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d507ea2
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In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.
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anxiety
conservatism
delusion
psychology
uncertainty
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Alan Moore |
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1ddbe7d
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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
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anxiety
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Alain de Botton |
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27b1219
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When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments -- the results of our actions -- to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people's lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.
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anxiety
fear
self-esteem
success
work
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Henri J.M. Nouwen |
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c869e44
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We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.
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anxiety
desire
happiness
materialism
possessions
self-knowledge
status
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Alain de Botton |
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df37efd
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Aesthetic value emanates from the struggle between texts: in the reader, in language, in the classroom, in arguments within a society. Aesthetic value rises out of memory, and so (as Nietzsche saw) out of pain, the pain of surrendering easier pleasures in favour of much more difficult ones ... successful literary works are achieved anxieties, not releases from anxieties.
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anxiety
canon
literature
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Harold Bloom |
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5ab42bf
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"Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn't look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me--little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again.
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alcohol
anxiety
art
balance
be-okay
chest
coffee
crying
drinking
ed
fine
flowers
focus
grateful
gratitude
happiness
hope
hopeful
hopeless
hurt
inspiration
joy
lovely
lovers
madness
mental-health
music
new-day
okay
panic
panic-attack
panic-attacks
park
recovery
sad
sadness
self-destruction
self-harm
sing
singing
sky
smoking
songs
sound
spring
starving
tears
walking
well-being
wellness
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Charlotte Eriksson |
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342a841
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Alcohol has its own well-know defects as a medication for depression but no one has ever suggested - ask any doctor - that it is not the most effective anti-anxiety agent yet known.
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alcoholism
anxiety
depression
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Joan Didion |
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681cae7
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I find me, leave me, go towards me, come from me, nothing ever but me, a particle of me, retrieved, lost, gone astray, I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts...
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anxiety
turmoil
words
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Samuel Beckett |
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fc5d78c
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It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.
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americans
anxiety
atheism
disappointment
drive
hope
optimism
pessimism
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Alain de Botton |
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73d75a6
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When both she and I had to deal with our respective demons, my sister saw the darkness as being within and part of herself, the family and the world. I, instead, saw it as a stranger; however lodged within my mind and soul the darkness became, it almost always seemed an outside force that was at war with my natural self.
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anxiety
depression
kay-redfield-jamison
mental-illness
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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29b84fd
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He was agitated for some reason that he could not name. (page 35)
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anxiety
helplessness
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Kate DiCamillo |
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383102c
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But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else.
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anxiety
life
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Curtis Sittenfeld |
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4c309f3
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God only knew what ran underneath the fierce self-discipline and emotional control that had come with my upbringing. But the cracks were there, I knew it, and they frightened me.
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anxiety
depression
kay-redfield-jamison
mental-illness
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Kay Redfield Jamison |
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42617fd
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On his thirteenth birthday he had seen a film in which the central character was a painter who, unable to sell his work, grew cold and hungry as he went from one unsuccessful interview to the next; eventually he had become a vagrant, sleeping in the streets of the city where once he had walked in hope. Hawksmoor left the cinema in a mood of profound, terrified apprehension and, from that time, he was filled with a sense of time passing and with the fear that he might be left discarded on its banks. The fear had not left him, although now he could no longer remember from where it came: he looked back on his earlier life without curiosity, since it seemed to lack intrinsic interest, and when he looked forward he saw the same steady attainment of goals without any joy in their attainment. For him, the state of happiness was simply the state of not suffering and, if he cared for anything, it was for oblivion.
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anxiety
goals
life
oblivion
time
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Peter Ackroyd |
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7240f03
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When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground...it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.
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anxiety
assertiveness
child-sexual-abuse-survivor
empowering
false-guilt
guilt
healing
healing-insights
power
survivors
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Maureen Brady |
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35ecf80
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When I penetrate into that house, if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive, like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms, overturning furniture, in the midst of my family all trying to embrace me at once, until by virtue of a supreme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and gradually leave backwards, without having said good evening.
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anxiety
distress
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Samuel Beckett |
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0628e5d
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Rapid movement was a relief in the midst of so much feeling.
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anxiety
tic
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Gail Carson Levine |
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23b5103
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And I was upset to find how really reluctant I was to leave my little flat. It was as if I was almost frightened. Spasms of prophetic homesickness pierced me as I rearranged the china and dusted it with my handkerchief, obsessive visions of burglaries and desecrations.
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anxiety
fear
hermetic
homebody
homesickness
iris-murdoch
recluse
the-black-prince
worry
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Iris Murdoch |