Scott Stossel Quotes

People who suffer from anxiety are very good at hiding it. That can often be a contributor to the anxiety because the gap between the internal perception and the external impression can feel so large. ~ Scott Stossel

There's a vast encyclopedia of fears and phobias, and pretty much any object, experience, situation you can think of, there is someone who has a phobia of it. ~ Scott Stossel

All the textbooks talk about avoidance as a classic hallmark of anxiety disorder. So you need a therapist who is sympathetic and understanding but will also push you to do precisely the things that scare you. ~ Scott Stossel

for the existentialists, what generated anxiety was not the godlessness of the world, per se, but rather the freedom to choose between God and godlessness. Though freedom is something we actively seek, the freedom to choose generates anxiety. "When I behold my possibilities," Kierkegaard wrote, "I experience that dread which is the dizziness of freedom, and my choice is made in fear and trembling." Many people try to flee anxiety by fleeing choice. This helps explain the perverse-seeming appeal of authoritarian societies - the certainties of a rigid, choiceless society can be very reassuring - and why times of upheaval so often produce extremist leaders and movements: Hitler in Weimar Germany, Father Coughlin in Depression-era America, or Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Vladimir Putin in Russia today. But running from anxiety, Kierkegaard believed, was a mistake because anxiety was a "school" that taught people to come to terms with the human condition. ~ Scott Stossel

The truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and culture. ~ Scott Stossel

For the social phobic, any kind of performance - musical, sporting, public speaking - can be terrifying because failure will reveal the weakness and inadequacy within. This in turn means constantly projecting an image that feels false - an image of confidence, competence, even perfection. ~ Scott Stossel

As recently as 1979, neither panic attacks nor panic disorder officially existed. ~ Scott Stossel

It is an irony of medical history that even as Freud's later work would make him the progenitor of modern psychodynamic psychotherapy, which is generally premised on the idea that mental illness arises from unconscious psychological conflicts, his papers on cocaine make him one of the fathers of biological psychiatry, which is governed by the notion that mental distress is partly caused by a physical or chemical malfunction that can be treated with drugs. ~ Scott Stossel

To say that my anxiety is reducible to the ions in my amygdala is as limiting as saying that my personality or my soul is reducible to the molecules that make up my brain cells or to the genes that underwrote them. ~ Scott Stossel

The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s.") ~ Scott Stossel

Many nights, I would begin the evening fueled by caffeine and nicotine, which I needed to propel me out of torpor and hopelessness - only to overshoot into quaking, quivering anxiety. ~ Scott Stossel

To grapple with and understand anxiety is, in some sense, to grapple with and understand the human condition. ~ Scott Stossel

But none of these treatments have fundamentally reduced the underlying anxiety that seems woven into my soul and hardwired into my body and that at times makes my life a misery. As the years pass, the hope of being cured of my anxiety has faded into a resigned desire to come to terms with it, to find some redemptive quality or mitigating benefit to my being, too often, a quivering, quaking, neurotic wreck. ~ Scott Stossel

I have, since the age of about 2, been a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears, and neuroses. And I have, since the age of 10, when I was first taken to a mental hospital for evaluation and then referred to a psychiatrist for treatment, tried in various ways to overcome my anxiety. ~ Scott Stossel

Hugh Grant, who several times has announced that he was thinking of retiring from acting, has said that he suffers from panic attacks when the cameras start rolling. ~ Scott Stossel

During high school, I would purposely lose tennis and squash matches to escape the agony of anxiety that competitive situations would provoke in me. ~ Scott Stossel

Even though my mom herself was anxious, I think she didn't know how to deal with it in her kid, and my dad just had no conception of what this was about, and sort of didn't even want to acknowledge it. ~ Scott Stossel

I don't want to be in a position that could make me vomit, like air travel. I've purloined airsick bags and stuffed them everywhere, just in case I ever feel the need to throw up. I haven't vomited since 1977, but I think about it all the time. I recognize that it's irrational, but I'd rather jump out of a window than vomit. ~ Scott Stossel

It is a fact - I say this from experience - that being severely anxious is depressing. Anxiety can impede your relationships, impair your performance, constrict your life, and limit your possibilities. ~ Scott Stossel

Individuals who rate high on the so-called Anxiety Sensitivity Index, or ASI, have a high degree of what's known as interoceptive awareness, meaning they are highly attuned to the inner workings on their bodies, to the beepings and bleatings, the blips and burps, of their physiologies; they are more conscious of their heart rate, blood pressure, digestive burblings, and so forth than other people are. ~ Scott Stossel

I had no trouble with strangers finding out about my anxiety. It was my friends and colleagues I was concerned about. ~ Scott Stossel

I am living on the razor's edge between success and failure, adulation and humiliation - between justifying my existence and revealing my unworthiness to be alive. ~ Scott Stossel

I've always been interested in intellectual history and in psychology, and anxiety is obviously something that's been a big part of my life. ~ Scott Stossel

Some social phobics find even positive attention to be aversive. Think of the young child who bursts into tears when guests sing "Happy Birthday" to her at a party - or of Elfriede Jelinek afraid to pick up her Nobel Prize. Social attention - even positive, supportive attention - activates the neurocircuitry of fear. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Calling positive attention to yourself can incite jealousy or generate new rivalries. ~ Scott Stossel

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

Paul Tillich, a theologian who grew up in Weimar Germany, similarly explained the rise of Nazism as a response to anxiety. "First of all a feeling of fear or, more exactly, of indefinite anxiety was prevailing," he writes of 1930s Germany. "Not only the economic and political, but also the cultural and religious, security seemed to be lost. There was nothing on which one could build; everything was without foundation. A catastrophic breakdown was expected every moment. Consequently, a longing for security was growing in everybody. A freedom that leads to fear and anxiety has lost its value; better authority with security than freedom with fear. ~ Scott Stossel

There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn't want to give up. It allows you to have foresight. I may not be as empathetic. It's hard to figure out the difference between pathology and personality. ~ Scott Stossel

Even as economic and political freedoms have advanced enormously and generated huge benefits for humanity, they've also created a great deal of anxiety because every time you have to make a choice, there's anxiety about making the wrong one. ~ Scott Stossel

There are lots of things, including changing the kind of inner dialog, that can mitigate anxiety. And yes, there are people who have the glass half full and glass half empty, and I'm afraid the glass is going to break and I'll cut myself on the shards. ~ Scott Stossel

To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck
paddling, paddling, paddling. ~ Scott Stossel

It was a marriage of love. He was sufficiently spoiled to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Listen. I own this city. Bought and paid for. I have the key to the city in my pocket and a tattoo that says 'Fuck you. I'm the Mayor.'. ~ Scott Lefebvre

I could settle down if women were different," he said. "If I didn't understand so much about them, if women didn't spoil you for other women, if they had only a little pride. If I could go to sleep for a while and wake up into a home that was really mine - why, that's what I'm made for, Paula, that's what women have seen in me and liked in me. It's only that I can't get through the preliminaries any more. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

And then it hit me -
I don't have to participate in these toxic conversations.
But if I choose to, I can set a different example.
I can bring love to the moment, regardless of the response.
I can choose to be kind, no matter what.
My power lives in my love. ~ Scott Stabile

The only reasonable goal in life is maximizing your total lifetime experience of something called happiness. That might sound selfish, but it's not. Only a sociopath or a hermit can find happiness through extreme selfishness. A normal person needs to treat others well in order to enjoy life. ~ Scott Adams

Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handle with gloves. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

We all get angry and jealous sometimes, none of us is perfect, but we should not try to be different. ~ Jill Scott

Beer now,bitch later. ~ Scott Lynch

any medium. Henry Stupen of Elco, the electric boat company, purchased PT 9 along with reproduction rights and lengthened the boat to 77 feet in order to carry the four torpedo tubes the U.S. Navy wanted. With Scott-Paine at the controls and the Rolls Royce engines purring beneath him, PT 9 won every sea trial it entered. The US Navy had their PT Boat. Three Packard marine engines replaced PT 9's Rolls Royce engines. ~ Michael Engelmann

Creativity is, quite simply, a genuine interest combined with initiative. ~ Scott Belsky

Dick walked beside her, feeling her unhappiness, and wanting to drink the rain that touched her cheek. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Every day I think, 'Can I commit?' I think I can and that I will. ~ Scott Baio

Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can't two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child? ~ Scott Simon

Make no mistake about it, my friends - Republicans, the American people are never going to forget that it was you who shut down the government of the people. ~ David Scott

The sky was a fading red and nothing remained of the day save for a line of molten gold slowly lowering on the western horizon. ~ Scott Lynch

Hard work pays off, dreams come true. Bad times don't last, but BAD GUYS do. ~ Scott Hall

So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high. ~ Scott Turow

That day of wrath, that dreadful day. When heaven and earth shall pass away. ~ Walter Scott

Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help. ~ Scott Westerfeld

You have a place in my heart no one else ever could have. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

When we went to war at the Falklands, Buck Kernan had to shake each man's hand as we boarded a boat for war. ~ Scott Raab

Realize your full dependence upon the Lord and your need to align your life with His teachings. There is really no other way to get lasting healing and peace. ~ Richard G. Scott

On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key. ~ Scott Adams

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon ~ Mike Scott

My metaphor for acting in movies - not on stage because it's completely different on stage - is to put colors on an easel for the director to paint his own painting with in the editing room, long after I've left. You buy me for red and black, so I better give you really great red and black, but if I can give you purple, pink, green and brown too, I will. ~ Scott Glenn

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading. ~ Orson Scott Card

You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

It was almost like I was expecting to get crushed. ~ Kieran Scott

much of the developing world - no longer suffers from diseases of deficiency. Instead we get the diseases of excess. This ~ Scott Carney

I was doing a show in L.A. called 'Celebrity Autobiography,' where celebrities read excerpts from other celebrities' books and hang themselves with their own rope. ~ Scott Adsit

When something is no longer working, changing your plans is not giving up. It's not failure. ~ Kylie Scott

Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street. ~ Scott Fitzgerald