“
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
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C.G. Jung
“
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
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Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning)
“
Life is just action and reaction, rationalizations are added later on
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Ibn-e-Safi
“
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)
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Nothing in my life has ever made me want to commit suicide more than people's reaction to my trying to commit suicide.
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”
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
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Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth
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”
Pema Chödrön (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times)
“
We try so hard to hide everything we're really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if it's somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life.
”
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Colleen Hoover (Maybe Someday (Maybe, #1))
“
If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.
”
”
John F. Kennedy (Profiles in Courage)
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Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.
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Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
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Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.
”
”
Ben Carson (Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story)
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Her unexpected outburst rocked Flaminius to his core. Suddenly, she didn't seem so angelic. Her face twisted with rage; veins in her neck throbbed with fury in a scene all too familiar. Her reaction switched him off to her instantly as all his worst fears came to life.
”
”
Therisa Peimer (Taming Flame)
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Dmitri was at a total loss. It was a common reaction for people when I agreed to do something reasonable.
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”
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
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You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers – the monsters, the enemies. When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, #4))
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Because you are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. And because there is joy in embracing - rather than running from - the utter absurdity of life.
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Jenny Lawson (Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir)
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Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.
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J. Krishnamurti
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Rage — whether in reaction to social injustice, or to our leaders’ insanity, or to those who threaten or harm us — is a powerful energy that, with diligent practice, can be transformed into fierce compassion.
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Bonnie Myotai Treace
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Part of me wanted to walk up to him and hug him from behind, and part of me wanted to hurl a snowball at his perfect face to get some kind of reaction.
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”
Julie Kagawa (Winter's Passage (Iron Fey, #1.5))
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What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman.
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Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
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You can only control your own actions. Not other people’s reactions.
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Emily Giffin (Something Blue (Darcy & Rachel, #2))
“
The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.
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Sigmund Freud (Sexuality and the Psychology of Love)
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Having a physical reaction to a lack of book is not unusual.
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Erin Morgenstern (The Starless Sea)
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Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
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Anaïs Nin
“
Stop being tomented by everyone else's reaction to you.
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Joyce Meyer
“
The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
You were wrong. She really is the new general in town."
I smiled back, hoping he wasn't aware of my body's reaction to us standing so close. "Maybe. But, it's okay. You can still be colonel."
He arched an eyebrow. "Oh? Did you demote yourself? Colonel's right below general. What's that make you?"
I reached into my pocket and triumphantly flashed the CR-V keys I'd swiped when we'd come back inside. "The driver," I said.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
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The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
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Adam Smith (The Money Game)
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When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie.
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Criss Jami (Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile)
“
I suspect he's sweet on Sophie and doesn't like to see her work too hard.'
Tessa was glad to hear it. She'd felt awful about her reaction to Sophie's scar, and the thought that Sophie had a male admirer - and a handsome one like that- eased her conscience slightly. 'Perhaps he's in love with Agatha', she said.
'I hope not. I intend to marry Agatha myself. She may be a thousand years old, but she makes an incomparable jam tart. Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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This is how we reveal ourselves: these tiny flashes of discomfort, the reactions we can’t hide.
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Christina Lauren (Autoboyography)
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I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
“
Did we have sex?" he asked directly.
For about two minutes, this might actually be fun. "Eric," I said, "we had sex in every position I could imagine, and some I couldn’t. We had sex in every room in my house, and we had sex outdoors. You told me it was the best you’d ever had." (At the time he couldn’t recall all the sex he’d ever had. But he’d paid me a compliment.) "Too bad you can’t remember it," I concluded with a modest smile.
Eric looked like I’d hit him in the forehead with a mallet. For all of thirty seconds his reaction was completely gratifying.
”
”
Charlaine Harris (Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse, #5))
“
You have the ability to choose your reactions.
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”
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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The secret of happiness is this: let your interest be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons who interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
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Bertrand Russell
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When I tell people I went to library school, the most common reaction is either “You’re joking, right?” or “They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people?
”
”
Scott Douglas
“
and to every action there is always an equal and opposite or contrary, reaction
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Isaac Newton
“
It’s never overreacting to ask for what you want and need.
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Amy Poehler
“
So what were you [Sonea] and Dorrien discussing before?' Akkarin asked.
She turned to regard him. 'Discussing?'
'Outside the farmhouse when I was buying the food.'
'Oh. Then. Nothing.'
He smiled and nodded. 'Nothing. Amazing subject, that one. Produces such fascinating reactions in people.
”
”
Trudi Canavan (The High Lord (The Black Magician Trilogy #3))
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A coworker at SNL dropped an angry c-bomb on me and i had the weirdest reaction. To my surprise, I blurted, "No. You don't get to call me that. My parents love me. I'm not some Adult Child of an Alcoholic that's going to take that shit.
”
”
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
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He had stayed. And fought for me.
Week after week, he’d fought for me, even when I had no reaction , even when I had barely been able to speak or bring myself to care if I lived or died or ate or starved. I couldn’t leave him to his own dark thoughts, his own guilt. He’d shouldered them alone long enough.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
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Wayne's a little attached to that hat," Waxillium said. "He thinks it's lucky."
Wayne: "It is lucky. I ain't never died while wearing that hat."
Marasi frowned. "I ... I'm not sure I know how to respond."
Wax: "That's a common reaction to Wayne.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (The Alloy of Law (Mistborn, #4))
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As Lothaire lifted the lid with a sense of dread, Nïx murmured, “Hint: it’s the middle one.”
Elizabeth’s fragile finger.Seeing it severed like this brought on a visceral reaction—pain shooting through his own hand, radiating throughout his regenerated heart. He closed the lid with a swallow, sentimentally pocketing the package.
“You gave her your heart, and she gave you the bird.” Nïx sighed. “Songs will be written about this.
”
”
Kresley Cole (Lothaire (Immortals After Dark, #11))
“
YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER.
One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.
”
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Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
“
What do you mean? Is she in a coma?”
“Not anymore.” She braced herself for his reaction.
“But she’s a cyborg.”
His eyes widened, but then his attention was darting around the room as though he couldn’t look at Cinder while he adjusted to that information. “I see,” he said slowly, before meeting her gaze again.
“But … is she all right?”
The question caught her by surprise and she couldn’t help a startled laugh. “Oh, yeah, she’s great. I mean, half the people in the world want to kill her and the other half want to chain her to a throne on the moon, which is just what she’s always wanted. So she’s fantastic.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
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The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.
”
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Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
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It annoys me when people try to convince other people that their anger or stress isn’t warranted if someone else in the world is worse off than them. It’s bullshit. Your emotions and reactions are valid, Merit. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. You’re the only one who feels them.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Without Merit)
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Nobody really knows her
Except the chosen few
Her secrets are kept hidden
Behind that sun-kissed hue.
If I reach out to touch her
She’ll just run away
My Forever and Always
Will have to wait another day.
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Chain Reaction (Perfect Chemistry, #3))
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A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.
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J.D. Stroube (Caged by Damnation (Caged, #2))
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How you react emotionally is a choice in any situation.
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Judith Orloff
“
...But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.
”
”
Winston S. Churchill (The Story of the Malakand Field Force)
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And I find myself saying, “It wasn’t really about her.” And finding it’s true.
What do you mean?” Norah asks.
It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.
”
”
David Levithan (Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist)
“
Recognizing that people's reactions don't belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you've created, terrific. If people ignore what you've created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you've created, don't sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you've created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest - as politely as you possibly can - that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
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People's reaction to me is sometimes "Uch, I just don't like her. I hate how she thinks she is so great." But it's not that I think I'm so great. I just don't hate myself. I do idiotic things all the time and I say crazy stuff I regret, but I don't let everything traumatize me. And the scary thing I have noticed is that some people really feel uncomfortable around women who don't hate themselves. So that's why you need to be a little bit brave.
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”
Mindy Kaling (Why Not Me?)
“
Marry me, Kiara,” he blurts out in front of everyone.
“Why?” she asks, challenging him.
“Because I love you,” he says, walking up to her and bending down on one knee while he takes her hand in his, “and I want to go to sleep with you every night and wake up seein’ your face every mornin’, I want you to be the mother of my children, I want to fix cars with you and eat your crappy tofu tacos that you think are Mexican. I want to climb mountains with you and be challenged by you, I want to argue with you just so we can have crazy hot makeup sex. Marry me, because without you I’d be six feet under … and because I love your family like they’re my own … and because you’re my best friend and I want to grow old with you.” He starts tearing up, and it’s shocking because I’ve never seen him cry. “Marry me, Kiara Westford, because when I got shot the only thing I was thinkin’ about was comin’ back here and makin’ you my wife. Say yes, chica.
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Chain Reaction (Perfect Chemistry, #3))
“
In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
”
”
Dorothy L. Sayers (Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society)
“
To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.
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”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
“
[...] Tess and I are a good match. She understands intimately where I came from. She can cheer me up on my darkest days. It's as if she came perfectly happy home instead of what Kaede just told me. I feel a relaxing warmth at the thought, realizing suddenly how much I'm anticipating meeting up with Tess again. Where she goes, I go, and vice versa. Peas in a pod.
Then there's June.
Even the thought of her name makes it hard for me to breathe. I'm almost embarrassed by my reaction. Are June and I a good match? No. It's the first word to pop into my mind.
And yet, still.
”
”
Marie Lu (Prodigy (Legend, #2))
“
I couldn’t trust my own emotions. Which emotional reactions were justified, if any? And which ones were tainted by the mental illness of BPD? I found myself fiercely guarding and limiting my emotional reactions, chastising myself for possible distortions and motivations. People who had known me years ago would barely recognize me now. I had become quiet and withdrawn in social settings, no longer the life of the party. After all, how could I know if my boisterous humor were spontaneous or just a borderline desire to be the center of attention? I could no longer trust any of my heart felt beliefs and opinions on politics, religion, or life. The debate queen had withered. I found myself looking at every single side of an issue unable to come to any conclusions for fear they might be tainted. My lifelong ability to be assertive had turned into a constant state of passivity.
”
”
Rachel Reiland (Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder)
“
We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them thatexcrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body. Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules.
”
”
Alan W. Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)
“
BEFRIENDING THE BODY
Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.
In my practice I begin the process by helping my patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. I also work on identifying the sensations associated with relaxation or pleasure. I help them become aware of their breath, their gestures and movements.
All too often, however, drugs such as Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, are prescribed instead of teaching people the skills to deal with such distressing physical reactions. Of course, medications only blunt sensations and do nothing to resolve them or transform them from toxic agents into allies.
The mind needs to be reeducated to feel physical sensations, and the body needs to be helped to tolerate and enjoy the comforts of touch. Individuals who lack emotional awareness are able, with practice, to connect their physical sensations to psychological events. Then they can slowly reconnect with themselves.
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
We're all—especially those of us who are educated and have read a lot and have watched TV critically—in a very self-conscious and sort of worldly and sophisticated time, but also a time when we seem terribly afraid of other people's reactions to us and very desperate to control how people interpret us. Everyone is extremely conscious of manipulating how they come off in the media; they want to structure what they say so that the reader or audience will interpret it in the way that is most favorable to them. What's interesting to me is that this isn't all that new. This was the project of the Sophists in Athens, and this is what Socrates and Plato thought was so completely evil. The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.
”
”
David Foster Wallace