Anxiety

“ The anxiety, every terrible and oppressive anxiety he felt while throwing the dice for worryingly high stakes was something he loved, he always sought to renew it, always to raise it, always to tickle it a little higher, for it was in this feeling alone that he could feel something like happiness, something like inebriation, something like a higher kind of life in among the sated, lukewarm, insipid life he led. ”

“ When we have constructed a true psychological pathology, we shall understand clearly why and how it is that fear can turn the hair gray in a single night; that a mother's milk can be poisoned by a moment of terror; that the heart may be paralyzed by a sudden joy or sorrow; that dyspepsia, paralysis, and many other diseases are produced by mental worry and fret and the brain-fag of overwork and anxiety. ”

“ Anxiety then lays hold of us, attenuating the bright side, magnifying the dark, maddening our brain, which is living two lives at once, and tormenting our heart, which is beating as though it would burst. ”

“ The fifth said,
'I should feel as much anxiety as if I were driving six horses with rotten reins.Oh! whither shall we turn?
The thoughts in my breast make me sad.
All the people are hostile to us;
On whom can we rely?
Anxieties crowd together in our hearts;
Thick as are our faces, they are covered with blushes.
We have not been careful of our virtue ”

“ It is our anxiety, our impatience, which does the mischief, and most men die of their remedies, and not of their diseases. ”

“ By what thought shall we add the cubits to the spiritual stature and reach the fullness of the Perfect Man? And because we know ill how to do this, the old anxiety comes back again and our inner life is once more an agony of conflict and remorse. After all, we have but transferred our anxious thoughts from the body to the soul. ”

“ This is a state in which the patient fears everything or nothing, where anxiety, instead of being riveted on one object, floats as in a dream, and only becomes fixed for an instant at a time, passing from one object to another, as circumstances may determine. ”

“ The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. ”

“ Nothing can throw off the grip which this acute anxiety has fixed on the brain, except a resolute effort of will and intelligence. I, myself, would give one simple recipe for the cure. When you feel inclined to be anxious about the present, think of the worst anxiety you ever had in the past. ”

“ The body, sense, intellect, and will are all profoundly affected by the irresistible sweep of the fear instinct, as manifested in the overwhelming feeling of anxiety. The fear instinct and its offsprings—hesitation, anxiety, conflicts and repressions—weaken, dissociate, and paralyze the functions [48] of the body and mind, producing the various symptoms of psychopathic diseases. The fear instinct keeps on gnawing at the very vitals of the psychopathic patient. ”

“ In moments of great anxiety there is a sort of natural superstition about the heart, which the reason rejects in cooler moments. ”

“ But while the present condition of things, and the feeling of anxiety and doubt springing from it, has thrown some minds into so morbid a despair, it has produced upon others, and, I am happy to say, a much larger number, a healthier effect full of encouragement and promise. ”

“ It might appear wonderful to most persons, it is startling even to myself sometimes, to observe how free from anxiety I am—from the sort of anxiety which might be well connected with my own position here, and which is personal to myself. ”

“ Proceeding now to neurotic fear, what are its manifestations and conditions? There is much to be described. In the first place we find a general condition of anxiety, a condition of free-floating fear as it were, which is ready to attach itself to any appropriate idea, to influence judgment, to give rise to expectations, in fact to seize any opportunity to make itself felt. ”

“ Thus, to take one special instance, if inability to draw deep breath, fluttering of the heart, and that peculiar epigastric change felt as “precordial anxiety,” with an irresistible tendency to take a somewhat crouching attitude and to sit still, and with perhaps other visceral processes not now known, all spontaneously occur together in a certain person; his feeling of their combination is the emotion of dread, and he is the victim of what is known as morbid fear. ”

“ Thus that nervous anxiety to hastily repair broken fortunes, and to prevent still greater ruin and distress, embraces nearly all classes, and imprints upon all the movements of the social body a morbid character. ”

“ Direct the attention toward the cause of anxiety,—a person, sick or well, generally, or to a specific point of body, mind, morals,—and strongly, yet calmly, desire, wish, will, the love-cure to be effective; but a few trials will be needed to ensure absolute, if qualified, success; an assuagement will assuredly follow, nor is the genuine cure far off. ”

“ The mischief is done; he must endure it; all my anxiety will only serve to frighten him more, and to increase his sensitiveness. After all, when we hurt ourselves, it is less the shock which pains us than the fright. ”

“ It is doubt, turning into an incentive for independent thought. It is anxiety, becoming a stimulus for fresh exertion. In such a mood many errors may be committed, many mistaken notions may be entertained, many false movements may be made. ”

“ Do I not know anxiety, though I go about well-dressed, and have food enough? Oh, Bessy, God is just, and our lots are well portioned out by Him, although none but He knows the bitterness of our souls." ”

“ What is particularly destructive about this is that you soon find yourself caught in a vicious circle: a certain situation makes you anxious, you try to avoid the situation and the anxiety it produces in you, and as you do this, you build up secondary anxiety—you get anxious that you'll get anxious. So anxiety compounds, feeding on itself, fueling itself. ”

“ Is it not a fact that we always feel a marked improvement in our spirits when we begin to get over a period of anxiety? I may go further and say that there is some use in occasionally looking upon terrible misfortunes—such as might happen to us—as though they had actually happened, for then the trivial reverses which subsequently come in reality, are much easier to bear. ”

“ Let us for example recall the state of anxiety in obsessive neuroses! Here as a rule the ideation is so inadequate that even the patients recognize it by its logical instability and rate it as senseless, yet it seems to be the source of anxiety. ”

“ In all we do, almost the first thing we think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the troubles and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score; it is the anxiety which is at the bottom of all that feeling of self-importance, which is so often mortified because it is so very morbidly sensitive. It is solicitude about what others will say that underlies all our vanity and pretension, yes, and all our show and swagger too. Without it, there would not be a tenth part of the luxury which exists. ”

“ But by-and-by the ferment of my spirits began somewhat to subside, and I could look matters more coolly in the face. Then, instead of anger, I became consumed with anxiety, for I began, little by little, to perceive what a175 dreadful cloud of suspicion overshadowed me. ”

“ Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. ”

“ In all the alleged examples there is visible in the same way the same action on the faculty of feeling. All throw our souls into an anxious agitation and strain its springs. A certain gravity which can even raise itself to a solemn rejoicing takes possession of our soul, and whilst our organs betray evident signs of internal anxiety, our mind falls back on itself by reflection, and appears to find a support in a higher consciousness of its independent strength and dignity. ”

“ Anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body, and lays it open to the entrance of disease; ”

“ The visceral complex loses in intensity and excitement gradually wears off; and similarly, anxiety slowly disappears with the shortening of the empty waiting period. The change from excitement or anxiety to relief sets in with the appearance of a new idea. ”

“ Thus, we find from different standpoints that the feeling of anxiety with its accompanying phenomena is one of the most potent manifestations of animal instincts, the fear instinct, which is at the basis of all psychopathic, neurotic maladies. ”

“ They pass through a physiological period of incubation, marked by palpitations and vaso-motor disturbances, rushes of heat to the head, headaches, præcordial anxiety, insomnia, agitation, fatigue, malaise, and undefined suffering. 2. The entrance into the psychological period is marked by the appearance of a fixed idea. Why one rather than another? This question will be examined later. The fixed idea, reigning as a tyrant in the consciousness, gives an aim to the tendency, determines its orientation. ”

“ There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account—things material and spiritual—heaviness in the atmosphere—a sense of suffocation—anxiety—and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. ”

“ He is easily influenced by all depressing, discordant and jarring conditions. He catches the expressions of fear and anxiety in the looks, the words, gestures and actions of his attendants, relatives and friends and these intensify his own depression and gloomy forebodings. ”

“ If, for example, alone with ourselves, we think over our personal circumstances, and now perhaps vividly present to ourselves the menace of an actually present danger and the possibility of an unfortunate issue, anxiety at once compresses the heart, and the [pg 420] blood ceases to circulate in the veins. ”

“ These conditions take away from him all assurance and security of life and action, and hold him in a perpetual state of anxiety until he becomes completely incapacitated for all kinds of action and reaction. ”

“ In bad cases the periodic changes of mood may become stronger and stronger, and lead eventually between the fortieth and sixtieth year to actual ‘folie circulaire.’ Anxiety is, of course, common to all nervous people, but in many cases it plays the prominent part.... ”

“ Hence anxiety, which is a continued pain of fear, so universally debilitates the constitution as to occasion a lingering death; which happens much more frequently than is usually supposed; and these victims of continued anxiety are said to die of a broken heart. ”

“ Anxiety and the anxious frame of mind is in readiness to take fright in connection with our most vulnerable points on all occasions of apprehension or uncertainty. As no one’s future can be clear throughout, there is never wanting the matter of anxiety to a mind susceptible of this state. ”

“ A man in great anxiety, for example, will regard as omens or warnings such things as the ringing of a bell or the flight of a bird. I have heard this process deliberately defended by people who should know better. ”

“ From experience, I can speak of the mental anxiety which must have likewise, with others, supervened, at the thought of one's entire helplessness, and the encumbrance one had become to others, who, God knows, had troubles and labour enough of their own. ”

“ Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about; ”

“ Our anxiety grew more and more intense, as the time of our intended departure drew nigh. It was truly felt to be a matter of life and death with us, and we fully intended to fight, as well as run, if necessity should occur for that extremity. ”

“ When the child had stayed out all night and the whole of the next forenoon, and when they actually found his little hat in the woods on the carriage-road, then did the stings of anxiety grow into the festering pains of inflicted wounds. There is no agitation of the soul against which it is so hard to bring an effective argument as against anxiety: I have, therefore, for a year and a day ceased to attempt any ”

“ The only reality is “anxiety” in the whole chain of beings. To the man lost in the world and its diversions this anxiety is a brief, fleeting fear. But if that fear becomes conscious of itself, it becomes anguish, the perpetual climate of the lucid man “in whom existence is concentrated.” ”

“ The mental anxiety and apprehensions which they at first occasion after a time wear away, and they are at length reckoned as belonging among those annoyances of life to which may be applied the common expression, "What cannot be cured must be endured." ”

“ So then this is an instance of evanescence itself.
(23.) For (as כי is repeated, it becomes emphatic, ‘for now’) all his days are causing him pain (or painful――notice the force of the מ־) and disappointment his anxiety, (a pregnant sentence, denoting more than his anxiety disappoints, his anxiety is always painful and useless too) also at night does not rest (this clause is an additional proof that we have correctly determined the meaning of ♦ענין; it is anxiety which causes wakefulness) even his heart. ”

“ Society, amusement, relaxation, complete cessation of scientific work, absence, as far as possible, of mental anxiety in any form, may enable you to tide over the turning point. But that there is danger threatened, it would be unkind and untrue not to warn you. It is very unusual for a patient to consult us in person about these matters. More often it is the friends who notice the coming change ”