Placebo Love Quotes

And can you teach your body emotionally what it would feel like to believe in this way . . . to be empowered . . . to be moved by your own greatness . . . to be invincible . . . to have courage . . . to be in love with life . . . to feel unlimited . . . to live as if your prayers are already answered? . . .

People don't want to be loved, they want to feel loved.

And can you teach your body emotionally . . . what it would feel like to believe in this way . . . to be empowered . . . to be moved by your own greatness . . . to have courage . . . to be invincible . . . to be in love with life . . . to feel unlimited

Meditation takes us from survival to creation; from separation to connection; from imbalance to balance; from emergency mode to growth-and-repair mode; and from the limiting emotions of fear, anger, and sadness to the expansive emotions of joy, freedom, and love.

how do you and I become supernatural? We have to begin to do what’s unnatural—that is, to give in the midst of crisis, when everyone is feeling lack and poverty; to love when everyone is angry and judging others; to demonstrate courage and peace when everyone else is in fear; to show kindness when others are displaying hostility and aggression; to surrender to possibility when the rest of the world is aggressively pushing to be first, trying to control outcomes, and fiercely competing in an endless drive to get to the top; to knowingly smile in the face of adversity; and to cultivate the feeling of wholeness when we’re diagnosed as sick.

I fed her a placebo, a sugar pill, and then tried to sugarcoat the truth. The truth was I was lying when I said I loved her. Oh, I it was true I loved her, but not when I said I did.


I think the love I once had has run its course. What remains is just placebo love, easy to mistake for real love. Aging, sickness, maybe the start of dementia will do this. Taking care of him and worrying for him and calling him all the time when I’m away to make sure he lacks for nothing—all these have worn out everything I had in me to give. You wouldn’t call this love. No one would. He wouldn’t.

But how do you and I become supernatural? We have to begin to do what’s unnatural—that is, to give in the midst of crisis, when everyone is feeling lack and poverty; to love when everyone is angry and judging others; to demonstrate courage and peace when everyone else is in fear; to show kindness when others are displaying hostility and aggression; to surrender to possibility when the rest of the world is aggressively pushing to be first, trying to control outcomes, and fiercely competing in an endless drive to get to the top; to knowingly smile in the face of adversity; and to cultivate the feeling of wholeness when we’re diagnosed as sick. It

This loving intelligence is what you merge with in meditation when you lay down the ego and go from selfish to selfless, when you become pure consciousness—no longer a body in the environment or in linear time but, instead, no body, no one, no thing, in no place and no time. That’s when you become simply an awareness in an infinite field of possibility.

I come from a worried people. These people worry and are overly cautious. The worried people are very suggestive and read the side effects on every medication to make sure they experience all of them, even the side effects experienced by the placebo people. If it only happens in males, my female people will figure out a way to have that side effect, too. My people worry out of love, though.

But how do you and I become supernatural? We have to begin to do what’s unnatural—that is, to give in the midst of crisis, when everyone is feeling lack and poverty; to love when everyone is angry and judging others; to demonstrate courage and peace when everyone else is in fear; to show kindness when others are displaying hostility and aggression; to surrender to possibility when the rest of the world is aggressively pushing to be first, trying to control outcomes, and fiercely competing in an endless drive to get to the top; to knowingly smile in the face of adversity; and to cultivate the feeling of wholeness when we’re diagnosed as sick.

There are some things that people will pay for even an imaginary chance at having. Youth, love, sex, wealth, and status are so deeply and painfully desired that people are willing to suspend their disbelief for the privilege of imagining that they might be obtainable. The need for social belonging trumps all other needs, and even trumps our own rationality. Being old, fat, poor, or impotent means being in social pain. Just as the desperate, terminally ill cancer patient often turns to expensive placebos for an imaginary chance at more life, desperate, terminally alive sad people turn to expensive placebos for a chance to imagine a decent life.

This feeling of irritability and alienation meant I was malleable. Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn’t want anything from you? It’s hard. Have you ever noticed in a row with someone that no longer loves you that you have no recourse? No tools with which to bargain. If you stroll up to a stranger and tell them that unless they comply with your demands they’ll never see you again, it’s unlikely that they’ll fling themselves at your feet and beg you not to go. They’ll just wander off. When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel.

The role of endorphins in human feelings was illustrated by an imaging study of fourteen healthy women volunteers. Their brains were scanned while they were in a neutral emotional state and then again when they were asked to think of an unhappy event in their lives. Ten of them recalled the death of a loved one, three remembered breakups with boyfriends and one focused on a recent argument with a close friend. Using a special tracer chemical, the scan highlighted the activity of opioid receptors in the emotional centres of each participant’s brain. While the women were under the spell of sad memories, these receptors were much less active.6 On the other hand, positive expectations turn on the endorphin system. Scientists have observed, for example, that when people expect relief from pain, the activity of opioid receptors will increase. Even the administration of inert medications—substances that do not have direct physical activity—will light up opioid receptors, leading to decreased pain perception.7 This is the so-called “placebo effect,” which, far from being imaginary, is a genuine physiological event. The medication may be inert, but the brain is soothed by its own painkillers, the endorphins.

ANTHROPOCENE PASTORAL BY Catherine Pierce In the beginning, the ending was beautiful. Early spring everywhere, the trees furred Pink and white, lawns the sharp green That meant new. The sky so blue it looked Manufactured. Robins. We’d heard The cherry blossoms wouldn’t blossom This year, but what was one epic blooming When even the desert was an explosion Of verbena? When coyotes slept deep in orange Poppies. One New Year’s Day we woke To daffodils, wisteria, onion grass wafting Through the open windows. Near the end, We were eyeletted. We were cottoned. We were sundressed and barefoot. At least It’s starting gentle, we said. An absurd comfort, We knew, a placebo. But we were built like that. Built to say at least. Built to reach for the heat Of skin on skin even when we were already hot, Built to love the purpling desert in the twilight, Built to marvel over the pink bursting dogwoods, To hold tight to every pleasure even as we Rocked together toward the graying, even as We held each other, warmth to warmth, And said, sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry while petals Sifted softly to the ground all around us.

At the same time, some researchers wonder whether acetaminophen is impacting something as critical and fundamental as our emotions. One Ohio State researcher who examined this found that study participants who received acetaminophen versus a placebo had a harder time feeling “positive empathy” for strangers, which matters because the ability to experience empathy is associated with more stable romantic relationships and more successful careers. “Just like we should be aware that you shouldn’t get in front of the wheel if you’re under the influence of alcohol, you don’t take [acetaminophen] and then put yourself into a situation that requires you to be emotionally responsive—like having a serious conversation with a partner or coworker,” Dominik Mischkowski, an assistant professor at Ohio University who studies the relationship between pain and social behavior, told the BBC.

Prayer is a type of magical thinking. Its appeal is undeniable; it feels empowering and makes individuals feel as though they have a measure of control over the world around them. But there is simply no evidence that prayers are anything more than a placebo. And unlike many placebos, prayer can actually be harmful.

Part II of this book, metaphysics moves into concrete manifestation. You can do these meditations yourself easily, experiencing firsthand the expanded possibilities of being your own placebo. The goal here is to change your beliefs and perceptions about your life at a biological level so that you are, in essence, loving a new future into concrete material existence.

This feeling of irritability and alienation meant I was malleable. Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn’t want anything from you? It’s hard. Have you ever noticed in a row with someone that no longer loves you that you have no recourse? No tools with which to bargain. If you stroll up to a stranger and tell them that unless they comply with your demands they’ll never see you again, it’s unlikely that they’ll fling themselves at your feet and beg you not to go. They’ll just wander off. When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel. I am confident that this is necessary. When do you ever meet people that are happy? Genuinely happy? Only children, the mentally ill, and daytime television presenters. My belief is that it is possible to feel happier, because I feel better than I used to. I am beginning to understand where the solution lies, primarily because of an exhausting process of trial and mostly error. My qualification to write a book on how to change yourself and change the world is not that I’m better than you, it’s that I’m worse. Not that I’m smarter, but that I’m dumber: I bought the lie hook, line, and sinker. My only quality has been an unwitting momentum, a willingness to wade through the static dissatisfaction that has been piped into my mind from the moment I learned language. What if that feeling of inadequacy, isolation, and anxiety isn’t just me? What if it isn’t internally engineered but the result of concerted effort, the product of a transmission? An ongoing broadcast from the powerful that has colonized my mind? Who is it in here, inside your mind, reading these words, feeling that fear? Is there an awareness, an exempt presence, gleaming behind the waterfall of words that commentate on every event, label every object, judge everyone you come into contact with? And is there another way to feel? Is it possible to be in this world and feel another way? Can you conceive, even for a moment, of a species similar to us but a little more evolved, that have transcended the idea that solutions to the way we feel can be externally acquired? What would that look like? How would that feel—to be liberated from the bureaucracy of managing your recalcitrant mind. Is it possible that there is a conspiracy to make us feel this way? If we were cops right now, we’d look for a motive. If our peace of mind, our God-given right to live in harmony with our environment and one another, has been murdered, who are the prime suspects? Well, who has a motive?

What were the basic ideas involved in that recovery? [...] Hope, faith, love, will to live, cheerfulness, humor, creativity, playfulness, confidence, great expectations – all these, I believed, had therapeutic value.’ In the end, argues Cousins, the greatest value of the placebo is that it tells us that indeed positive imagery can and often does awaken the body to its own self-healing powers.”43 Producing positive images can awaken the body to its own self-healing

23. I come from a worried people. These people worry and are overly cautious. The worried people are very suggestive and read the side effects on every medication to make sure they experience all of them, even the side effects experienced by the placebo people. If it only happens in males, my female people will figure out a way to have that side effect, too. My people worry out of love, though.

I come from a worried people. These people worry and are overly cautious. The worried people are very suggestive and read the side effects on every medication to make sure they experience all of them, even the side effects experienced by the placebo people. If it only happens in males, my female people will figure out a way to have that side effect, too. My people worry out of love, though.

Religion is now viewed by many as a placebo or emotional crutch precisely because that is how we often pitch the gospel to unbelievers.

Betrayal is a facet of love.

loved conspiracy theories. Mom hated them. She’d taught me to question my response to them. The more beguiling a conspiracy theory was, the more important it was to analyze what problem in my life it provided a placebo for.

Reiki looks like touch-less massage. The person performing Reiki holds his or her hands on or just above the surface of a person’s body and, with motions of hand and arms, moves energy to or from places that hurt and places that need healing. As far as I know, Reiki has no scientific basis and is not billed for or paid. But for many people, it works. They feel better after having it and often ask to have it performed again. This may very well be the purest form of the placebo effect: one person’s healing intention causing a therapeutic effect in another. All the more reason to recommend it. People love it and I have yet to hear of any dangerous side effects.