Relieve Anxiety Quotes

It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.

The suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance; the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the images they conjure up before it; the desperate anxiety to be doing something to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad remembrance of our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what reflections of endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay them!

Skepticism relieved two terrible diseases that afflicted mankind: anxiety and dogmatism.

Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that meditation showed me that the other side of anxiety is desire. They exist in relationship to each other, not independently.

And maybe this was what craziness was: an emergency valve to relieve the pressure of unbearable anxiety.

Gifts are very useful to con men. Gifts create a feeling of debt, an itchy anxiety that the recipient is eager to be rid of by repaying. So eager, in fact, that people will often overpay just to be relieved of it. A single spontaneously given cup of coffee can make a person feel obligated to sit through a lecture on a religion they don't care about. The gift of a tiny, wilted flower can make the recipient give to a charity they dislike. Gifts place such a heavy burden that even throwing away the gift doesn't remove the debt. Even if you hate coffee, even if you didn't want that flower, once you take it, you want to give something back. Most of all, you want to dismiss obligation.

the anxiety attacks are like earthquake. I'm always relieved when the ground stops shaking, but I know there will be another one eventually, and again, I'll never see it coming,

Paris is narcotic for a man alone, a never-ending labyrinth where the anxiety of freedom is relieved.

We live in anxious times, my love, anxiety-producing times. It doesn't mean we have to be anxious, but if we've got it, we've got to find some way to relieve it.

There are so many ways to relieve the anxiety, and we cannot function if we don't find one of those ways, one that distracts, relieves, and leaves you better off than before not worse, and self-loathing... We know not what storms are coming.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it’s all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” – Marcus Aurelius Ever

In an age of fear, moderation is hard to find and harder to sustain. Who wants to listen to a nuanced argument, when what we want is someone to relieve us from the burden of thought and convince us that we were right all along? So people mock. They blame. They caricature. They demonise. In an age of anxiety, few can hear the still small voice that the Bible tells us is the voice of God.

Compulsive reading relieves the anxiety that comes from tramping through the forest of meditation in search of clearings.

In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and the pleasure routine. Man becomes a 'nine to fiver', he is part of the labour force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organisation of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organisation, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction. Fun is routinised in similar, although not quite as drastic ways. Books are selected by the book clubs, movies by the film and theatre owners and the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is also uniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session, the card game, the social parties. From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening - all activities are routinised, and prefabricated. How should a man caught up in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and separateness?

Because the dying also are unable to help themselves, we should relieve them of discomfort and anxiety, and assist them, as far as we can, to die with composure.

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there—buried

the ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life...It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free.

Numerous studies have indicated that people who put in too many hours at their jobs, either by choice or by requirement, become inefficient. With rare exceptions, they burn out and lose their creative edge.

when you’re anxious, your body wants you to move so that you can relieve tension and counteract the effects of cortisol. Big muscle movements like jump squats, lunges, and kicks can help you move through anxiety and reduce stress.

She would become, through the years, a woman who expected the worst, to relieve herself of the anxiety of hope. She would become a woman of calm, fatalistic principles, anticipating her life with the equanimity of a weather forecaster.

Across that threshold I had been afraid to cross, things suddenly seemed so very simple. There was but a single vision, God, who was all in all; there was but one will that directed all things, God's will. I had only to see it, to discern it in every circumstance in which I found myself, and let myself be ruled by it. God is in all things, sustains all things, directs all things. To discern this in every situation and circumstance, to see His will in all things, was to accept each circumstance and situation and let oneself be borne along in perfect confidence and trust. Nothing could separate me from Him, because He was in all things. No danger could threaten me, no fear could shake me, except the fear of losing sight of Him. The future, hidden as it was, was hidden in His will and therefore acceptable to me no matter what it might bring. The past, with all its failures, was not forgotten; it remained to remind me of the weakness of human nature and the folly of putting any faith in self. But it no longer depressed me. I looked no longer to self to guide me, relied on it no longer in any way, so it could not again fail me. By renouncing, finally and completely, all control of my life and future destiny, I was relieved as a consequence of all responsibility. I was freed thereby from anxiety and worry, from every tension, and could float serenely upon the tide of God's sustaining providence in perfect peace of soul.

Neither season after season of extreme weather events nor the risk of extinction for a million animal species around the world could push environmental destruction to the top of our country’s list of concerns. And how sad, he said, to see so many among the most creative and best-educated classes, those from whom we might have hoped for inventive solutions, instead embracing personal therapies and pseudo-religious practices that promoted detachment, a focus on the moment, acceptance of one’s surroundings as they were, equanimity in the face of worldly cares. (This world is but a shadow, it is a carcass, it is nothing, this world is not real, do not mistake this hallucination for the real world.) Self-care, relieving one’s own everyday anxieties, avoiding stress: these had become some of our society’s highest goals, he said—higher, apparently, than the salvation of society itself. The mindfulness rage was just another distraction, he said. Of course we should be stressed, he said. We should be utterly consumed with dread. Mindful meditation might help a person face drowning with equanimity, but it would do absolutely nothing to right the Titanic, he said. It wasn’t individual efforts to achieve inner peace, it wasn’t a compassionate attitude toward others that might have led to timely preventative action, but rather a collective, fanatical, over-the-top obsession with impending doom.

But in many individuals in whom separateness is not relieved in other ways, the search for the sexual orgasm assumes a function which makes it not very different from alcoholism and drug addiction. It becomes a desperate attempt to escape the anxiety engendered by separateness, and it results in an ever-increasing sense of separateness, since the sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily. All

In other words, though it might not feel like it in the moment, a big cause of anxiety can come down to intrinsic factors within you as an individual.

Meditation is a lot like doing reps at a gym. It strengthens your attention muscle.

We are living through deeply anxious days and if we are to relieve our own anxiety we must diagnose its cause

Awareness is always the first step toward change. We

Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin released in the making of music and art can help to relieve anxiety and depression.

pain can relieve anxiety by distracting you from your consciousness.

I must go,” Gavriel said, pushing back ash-black hair and looking at her with the utter sincerity of the drunk or deranged. “You will take care, won’t you? This city is hungry.” “You’re going now?” Tana asked him. She should have been relieved, knowing what he was and what he was capable of, but she didn’t want him to go. The thought of being alone with Aidan and Midnight and Winter filled her with a nameless anxiety. “It’s almost dawn. You don’t even know where you’re going.” He smiled, a real smile, the kind real boys gave real girls. “It’s been a very long time since anyone worried for me.

Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life. The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances. I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances. It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve.

Wasn't she a good person? She felt a dim awareness of something almost shameful about the way she'd lived her life. Wasn't there something closed off, even small-minded and mean, about the way she cut herself off from people, ducking down behind the convenient wall of her shyness, her social anxiety? When she sensed the overtures of friendship, she took too long to respond to phone calls and e-mails, and eventually people gave up, and Tess was always relieved.

When the hour of departure drew near, the maternal anxiety of Mrs Morland will be naturally supposed to be severe... Cautions against the violence of such nobleman and baronets as delight in forcing young ladies away to some remote farmhouse, must, at such a moment, relieve the fullness of her heart... But Mrs Morland knew so little of lords and baronets, that she entertained no notion of their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations.

The ancient Stoics understood these principles well, with Epictetus saying, “Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.” We have power over our minds, not outside events. So, if we continue to focus on outside events that we don’t have power over, the conclusion is obvious—we repeatedly experience powerlessness and therefore anxiety.

This apparent calm before the storm may reflect different things: The suicidal patients may be experiencing a genuine calm in the midst of recovery but then switch precipitously into a severe depression or a mixed state. They may, on the other hand, be calmer because, having decided to kill themselves, they are relieved of the anxiety and pain entailed in having to continue to live. They may also be deliberately deceiving their doctors and families in order to secure the circumstances that will allow them to commit suicide.

How to be there for someone with depression or anxiety 1. Know that you are needed, and appreciated, even if it seems you are not. 2. Listen. 3. Never say ‘pull yourself together’ or ‘cheer up’ unless you’re also going to provide detailed, foolproof instructions. (Tough love doesn’t work. Turns out that just good old ‘love’ is enough.) 4. Appreciate that it is an illness. Things will be said that aren’t meant. 5. Educate yourself. Understand, above all, that what might seem easy to you –going to a shop, for instance –might be an impossible challenge for a depressive. 6. Don’t take anything personally, any more than you would take someone suffering with the flu or chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis personally. None of this is your fault. 7. Be patient. Understand it isn’t going to be easy. Depression ebbs and flows and moves up and down. It doesn’t stay still. Do not take one happy/ bad moment as proof of recovery/ relapse. Play the long game. 8. Meet them where they are. Ask what you can do. The main thing you can do is just be there. 9. Relieve any work/ life pressure if that is doable. 10. Where possible, don’t make the depressive feel weirder than they already feel. Three days on the sofa? Haven’t opened the curtains? Crying over difficult decisions like which pair of socks to wear? So what. No biggie. There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.

Thinking may seem automatic and uncontrollable, but many of our thought patterns are habitual and, well, thoughtless.

11)Get rid of toxic people from your life Evaluate all the people in your life. And then, keep off from people who are not worth the time and energy.

The more we ponder our despair, the more despondent we become.

increased choice leads to greater anxiety, indecision, paralysis, and dissatisfaction.

If you’re depressed, you might be more likely to show up for someone else than you are to show up for yourself,

There seems to be nothing that relieves anxiety state but hard outdoor exercise and useful work. Hard work is wonderful medicine.

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” – Winnie the Pooh

when we find ourselves in the present, the past is already dead while the future is about to be born

there's no use rethinking the past that is dead and gone, nor should we think about future that has yet to be born until it arrives

In my practice I use neurofeedback primarily to help with the hyperarousal, confusion, and concentration problems of people who suffer from developmental trauma. However, it has also shown good results for numerous issues and conditions that go beyond the scope of this book, including relieving tension headaches, improving cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury, reducing anxiety and panic attacks, learning to deepen meditation states, treating autism, improving seizure control, self-regulation in mood disorders, and more.

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When our mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love. When your beloved is suffering, you need to recognize her suffering, anxiety, and worries, and just by doing that, you already offer some relief. Mindfulness relieves suffering because it is filled with understanding and compassion. When you are really there, showing your loving-kindness and understanding, the energy of the Holy Spirit is in you.

Are you going to believe your own eyes or the headlines? This is the dilemma of people who live in totalitarian societies. Trusting one’s own perceptions is a lonely lot; believing one’s own eyes and being vocal about it is dangerous. Believing the propaganda—or, rather, accepting the propaganda as one’s reality—carries the promise of a less anxious existence, in harmony with the majority of one’s fellow citizens. The path to peace of mind lies in giving one’s mind over to the regime. Bizarrely, the experience of living in the United States during the Trump presidency reproduces this dilemma. Being an engaged citizen of Trump’s America means living in a constant state of cognitive tension. One cannot put the president and his lies out of one’s mind, because he is the president. Accepting that the president continuously tweets or says things that are not true, are known not to be true, are intended to be heard or read as power lies, and will continue to be broadcast—on Twitter and by the media—after they have been repeatedly disproven means accepting a constant challenge to fact-based reality. In effect, it means that the two realities—Trumpian and fact-based—come to exist side by side, on equal ground. The tension is draining. The need to pay constant attention to the lies is exhausting, and it is compounded by the feeling of helplessness in the face of the ridiculous and repeated lies. Most Americans in the age of Trump are not, like the subjects of a totalitarian regime, subjected to state terror. But even before the coronavirus, they were subjected to constant, sometimes debilitating anxiety. One way out of that anxiety is to relieve the mind of stress by accepting Trumpian reality. Another—and this too is an option often exercised by people living under totalitarianism—is to stop paying attention, disengage, and retreat to one’s private sphere. Both approaches are victories for Trump in his attack on politics.

We often feel like we don’t have time to declutter because we’re too busy consuming new stuff and information. But at some point, all this busyness is leading us to mental and emotional exhaustion.

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there—buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day.” – Deepak Chopra You

The sound of the abstract is called Anahad in the Vedas, meaning unlimited sound. The Sufis name it Sarmad, which suggests the idea of intoxication. The word intoxication is here used to signify upliftment, the freedom of the soul from its earthly bondage. Those who are able to hear the Saut-i Sarmad and meditate on it are relieved from all worries, anxieties, sorrows, fears and diseases; and the soul is freed from captivity in the senses and in the physical body. The soul of the listener becomes the all-pervading consciousness, and his spirit becomes the battery which keeps the whole universe in motion.

Stress and anxiety are not the same thing. Psychologist Dr. Sarah Edelman explains that stress is something in the environment, an external pressure on us, whereas anxiety is our internal experience of this pressure.

We can learn to break the habit of accumulating and perpetuating old emotion by flapping our wings, metaphorically speaking, and refrain from mentally dwelling on the past, regardless of whether something happened yesterday or 30 years ago. We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the pristine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie-making.

Feeling compassion toward a dangerous person will not lead you to submit to them or put yourself at risk or condone their actions. What it does simply, is relieve your anxiety – which immediately makes you stronger and more resilient.

Cziksentmihalyi defines flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

He was aware, suddenly, of how exhausted, how utterly depleted he was, as much by the past few weeks of anxiety as well as the past thirty years of craving, of wanting, of wishing so intensely even as he told himself he didn’t care, that by the time they had toasted one another and first Julia and then Harold had hugged him—the sensation of being held by Harold so unfamiliar and intimate that he had nearly squirmed—he was relieved when Harold told him to leave the damn dishes and go to bed.

Most of people have little perspectives of delution. Delusion in Zen has deeper meaning. Envy of others, feeling of self doubt-there are also delutions. Meanwhile, existence of every thing and every person is absolute, unto itself -- there is no comparison.

In fact, nearly every negative thought you have relates to the past or future. It’s common to find yourself trapped in a looping cycle of regretful thinking or worry thoughts, even while feeling desperate to escape the never-ending tape playing in your mind.

we try to quell the mental chatter by self-medicating with too much food, alcohol, drugs, work, sex, or exercise. But these are temporary solutions to muffle the noise and ease the pain. Soon enough, our thoughts are back at it again, and the cycle continues.

If you’re a victim of this tactic, you will sense the manipulator is withdrawing. He or she is not giving you the attention and affection that they used to, and you will fear that something is wrong and that you are losing them. If you ask them if something is wrong, they will deny it or blame you. At some point the manipulator will act once again like the attentive, romantic, interested and loving person they once were. Your anxiety and doubt are relieved, and you are on top of the world. But then they withdraw again, and you are consumed with anxiety once more. By using intermittent reinforcement the manipulator will have you riding an emotional roller coaster, your moods and emotional well-being dependent upon whether he or she is withholding from you or rewarding you.

Q: You're asking whether we can learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented? Bohm: That's part of it. And another part is looking into impulses and feelings and anxieties which push us away from that. Instead of saying 'It's terrible, I'm anxious; I must quickly find some thought to relieve the anxiety', I now say 'Anxiety is perfectly normal and is to be expected in this situation'. Q: It's an opportunity to learn. Bohm: It's an opportunity to learn, yes. And this is a reversal of most of our culture.

As a newborn baby each of us was helpless and, without the care and kindness we received then, we would not have survived. Because the dying are also unable to help themselves, we should relieve them of discomfort and anxiety, and assist them, as far as we can, to die with composure.

But if this man alone is removed from this piratical crew, we may appear, perhaps, for a short time relieved from fear and anxiety, but the danger will settle down and lie hid in the veins and bowels of the republic. As it often happens that men afflicted with a severe disease, when they are tortured with heat and fever, if they drink cold water, seem at first to be relieved, but afterwards stiffer more and more severely; so this disease which is in the republic, if relieved by the punishment of this man, will only get worse and worse, as the rest will be still alive.

People often develop routines or rituals to try to keep a lid on their anxiety. These can range from avoiding “forbidden foods,” to going to only certain places or doing only certain activities with someone else, to washing their hands for a minimum number of seconds. Again, these routines help relieve anxiety in the short term but increase it in the long term, and suck away self-confidence. The goods new is that cognitive behavioral strategies are very effective for preventing anxiety from spiraling out of control and fear for reversing this process once it has occurred.

The more we procrastinate on something important, the worse we feel about ourselves. The worse we feel, the less motivation we have to get moving on our work. The less motivation we have, the more we procrastinate with mindless distractions. It’s a vicious cycle that traps you in self-recriminations and anxiety.

The desire to drink comes from the Big Monster—the illusion that drinking gives us pleasure or support. • The edgy feeling we get when we’re without a drink is merely the Little Monster wanting to be fed. • The Little Monster was created by drinking in the first place. • Therefore drinking does not relieve the anxiety, it causes it.

In the mid-1980s, the medical world wrestled with how to use the new opiates that pharmaceutical companies were developing to treat pain. David Procter was an early and aggressive adopter. He prescribed opiates for neck, leg, and lower back pain, arthritis, and lower lumbar spine pain. He combined them with benzodiazepines—anxiety relievers, of which Valium and Xanax, Procter’s favorite, are the best known. In Portsmouth, people had anxiety and they had pain. Appalachia had a long history of using benzodiazepines—dating to the release of Valium in the early 1960s. Little old ladies used it. In this part of the country, anything that relieved pain was welcome. But opiates and benzos together also led quickly to addiction.

We can control and direct our thoughts, but it often feels like our thoughts have minds of their own, controlling us and how we feel. Thinking is necessary for solving problems, analyzing, making decisions, and planning, but in between the times of proactive mental endeavors, the mind roams like a wild monkey, dragging you through the brambles of rumination and negativity.

Whereas we’d once believed that the symptoms and behavior exhibited by our clients primarily reflected their psychological defenses—a view that attributed a degree of intentionality, no matter how unconscious—now, we better understood the symptoms as manifestations of instinctive brain and bodily survival responses. We understood that sympathetic activation fuels anxiety and rage, parasympathetic dominance causes shutdown and passive-aggressive behavior, flight responses spur fleeing the therapist’s office, and fight responses lead to verbal or physical aggression or violence turned against the self. When clients self-harm, for example, these days, we understand their actions to be instinctive, rather than thought out—an effort to regulate or relieve, rather than punish.

I take care of your children like the priceless jewels that they are and I don't expect a thank-you for my efforts. You never have to worry about our kids because you know no harm will come to them in my care. Do you have any idea what a burden I have taken off your shoulders? The ability to relieve another human being of worry and anxiety is the single greatest act of love one can do for another and I do it for you.

Relieve Stress It has been proven that meditation can lower the levels of cortisol, one of the major stress hormones. As little as 5 to 10 minutes of meditation per day, it can alleviate symptoms like tension, anxiety, and even depression. Meditation can also counter excess adrenalin and norepinephrine, hormones known to produce our “fight or flight response”, and which are also associated with stress. This, again, was proven scientifically by Herbert Benson, MD.

According to Australian psychologist Dr. Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living, “Thus, evolution has shaped our brains so that we are hardwired to suffer psychologically: to compare, evaluate, and criticize ourselves, to focus on what we’re lacking, to rapidly become dissatisfied with what we have, and to imagine all sorts of frightening scenarios, most of which will never happen. No wonder humans find it hard to be happy!

I thought about the people I had met who were in pain but were pretending that everything was fine. And I thought, this is what books can do for us: they can acknowledge our experience and take the lid off our isolation and make us feel less alone. To me, books have always been a great source of comfort--not because they allow for escapism (though that's certainly one of their benefits) but because they offer recognition. Face to face with other people, we might give in to the impulse to pretend that everything is "fine"; but when we open the cover of a book--I'm talking mostly about novels here--there is no shame and no need to pretend. Good fiction has never lied to me. When I immerse myself in a book I feel recognized and therefore relieved. I turn the pages and think, yes, I have felt that too--that loneliness and joy and anxiety and confusion and fear. When I read, what once seemed meaningless gains meaning, and I am not alone.

...my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from intimate trial; the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives--the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.

Over the years, a variety of studies on people suffering from different forms of anxiety and disorders help us understand. They started realizing their condition was affecting their relationships with parents, significant other, spouse, or coworkers. Many have admitted that anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder have played a massive role in damaging the relationship. Fortunately, many of these disorders are now treatable. When anxiety is out of the picture or under proper control, a relationship with loved ones once again could grow. In

How did Epicurus attempt to alleviate death anxiety? He formulated a series of well-constructed arguments, which his students memorized like a catechism. Many of these arguments have been debated over the past twenty-three hundred years and are still germane to overcoming the fear of death. In this chapter, I will discuss three of his best-known arguments, which I've found valuable in my work with many patients and to me personally in relieving my own death anxiety. 1. The mortality of the soul 2. The ultimate nothingness of death 3. The argument of symmetry

Fear No Fear (The Sonnet) I have zero tolerance for fear, I don't mean intolerance of being afraid. Let the fear come and go, Just never let it make you slave. Embrace it all, and the grip will slowly loosen, Then take care of the cause of your fear. It is quite human to have cold feet on occasion, Just know, your backbone is your savior. Fear resisted is fear amplified, Fear embraced is fear relieved. Most fears are rooted in imagination, Observe yourself and all is revealed. You are the ultimate answer to your own fear. Study yourself without coldness, and all will be clear.

In the United States in 1907, a book entitled Three Acres and Liberty seized the imagination of the reading public. The author, Bolton Hall, began by taking for granted the awkwardness of having to work for someone else, and so advised his readers that they could win their freedom by leaving their offices and factories and buying three acres apiece of inexpensive farmland in middle America. This acreage would soon enable them to grow enough food for a family of four and to build a simple but comfortable home, and best of all, relieve them of any need ever again to flatter or negotiate with colleagues and superiors.

As Ernest Becker observes in The Denial of Death, the very thought of disobeying authority appears to awaken the anxiety connected with the possible loss, during infancy, of parental love, respect or support. The unexamined beliefs and experiences that generate our reliance on, and deference to authority, seem rooted in a profound existential uncertainty: the patient looks to the doctor to relieve this uncertainty, not only about not feeling well and not knowing why, but also about not knowing what to do, what action to undertake. In other words, the expertise of the physician relieves the patient of some of the burden of responsibility.

When Amelia put her hand on the doorknob, Rick stopped her by taking her in his arms. He pulled her against his chest and gave her a lingering hug. "You know what they say about hugging," Rick whispered in her ear. Amelia smiled. "Yeah. It relieves stress, anxiety, and strengthens the immune system." "That's right." "But, Rick, I don't have a problem with stress or anxiety, and I'm pretty healthy, too." Rick chuckled. "Hey, you! Hugging also helps to create a bond between two people." Amelia giggled. "You think so, huh?" "Most definitely!" As he held her in his arms, he kissed her neck a couple of times and whispered. "I'm just making sure your health remains intact.

Almost a year after the start of the corona crisis, how is the mental health of the population? MD: For the time being, there are few figures that show the evolution of possible indicators such as the intake of antidepressants and anxiolytics or the number of suicides. But it is especially important to place mental well-being in the corona crisis in its historical continuity. Mental health had been declining for decades. There has long been a steady increase in the number of depression and anxiety problems and the number of suicides. And in recent years there has been an enormous growth in absenteeism due to psychological suffering and burnouts. The year before the corona outbreak, you could feel this malaise growing exponentially. This gave the impression that society was heading for a tipping point where a psychological 'reorganization' of the social system was imperative. This is happening with corona. Initially, we noticed people with little knowledge of the virus conjure up terrible fears, and a real social panic reaction became manifested. This happens especially if there is already a strong latent fear in a person or population. The psychological dimensions of the current corona crisis are seriously underestimated. A crisis acts as a trauma that takes away an individual's historical sense. The trauma is seen as an isolated event in itself, when in fact it is part of a continuous process. For example, we easily overlook the fact that a significant portion of the population was strangely relieved during the initial lockdown, feeling liberated from stress and anxiety. I regularly heard people say: "Yes these measures are heavy-handed, but at least I can relax a bit." Because the grind of daily life stopped, a calm settled over society. The lockdown often freed people from a psychological rut. This created unconscious support for the lockdown. If the population had not already been exhausted by their life, and especially their jobs, there would never have been support for the lockdown. At least not as a response to a pandemic that is not too bad compared to the major pandemics of the past. You noticed something similar when the first lockdown came to an end. You then regularly heard statements such as "We are not going to start living again like we used to, get stuck in traffic again" and so on. People did not want to go back to the pre-corona normal. If we do not take into account the population's dissatisfaction with its existence, we will not understand this crisis and we will not be able to resolve it. By the way, I now have the impression that the new normal has become a rut again, and I would not be surprised if mental health really starts to deteriorate in the near future. Perhaps especially if it turns out that the vaccine does not provide the magical solution that is expected from it.

Sometimes in Hubbard’s writings, however, he puts forward what appear to be fantasies of a highly schizophrenic personality. In 1952, for instance, he began talking about “injected entities,” which can paralyze portions of the anatomy or block information from being audited. These entities can be located in the body, always in the same places. For instance, one of the entities, the “crew chief,” is found on the right side of the jaw down to the shoulder. “They are the ‘mysterious voices’ in the heads of some preclears,” Hubbard said. “Paralysis, anxiety stomachs, arthritis and many ills and aberrations have been relieved by auditing them. An E-Meter shows them up and makes them confess their misdeeds. They are probably just compartments of the mind which, cut off, begin to act as though they were persons.

The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life. The physical comforts were certainly meagre, but at the Ritz Paul had learned to appreciate the inadequacy of purely physical comfort. It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meals, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free. At some rather chilly time in the early morning a bell would ring, and the warder would say, "Slops outside!"; he would rise, roll up his bedding, and dress; there was no need to shave, no hesitation about what tie he should wear, none of the fidgeting with studs and collars and links that so distracts the waking moments of civilized man. He felt like the happy people in the advertisements for shaving soap who seem to have achieved very simply that peace of mind so distant and so desirable in the early morning.

behaviors. Alcohol becomes more important because drinking it excessively tricks a primitive, unconscious part of our brain into believing it’s more critical to our survival than it actually is. The artificially high levels of dopamine that flood the brain when we ingest alcohol begin a cascade of other reactions and responses. The brain has a hedonic set point (a term coined by Dr. Kevin McCauley), which means that it both needs a certain amount of dopamine to register pleasure, and is programmed to downgrade levels of dopamine when we receive too much pleasure. Our bodies are constantly trying to find stasis, or balance, and the hedonic set point is an example of that. When high levels of dopamine are regularly released into the system from chronic use of alcohol, the dopamine is down-regulated (or balanced) by something called corticotropin-releasing factor, or CRF—a hormone that makes us feel anxious or stressed. If we flood our system with higher-than-normal levels of dopamine, we also flood our system with higher-than-normal levels of CRF, or anxiety. Over time, when our system is assaulted by surges of dopamine, our hedonic set point goes up (requiring more dopamine to feel good), and things that used to register as pleasurable (like warm hugs or our children’s laughter) don’t release enough dopamine to hit that raised baseline. To boot, activities that normally relieve stress, like a bath or a brisk walk, also lose their effectiveness. Alcohol becomes the quickest way our body learns to handle anxiety (which begets more anxiety because alcohol is a depressant, and the body reacts to it by releasing cortisol and adrenaline, which means the net effect of a glass of wine is more stress, not less). Our bodies are adaptive, and they adapt to an environment that expects the effects of alcohol. So here we are: we start using alcohol because it gives us more pleasure than sex and does more for stress management than chamomile tea. Over time it gets wrapped up in our survival response, so we are motivated to drink with the same force that motivates us to eat—only the force is stronger than the desire to eat because our midbrain, which ranks everything based on dopamine, thinks we need alcohol more than food. That seems like enough fuckery to contend with, but there’s more to the story.

Using the Worst-Case Scenario Technique Another way to correct inaccurate expectations is to imagine what would happen if the worst possible scenario occurred. Pretend that everything has gone wrong at once. Picture all the details and then exaggerate them. As you visualize the worst situation possible, you may start to laugh. The scene will seem so ridiculous that you realize there is not the slightest chance that it will take place. Lupe used the worst-case scenario technique after deciding that she really wanted to join the yearbook committee. The students in the group met after school once a week, and Lupe felt anxious about attending her first meeting. She was certain she would clamp up when people spoke to her. The morning before the meeting, she relaxed and imagined the worst things that could happen. She pictured herself saying something and everyone ignoring her. She pictured her face getting so red that it looked like she was going to explode. Then she imagined people laughing at her, saying she didn’t belong. This exercise helped Lupe realize that her fears were unfounded. That afternoon, after a little pep talk and a few deep breaths, Lupe walked into the meeting. She was relieved that people were genuinely happy to have her there. She felt proud that she was able to be involved in a situation that she would have previously avoided.

Goodness and Reality being timeless, the best State will be the one which most nearly copies the heavenly model, by having a minimum of change and a maximum of static perfection, and its rulers should be those who best understand the eternal Good. In the second place: Plato, like all mystics, has, in his beliefs, a core of certainty which is essentially incommunicable except by a way of life. The Pythagoreans had endeavoured to set up a rule of the initiate, and this is, at bottom, what Plato desires. If a man is to be a good statesman, he must know the Good; this he can only do by a combination of intellectual and moral discipline. If those who have not gone through this discipline are allowed a share in the government, they will inevitably corrupt it. In the third place: much education is needed to make a good ruler on Plato's principles. It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible. This view implies an oligarchy. In the fourth place: Plato, in common with most Greek philosophers, took the view that leisure is essential to wisdom, which will therefore not be found among those who have to work for their living, but only among those who have independent means or who are relieved by the State from anxieties as to their subsistence. This point of view is essentially aristocratic.

Define Your Options When people are spinning their rumination wheels about a particular problem, they often don’t concretely define what their options are for moving forward. To shift out of rumination and into problem-solving mode, concretely and realistically define what your best three to six options are. For example, imagine you’ve recently hired a new employee but that person is not working out. Instead of mentally slapping yourself around about why you made the hire, it would be more useful to define what your options are at this point: --Giving the employee more time --Shifting the employee’s responsibilities to simpler jobs --Giving the employee checklists of the steps needed to complete each task --Having another employee work with the individual --Firing the employee Defining your options relieves some of the stress of rumination and helps you shift to effective problem solving. Keeping your list of options short will prevent you from running into choice-overload problems. Research shows that if you consider more than three to six choices, you’re less likely to end up making a choice. Experiment: Practice concretely defining your best three to six options for moving forward with a problem you’re currently ruminating or worrying about. Write brief bullet points, like in the example just given. You can use this method for all sorts of problems. For example, a friend just used it to come up with ideas for how to have more social contact in her life. Note: If the word best is causing you to jump into perfectionism/frozen mode, write any three to six options.

Sunday, May 7, 1944 I should be deeply ashamed of myself, and I am. What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again...I'm not all that ugly, or that stupid, I have a sunny disposition, and I want to develop a good character! Monday, May 22, 1944 ...Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it's practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? Thursday, May 25, 1944 The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor...Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next. ...We're going to be hungry, but nothing's worse than being caught. Friday, May 26, 1944 ...That gap, that enormous gap, is always there. One day we're laughing at the comical side of life in hiding, and the next day (there are many such days), we're frightened, and the fear, tension and despair can be read on our faces. ...But they also have their outings, their visits with friends, their everyday lives as ordinary people, so that the tension is sometimes relieved, if only for a short while, while ours never is, never has been, not once in the two years we've been here. How much longer will this increasingly oppressive, unbearable weight press down on us? ... ...What will we do if we're ever...no, I mustn't write that down. But the question won't let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I've ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. ... I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we'll know whether we are to be victors or the vanquished. Tuesday, June 13, 1944 Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become so smitten with nature? ... Many people think nature is beautiful, many people sleep from time to time under the starry sky, and many people in hospitals and prisons long for the day when they'll be free to enjoy what nature has to offer. But few are as isolated and cut off as we are from the joys of nature, which can be shared by rich and poor alike. It's not just my imagination - looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It's much better medicine than Valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage! ...Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute.

Sometimes, simply by sitting, the soul collects wisdom - Zen Proverb

In the fourth place: Plato, in common with most Greek philosophers, took the view that leisure is essential to wisdom, which will therefore not be found among those who have to work for their living, but only among those who have independent means or who are relieved by the State from anxieties as to their subsistence. This point of view is essentially aristocratic.

For example, if your judgment of an event causes you to boil over with anger, then all you have done is boil over with anger. The fact that you’re angry is useless. It doesn’t change the situation and neither does it benefit the situation. All it does is cause you bodily harm because it creates stress. Buddha said “You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.” When you choose to remain free from judgment, you accept things as they are. You look at “what is” and accept it as such. Living life free from judgment allows you to control your state of mind in every moment and in every situation.

Fortunately, the power to take responsibility for your personal state of mind is something you have control over.

Yamuna: Toward the end of the ceremony, Swamiji, smiling broadly, picked up a small bongo drum and said, “Now we will have kirtan.” His chanting started off slowly, and he appeared fully absorbed in it. His voice was vibrant and clear, the melody simple, the cadence strong and steady. I was relieved because this part seemed easy enough—quite unlike the Sanskrit recited throughout the wedding ceremony. After a couple of repetitions of Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Swamiji nodded his head and other voices joined in. Over and over they repeated the three-worded mantra. When Swamiji closed his eyes, I noted that many others did so as well. I speculated that this fostered a trance-like state, but I still kept my eyes wide open so as not to miss anything. I did not chant, fearing that if I were to add my voice to the mix, it might disturb its cohesiveness, its balance. In this way, I observed and listened to the chanting for a good five minutes or so. Chanting the mantra seemed different from any group singing I had ever experienced. The first thing that struck me was its simplicity: a simple melody, an easy rhythm, and only three words. When I too closed my eyes and joined the others, it was as though I had been chanting this simple song to God forever. I soon found myself soothed and relieved of all my anxieties, though I could not understand how or why this was happening. I just surrendered to the sound and let it envelop my senses, allowing myself to trust, to call out—to open my heart to its promise.

the only two things that you can completely control in life are your thoughts and actions. That’s it. Most things are simply beyond your control.

If mindfulness is the cure to wayward thought, which can be responsible for a lot of the stress, depression and anxiety in society, then this mindfulness needs to be constant.

I too have suffered from vile rumors and unkind speculation, so you may rest assured your master has an ally in me. I only meant that his wife must have been relieved to dispel her pent up anxieties and frustrations on a portrait. We women suffer terrible hysteria at times and for little reason, as you must know. We are flighty, temperamental creatures, are we not? That is why they call us the weaker sex. It's fortunate we have men and corsets to keep us in our place or we might explode into little pieces.

And so,the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live? We will see the import of this at the close of this chapter, but right now we must remind ourselves that when we talk about the need for illusion we are not being cynical. True, there is a great deal of falseness and self-deception in the cultural causa-sui project, but there is also the necessity of this project. Man needs a "second" world, a world of humanly created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. "Illusion" means creative play at its highest level. Cultural illusion is a necessary ideology of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. To lose the security of heroic cultural illusion is to die-that is what "deculturation" of primitives means and what it does. It kills them or reduces them to the animal level of chronic fighting and fornication. Life becomes possible only in a continual alcoholic stupor. Many of the older American Indians were relieved when the Big Chiefs in Ottawa and Washington took control and prevented them from warring and feuding. It was a relief from the constant anxiety of death for their loved ones, if not for themselves. But they also knew, with a heavy heart, that this eclipse of their traditional hero-systems at the same time left them as good as dead.

The renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow reminds us that “the ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

recalcitrant