Crippling Anxiety Quotes

I AM THE NARRATOR OF MY STORY. I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN WRITE THE NARRATIVE, THE BEGINNING, AND THE END OF THE CHAPTERS IN MY LIFE. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

You can and will do this. You are entitled to speak your truth in a respectful way. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering. ~ Ron Suskind

I am proud of myself. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength. ~ Charles Spurgeon

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

True contemplation can only thrive when defended from two opposite exaggerations: quietism on the one hand, and spiritual fuss upon the other. Neither from passivity nor from anxiety has it anything to gain. ~ Evelyn Underhill

So, I remember when I was a kid, I was waiting for my mom to come home when she was working late, and, you know, I was like, 'Oh my God, what happened to her? Is she OK? Did something happen to her getting in the car?' I was a little kid. But those are actually early onsets of anxiety. ~ Vinny Guadagnino

Do not empower your negative thoughts by giving them "legs" so they can run around your mind, creating worries,frustrations, and anxiety in your life. ~ Rodolfo Costa

All of us react to our anxiety by "partializing" our world, by restricting our consciousness within narrow bounds, to areas that we can more or less control which provide us a sense of self-confidence. ~ David R. Loy

I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting. ~ Laurie Foos

[Sonia Sotomayor's] opinion echoed with her personal story: 'Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: 'I do not belong here. ~ Joan Biskupic

Anxiety and stress derive from fear and self-doubt. ~ Debasish Mridha

Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Who is open without levity; generous without waste; secret without craft; humble without meanness; bold without insolence; cautious without anxiety; regular, yet not formal; mild, yet not timid; firm, yet not tyrannical
is made to pass the ordeal of honor, friendship, virtue. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Do you have an emergency fund? If not, build one - aim for three months of expenses to start, then boost it to six. It will ease your anxiety and get you out of a potential jam. ~ Jean Chatzky

Five a.m. and mooching round
Compartments in my brain
Every corner occupied
By garbage and disdain
Down all day - up all night
Beneath that energy draining light

The Paperboy's Wife ~ John Cooper Clarke

Secondary structural dissociation involves one ANP and more than one EP. Examples of secondary structural dissociation are complex PTSD, complex forms of acute stress disorder, complex dissociative amnesia, complex somatoform disorders, some forms of trauma-relayed personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, and dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS).. Secondary structural dissociation is characterized by divideness of two or more defensive subsystems. For example, there may be different EPs that are devoted to flight, fight or freeze, total submission, and so on. (Van der Hart et al., 2004). Gail, a patient of mine, does not have a personality disorder, but describes herself as a "changed person." She survived a horrific car accident that killed several others, and in which she was the driver. Someone not knowing her history might see her as a relatively normal, somewhat anxious and stiff person (ANP). It would not occur to this observer that only a year before, Gail had been a different person: fun-loving, spontaneous, flexible, and untroubled by frightening nightmares and constant anxiety. Fortunately, Gail has been willing to pay attention to her EPs; she has been able to put the process of integration in motion; and she has been able to heal. p134 ~ Elizabeth F. Howell

I'd set out to write a book about how we learn to trust our own experience in the face of confusion, doubt, and anxiety. What I ended up with is the story of how we love each other in spite of immense limitations ~ Heather Sellers

It is love. I will have to run or hide.

The walls of its prison rise up, as in a twisted dream. The beautiful mask has changed, but as always it is the one. Of what use are my talismans: the literary exercises, the vague erudition, the knowledge of words used by the harsh North to sing its seas and swords, the temperate friendship, the galleries of the Library, the common things, the habits, the young love of my mother, the militant shadow of my dead, the timeless night, the taste of dreams?

Being with you or being without you is the measure of my time.

Now the pitcher breaks about the spring, now the man arises to the sound of birds, now those that watch at the windows have gone dark, but the darkness has brought no peace.

It, I know, is love: the anxiety and the relief at hearing your voice, the expectation and the memory, the horror of living in succession.

It is love with its mythologies, with its tiny useless magics.

There exists a corner that I dare not cross.

Now the armies confine me, the hordes.

(This room is unreal; she has not seen it.)

The name of a woman gives me away.

A woman hurts me in all of my body. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

How I wish to fly with the geese away from dreary November days, the "freeze-up," and cruel winter. Away from loneliness, isolation, and anxiety bred by blizzards. Most every local person I've talked to grudgingly admits to an autumn apprehension. It is part and parcel of an Adirondacker's psychological makeup. The geese contaminate us with this strange depression on their southbound flight and cure us with their northbound. In between, we try to tolerate winter, each in his or her own way. ~ Anne LaBastille

Totalitarian rule thrives on its subjects' ignorance of the extent to which the surveillance system is monitoring their lives. The possibility, rather than the fact, of surveillance is enough to generate fear, anxiety, and informal pressures to conform, to downplay dissenting opinions, to declare one's absolute loyalty. Thus an enforced culture of self-censorship emerges in communities that used to express their political opinions freely. ~ Arun Kundnani

Not being able to find a cause is profoundly distressing; it creates anxiety because it implies a loss of control. The desire to find a cause is driven by fear. ~ Sidney Dekker

Barbra Streisand developed overwhelming performance anxiety at the height of her career; for 27 years she refused to perform for the general public, appearing live only in private clubs and at charity events, where she presumably believed the pressure on her was less intense. ~ Scott Stossel

In his anxiety to be just to others he was often prepared to be unjust to himself. He was always ready to sacrifice his own rights rather than run any rish of infringing the rights of others. ~ Aldous Huxley

People who are diagnosed as having "generalized anxiety disorder" are afflicted by three major problems that many of us experience to a lesser extent from time to time. First and foremost, says Rapgay, the natural human inclination to focus on threats and bad news is strongly amplified in them, so that even significant positive events get suppressed. An inflexible mentality and tendency toward excessive verbalizing make therapeutic intervention a further challenge. ~ Winifred Gallagher

Ironically, the worship of of death as a strategy for coping with our underlying fear of death's power does not truly give us solace. It is deeply anxiety producing. The more we watch spectacles of death, of random violence and cruelty, the more afraid we become in our daily lives. ~ Bell Hooks

I don't know how you deal with anxiety attacks,
but I tell myself is: OK. OK. It's OK to feel
you're about to vomit. Let yourself feel like you can't breathe. Don't scold your
feelings just because you're not
actually having an aneurism. Slash heart attack slash dengue fever. Let that feeling try itself. ~ Mike Young

It was she whom I loved and whom I could not therefore see without that anxiety, without that desire for something more, which destroys in us, in the presence of the person we love, the sensation of loving. ~ Marcel Proust

It's because the door hasn't been closed yet that the nightmares still find their way in. ~ Joyce Rachelle

"It's just literally being afraid. And you think, oh, [the alcohol] will ease the fear. And it doesn't." What was he afraid of? "Everything. It's just a general all-round arggghhh. It's fearfulness and anxiety." He added, "For that first week you lie to yourself, and tell yourself you can stop, and then your body kicks back and says, no, stop later. And then it took about three years, and finally you do stop." ~ Robin Williams

The hydrogen bomb is not the answer to the Western peoples' dream of full and final insurance of their security ... While it has increased their striking power it has sharpened their anxiety and deepened their sense of insecurity. ~ B.H. Liddell Hart

Ally wasn't disappointed in the writers: she hadn't expected anything from them in the first place; it hadn't occurred to her to be interested in writers as individuals beyond their work. To her relief no one whose books she'd read ever came to the centre, although sometimes she had to pretend to have read the writers who did. The writers could be fairly crazy, too; you had to be vigilant not to trip over their vanity or anxiety. Luckily, most of her favourites were dead. (She's the one, 151) ~ Tessa Hadley

Be thankful when you find yourself worrying about the smallest things, for it often means there aren't any bigger things to truly worry about. ~ Joyce Rachelle

Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. ~ Paulo Coelho

Learning from Negative Experiences

Many people with social anxiety can remember certain events that contributed to their fears. Martin knows exactly why he is afraid to speak in class.

When I was in seventh-grade science class, the teacher had each student read aloud a paragraph from the textbook. It was a chapter on different types of organisms. When it was my turn, I accidentally said "orgasm" instead of "organism." Everyone howled with laughter, including the teacher. I felt so embarrassed. My face was bright red and I wanted to hide. Kids teased me about it for a long time. Ever since then, I am terrified about reading anything aloud. Sometimes, I am even afraid of simply speaking.

This event, together with Martin's biochemistry and genes, set him up to have a form of social anxiety. People who don't have the same heightened sense of awareness or the same chemicals rushing through their bodies may not have been upset by this event. They may have laughed with the class or even have been able to make fun of themselves. ~ Heather Moehn

Anxiety

I struggle with things that are as easy to others as breathing.

Like breathing. Like answering the phone. Or sending that email I have been meaning to for weeks.

I panic when I am asked out to dinner, even if it's with someone I really want to see.

It's hard for me to commit to anything, and when I do, I overthink it until my brain tells me I have made a mistake, like a rat caught in a maze, trying to claw its way out.

I don't know why I am like this. People ask me why I can't do anything without jumping through a thousand thoughts, like hoops. But sometimes I wonder if my inability to function in the real world is really such a bad thing. I wonder if that's why I've spent so much time sheltered in my imagination.

And because I can't live in the real world, I create worlds to belong to. And I wonder if the very thing I've always been told is my weakness, has all along, been my strength. ~ Lang Leav

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future. ~ Albert Einstein

I would say off the cuff that I am an anxious person. I worry about everything. I need to know everything. I tend to live in a state of anxiety with the feeling that life is some kind of great catastrophe. ~ Antoni Tapies

Anxiety is the price tag on human freedom ~ Louis Menand

He who cares for the sparrows and numbers the hairs of our head, cannot possibly fail us. ~ Hannah Whitall Smith

Conscious breathing is the best antidote to stress, anxiety and depression. ~ Amit Ray

I feel… lost," I whisper. "I hurt. I hurt so much." I look up into the face of the man who stole my heart so long ago, and I know without a doubt that I'm still deeply in love with him. It's a crippling realization - one I've been denying for so long. Callan's expression is fierce, protective and possessive all at once. How can he feel this way after so long? How can he still want to love me? Or even be near me after everything we both put each other through?
"I hurt, too," he says quietly. "But you have the ability to make that hurt stop, bluebird. Just like I can take your pain away. Every last scrap of it. I won't rest until the past is dead and buried and you're happy, if you let me. Please. Please… please just let me. ~ Callie Hart

Love is a source of anxiety until it is a source of boredom; only friendship feeds the spirit. ~ Edmund White

Women (...) have been encouraged since they were children to be dependent to an unhealthy degree. Any woman who looks within knows that she was never trained to be comfortable with the idea of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, asserting herself. At best she may have played the game of independence, inwardly envying the boys (and later the men) because they seemed so naturally self-sufficient.

It is not nature that bestows this self-sufficiency on men; it's training. Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. Just as systematically, women are taught that they have an out - that someday, in some way, they are going to be saved. That is the fairy tale, the life-message (...) We may venture out on our own for a while. We may go away to school, work, travel; we may even make good money, but underneath it all there is a finite quality to our feelings about independence. Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living. (The only savior the boy learns about is himself.) ~ Colette Dowling

I am light. I am not invisible when I look in the mirror - I am my own light that will shine, shine, and shine. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Some time ago, my son Emilio was going back to school after vacation. He did not like the idea at all and was filled with anxiety. To him, the approach of school days was like a monster that threatened him and wanted to squash him. What is a parent supposed to do? I tried to lift his spirits, to distract him, convince him it was not as bad as it seemed, but in vain. Then I hit upon the idea of offering him something that is almost taboo in our family: French fries at a fast-food place. Usually anything that is prohibited appeals to Emilio, especially junk food. I thought I had the ace up my sleeve. But no. Emilio's reply ought to be chiseled in stone: "Dad, you don't solve problems with french fries."

Touche. You don't pretend problems do not exist, and you can't solve them with ephemeral distractions. You have to face them with open-eyed honesty. Offering French fries to my son in order to console and distract him from his anxiety was by no means a kind act. I was simply choosing the easier option--far too easy. I had found a comfortable way out. ~ Piero Ferrucci