Ulcer Sayings And Quotes

Don't ever do that to me again. I'm too young to die of a heart attack." (...) "I would say claiming you're too young is a bit debatable, don't you think?" The German tilted his head up and cursed something low and long in German. "You were brought to this planet to give me an ulcer, weren't you?

I've Got A Little Problem And I'm not really sure how to fix it. Not really sure I need to. Not really sure I could. Life is pretty good. But once in a while, uninvited and uninitiated anger invades me. It starts, a tiny gnaw at the back of my brain. Like a migraine except without pain. They say headaches blossom, but this isn't so much a blooming as a bleeding. Irritation bleeds into rage, seethes into fury. An ulcer, emptying hatred inside me. And I don't know why. Life is pretty good. So, what the hell?

R is a velocity of measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being, and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly as almost infinite variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility, this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers, and even death.

You need a place just a click over middle range. Don’t want to go all-out first time, but you don’t want to run on the cheap either. You want atmosphere, but not stuffy. A nice established place.” “Bob, you’re going to give me an ulcer.” “This is all ammunition, Cart. All ammo. You want to be able to order a nice bottle of wine. Oh, and after dinner, if she says how she doesn’t want dessert, you suggest she pick one and you’ll split it. Women love that. Sharing dessert’s sexy. Do not go on and on about your job over dinner. Certain death. Get her to talk about hers, and what she likes to do. Then—” “Should I be writing this down?

...the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: "These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we make a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest.

Everything in physiology follows the rule that too much can be as bad as too little. There are optimal points of allostatic balance. For example, while a moderate amount of exercise generally increases bone mass, thirty-year-old athletes who run 40 to 50 miles a week can wind up with decalcified bones, decreased bone mass, increased risk of stress fractures and scoliosis (sideways curvature of the spine)—their skeletons look like those of seventy-year-olds. To put exercise in perspective, imagine this: sit with a group of hunter-gatherers from the African grasslands and explain to them that in our world we have so much food and so much free time that some of us run 26 miles in a day, simply for the sheer pleasure of it. They are likely to say, “Are you crazy? That’s stressful.” Throughout hominid history, if you’re running 26 miles in a day, you’re either very intent on eating someone or someone’s very intent on eating you.

Can you please sit down?” Zahra says after twenty minutes of watching him twitch around the cabin. “You’re giving my ulcer an ulcer.

Three things make people want to change. One is that they hurt sufficiently. They have beat their heads against the same wall so long that they decide they have had enough. They have invested in the same slot machines without a pay-off for so long that they finally are willing either to stop playing, or to move on to others. Their migraines hurt, their ulcers bleed. They are alcoholic. They have hit the bottom. They beg for relief. They want to change. Another thing that makes people want to change is a slow type of despair called ennui, or boredom. This is what the person has who goes through life saying, "So what?" until he finally asks the ultimate big "So What?" He is ready to change. A third thing that makes people want to change is the sudden discovery that they can. This has been an observable effect of Transactional Analysis. Many people who have shown no particular desire to change have been exposed to Transactional Analysis through lectures or by hearing about it from someone else. This knowledge has produced an excitement about new possibilities, which has led to their further inquiry and a growing desire to change. There is also the type of patient who, although suffering from disabling symptoms, still does not really want to change. His treatment contract reads, "I'll promise to let you help me if I don't have to get well." This negative attitude changes, however, as the patient begins to see that there is indeed another way to live. A working knowledge of P-A-C makes it possible for the Adult to explore new and exciting frontiers of life, a desire which has been there all along but has been buried under the burden of the NOT OK.

Tick's strategy for dealing with lying adults is to say nothing and watch thee lies swell and constrict in their throats. when this happens, the lie takes on a physical life of its own and must be either expelled or swallowed. Most adults prefer to expel untruths with little burplike coughs behind their hands, while others chuckle or snort or make barking sounds. When Mr. Meyer's Adam's apple bobs once, Tick sees that he's a swallower, and that this particular lie has gone south down his esophagus and into his stomach. According to her father, the man suffers from bleeding ulcers. Tick can see why. She imagines all the lies a man in his position would have to tell, how they must just churn away down there in his intestines like chunks of indigestible food awaiting elimination. By the Tick suspects, lies seek open air. they don't like being confined in dark, cramped places.

Memory can be dramatically disrupted if you force something that’s implicit into explicit channels. Here’s an example that will finally make reading this book worth your while—how to make neurobiology work to your competitive advantage at sports. You’re playing tennis against someone who is beating the pants off of you. Wait until your adversary has pulled off some amazing backhand, then offer a warm smile and say, “You are a fabulous tennis player. I mean it; you’re terrific. Look at that shot you just made. How did you do that? When you do a backhand like that, do you hold your thumb this way or that, and what about your other fingers? And how about your butt, do you scrunch up the left side of it and put your weight on your right toes, or the other way around?” Do it right, and the next time that shot is called for, your opponent/victim will make the mistake of thinking about it explicitly, and the stroke won’t be anywhere near as effective. As Yogi Berra once said, “You can’t think and hit at the same time.

R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death.

Today, I hold firm to my ability to say "no" to everything that doesn't fall under the umbrella of my ultimate gifts. If it doesn't allow me to offer my best self to the world, it's a graceful "no.

Then I’ll play the happy fool and get laugh lines on my face. I’d rather overload my liver with wine than starve my heart by denying myself fun. Why should any living man sit still like a statue? Why should he sleep when he’s awake? Why should he get ulcers from being crabby all the time? I love you, and I’m telling you this because I care about you, Antonio—there are men who always look serious. Their faces never move or show any expression, like stagnant ponds covered with scum. They’re silent and stern, and they think they’re wise and deep, important and respectable. When they talk, they think everybody else should keep quiet, and that even dogs should stop barking. I know a lot of men like that, Antonio. The only reason they’re considered wise is because they don’t say anything. I’m sure if they ever opened their mouths, everyone would see what fools they are. I’ll talk to you more about this some other time. In the meantime, cheer up. Don’t go around looking so glum. That’s my opinion, but what do I know? I’m a fool.

Selye discovered that the biology of stress predominantly affected three types of tissues or organs in the body: in the hormonal system, visible changes occurred in the adrenal glands; in the immune system, stress affected the spleen, the thymus and the lymph glands; and the intestinal lining of the digestive system. Rats autopsied after stress had enlarged adrenals, shrunken lymph organs and ulcerated intestines. All

When American experts began making "helpful" suggestions about how the French could "increase productivity and profits" the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: "These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we have a nice little business here just as it is. Everybody makes a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest.

Some team! The Chief was doing so many jobs alone. I’d fix on the Chief’s raw, rope-burned palms or all the gray hairs collected in his sink, and I’d suffer this terrible side pain that Kiwi said was probably an ulcer and Ossie diagnosed as lovesickness. Or rather a nausea produced by the “black fruit” of love—a terror that sprouted out of your love for someone like rotting oranges on a tree branch. Osceola knew all about this black fruit, she said, because she’d grown it for our mother, our father, Grandpa Sawtooth, even me and Kiwi. Loving a ghost was different, she explained—that kind of love was a bare branch. I pictured this branch curving inside my sister: something leafless and complete, elephantine, like a white tusk. No rot, she was saying, no fruit. You couldn’t lose a ghost to death.

One last bit of bad news. We’ve been focusing on the stress-related consequences of activating the cardiovascular system too often. What about turning it off at the end of each psychological stressor? As noted earlier, your heart slows down as a result of activation of the vagus nerve by the parasympathetic nervous system. Back to the autonomic nervous system never letting you put your foot on the gas and brake at the same time—by definition, if you are turning on the sympathetic nervous system all the time, you’re chronically shutting off the parasympathetic. And this makes it harder to slow things down, even during those rare moments when you’re not feeling stressed about something. How can you diagnose a vagus nerve that’s not doing its part to calm down the cardiovascular system at the end of a stressor? A clinician could put someone through a stressor, say, run the person on a treadmill, and then monitor the speed of recovery afterward. It turns out that there is a subtler but easier way of detecting a problem. Whenever you inhale, you turn on the sympathetic nervous system slightly, minutely speeding up your heart. And when you exhale, the parasympathetic half turns on, activating your vagus nerve in order to slow things down (this is why many forms of meditation are built around extended exhalations). Therefore, the length of time between heartbeats tends to be shorter when you’re inhaling than exhaling. But what if chronic stress has blunted the ability of your parasympathetic nervous system to kick the vagus nerve into action? When you exhale, your heart won’t slow down, won’t increase the time intervals between beats. Cardiologists use sensitive monitors to measure interbeat intervals. Large amounts of variability (that is to say, short interbeat intervals during inhalation, long during exhalation) mean you have strong parasympathetic tone counteracting your sympathetic tone, a good thing. Minimal variability means a parasympathetic component that has trouble putting its foot on the brake. This is the marker of someone who not only turns on the cardiovascular stress-response too often but, by now, has trouble turning it off.

Then, like a levee breaking, it all came out: “I took advantage of her. I manipulated her. I called her horrible things. I stole her car once, with a shoelace. I’d leave, for days at a time, without telling her where I’d gone or who I was out with. I must have given her ulcers. When I . . . when I left for college, we didn’t even say goodbye. I just got in my Honda and drove to Boulder. I stole a bottle of her gin from the cabinet on my way out.

Poem for My Father You closed the door. I was on the other side, screaming. It was black in your mind. Blacker than burned-out fire. Blacker than poison. Outside everything looked the same. You looked the same. You walked in your body like a living man. But you were not. would you not speak to me for weeks would you hang your coat in the closet without saying hello would you find a shoe out of place and beat me would you come home late would i lose the key would you find my glasses in the garbage would you put me on your knee would you read the bible to me in your smoking jacket after your mother died would you come home drunk and snore would you beat me on the legs would you carry me up the stairs by my hair so that my feet never touch the bottom would you make everything worse to make everything better i believe in god, the father almighty, the maker of heaven, the maker of my heaven and my hell. would you beat my mother would you beat her till she cries like a rabbit would you beat her in a corner of the kitchen while i am in the bathroom trying to bury my head underwater would you carry her to the bed would you put cotton and alcohol on her swollen head would you make love to her hair would you caress her hair would you rub her breasts with ben gay until she stinks would you sleep in the other room in the bed next to me while she sleeps on the pull-out cot would you come on the sheet while i am sleeping. later i look for the spot would you go to embalming school with the last of my mother's money would i see your picture in the book with all the other black boys you were the handsomest would you make the dead look beautiful would the men at the elks club would the rich ladies at funerals would the ugly drunk winos on the street know ben pretty ben regular ben would your father leave you when you were three with a mother who threw butcher knives at you would he leave you with her screaming red hair would he leave you to be smothered by a pillow she put over your head would he send for you during the summer like a rich uncle would you come in pretty corduroys until you were nine and never heard from him again would you hate him would you hate him every time you dragged hundred pound cartons of soap down the stairs into white ladies' basements would you hate him for fucking the woman who gave birth to you hate him flying by her house in the red truck so that other father threw down his hat in the street and stomped on it angry like we never saw him (bye bye to the will of grandpa bye bye to the family fortune bye bye when he stompled that hat, to the gold watch, embalmer's palace, grandbaby's college) mother crying silently, making floating island sending it up to the old man's ulcer would grandmother's diamonds close their heartsparks in the corner of the closet yellow like the eyes of cockroaches? Old man whose sperm swims in my veins, come back in love, come back in pain.

In other extreme cases, repressed anger can express itself as violent criminal behavior, ranging from wife beating to rape to murder. Our jails are filled with adults who were physically abused as children and never learned to express their anger appropriately. Kate, on the other hand, turned her anger inward. It found physical ways to express itself: No matter what anybody says or does to me, I can’t ever stand up for myself. I just never feel up to it. I get headaches. I feel lousy most of the time. Everyone walks all over me, and I don’t know how to stop them. Last year, I was sure I had an ulcer. I had stomachaches all the time.

and confused if someone does not appreciate their niceness. Others often sense this and avoid giving them feedback not only, effectively blocking the nice person’s emotional growth, but preventing risks from being taken. You never know with a nice person if the relationship would survive a conflict or angry confrontation. This greatly limits the depths of intimacy. And would you really trust a nice person to back you up if confrontation were needed? 3. With nice people you never know where you really stand. The nice person allows others to accidentally oppress him. The “nice” person might be resenting you just for talking to him, because really he is needing to pee. But instead of saying so he stands there nodding and smiling, with legs tightly crossed, pretending to listen. 4. Often people in relationship with nice people turn their irritation toward themselves, because they are puzzled as to how they could be so upset with someone so nice. In intimate relationships this leads to guilt, self-hate and depression. 5. Nice people frequently keep all their anger inside until they find a safe place to dump it. This might be by screaming at a child, blowing up a federal building, or hitting a helpless, dependent mate. (Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, was described by acquaintances as a very, very nice guy, one who would give you the shirt off his back.) Success in keeping the anger in will often manifest as psychosomatic illnesses, including arthritis, ulcers, back problems, and heart disease. Proper Peachy Parents In my work as a psychotherapist, I have found that those who had peachy keen “Nice Parents” or proper “Rigidly Religious Parents” (as opposed to spiritual parents), are often the most stuck in chronic, lowgrade depression. They have a difficult time accessing or expressing any negative feelings towards their parents. They sometimes say to me “After all my parents did for me, seldom saying a harsh word to me, I would feel terribly guilty complaining. Besides, it would break their hearts.” Psychologist Rollo May suggested that it is less crazy-making to a child to cope with overt withdrawal or harshness than to try to understand the facade of the always-nice parent. When everyone agrees that your parents are so nice and giving, and you still feel dissatisfied, then a child may conclude that there must be something wrong with his or her ability to receive love. -§ Emotionally starving children are easier to control, well fed children don’t need to be. -§ I remember a family of fundamentalists who came to my office to help little Matthew with his anger problem. The parents wanted me to teach little Matthew how to “express his anger nicely.” Now if that is not a formula making someone crazy I do not know what would be. Another woman told me that after her stinking drunk husband tore the house up after a Christmas party, breaking most of the dishes in the kitchen, she meekly told him, “Dear, I think you need a breath mint.” Many families I work with go through great anxiety around the holidays because they are going to be forced to be with each other and are scared of resuming their covert war. They are scared that they might not keep the nice garbage can lid on, and all the rotting resentments and hopeless hurts will be exposed. In the words to the following song, artist David Wilcox explains to his parents why he will not be coming home this Thanksgiving: Covert War by David Wilcox

The adults continued having nightmares. They cried out in their sleep. In the mornings, they sat at the table and talked to us about their bad dreams: the war was around them, the land was falling to pieces, Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese soldiers were coming, the sound of guns raced with the beating of their hearts. In their dreams, they met people who were no longer alive but who had loved them back in their old lives. There were stomach ulcers from worrying and heads that throbbed late into the night. My aunts and uncles in California farmed on a small acreage, five or ten, to add to the money they received from welfare. My aunts and uncles in Minnesota, in the summers, did “under the table” work to help make ends meet if they could, like harvesting corn or picking baby cucumbers to make pickles. And the adults kept saying: how lucky we are to be in America. I wasn’t convinced.

In 2013 a study published in the Journal of Patient Safety8 put the number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm at more than 400,000 per year. (Categories of avoidable harm include misdiagnosis, dispensing the wrong drugs, injuring the patient during surgery, operating on the wrong part of the body, improper transfusions, falls, burns, pressure ulcers, and postoperative complications.) Testifying to a Senate hearing in the summer of 2014, Peter J. Pronovost, MD, professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the most respected clinicians in the world, pointed out that this is the equivalent of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every twenty-four hours. “What these numbers say is that every day, a 747, two of them are crashing. Every two months, 9/11 is occurring,” he said. “We would not tolerate that degree of preventable harm in any other forum.”9 These figures place preventable medical error in hospitals as the third biggest killer in the United States—behind only heart disease and cancer.

There is another call, the one that arrives the day when what once worked no longer does. Sometimes people need a shock; sometimes a tocsin call. It is time for a wake-up call. A man is fired from a job; a child runs away from home; ulcers overtake the body. The ancients called this “soul loss.” Today, the equivalent is the loss of meaning or purpose in our lives. There is a void where there should be what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “juice and joy.” The heart grows cold; life loses its vitality. Our accomplishments seem meaningless. As Tolstoy wrote in his Confessions, “Nothing ahead except ruins.” We seem to be in the thick of the forest without a road. “What, then, must we do?” The long line of myths, legends, poetry, and stories throughout the world tell us that it is at that moment of darkness that the call comes. It arrives in various forms—an itch, a fever, an offer, a ringing, an inspiration, an idea, a voice, words in a book that seem to have been written just for us—or a knock. THE KNOCK The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away. I'm looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. —Robert Pirsig

The experience of stress has three components. The first is the event, physical or emotional, that the organism interprets as threatening. This is the stress stimulus, also called the stressor. The second element is the processing system that experiences and interprets the meaning of the stressor. In the case of human beings, this processing system is the nervous system, in particular the brain. The final constituent is the stress response, which consists of the various physiological and behavioural adjustments made as a reaction to a perceived threat. We see immediately that the definition of a stressor depends on the processing system that assigns meaning to it. The shock of an earthquake is a direct threat to many organisms, though not to a bacterium. The loss of a job is more acutely stressful to a salaried employee whose family lives month to month than to an executive who receives a golden handshake. Equally important is the personality and current psychological state of the individual on whom the stressor is acting. The executive whose financial security is assured when he is terminated may still experience severe stress if his self-esteem and sense of purpose were completely bound up with his position in the company, compared with a colleague who finds greater value in family, social interests or spiritual pursuits. The loss of employment will be perceived as a major threat by the one, while the other may see it as an opportunity. There is no uniform and universal relationship between a stressor and the stress response. Each stress event is singular and is experienced in the present, but it also has its resonance from the past. The intensity of the stress experience and its long-term consequences depend on many factors unique to each individual. What defines stress for each of us is a matter of personal disposition and, even more, of personal history. Selye discovered that the biology of stress predominantly affected three types of tissues or organs in the body: in the hormonal system, visible changes occurred in the adrenal glands; in the immune system, stress affected the spleen, the thymus and the lymph glands; and the intestinal lining of the digestive system. Rats autopsied after stress had enlarged adrenals, shrunken lymph organs and ulcerated intestines.

Auto-Zoomar. Talbert knelt in the a tergo posture, his palms touching the wing-like shoulder blades of the young woman. A conceptual flight. At ten-second intervals the Polaroid projected a photograph on to the screen beside the bed. He watched the auto-zoom close in on the union of their thighs and hips. Details of the face and body of the film actress appeared on the screen, mimetized elements of the planetarium they had visited that morning. Soon the parallax would close, establishing the equivalent geometry of the sexual act with the junctions of this wall and ceiling. ‘Not in the Literal Sense.’Conscious of Catherine Austin’s nervous hips as she stood beside him, Dr Nathan studied the photograph of the young woman. ‘Karen Novotny,’ he read off the caption. ‘Dr Austin, may I assure you that the prognosis is hardly favourable for Miss Novotny. As far as Talbert is concerned the young woman is a mere modulus in his union with the film actress.’ With kindly eyes he looked up at Catherine Austin. ‘Surely it’s self-evident - Talbert’s intention is to have intercourse with Miss Taylor, though needless to say not in the literal sense of that term.’ Action Sequence. Hiding among the traffic in the near-side lane, Koester followed the white Pontiac along the highway. When they turned into the studio entrance he left his car among the pines and climbed through the perimeter fence. In the shooting stage Talbert was staring through a series of colour transparencies. Karen Novotny waited passively beside him, her hands held like limp birds. As they grappled he could feel the exploding musculature of Talbert’s shoulders. A flurry of heavy blows beat him to the floor. Vomiting through his bloodied lips, he saw Talbert run after the young woman as she darted towards the car. The Sex Kit.‘In a sense,’ Dr Nathan explained to Koester, ‘one may regard this as a kit, which Talbert has devised, entitled “Karen Novotny” - it might even be feasible to market it commercially. It contains the following items: (1) Pad of pubic hair, (2) a latex face mask, (3) six detachable mouths, (4) a set of smiles, (5) a pair of breasts, left nipple marked by a small ulcer, (6) a set of non-chafe orifices, (7) photo cut-outs of a number of narrative situations - the girl doing this and that, (8) a list of dialogue samples, of inane chatter, (9) a set of noise levels, (10) descriptive techniques for a variety of sex acts, (11) a torn anal detrusor muscle, (12) a glossary of idioms and catch phrases, (13) an analysis of odour traces (from various vents), mostly purines, etc., (14) a chart of body temperatures (axillary, buccal, rectal), (15) slides of vaginal smears, chiefly Ortho-Gynol jelly, (16) a set of blood pressures, systolic 120, diastolic 70 rising to 200/150 at onset of orgasm . . . ’ Deferring to Koester, Dr Nathan put down the typescript. ‘There are one or two other bits and pieces, but together the inventory is an adequate picture of a woman, who could easily be reconstituted from it. In fact, such a list may well be more stimulating than the real thing. Now that sex is becoming more and more a conceptual act, an intellectualization divorced from affect and physiology alike, one has to bear in mind the positive merits of the sexual perversions. Talbert’s library of cheap photo-pornography is in fact a vital literature, a kindling of the few taste buds left in the jaded palates of our so-called sexuality.

Cancer and the autoimmune diseases of various sorts are, by and large, diseases of civilization. While industrialized society organized along the capitalist model has solved many problems for many of its members — such as housing, food supply and sanitation — it has also created numerous new pressures even for those who do not need to struggle for the basics of existence. We have come to take these stresses for granted as inevitable consequences of human life, as if human life existed in an abstract form separable from the human beings who live it. When we look at people who only recently have come to experience urban civilization, we can see more clearly that the benefits of “progress” exact hidden costs in terms of physiological balance, to say nothing of emotional and spiritual satisfaction. Hans Selye wrote, “Apparently in a Zulu population, the stress of urbanization increased the incidence of hypertension, predisposing people to heart accidents. In Bedouins and other nomadic Arabs, ulcerative colitis has been noted after settlement in Kuwait City, presumably as a consequence of urbanization.” The main effect of recent trends on the family under the prevailing socioeconomic system, accelerated by the current drive to “globalization,” has been to undermine the family structure and to tear asunder the connections that used to provide human beings with a sense of meaning and belonging. Children spend less time around nurturing adults than ever before during the course of human evolution. The nexus previously based in extended family, village, community and neighbourhood has been replaced by institutions such as daycare and school, where children are more oriented to their peers than to reliable parents or parent substitutes. Even the nuclear family, supposedly the basic unit of the social structure, is under intolerable pressure. In many families now, both parents are having to work to assure the basic necessities one salary could secure a few decades ago. “[The] separation of infants from their mothers and all other types of relocation which leave few possibilities for interpersonal contact are very common forms of sensory deprivation; they may become major factors in disease,” wrote the prescient Hans Selye.

But once in a while, uninvited and uninitiated, anger invades me. It starts, a tiny gnaw at the back of my brain. Like a migraine, except without pain. They say headaches blossom, but this isn't so much a blossoming as a bleeding. Irritation bleeds into rage, seethes into fury. An ulcer, emptying hatred inside me. And I don't know why. Life is pretty good.

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?

The good news was that the smoke, whatever its source, was not getting closer to us. The bad news was that it was moving towards Oban. We wasted no time rowing across the loch. The group we’d already sent over remained visible and clearly busy, though doing what was anybody’s guess from our vantage point in the birlinn. It was getting on past noon, and I hated the idea of leaving the birlinn behind. Crafting it had been a singularly powerful experience, one that I wasn’t sure was repeatable. The birlinn we’d made was unique. In the end, though, it was a boat. It wasn’t alive like the three hundred people we were trying to keep breathing. Not to mention the thousands in Oban who could die. I’d planned to take one of the oars to give a rower a break, but I must have looked haggard. When I’d gone to offer, the bloke with the oar had taken one look at me and said, “Naw, mate.” Sitting on a thwart next to Eilidh, I fervently wished for something to distract me from the radiating warmth on my left. Rowing would at least give me something to do that wasn’t thinking about that heat or second guessing all the decisions we’d made in the past few days. We could have taken the strongest of us and returned to Oban, leaving the other three hundred to take the slower route around the loch. Sure, that was a possibility. But if we’d done that, we’d have left them vulnerable, including the children. That wasn’t acceptable to me or to anyone else. Oban had the advantage of numbers and at least some preparation at this point; the people with us did not. There were any number of things we could be questioning, but if we sat here picking apart the instincts we’d followed, all we’d do was pick up an ulcer. We were still alive. That was all that mattered. I tuned back in to the birlinn to hear a couple of the rowers talking, both of them darting glances at me and Eilidh in the process. “. . . wrecked all of Sackington’s guns and stole his grenades,” one of them said, not really trying to be quiet. Eilidh zeroed in on him like a bloodhound catching a whiff of the quarry. “Yes. We did.” “Erm, he wasn’t saying it was a bad thing!” one of the rowers blurted out. “Yes, I was! We could have used those instead of hitting things with sticks, for fuck’s sake,” the other one said. “No offense.” “Mate, they don’t even work anymore,” I said, and when I could almost see his thoughts pivot to but there’s magic now, I sighed. “We happened to be present when someone figured out how to use their magic to fire a rifle at one of Bawbag’s simulacra. Not only did the bullet literally bounce right back, but it killed his daughter when it ricocheted, and his next shot was dead on. Can you guess what happened then?” “He died,” said the guy who had tried to reassure me they weren’t questioning that decision. He had sandy brown hair that was a mess of waves half stuck to his head with sweat from the exertion, and his muscles were bulging out of his shirt—guess he was getting those Strength increases. “Did he die?” the other bloke asked. “Aye, he might as well have just shot himself in the heart. Even swords bounced right off that damn thing—piercing it with the point seems to be the only thing even marginally successful, and that might be imbuing it with Purifire more than the actual poke.” “I know how to shoot a gun,” Eilidh said bluntly. “And amateurs with firearms tend to hurt much more than they help, let alone in a state of active combat. This isn’t the fucking Wild West.” She sounded Done with a capital D, and I didn’t blame her. To his credit, the bloke seemed to mull that over for a bit before nodding as if ceding the point. Whatever the Ascended Alliance knew about friendly fire of an arcane nature, that did not extend to human-made explosives. If

Large amounts of variability (that is to say, short interbeat intervals during inhalation, long during exhalation) mean you have strong parasympathetic tone counteracting your sympathetic tone, a good thing.

Constructive criticism, which points out defects and the means of remedying them, is the basis of progress; but destructive criticism, which vandalisticaly demolishes good and bad alike without aiming at any higher attainment, is an ulcer on the character and must be eradicated. Gossip and idle tale-bearing are clogs and hindrances. While it is not required that we shall say that black is white and overlook manifestly wrong conduct, criticism should be made for the purpose of helping, not to wantonly besmirch the character of a fellow-being because we have found a little stain.

Borody claims to have used fecal transplants to effectively cure people who were suffering from ulcerative colitis—which, he says, was

People who experienced chronic anxiety, long periods of sadness and pessimism, unremitting tension or incessant hostility, relentless cynicism or suspiciousness, were found to have double the risk of disease—including asthma, arthritis, headaches, peptic ulcers, and heart disease. This order of magnitude makes distressing emotions as toxic a risk factor as, say, smoking or high cholesterol are for heart disease. Anger seems to be the one emotion that does most harm to the heart. Being prone to anger was a stronger predictor of dying young than were other risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

But on the way home tonight, you wish you’d picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As if it were you who could, somehow, save him. For the moment not caring who you’re supposed to be registered as. For the moment anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you are. O Jesu parvule, Nach dir ist mir so weh . . . So this pickup group, these exiles and horny kids, sullen civilians called up in their middle age, men fattening despite their hunger, flatulent because of it, pre-ulcerous, hoarse, runny-nosed, red-eyed, sore-throated, piss-swollen men suffering from acute lower backs and all-day hangovers, wishing death on officers they truly hate, men you have seen on foot and smileless in the cities but forgot, men who don’t remember you either, knowing they ought to be grabbing a little sleep, not out here performing for strangers, give you this evensong, climaxing now with its rising fragment of some ancient scale, voices overlapping three- and fourfold, up, echoing, filling the entire hollow of the church—no counterfeit baby, no announcement of the Kingdom, not even a try at warming or lighting this terrible night, only, damn us, our scruffy obligatory little cry, our maximum reach outward—praise be to God!—for you to take back to your war-address, your war-identity, across the snow’s footprints and tire tracks finally to the path you must create by yourself, alone in the dark. Whether you want it or not, whatever seas you have crossed, the way home. . . .

The self-centered person did not get the attention he needed as an infant and so must manufacture it for himself. He is unable or reluctant to take a realistic view of himself as just another person in the world, sometimes playing a star role, sometimes not' most often, neither star nor audience, but a human being getting on with life like any other. Self-centered people forever need to wrest attention from everyone else. They are preoccupied with their importance or lack of it, always looking in mirrors, talking about their friends and never interested in yours. Ironically, the hypochondriac, always telling us about his ulcers, his weight problem, the pimple on his nose, is self-centered too. The clue to the self-centered personality is whether he is telling you how big and marvelous he is, or how small and near death, he must always keep himself the focus of conversation, the center of attention. People often say he has a "big ego". The fact is that he has very little "ego" at all.

I want to marry you, Rosalie Harrow. I want you to be my duchess and my wife. I want to wake with you in my arms every morning. But most of all, I want you to want me…want us. Enough to stay, enough to try this, enough to trust us with your heart and earn the right to love you. And I want this painful moment to be over, and I want you to answer me, because if I’m left wondering if you’ll ever say yes much longer, the ulcer I’ve named after you will burst, and I’ll die, and this will have all been for nothing.

When it is a question of abuses in political institutions, it is necessary to take great care to judge of them only by their constant effects, and never by any of their causes, of whatever kind, which signify nothing still less by certain collateral inconveniences (if I may so express myself ) which men of limited views readily lay hold of, and are thus prevented from seeing the whole together. Indeed, the cause, according to the hypothesis which seems to be proved, not having any logical relation to the effect; and the inconveniences of an institution, good in itself, being only, as I have just said, an inevitable dissonance in the general key; how can we judge of institutions by their causes and inconveniences?—Voltaire, who spoke of every thing, during an age, without having so much as penetrated below the surface, has reasoned very humorously on the sale of the offices of the magistracy which occurred in France; and no instance, perhaps, could be more apposite to make us sensible of the truth of the theory which I am setting forth. That this sale is an abuse, says he, is proved by the fact, that it originated in another abuse. Voltaire does not mistake here as every man is liable to mistake. He shamefully mistakes. It is a total eclipse of common sense. Everything which springs from an abuse, an abuse! On the contrary; one of the most general and evident laws of this power, at once secret and striking, which acts and makes itself to be felt on every side, is, that the remedy of an abuse springs from an abuse, and that the evil, having reached a certain point, destroys itself, as it ought to do; for evil, which is only a negation, has, for measure of dimension and duration, that of the being to which it is joined, and which it destroys. It exists as an ulcer, which can only terminate in self-destruction. But then a new reality will necessarily occupy the place of that which has disappeared; for nature abhors a vacuum, and the Good. But I diverge too far from Voltaire.

When American experts began making “helpful” suggestions about how the French could “increase productivity and profits,” the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: “These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we have a nice little business here just as it is. Everybody makes a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think, as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make these changes that you suggest.

I don't want to be happy. There is no happy. I am content to wallow in this cesspit for all eternity because it is like poking at a mouth ulcer with the tip of your tongue--inadvisable, painful, but addictive. What I choose to say to my little brother instead: 'Someday. Maybe.

Let’s walk this out step by step. Let’s say you have a problem with a disease by the label of “acid reflux.” You experience stress. Stress decreases muscle tone around the lower esophagus, because that requires blood and energy, which we are using to fight or flee. Now the acid in the stomach washes back up into the esophagus, damaging the lining of the esophagus. These cells get repeatedly damaged, causing pain and eventually ulcers or cancer. But they only do that because they’re not in growth and healing and repair mode, or they could protect themselves from the acid bath. So you manifest the disease “acid reflux.” The medical solution is to give a purple pill to stop the acid. This works quite effectively for reducing the acid, but the problem is that the acid is needed to digest food. Acid also functions to kill bacteria that we have ingested with the food. In masking our symptom, we’ve created two new problems. The extra bacterial load burdens the immune system. The food remains in the stomach longer until the stomach finally produces enough acid to digest it, but now there’s a longer exposure period of the acid to the esophagus. It becomes a vicious cycle. So, do we want to mask the symptom or heal the source?

Because ‘achievers’ have to be ‘good,’ they tend to keep their feelings under careful control, and they often suffer from ulcers or high blood pressure.