusion is inescapable: in times of crisis, the bookworms are too easily inclined to switch from the positive to the negative. They're waverers who find in public opinion additional encouragement for their wavering. By contrast, the courageous and energetic optimist—even although he has no wide knowledge— will always end, guided by his subconscious or by mere commonsense, in finding a way out.
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)
Anxious: You love to be very close to your romantic partners and have the capacity for great intimacy. You often fear, however, that your partner does not wish to be as close as you would like him/her to be. Relationships tend to consume a large part of your emotional energy. You tend to be very sensitive to small fluctuations in your partner’s moods and actions, and although your senses are often accurate, you take your partner’s behaviors too personally. You experience a lot of negative emotions within the relationship and get easily upset. As a result, you tend to act out and say things you later regret. If the other person provides a lot of security and reassurance, however, you are able to shed much of your preoccupation and feel contented. Secure: Being warm and loving in a relationship comes naturally to you. You enjoy being intimate without becoming overly worried about your relationships. You take things in stride when it comes to romance and don’t get easily upset over relationship matters. You effectively communicate your needs and feelings to your partner and are strong at reading your partner’s emotional cues and responding to them. You share your successes and problems with your mate, and are able to be there for him or her in times of need. Avoidant: It is very important for you to maintain your independence and self-sufficiency and you often prefer autonomy to intimate relationships. Even though you do want to be close to others, you feel uncomfortable with too much closeness and tend to keep your partner at arm’s length. You don’t spend much time worrying about your romantic relationships or about being rejected. You tend not to open up to your partners and they often complain that you are emotionally distant. In relationships, you are often on high alert for any signs of control or impingement on your territory by your partner.
Amir Levine (Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love)
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Suggestions to Develop Self-Help Skills Self-help skills improve along with sensory processing. The following suggestions may make your child’s life easier—and yours, too! DRESSING • Buy or make a “dressing board” with a variety of snaps, zippers, buttons and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, buckles and shoelaces. • Provide things that are not her own clothes for the child to zip, button, and fasten, such as sleeping bags, backpacks, handbags, coin purses, lunch boxes, doll clothes, suitcases, and cosmetic cases. • Provide alluring dress-up clothes with zippers, buttons, buckles, and snaps. Oversized clothes are easiest to put on and take off. • Eliminate unnecessary choices in your child’s bureau and closet. Clothes that are inappropriate for the season and that jam the drawers are sources of frustration. • Put large hooks inside closet doors at the child’s eye level so he can hang up his own coat and pajamas. (Attach loops to coats and pajamas on the outside so they won’t irritate the skin.) • Supply cellophane bags for the child to slip her feet into before pulling on boots. The cellophane prevents shoes from getting stuck and makes the job much easier. • Let your child choose what to wear. If she gets overheated easily, let her go outdoors wearing several loose layers rather than a coat. If he complains that new clothes are stiff or scratchy, let him wear soft, worn clothes, even if they’re unfashionable. • Comfort is what matters. • Set out tomorrow’s clothes the night before. Encourage the child to dress himself. Allow for extra time, and be available to help. If necessary, help him into clothes but let him do the finishing touch: Start the coat zipper but let him zip it up, or button all but one of his buttons. Keep a stool handy so the child can see herself in the bathroom mirror. On the sink, keep a kid-sized hairbrush and toothbrush within arm’s reach. Even if she resists brushing teeth and hair, be firm. Some things in life are nonnegotiable.
Carol Stock Kranowitz (The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder)
We don't die willingly. The more invested we are in the worlds projected by patterns, the stronger the denial, anger, and bargaining, and the despair of depression. Insight practice is inherently frustrating because you are looking to see where, at first, you are unable to see--beyond the world of the patterns. Another way to look at insight practice is to see that the process has three stages: shock, disorganization, and reorganization. The first stage starts when you see beyond illusion. You experience a shock. You react by denying that you saw what you saw, saying, in effect, "That makes no sense. I'll just forget about that." Unfortunately, or fortunately, your experience of seeing is not so easily denied. It is too vivid, too real, to ignore. Now you become angry because the illusion in which you have lived has been shattered. You know you can't go back, but you don't want to go forward. You are still attached to the world of patterns. You feel anxious, and the anxiety gradually matures into grief. You now know that you have to go forward. You experience the pain of separating from what you understood, just as the lama in the example experienced pain at the loss of his worldview. You then enter a period of disorganization. You withdraw, become apathetic, lose your energy for life, become restless, and routinely reject new possibilities or directions. You surrender to the changes taking place but do nothing to move forward. A major risk at this stage is that you remain in a state of disorganization. You hold on to an aspect of the old world. parents who have lost a child in an accident or to violence, for example, have great difficulty in letting go. They may keep the child's bedroom just as it was. Their views and expectations of life have been shattered, and, understandably, they cling to a few of the shards. They may stay in the stage of disorganization for a long time. The third stage of insight is reorganization. You experience a shift, and you let the old world go, even the shards. You accept the world that you see with your new eyes. What was previously seen as being absolute and real is now seen differently. The old structures, beliefs, and behaviors no longer hold, and you enter a new life.
Ken McLeod (Wake Up To Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of Attention)
The urban isolated individual An individual can be influenced by forces such as propaganda only when he is cut off from membership in local groups because such groups are organic and have a well-structured material, spirltual and emotional life; they are not easily penetrated by propaganda. For example, it is much more difficult today for outside propaganda to influence a soldier integrated into a military group, or a militant member of a monolithic party, than to influence the same man when he is a mere citizen. Nor is the organic group sensitive to psychological contagion, which is so important to the success of Nazi propaganda. One can say generally, that 19th century individualist society came about through the disintegration of such small groups as the family or the church. Once these groups lost their importance, the individual was substantially isolated. He was plunged into a new environment generally urban and thereby "uprooted." He no longer had a traditional place in which to live. He was no longer geographically attached to a fixed place, or historically to his ancestry. An individual thus uprooted can only be part of a mass- He is on his own, and individualist thinking asks of him something he has never been required to do before: that he, the individual, become the measure of all things. Thus he begins to judge everything for himself. In fact he must make his own judgments. He is thrown entirely on his own resources; he can find criteria only in himself. He is clearly responsible for his own decisions, both personal and social. He becomes the beginning and the end of everything. Before him there was nothing; after him there will be nothing. His own life becomes the only criterion of justice and injustice, of Good and Evil. The individual is placed in a minority position and burdened at the same time with a total crushing responsibility. Such conditions make an individualist society fertile ground for modern propaganda. The permanent uncertainty, the social mobility, the absence of sociological protection and of traditional frames of reference — all these inevitably provide propaganda with a malleable environment that can be fed information from the outside and conditioned at will. The individual left to himself is defenseless the more so because he may be caught up in a social current thus becoming easy prey for propaganda. As a member of a small group he was fairly well protected from collective influences, customs, and suggestions. He was relatively unaffected by changes in the society at large.
Jacques Ellul (Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes)
There are good biological reasons for accepting the fact that man is so constituted that he possesses an inner world of the imagination which is different from, though connected to, the world of external reality. It is the discrepancy between the two worlds which motivates creative imagination. People who realize their creative potential are constandy bridging the gap between inner and outer. They invest the external world with meaning because they disown neither the world’s objectivity nor their own subjectivity. This interaction between inner and outer worlds is easily seen when we observe children at play. Children make use of real objects in the external world, but invest these objects with meanings which derive from the world of their own imagination. This process begins very early in the child’s life. Many infants develop intense attachments to particular objects. D. W. Winnicott was the first psychoanalyst to draw attention to the importance of such attachments in his paper ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena’.7 These phenomena are closely connected with the beginnings of independence and with the capacity to be alone.
Anthony Storr (Solitude a Return to the Self)
The uncomfortable assumption had begun to dawn on me that maybe this was all some sex-related thing I was better off not knowing. I looked at the side of his face: petulant, irritable, glasses low on the tip of his sharp little nose and the beginnings of jowls at his jawline. Might Henry have made a pass at him in Rome? Incredible, but a possible hypothesis. If he had, certainly, all hell would have broken loose. I could not think of much else that would involve this much whispering and secrecy, or that would have had so strong an effect on Bunny. He was the only one of us who had a girlfriend and I was pretty sure he slept with her, but at the same time he was incredibly prudish — touchy, easily offended, at root hypocritical. Besides, there was something unquestionably odd about the way Henry was constantly shelling out money to him: paying his tabs, footing his bills, doling out cash like a husband to a spendthrift wife. Perhaps Bunny had allowed his greed to get the better of him, and was angry to discover that Henry's largesse had strings attached. But did it? There were certainly strings somewhere, though — easy as it seemed on the face of it — I wasn't sure that this was where those particular strings led. There was of course that thing with Julian in the hallway; still, that had been very different. I had lived with Henry for a month, and there hadn't been the faintest hint of that sort of tension, which I, being rather more disinclined that way than not, am quick to pick up on. I had caught a strong breath of it from Francis, a whiff of at times from Julian; and even Charles, who I knew was interested in women, had a sort of naive, prepubescent shyness of them that a man like my father would have interpreted alarmingly — but with Henry, zero. Geiger counters dead. If anything, it was Camilla he seemed fondest of, Camilla he bent over attentively when she spoke, Camilla who was most often the recipient of his infrequent smiles. And even if there was a side of him which I was unaware (which was possible) was it possible that he was attracted to Bunny? The answer to this seemed, almost unquestionable, No. Not only did he behave as if he wasn't attracted to Bunny, he acted as if he were hardly able to stand him. And it seemed that he, disgusted by Bunny in what appeared to be virtually all respects, would be far more disgusted in that particular one than even I would be. It was possible for me to recognize, in a general sort of way, that Bunny was handsome, but if I brought the lens any closer and tried to focus on him in a sexual light, all I got was a repugnant miasma of sour-smelling shirts and muscles gone to fat and dirty socks. Girls didn't seem to mind that sort of thing, but to me he was about as erotic as an old football coach.
Anonymous
In compassionate adepts, the brain’s insula begins to enlarge. The insula makes us aware of our internal emotional states and raises our level of attention to their signals. It also has rich connections to the heart and other visceral organs, allowing it to track and integrate signals coming from the body. In empathetic people, the insula responds strongly to the distress of others, just as though we were suffering ourselves. Activation of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) indicates that we can see things from the perspective of another person. This allows us to put ourselves in their shoes and take their needs into consideration. 6.10. Empathy is a neurological event, not simply an emotional state. There’s a part of the anterior cingulate that lights up only when we’re contemplating actions that help others. It isn’t activated by outcomes that favor only us. This region is also associated with impulse control and decision-making; we can choose win-win options rather than the desire-driven cravings of the nucleus accumbens. When adepts are confronted by the suffering of others, the premotor cortex lights up. This means that the brain hasn’t just noticed the distress of a fellow being; it’s getting ready to take action. In experienced meditators, the nucleus accumbens shrinks. This structure, which we looked at in Chapter 3, is active in desire and addiction. Deactivation of the nucleus accumbens through empathetic connection equates to a weakening of self-centered attachment. Calming our emotions and focusing our attention, we’re no longer driven by our wants and compulsions, and the brain circuitry associated with this part of the reward circuit begins to wither. When training people in EcoMeditation retreats, I focus on the Empathy Network only after the first three networks are active. First I have them focus on self, then on just one other person. Only after that do we expand our compassion to the universal scale. That’s because thinking about other people can easily take us into mind wandering. People I love, people I don’t, and the things that happened to cause those feelings. Trying to be compassionate toward people who harmed us can lead us out of Bliss Brain. So I activate the Empathy Network only after the Attention Network is engaged. BRAIN CHANGE IS LIFE CHANGE The fact that blissful states, practiced consistently, become blissful traits is a profound gift to us human beings. It means that we aren’t condemned to live in the Caveman Brain with which evolution endowed us. That practice can evolve our brains, some parts slowly, some parts quickly, is a remarkable innovation.
Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
The next step is to start expressing your needs. Most anxious people easily fall into the trap that relationship books—and society at large—set for them. They feel that they are too demanding and needy and so they try to accommodate their partner’s need for distance and boundaries (if they’re involved with someone avoidant). It’s simply more socially acceptable to maintain a cool, self-sufficient façade. So they hide their wishes and mask their discontent. In actuality, you are missing out when you do so, because by expressing those needs you achieve two goals. First, you are being your authentic self, which has been found to contribute to our general feelings of happiness and fulfillment, and being happy and fulfilled is probably one of the most attractive traits you can offer a partner. Second and no less important, once you are your authentic self, if your partner is incapable of meeting your genuine needs, you can determine that early on. Not everyone has relationship needs compatible with your own, and that’s fine. Let them find someone else who wants to be kept at arm’s length, and you can go about finding someone who will make you happy.
Amir Levine (Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love)
Mourning is immensely reassuring because it convinces us of something we might otherwise easily doubt: our attachment to others. The protracted painfulness of mourning confirms something that psychoanalysis had put into question: how intransigently devoted we are to the people we love and hate. Despite the evidence of our dreams, our capacity for infinite substitution is meagre. In this sense mourning has been a ballast for the more radical possibilities of psychoanalysis. It is the rock, so to speak, on which Prometheus founders.
Adam Phillips (Terrors and Experts)
And was Jude broken? How raw was the wound left by the last woman? What kind of woman would I have to be to keep him? I could love her easily, abundantly, where with Jude I had to be so careful to parcel out my affections in case I scared him away.
Madelaine Lucas (Thirst for Salt)
So how can you expect an attached person to enter that ocean of happiness called the Kingdom of God? As well as you can expect a camel to pass through the eye of a needle! Anyone who stops clinging to brothers, sisters, father, mother, children, land, or houses is repaid a hundred times over and gains eternal life. Then you will so easily take leave of your possessions, that is, you will stop clinging, and you will have destroyed clinging’s capacity to hurt you. Then, at last, you will experience that mysterious state that cannot be described or uttered—the state of abiding happiness and peace.
Anthony de Mello (Stop Fixing Yourself: Wake Up, All Is Well (The Anthony De Mello Legacy Library))
The problem was, I had dependence issues. While I embraced my sensuality, I found it hard to separate intimacy and emotions. Hence I didn’t sleep around. I got too easily attached. Six months was a long time to belong to someone and still look at them as a business arrangement, especially because Anton wasn’t a man to become attached to.
Regine Abel (Anton's Grace (Braxians, #1))
Attachment theory can too easily segue into mother-blaming, so I want you to understand that this lack of a sense of safety doesn't have to be the caregiver's (read 'mother's') fault; a parent and a baby are two different people, and sometimes, with the best will in the world, two people can be a bad fit for each other. Misrecognition is very often mutual.
Joanne Limburg (Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism)
The Secure person tends to work very well with their Dismissive-Avoidant partner. Secure partners will sometimes feel like their Dismissive-Avoidant counterpart is mysterious or confusing. Since the Dismissive-Avoidant is highly independent, a Secure partner may want more closeness or commitment in the relationship. They will express this in a straightforward and direct way, usually without criticism so that the Dismissive-Avoidant doesn’t feel like their partner is becoming too clingy or needy. This relationship often creates a platform where both partners become more Secure over time. The highs are that the Secure partner often feels very grateful because the Dismissive-Avoidant is often non-committal and fearful of too much emotion. The Secure values the Dismissive-Avoidant partner and will nurture them in a way that the Dismissive-Avoidant didn’t receive in relationships growing up. The lows are that the Secure partner can become impatient with their Dismissive-Avoidant’s difficulty in making a commitment, and they might feel stonewalled during communication. The fact that the Dismissive-Avoidant doesn’t open up easily or share enough can be very frustrating for the Secure partner. This could make the Secure partner want to leave the relationship as they need more than they are getting.
Thais Gibson (Attachment Theory: A Guide to Strengthening the Relationships in Your Life)
The fact that we incorporate material objects into our sense of self opens new doors for understanding our relationship with money and the things we own. When I first learned about the possession–self link, it immediately helped me to see why we can so easily attach our personal value to our material success. It also helped me understand why shopping can feel so comforting, especially after a rejection or a loss. This simple concept can illuminate many of the underlying motivations we have for our financial behaviors, and I encourage you to think about how your possessions, especially those that most represent the parts of yourself you care about, are actually extensions of your identity. How do your personal items like your home, car, clothes, hobby gear, pictures, electronics, and your thousands of other things reflect who you are?
Sarah Newcomb (Loaded: Money, Psychology, and How to Get Ahead without Leaving Your Values Behind)
I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue. Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each letter. Your name, which I played with so carelessly, so easily, has somehow become sacred to my lips. A name I won’t throw around lightheartedly or repeat without deep thought. And if ever I speak of you, I use the English language to describe who you were to me. You are nameless, because those letters grouped together in that familiar form….. carries too much meaning for my capricious heart.
Jamie Weise
Gerda has no sense of process. That is what is the matter with Gerda, She wants the result without doing any of the work that goes to make it.  . . . She is angry because we have some money. She feels that it might just as well belong to her. . . . For her, the money might as easily have been attached to her as to us by a movement as simple as that which pastes a label on a trunk. . . . As she has no sense of what goes to bring people love, or friendship, or distinction, or wealth, it seems to her that the whole world is enjoying undeserved benefits; and in a universe where all is arbitrary, it might just as well happen that the injustice was pushed a little further and that all these benefits were taken from other people, leaving them nothing, and transferred to her, giving her everything. Given the premise that the universe is purely arbitrary, that there is no causality at work anywhere, there is nothing absurd in that proposal. This is the conqueror’s point of view. . . . Let us admit it, for a little while the whole of our world may belong to Gerda. She will snatch it out of hands too well bred and compassionate and astonished to defend it. What we must remember is that she will not be able to keep it. For her contempt for the process makes her unable to conduct any process. . . . To go up in an aeroplane and drop bombs is a simple use of an elaborate process that has already been developed. But you cannot administer a country on this principle. . . . Gerda’s empire . . . will be an object of fear and nothing else. For this reason, I believe that Gerda’s empire cannot last long. But while it lasts it will be terrible. And what it leaves when it passes will also be terrible. For we cannot hope for anything but a succession of struggles for leadership among men whose minds will have been unfitted for leadership by the existence of tyranny and the rupture of European tradition, until, slowly and painfully, the nations re-emerge, civilization re-emerges.
Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
I was sure the shoes had a name attached to them.  Some big designer’s name.  They were the kind of shoes that needed no introduction in certain circles.  In my particular circle, I could easily identify Crocs, but that was about it.
Holly Jacobs (Maid in LA Mysteries: A Four Book Set)
you are not always going to get it right. sometimes the reaction will be too strong, and it will pull you into saying and doing things that are counterproductive. if the trigger is too intense or if you are already in a low mood or exhausted, your reactions can ore easily govern your thoughts and your behaviour. even if you have grown immensely, you are not flawless. this is why growth is nonlinear. healing is not about developing an attachment to perfection; it is about recognizing the moments when you're moving in the opposite direction from our longterm goals and building awareness around what you can do differently next time. recognizing when you get it wrong is not an invitation to be hard on yourself. in fact, it is a sign of victory. it means you can see yourself better than you did the past, and you understand what areas you need to grow in next. real self-love embraces personal growth, but it does so gently.
Yung Pueblo (The Way Forward (The Inward Trilogy))
in Boston, her own version of a trip to the Golden City.) She made clear that there was plenty of self-reproach and spiritual confusion and devilish temptation to discharge, the kind of anguish that left Sewall and the Goodwin children to sob they had squandered their lives. Already there was an Indian behind every bush, a spectral Frenchman in the yard.* Every child is on intimate terms with the raging monster inside. But adults too have awoken to discover an arm attached not to the comely hand of Henry Jekyll, but to the dusky, gnarled paw of Edward Hyde. Did the afflicted truly feel pinched and pricked? The hysteric’s skin is said to be uncommonly sensitive, especially late at night. It bruises easily. On two other counts, a seventeenth-century villager might feel metaphorically bitten or stabbed. You were meant to be pierced to the marrow by good preaching. And Cotton Mather termed winters “very pinching and piercing things.”* There seemed, he noted, to be more hours in a winter day, allowing more time
Stacy Schiff (The Witches: Salem, 1692)
Gone. And then another image: a white room. Carvings on the ground, the same shapes over and over. Exhaustion. Fear. Looking down at hands that I knew very well by now, and the Stratagrams that inked the arms attached to them. My heart stopped. I faltered. The image disappeared. Max. That was him. I saw him. I felt him. I was him. This realization struck me so hard that I faltered, mid-movement. A guard struck me. My back hit the ground. No. Go back. Go back. I tried to reach back out to my magic, but it was out of reach. The magic surrounding my sword fell away, leaving only pitiful steel that one of the guards knocked from my grasp easily.
Carissa Broadbent (Mother of Death & Dawn (The War of Lost Hearts, #3))
The child’s attachment system wants to move towards their attachment figure, while the protective defensive mechanism of flight / flight / freeze / appease wants to move away from the attachment figure, and the two systems are coactivated. The predominant factor leading to this style in childhood is having parents who are suffering from their own unresolved trauma or losses. When a parent has a history of unresolved trauma, they are more easily overwhelmed by life’s demands and emotionally flooded by their child’s emotional states. Unable to regulate their own emotions, parents with their own history of unhealed trauma, neglect or abuse might then act out, lash out or completely tune out in ways that are scary to the child. Whether that parent is being terrifyingly overresponsive or frighteningly underresponsive, the child learns that they’re not safe with the very person who’s supposed to protect them. Research has shown that approximately 20 to 40 percent of the general population has some degree of a disorganized attachment style, and approximately 80 percent of children who have experienced abuse develop a disorganized attachment style to one or both of their parents.
Jessica Fern (Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy)
Some evolutionary psychologists, most notably Robert Kurzban, believe that racial prejudice is a relatively weak force in human psychology since for most of evolutionary history we wouldn’t have encountered people of a different ethnicity. We might, rather, be heavily predisposed to attaching ‘outsider status’ to people who speak with a different accent to us, since such distinctions would have been experienced more frequently. Coming from a country that historically was obsessed with accents,* this does seem worth investigating. Would a privately educated Nigerian be at a disadvantage in seeking a job in London in competition with a white Liverpudlian with a strong Scouse accent? I rather doubt it. Kurzban’s work suggests that prejudice depends on context; we may be more prone to ascribe ‘outsider status’ to someone of a different ethnic background, but this does not mean that we cannot easily adopt anyone of any ethnic background into an ‘in group’ in a different setting.
Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
Attachments to views are not easily overcome; having decided among teachings, one tightly grasps [a view]. Therefore, among those bases of attachment, a person rejects and takes up a teaching. (6) 786. One who is cleansed formulates no view anywhere in the world about various states of existence. Having abandoned hypocrisy and conceit, through what would the cleansed one go [astray]194 when he is uninvolved? (7) 787. One involved is embroiled in disputes about teachings; but how, about what, could one dispute with one uninvolved? Nothing is taken up or rejected by him; he has shaken off all views right here.
Bhikkhu Bodhi (The Suttanipata: An Ancient Collection of the Buddha's Discourses Together with Its Commentaries (The Teachings of the Buddha))
All the good and kind things I’d once attached to him turned bitter. They shriveled on the spot. As much as I had loved him, I discovered I could now despise and resent and loathe him. It came to me rather easily.
Kate Canterbary (In a Jam)
Fears tend to hide behind one another […] I am not afraid of snakes; I'm afraid of pain, of immobilization or death. Telling the deepest truth of the fear requires thorough acquaintance with our own stories and interior lives, and it can so easily bleed into this next form of fear, a fear that endures past particular situations and can very nearly transcend time: anxiety. Fear becomes anxiety when it makes its home in you. Its chief attachment is not memory or villain or situation or future; its chief attachment and subject is you […] As an antagonist, fear can disrupt the most sacred patterns of rest and restoration. Fear reminds us that we are not in control, that there is far more in life that is inevitable than preventable.
Cole Arthur Riley (This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us)
While it is true that we spend much of our time needlessly dwelling in thoughts of the past or the future, the ability to stay focused in the present moment, by itself, does not guarantee any kind of personal transformation. Being in the moment is pleasant enough, but it is just a jumping-off place. Right Mindfulness opens up interesting opportunities for honest self-reflection, but there is no built-in guarantee that these openings will be used productively. The self does not give up its grip easily--all of the same defense mechanisms that Freud outlined are still operative even when mindfulness is strong. It is possible to overvalue mindfulness, to remain attached to its form rathe than working directly with what it reveals.
Mark Epstein (Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself)
or if someone took your clothes and you could easily slip back into another outfit from your wardrobe versus if now you had to go naked. Secure people, because of their history of available and abundant love, internalize the sense that they are connected to others—a sense that stays with them, even when rejected. Anxious people have no such resources. When others reject or leave them, the loneliness feels omnipresent and unbearable. They might feel, as Carolina described, “like a piece of paper burned down to its ash.
Marisa G. Franco (Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends)
My friends who have seen Egypt say that these people would sell a story as easily as they would an ass. More easily, in fact, because the stock of stories is dependent only on imagination and a tongue to utter them, whereas oats are in finite supply. They stand by their monuments, inscribed in a language which no ordinary man can read, and, seeing that the weary visitor, dirty and far from home, appears a very ordinary man indeed, gush forth a farrago of rubbish about heroes and magical birds. He who revisits may find quite a different story attaches to this inscription or that.
Elizabeth Speller (Following Hadrian: A Second-Century Journey through the Roman Empire)
I never let the things or people go easily but whenever i do, i make sure that i will attach to them again.
Rehan Khan
The more I reflect on the elder son in me, the more I realize how deeply rooted this form of lostness really is and how hard it is to return home from there...My resentment is not something that can be easily distinguished and dealt with rationally. It is far more pernicious: something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue. Isn't it good to be obedient, dutiful, law-abiding, hardworking and self-sacrificing? And still it seems that my resentments and complaints are mysteriously tied to such praiseworthy attitudes. This connection often makes me despair.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Personal Thinking Blockchains More speculatively for the farther future, the notion of blockchain technology as the automated accounting ledger, the quantized-level tracking device, could be extensible to yet another category of record keeping and administration. There could be “personal thinking chains” as a life-logging storage and backup mechanism. The concept is “blockchain technology + in vivo personal connectome” to encode and make useful in a standardized compressed data format all of a person’s thinking. The data could be captured via intracortical recordings, consumer EEGs, brain/computer interfaces, cognitive nanorobots, and other methodologies. Thus, thinking could be instantiated in a blockchain — and really all of an individual’s subjective experience, possibly eventually consciousness, especially if it’s more precisely defined. After they’re on the blockchain, the various components could be administered and transacted — for example, in the case of a post-stroke memory restoration. Just as there has not been a good model with the appropriate privacy and reward systems that the blockchain offers for the public sharing of health data and quantified-self-tracking data, likewise there has not been a model or means of sharing mental performance data. In the case of mental performance data, there is even more stigma attached to sharing personal data, but these kinds of “life-streaming + blockchain technology” models could facilitate a number of ways to share data privately, safely, and remuneratively. As mentioned, in the vein of life logging, there could be personal thinking blockchains to capture and safely encode all of an individual’s mental performance, emotions, and subjective experiences onto the blockchain, at minimum for backup and to pass on to one’s heirs as a historical record. Personal mindfile blockchains could be like a next generation of Fitbit or Apple’s iHealth on the iPhone 6, which now automatically captures 200+ health metrics and sends them to the cloud for data aggregation and imputation into actionable recommendations. Similarly, personal thinking blockchains could be easily and securely recorded (assuming all of the usual privacy concerns with blockchain technology are addressed) and mental performance recommendations made to individuals through services such as Siri or Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, perhaps piped seamlessly through personal brain/computer interfaces and delivered as both conscious and unconscious suggestions. Again perhaps speculatively verging on science fiction, ultimately the whole of a society’s history might include not just a public records and document repository, and an Internet archive of all digital activity, but also the mindfiles of individuals. Mindfiles could include the recording of every “transaction” in the sense of capturing every thought and emotion of every entity, human and machine, encoding and archiving this activity into life-logging blockchains.
Melanie Swan (Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy)
Life is indeed perfect in itself. You see, the best religions in the world have members so afraid to lose them, that they themselves will fear any change and, in doing so, stop such religion from progressing and, in such attitude, lead it to an inevitable destruction. The art of detachment can be ignored for as long as one can attach, but the level at which one attaches to things will bring forth an equally leveled suffering, and so, the higher the emotional attachment, the higher the amount of pain one feels at the end. The atheists, on the other hand, are ironically the most commonly individuals possessed by spirits, and often, due to their lower vibrations, demons. Their lack of spirituality is both a disease and a justification for such mental disease. Whatever they say serves them well, but makes them suffer at the same time. And evil, evil can only be ignored insofar as people have options that allow ignoring it. As soon as those options vanish or are all under the control of evil, revolutions become inevitable. And so, one can say that truth doesn’t need faith to exist but is surely more easily recognized under the right beliefs, and as much as spirituality doesn’t need religion, but is more easily found inside one.
Robin Sacredfire