The Relief From Distress Quotes

Lincoln's story confounds those who see depression as a collection of symptoms to be eliminated. But it resonates with those who see suffering as a potential catalyst of emotional growth. "What man actually needs," the psychiatrist Victor Frankl argued,"is not a tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling of a worthwhile goal." Many believe that psychological health comes with the relief of distress. But Frankl proposed that all people-- and particularly those under some emotional weight-- need a purpose that will both draw on their talents and transcend their lives. For Lincoln, this sense of purpose was indeed the key that unlocked the gates of a mental prison. This doesn't mean his suffering went away. In fact, as his life became richer and more satisfying, his melancholy exerted a stronger pull. He now responded to that pull by tying it to his newly defined sense of purpose. From a place of trouble, he looked for meaning. He looked at imperfection and sought redemption.

Montesquieu wrote: "I have never known any distress that an hour of reading did not relieve." If one substituted the word music for reading, the exact same dictum applied to me.

Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony.

As applied to substance abuse, the cognitive approach helps individuals to come to grips with the problems leading to emotional distress and to gain a broader perspective on their reliance on drugs for pleasure and/or relief from discomfort.

Please don't entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it witout a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flamelike -- breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? ... Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you'll wait for ever.

FEBRUARY 17 I WILL CAUSE YOU TO DWELL IN SAFETY I HAVE SENT My angels to surround you and to cause you to dwell in safety. They will deliver you from all danger and will surround you with My protection. I will hold you up, and you will be safe. My eyes are turned on My righteous servants, and My ears are attentive to your cry. I will deliver you from all your troubles. The name of My Son is a fortified tower for you, and you can run to it where you will be safe. Do not be afraid, for I will guide you safely wherever you go. You can lie down and sleep, for I have made you to dwell in safety. I am Your God, and I will keep you safe and will protect you forever from the wicked who freely strut around in wickedness. PSALMS 34:7–22; 78:52; 12:5 Prayer Declaration You will answer me, Lord, when I call to You, and will give me relief from my distress. You will have mercy on me and hear my prayer. You will grant peace in my family, in my land, and no one will cause me to be afraid. You will walk with me and will be My God, and I will be Your faithful servant.

we have a bit of self-interest in relieving the misery of others. One school of modern economic theory, following Hobbes, argues that people give to charities in part because of the pleasure they get from imagining either the relief of those they benefit or their own relief from alleviating their sympathetic distress.

Even when we’re in great distress, joy can still be found in moments we seize and moments we create. Cooking. Dancing. Hiking. Praying. Driving. Singing Billy Joel songs off-key. All of these can provide relief from pain. And when these moments add up, we find that they give us more than happiness; they also give us strength.

If anyone constantly seeks forgiveness, Allah will appoint for him a way out of every distress and a relief from every anxiety, and will provide sustenance for him from where he could never imagine.”14 PROPHET MUHAMMAD

When we get back into balance, we feel better. Relief of distress—getting back into balance—activates the reward networks in the brain. We feel pleasure when we get back into balance—from cold to warm, thirsty to quenched, hungry to satiated.

A generous intercourse of charity united the most distant provinces, and the smaller congregations were cheerfully assisted by the alms of their more opulent brethren. Such an institution, which paid less regard to the merit than to the distress of the object, very materially conduced to the progress of Christianity. The Pagans, who were actuated by a sense of humanity, while they derided the doctrines, acknowledged the benevolence of the new sect. The prospect of immediate relief and of future protection allured into its hospitable bosom many of those unhappy persons whom the neglect of the world would have abandonned to the miseries of want, of sickness, and of old age. There is some reason likewise to believe, that great numbers of infants, who, according to the inhuman practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated, and maintained by the piety of the Christians, and at the expense of the public treasure.

Dr Maturin had many of the virtues required in a medical man... yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of inquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru.

The act of consciously and purposefully paying attention to symptoms and their antecedents and consequences makes the symptoms more an objective target for thoughtful observation than an intolerable source of subjective anxiety, dysphoria, and frustration. In ACT, the act of accepting the symptoms as an expectable feature of a disorder or illness, has been shown to be associated with relief rather than increased distress (Hayes et al., 2006). From a traumatic stress perspective, any symptom can be reframed as an understandable, albeit unpleasant and difficult to cope with, reaction or survival skill (Ford, 2009b, 2009c). In this way, monitoring symptoms and their environmental or experiential/body state "triggers" can enhance client's willingness and ability to reflectively observe them without feeling overwhelmed, terrified, or powerless. This is not only beneficial for personal and life stabilization but is also essential to the successful processing of traumatic events and reactions that occur in the next phase of therapy (Ford & Russo, 2006).

When you are walking down the road in Bali and your pass a stranger, the very first question he or she will ask you is, "Where are you going?" The second question is, "Where are you coming from?" To a Westerner, this can seem like a rather invasive inquiry from a perfect stranger, but they're just trying to get an orientation on you, trying to insert you into the grid for the purposes of security and comfort. If you tell them that you don't know where you're going, or that you're just wandering about randomly, you might instigate a bit of distress in the heart of your new Balinese friend. It's far better to pick some kind of specific direction -- anywhere -- just so everybody feels better. The third question a Balinese will almost certainly ask you is, "Are you married?" Again, it's a positioning and orienting inquiry. It's necessary for them to know this, to make sure that you are completely in order in your life. They really want you to say yes. it's such a relief to them when you say yes. If you're single, it's better not to say so directly. And I really recommend that you not mention your divorce at all, if you happen to have had one. It just makes the Balinese so worried. The only thing your solitude proves to them is your perilous dislocation from the grid. If you are a single woman traveling through Bali and somebody asks you, "Are you married?" the best possible answer is: "Not yet." This is a polite way of saying, "No," while indicating your optimistic intentions to get that taken care of just as soon as you can. Even if you are eighty years old, or a lesbian, or a strident feminist, or a nun, or an eighty-year-old strident feminist lesbian nun who has never been married and never intends to get married, the politest possible answer is still: "Not yet.

Moments of melancholy, of distress, of anguish, I think we all have them, more or less, and it is a condition of every conscious human life. It seems that some people have no self-consciousness. But those who have it, they may sometimes be in distress, but for all that they are not unhappy, nor is it something exceptional that happens to them. And sometimes there comes relief, sometimes there comes new inner energy, and one rises up from it, till at last, some day, one perhaps doesn’t rise up any more, que soit, but that is nothing extraordinary, and I repeat, such is the common human fate, in my opinion.

Codependency doesn’t acknowledge that we actually feel what others are experiencing and want it to stop because it hurts us too. Empaths as a group tend to be caretakers because we feel relief when we help others to find relief. We sense distress and feel drawn to help. When we alleviate discomfort, we feel better too. Of course we want to do this. It makes so much more sense when you recognize that the reason you, as an empath, want to help, fix, and change other people is because you feel their feelings so intensely.

I charge you with a phrase from the gospel of John, Updike that is: Your only duty is to give the mundane its beautiful due. You step from this moment with scripture and stole ordained to the ordinary. Ours is an existence in something more than the husk it once was but not yet the bloom it shall be; in other words, you are charged to the in-between, middle-earth, us. Yes, our lives are sewn on occasion with a texture of joy unmistakable, the foretastes. But many days, if not most hours, reek of repetition, a mundane rising and falling punctuated with what the old hymn writer penned as “seasons of distress and grief.” The relief you are charged to bring to our souls in times like these is beauty – nothing more, nothing less. It is your only duty. Give up all other ambitions for the dross they are. Give the mundane its beautiful due. Bear witness to the truth we so often bury, that our lives are shot through with drama, interest, relevance, importance, and poetry. Live among us, story by story, with both precision and surprisingness. Help us to believe in God by startling us with the kicker – God believes in us. Know this, that yours is not so much a high calling as it is a careful attention; you are to be a person of prayer, not big britches. Once you begin a gesture it's often fatal not to go through with it, so please, for the love of God and us and you, go through with this. The world for you may be even harder from here on in, but most things worth doing are hard. So break and bless and preach and teach and laugh and sing and weep and rage and whisper at the altar of this astonishingly splendid fallen world. Give the mundane its beautiful due. Amen and amen.

Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of view, addicts are self-medicating conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or even ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anaesthetics. Heroin and cocaine, both powerful physical painkillers, also ease psychological discomfort. Infant animals separated from their mothers can be soothed readily by low doses of narcotics, just as if it was actual physical pain they were enduring. The pain pathways in humans are no different. The very same brain centres that interpret and “feel” physical pain also become activated during the experience of emotional rejection: on brain scans they “light up” in response to social ostracism just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling “hurt” or of having emotional “pain,” they are not being abstract or poetic but scientifically quite precise. The hard-drug addict’s life has been marked by a surfeit of pain. No wonder she desperately craves relief.

(he was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of enquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru.

Then the events leading up to her collapse came back to her in a flash. Her hands flew automatically to her belly and she was only partially reassured to feel the tight ball there. Was her baby okay? Was she herself okay? She blinked harder to bring the room more into focus. There was light shining through a crack in the bathroom door. A glance at the blinds told her that it was dark outside. Then her gaze fell on the chair beside her bed and she found Ryan staring at her, his gaze intense. She flinched away from the raw emotion shining in his blue eyes. “Hey,” he said quietly. “How are you feeling?” “Numb,” she answered before she could think better of it. “Kind of blank. My head doesn’t hurt anymore. Are my feet still swollen?” He carefully picked up the sheet and pushed it over her feet. “Maybe a little. Not as bad as they were. They’ve been giving you meds and they’re monitoring the baby.” “How is she?” Kelly asked, a knot of fear in her throat. “For now, she’s doing fine. Your blood pressure stabilized, but they might have to do a C-section if it goes back up or if the baby starts showing signs of distress.” Kelly closed her eyes and then suddenly Ryan was close to her, holding her, his lips pressed against her temple. “Don’t worry, love,” he murmured. “You’re supposed to stay calm. You’re getting the best possible care. I’ve made sure of it. They’re monitoring you round-the-clock. And the doctor said the baby has an excellent prognosis at thirty-four weeks’ gestation.” She sagged against the pillow and closed her eyes. Relief pulsed through her but she was so tired she couldn’t muster the energy to do anything more than lie there thanking God that her baby was okay. “I’m going to take care of you, Kell,” Ryan said softly against her temple. “You and our baby. Nothing will ever hurt you again. I swear it.” Tears burned her eyelids. She was emotionally and physically exhausted and didn’t have the strength to argue. Something inside her was broken and she had no idea how to fix it. She felt so…disconnected.

1.    Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted. 2.    Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him. [One mark of a great soldier is that he fight on his own terms or fights not at all.77 ] 3.    By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy to approach of his own accord; or, by inflicting damage, he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near. [In the first case, he will entice him with a bait; in the second, he will strike at some important point which the enemy will have to defend.] 4.    If the enemy is taking his ease, he can harass him; [This passage may be cited as evidence against Mei Yao-Ch’en’s interpretation of I. ss. 23.] if well supplied with food, he can starve him out; if quietly encamped, he can force him to move. 5.    Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected. 6.    An army may march great distances without distress, if it marches through country where the enemy is not. [Ts’ao Kung sums up very well: “Emerge from the void [q.d. like “a bolt from the blue”], strike at vulnerable points, shun places that are defended, attack in unexpected quarters.”] 7.    You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended. [Wang Hsi explains “undefended places” as “weak points; that is to say, where the general is lacking in capacity, or the soldiers in spirit; where the walls are not strong enough, or the precautions not strict enough; where relief comes too late, or provisions are too scanty, or the defenders are variance amongst themselves.”] You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked. [I.e., where there are none of the weak points mentioned above. There is rather a nice point involved in the interpretation of this later clause. Tu

depression in its major stages possesses no quickly available remedy: failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder as it reveals itself to the victim, and one that helps situate it squarely in the category of grave diseases. Except in those maladies strictly designated as malignant or degenerative, we expect some kind of treatment and eventual amelioration, by pills or physical therapy or diet or surgery, with a logical progression from the initial relief of symptoms to final cure. Frighteningly, the layman-sufferer from major depression, taking a peek into some of the many books currently on the market, will find much in the way of theory and symptomatology and very little that legitimately suggests the possibility of quick rescue. Those that do claim an easy way out are glib and most likely fraudulent. There are decent popular works which intelligently point the way toward treatment and cure, demonstrating how certain therapies—psychotherapy or pharmacology, or a combination of these—can indeed restore people to health in all but the most persistent and devastating cases; but the wisest books among them underscore the hard truth that serious depressions do not disappear overnight. All of this emphasizes an essential though difficult reality which I think needs stating at the outset of my own chronicle: the disease of depression remains a great mystery. It has yielded its secrets

The conditions that breed a disorganized attachment adaptation are not specific to CNM by any means, but I have seen a variation that is unique to CNM. There can be something very disorienting that happens for some new CNM couples who were first monogamous together and were accustomed to being each other’s main source of comfort, support and relief from distress. As the relationship opens, a partner’s actions with other people (even ethical ones that were agreed upon) can become a source of distress and pose an emotional threat. Everything that this person is doing with other people can become a source of intense fear and insecurity for their pre-existing partner, catapulting them into the paradoxical disorganized dilemma of wanting comfort and safety from the very same person who is triggering their threat response. Again, the partner may be doing exactly what the couple consented to and acting within their negotiated agreements, but for the pre-existing partner, their primary attachment figure being away, unavailable and potentially sharing levels of intimacy with another person registers as a debilitating threat in the nervous system. As someone in this situation simultaneously wants to move towards and away from one’s partner, the very foundation of their relationship and attachment system can begin to shudder, and people can begin acting out in ways that are destructive to each other and the relationship. When this happens, I recommend working with a professional to re-establish inner and outer safety.

Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations? To pose that question is to answer it. We despise, ostracize and punish the addict because we don’t wish to see how much we resemble him. In his dark mirror our own features are unmistakable. We shudder at the recognition. This mirror is not for us, we say to the addict. You are different, and you don’t belong with us. Like the hardcore addict’s pursuit of drugs, much of our economic and cultural life caters to people’s craving to escape mental and emotional distress. In an apt phrase, Lewis Lapham, long-time publisher of Harper’s Magazine, derides “consumer markets selling promises of instant relief from the pain of thought, loneliness, doubt, experience, envy, and old age.” According to a Statistics Canada study, 31 per cent of working adults aged nineteen to sixty-four consider themselves workaholics, who attach excessive importance to their work and are “overdedicated and perhaps overwhelmed by their jobs.” “They have trouble sleeping, are more likely to be stressed out and unhealthy, and feel they don’t spend enough time with their families,” reports the Globe and Mail. Work doesn’t necessarily give them greater satisfaction, suggested Vishwanath Baba, a professor of Human Resources and Management at McMaster University. “These people turn to work to occupy their time and energy” — as compensation for what is lacking in their lives, much as the drug addict employs substances. At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only towards the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future — the two elements that make the present intolerable. Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the centre, where we have lost touch with our souls, our spirit, with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition-, action- and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before. The constant, intrusive and meaningless mind-whirl that characterizes the way so many of us experience our silent moments is, itself, a form of addiction— and it serves the same purpose. “One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove the emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.” So writes Eckhart Tolle. Even our 24/7 self-exposure to noise, emails, cell phones, TV, Internet chats, media outlets, music downloads, videogames and non-stop internal and external chatter cannot succeed in drowning out the fearful voices within.

At the outset I must confess that I am no longer very good at telling the difference between good things and bad things. Of course there are many events in human history that can only be labeled as evil, but from the standpoint of inner individual experience the distinction has become blurred for me. Some things start out looking great but wind up terribly, while other things seem bad in the beginning but turn out to be blessings in disguise. I was diagnosed with cancer in 1995, which I thought was a bad thing. But the experience brought me closer to God and to my loved ones than I'd ever been, and that was wonderfully good. The chemotherapy felt awful, but it resulted in a complete cure, which I decided was good. I later found out it may also have caused the heart disease that now has me waiting for a heart transplant. At some point I gave up trying to decide what's ultimately good or bad. I truly do not know....Although not knowing may itself seem like a bad thing, I am convinced it is one of the great gifts of the dark night of the soul. To be immersed in mystery can be very distressing at first, but over time I have found immense relief in it. It takes the pressure off. I no longer have to worry myself to death about what I did right or wrong to cause a good or bad experience-because there really is no way of knowing. I don't have to look for spiritual lessons in every trouble that comes along. There have been many spiritual lessons to be sure, but they've given to me in the course of life; I haven't had to figure out a single one.

Esther Agrees to Help the Jews ESTHER 4 When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes  o and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. 2He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. 3And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews,  p with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them  q lay in sackcloth and ashes. 4When Esther’s young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed. She sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was. 6Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, 7and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him,  r and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. 8Mordecai also gave him  s a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people. 9And Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. 10Then Esther spoke to Hathach and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, 11“All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside  t the inner court without being called,  u there is but one law—to be put to death, except the one  v to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.” 12And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 13Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 15Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16“Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for  w three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law,  x and if I perish, I perish.” 17Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

As we made it across the field, my heart jolted with relief as I spotted Tory kneeling over Darius. My relief was quickly swallowed by fear as I saw the blood pooling out around the Fire Heir from multiple wounds. “Heal him!” Tory begged as she spotted us. Her eyes raked over me as Orion put me down and her shoulders sagged a little as she realised I was okay before her gaze fell back on Darius beneath her. Tears had tracked lines down her cheeks and her hands were stained red with his blood as she fought to help him. My lips parted in surprise as I noted the fear in her gaze, wondering what could have happened in that fight to make her look at Darius that way. Orion fell down beside him, looking distressed and I hurriedly knelt down too. He pressed his fingers to a bloody wound on Darius's side and it slowly began to heal. “He's survived worse,” he growled bitterly as Darius groaned, coming to. I sagged forward, beginning to tremble as exhaustion took hold of me. Orion nudged Tory’s hands away from the wound on Darius’s chest so that he could heal it next and she shifted forward, pressing her bloodstained palm to his cheek instead. Orion’s jaw tensed and I noted the pale colour to his skin as he threw his magic into healing his friend. His gaze slid to me imploringly. “I need more power to-” “Take mine,” Tory said, offering him her free hand without looking away from Darius for a moment. Orion snatched her hand without a moment’s hesitation, the green glow in his palm gaining intensity instantly. Darius coughed, his eyes flickering a few times before snapping open. His gaze fell on Tory as she continued to look down at him. Her hand was still pressed to his cheek and he frowned slightly. “You...” he began but he didn’t finish what he’d been going to say. His hand moved over hers for a moment, holding it in place against his cheek as he held her eye. I shifted uncomfortably beside them, feeling like I was laying witness to something private. “Good as new,” Orion muttered, releasing Tory and Darius in the same movement. Tory blinked, snatching her hand away from Darius’s face before scrambling off of him and getting to her feet. She turned her back on him, moving to my side and pulling me into a hug. (darcy)

In Buddhist ethics, if you feel a desire to speak in a very injurious or abusive way, perhaps when somebody has insulted or offended you, or even to retaliate physically, you are told to restrain yourself. When the mind is clouded by mental affliction, Buddhist ethics would say, “Now is not the time to act. Let it pass and then act when the mind is more balanced.” But your rats were less likely to get ulcers due to being shocked if they got relief by biting another rat, or at least gnawing on a piece of wood. I’m wondering what the implications are for human beings, when we are shocked by very disagreeable circumstances. From a neurobiological perspective, would it be good for us to go bite somebody, or at least chew on a piece of wood? Are there alternative strategies for us not to internalize the distress, get ulcers, and make ourselves mentally or physically ill? How do you see the interface between these two perspectives?

There can be something very disorienting that happens for some new CNM couples who were first monogamous together and were accustomed to being each other’s main source of comfort, support and relief from distress. As the relationship opens, a partner’s actions with other people (even ethical ones that were agreed upon) can become a source of distress and pose an emotional threat. Everything that this person is doing with other people can become a source of intense fear and insecurity for their pre-existing partner, catapulting them into the paradoxical disorganized dilemma of wanting comfort and safety from the very same person who is triggering their threat response.

My lady?” He came inside just in time to catch her as her legs collapsed. “Kat!” He looked at her anxiously. “Are you all right? I could feel your pain and distress—it worried me.” Kat smiled at him weakly. “Just the same old thing. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.” She sighed. “Where’s Deep?” Lock’s handsome features tightened. “I don’t know and I don’t care to know.” “What? So you two really are fighting?” she asked as he carried her back to the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. “It goes beyond that.” Lock stripped off his shirt and climbed into the bed beside her. Kat sighed in relief when she felt his warm hand on her arm. She didn’t even protest when he pulled her blouse gently over her head, leaving her bare from the top up except for her bra. “We should call him, even if you are fighting,” she said as Lock pulled her close, pressing his broad chest to her back. “Don’t want to hurt you.” “The pain is nothing,” Lock assured her gently. “It’s more than worth it to be near you, my lady. Especially when…” His voice faltered for a moment. “When I’m going to lose you so soon.” “Oh, Lock…” Kat could feel his sorrow welling up, a sense of loss so great it nearly smothered her with its intensity. Still, she didn’t draw back or try to get away. Instead, she turned in his arms so she was facing him and drew him into a tight embrace. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his shoulder. “So sorry.” “So am I.” It sounded like Lock might be crying. His large form shook against hers and Kat held him tighter, wishing she could comfort him better. “I love you, Kat,” he whispered brokenly. “And the idea of being torn apart from you tomorrow—of losing what little bond we have between us—it feels like death to me. Like the end of everything.” “I love you too,” Kat admitted. “And…I feel like I could love Deep. If only he would let me. If only he wanted me to.” Lock stiffened in her arms. “He won’t. He doesn’t. There’s no point in even considering it. No hope.” A low growl rose in his throat. “Gods, I wish I wasn’t tied to him.” “Don’t say that,” Kat said softly. “You’re brothers—twins. You ought to be close.” “How can I want to be close to him when he’s killing the only relationship that ever mattered to me?

Answer Me! Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer. PSALM 4:1 NIV Have you ever felt like God wasn’t listening? We’ve all felt that from time to time. David felt it when he slept in a cold, hard cave night after night, while being pursued by Saul’s men. He felt it when his son Absalom turned against him. Time and again in his life, David felt abandoned by God. And yet, David was called a man after God’s own heart. No matter our maturity level, there will be times when we feel abandoned by God. There will be times when our faith wavers and our fortitude wanes. That’s okay. It’s normal. But David didn’t give up. He kept crying out to God, kept falling to his knees in worship, kept storming God’s presence with his pleas. David knew God wouldn’t hide His face for long, for he knew what we might sometimes forget: God is love. He loves us without condition and without limit. And He is never far from those He loves. No matter how distant God may seem, we need to keep talking to Him. Keep praying. Keep pouring out our hearts. We can know, as David knew, that God will answer in His time. Dear Father, thank You for always hearing my prayers. Help me to trust You, even when You seem distant. Amen.

The feeling she has is most unexpected. The oddest thing. She feels no distress or worry. Instead, she senses a dim, faint feeling that rises from some unknown place in her heart, rising slowly and blossoming into something that she might call relief.

The night prior to Prince Yosef’s journey to the Temple, in the distant part of the city of Yerushalayim, a man by the name of Simeon, who had fully devoted his life to serving Yehuway, was fervently praying to Him in remotest privacy. His arms were stretched over his head as he lay on the stone floor and beads of sweat were pouring from his open pores. “Yehuway! Yehuway! How often I have exposed my heart to You. Let my grief for these people and for this city subside! Allow me, please, to see Your solution to the relief of this time’s distress, for surely it cannot continue too much longer without adversity on itself.” While he prayed a faint light filtered through the window and danced about his body. Yehuway heard his petition. The Creator held out His arm. A radiant glow formed from His elbow to the tips of His fingers. A surge of energy jettisoned from His body to encompass about Simeon, enriching, enhancing his intellectual capacity. The projected energy exerted itself into Simeon’s subconscious and a quiet voice adhered to his brain, influencing the oncoming images that were silently pictured inside him. Invisible energy flowed through him, illuminating a collage of thoughts, entrusting to him exact knowledge that he could not otherwise had understood. “Simeon, you will not under any circumstances die until you have personally touched the hand of Yehuway’s Mashi’ach.” At this same another surge of divine, revealing energy, touched the heart of an old woman who had forgotten the time of the night and, too tired to go home, had fallen asleep in the Court of the Women inside the Temple area. Yehuway’s private energy strengthened the old man’s legs. He stood straight. The divine energy guided Simeon to the Temple at the exact moment that Yosef approached the three southern gates of the Temple.

Stress is what occurs when a demand or challenge takes us out of balance—away from our regulated “set points.” When we get out of balance, we become dysregulated and feel discomfort or distress. When we get back into balance, we feel better. Relief of distress—getting back into balance—activates the reward networks in the brain. We feel pleasure when we get back into balance—from cold to warm, thirsty to quenched, hungry to satiated. Oprah: And regulation is more than a biological concept. In all areas of our lives, we are seeking what we need to be stabilized, balanced, and regulated. Dr. Perry: Yes. Balance is the core of health. We feel and function best when our body’s systems are in balance, and when we’re in balance with friends, family, community, and nature.

From the trauma of birth to the agony of death, human existence seemed fraught with suffering, and even death brought no relief because everything and everybody was caught up in an inescapable cycle (samsara) of rebirth, so the whole distressing scenario had to be endured again and again. The

I feel uncomfortable and experience building tension or discomfort that seems to come out of the blue when I think about a particular situation. ____ 2. I avoid specific situations that make me feel uncomfortable. ____ 3. I have at least four of the following symptoms at the same time: shortness of breath or feeling smothered; heart palpitations (rapid or irregular heartbeat); trembling or shaking; choking; dizziness or unsteadiness; nausea or abdominal distress; numbness, feeling detached or out of touch with myself; fear of dying; fear of going crazy or out of control; hot flashes or chills; sweating without exertion. ____ 4. I worry excessively, and so I feel restless, keyed up or on edge, irritable, easily fatigued, have trouble falling or staying asleep or I wake up tired, have tense and tight muscles, have difficulty concentrating, and/or find my mind going blank. ____ 5. I have recurring intrusive thoughts such as hurting or harming a close relative, being contaminated by dirt or a toxic substance, fearing I forgot to lock my door or turn off an appliance, and/or have unpleasant fantasies of catastrophe. ____ 6. I perform ritualistic actions such as washing my hands or counting to relieve my discomfort because I have fears that keep entering my mind. ____ 7. I have witnessed or been subjected to a life-threatening experience and have persistent symptoms that have lasted for at least a month, including repetitive and distressing thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks, attempts to reenact the situation, emotional numbness (out of touch with your emotions—feeling no anger, sadness, guilt, or relief), feeling detached from other people, losing interest in activities that once gave me pleasure, sleep or concentration problems, startling easily, irritability and/or have outbursts of anger.

Hustling, the action, the performance, is embraced because it often provides the only relief from economic misery. The hustler is determined not to suffer silently and turns distress to opportunity.

We will take the case of those who are in better circumstances than the mass of the community. They are well educated and taught; they have few distresses in life, or are able to get over them by the variety of their occupations, by the spirits which attend good health, or at least by the lapse of time. They go on respectably and happily, with the same general tastes and habits which they would have had if the Gospel had not been given them. They have an eye to what the world thinks of them; are charitable when it is expected. They are polished in their manners, kind from natural disposition or a feeling of propriety. Thus their religion is based upon self and the world, a mere civilization; the same (I say), as it would have been in the main, (taking the state of society as they find it,) even supposing Christianity were not the religion of the land. But it is; and let us go on to ask, how do they in consequence feel towards it? They accept it, they add it to what they are, they ingraft it upon the selfish and worldly habits of an unrenewed heart. They have been taught to revere it, and to believe it to come from God; so they admire it, and accept it as a rule of life, so far forth as it agrees with the carnal principles which govern them. So far as it does not agree, they are blind to its excellence and its claims. They overlook or explain away its precepts. They in no sense obey because it commands. They do right when they would have done right had it not commanded; however, they speak well of it, and think they understand it. Sometimes, if I may continue the description, they adopt it into a certain refined elegance of sentiments and manners, and then the irreligion is all that is graceful, fastidious, and luxurious. They love religious poetry and eloquent preaching. They desire to have their feelings roused and soothed, and to secure a variety and relief in that eternal subject which is unchangeable. They tire of its simplicity, and perhaps seek to keep up their interest in it by means of religious narratives, fictitious or embellished, or of news from foreign countries, or of the history of the prospects or successes of the Gospel; thus perverting what is in itself good and innocent. This is their state of mind at best; for more commonly they think it enough merely to show some slight regard for the subject of religion; to attend its services on the Lord’s day, and then only once, and coldly to express an approbation of it. But of course every description of such persons can be but general; for the shades of character are so varied and blended in individuals, as to make it impossible to give an accurate picture, and often very estimable persons and truly good Christians are partly infected with this bad and earthly spirit.

This is a difficult concept for many people to understand. As I discussed in the previous chapter, the most common response to distress is to seek out people we like and trust to help us and give us the courage to go on. We may also calm down by engaging in a physical activity like biking or going to the gym. We start learning these ways of regulating our feelings from the first moment someone feeds us when we’re hungry, covers us when we’re cold, or rocks us when we’re hurt or scared. But if no one has ever looked at you with loving eyes or broken out in a smile when she sees you; if no one has rushed to help you (but instead said, “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about”), then you need to discover other ways of taking care of yourself. You are likely to experiment with anything—drugs, alcohol, binge eating, or cutting—that offers some kind of relief.

No matter what term you use for the technique, relief from mental distress is made possible because this mental tool helps us remember and rapidly access positive affirmations and memories quickly and accurately, even during times of distress. These higher quality memories can help dissolve negative ones, both immediately and for the long term.

Would that I knew what others ignore, Such as has not been repeated, To say it and have my heart answer me, To inform it of my distress. Shift to it the load on my back, The matters that afflict me. Relate to it of what I suffer And sigh “Ah" with relief! of meditate on what has happened, The events that occur throughout the land: Changes take place, it is not like last year, One year is more irksome than the other. The land breaks up, is destroyed. Becomes [a wasteland]. Order is cast out, Chaos is in the council hail ; The ways of the gods are violated, Their provisions neglected. The land is in turmoil. There is mourning everywhere; Towns, districts are grieving, All alike are burdened by wrongs. One turns one’s back on dignity. The lords of silence are disturbed; As dawn comes every day. The face recoils from events. I cry out about it, My limbs are weighed down, I grieve in my heart. It is hard to keep silent about it, Another heart would bend; But a heart strong in distress: It is a comrade to its lord. Had I a heart skilled in hardship, I would take my rest upon it. Weigh it down with words of grief. Lay on it my malady! He said to his heart: Come, my heart, I speak to you. Answer me my sayings! Unravel for me what goes on in the land, Why those who shone are overthrown. I meditate on what has happened: While trouble entered in today, And turmoil will not cease tomorrow, Everyone is mute about it. The whole land is in great distress, Nobody is free from erime; Hearts are greedy. He who gave orders takes orders, And the hearts of both submit. One wakes to it every day. And the hearts do not reject it. Yesterday's condition is like today’s None is wise enough to know it, None angry enough to cry out, One wakes to suffer each day. My malady is long and heavy. The sufferer lacks strength to save himself From that which overwhelms him. It is pain to be silent to what one hears, It is futile to answer the ignorant. To reject a speech makes enmity; The heart does not accept the truth, One cannot bear a statement of fact, A man loves only his own words. Everyone builds on crookedness, Right-speaking is abandoned. I spoke to you, my heart, answer you me, A heart addressed must not be silent, Lo, servant and master fare alike, There is much that weighs upon you!

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illness and need palliative relief from suffering. Many common elements of palliative and geriatric medicine include diagnosis, identification of patient needs and sources of distress, creation of a care plan through shared decision-making, and helping people through their health care journey in a complex and confusing system.