Emotional distress

“ Long days of suffering followed as the tortured nerves recorded their far-spread effects in the waste of the body and that failure of emotional control which even the most courageous feel when long under the tyranny of continuous pain. ”

“ Can they be moved the one-thousandth part of an inch by your distress or my distress or the distress of any human being? Is not the slime of slander thick upon their tongues? Is not your smile a thorn in their flesh? ”

“ They then boast of their sensibility—when, alas! neglecting the foundation of all virtue, justice, they have occasioned exquisite distress; led a poor wretch into vice; heaped misery on helpless infancy, and drawn tears from the aged widow. ”

“ I have always that dread upon my soul, that I am destined to bring you suffering—misfortune—”
“Bring me what you will,” he interrupted passionately, “but do not speak of parting! Rather suffering and trial at your hands, oh, my life’s love, than the greatest peace and prosperity from any other woman’s!” ”

“ Then, also, the tears caused by this suffering flow abundantly, and without any trouble; the soul is disposed to the most touching emotions of pity, or is full of commiseration and of love; in a word, all misfortunes are the cherished and respected sisters of our misfortune.
On the contrary, if you suffer for an unworthy cause, your heart is drowned in hatred; your concentrated grief resembles dumb fury which shame bridles with a sharp bit that vanity conceals; envy and hatred gnaw you, but your eyes are dry, and the unhappiness of others can alone draw from you a sad and mournful smile. ”

“ The look of pity which saddens nearly every face that approaches me cuts me to the heart. Can I never give joy, or excite pleasurable emotion? Must I always be a mute and unwilling petitioner for sympathy in suffering!--always giving pain? ”

“ What sufferings, what sorrows should I have escaped!”
“Sufferings at your age, Rosario?”
“Aye, Father; Sufferings, which if known to you, would equally raise your anger and compassion! Sufferings, which form at once the torment and pleasure of my existence! Yet in this retreat my bosom would feel tranquil, were it not for the tortures of apprehension. Oh God! Oh God! how cruel is a life of fear!—Father! I have given up all; I have abandoned the world and its delights for ever: Nothing now remains, Nothing now has charms for me, but your friendship, but your affection. ”

“ The visible manifestation of emotional disturbance need bear no relation to its intensity. People of the greatest nervous sensibility, in whom emotional excitements are most deeply and acutely felt, often keep their emotions best under control. ”

“ But if she grieves or complains, she is perhaps confronted with the assertion that it is what she is made for; and with bitterness of heart and sorrow of soul, looking down through long weeks of heart-sickness and physical pain and unrest, to the dreaded, unknown crisis, to the after years of care, labor, and anxiety, and all to bear without hearty sympathy, what wonder that she is in despair, and little cares whether she live or die? Yet she must smile, and be cheerful to the world, and it never guesses all is not right at home. ”

“ Oh, the bitter tears I have shed when, scarcely more than a child, I have wept to hear other boys tell of happy homes, and a mother’s love, and the affection of brothers and sisters; then came the silent but more enduring sorrow of youth, when tears can no longer form a vent for the heart’s isolation, and the restless spirit preys upon itself ”

“ The shadows darken and passion stirs up my sickness amain And
longing rouses within me the old desireful pain.
The anguish of parting hath taken its sojourn in my breast And
love and longing and sorrow have maddened heart and brain.
Passion hath made me restless and yearning consumes my soul And
tears discover my secret, that else concealed had lain.
I know of no way to ease me of sickness and care and woe; Nor
can my weak endeavour reknit Love's severed skein.
My heart is a raging furnace, because of the heat whereof My
entrails are racked with anguish, that nothing can assain. ”

“ Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. [3] Hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions characteristic of conversion, can be equally explosive. And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them. ”

“ The distress is more complicated and hopeless from its nature than any other, and the pangs of a thousand discordant passions are crouded and concentrated into that terrible moment which discovers infidelity, where the confiding heart had fondly rested all its prospects of happiness. Under other strokes of calamity the soul gains force and dignity from the greatness of unmerited misfortunes, and rouses every latent power to combat against evil fate. ”

“ I look upon the ill-feeling I bear certain people in quite a new way now, and fear it, because I know it hides light and warmth from me. And I am persuaded that in this feeling of love and pity I have found the secret of true life, which alone gives uninterrupted peace and joy... ”

“ Your temper is made unequal by suffering, and the tenor of your mind is, I fear, sometimes shaken by unworthy causes; but let your confidence in my sympathy and love be deeper far, and incapable of being reached by these agitations that come and go, and if they touch not your affections leave you uninjured. ”

“ The wasted forms and sad, pleading eyes of those sufferers, waiting wearily for the tide of life to ebb away—without the commonest comforts, without one word of sympathy, or one tear of affection—will never cease to haunt me. ”

“ That is the use of dreary days, on which we’re all inclined to raise a yell of bitter grief; they fill us up with woe and dread, so when the gloomy clouds are sped, we’ll feel a big relief. That is the use of every care that fills your system with despair, and rends your heart in twain; for when you see your sorrow waltz, you’ll turn three hundred somersaults, and say life’s safe and sane. ”

“ The sigh of anguish he wishes to keep in, his very breath which he smothers, exhaust the lower part of his trunk, and works into his flanks, which make us judge in some degree of the palpitations of his visceral organs. But his own suffering appears to occasion less anguish than the pain of his children, who turn their faces toward their father, and implore him, crying for help. His father's heart shows itself in his eyes, full of sadness, and where pity seems to swim in a troubled cloud. ”

“ She became gradually borne down in health and spirits by the pressure of her trouble, her springs of pleasure all poisoned, her temper irritated and rendered morose, her intellectual pride puffed up to an insufferable haughtiness, and her conscience brought by perpetual pain of heart into a state of trembling soreness—all this, without one word ever being offered to her by any person whatever of sympathy or sorrow about her misfortune. ”

“ When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the tears of regret, the feebleness of purpose, the scorn of the world that has little charity, the desolation of the soul's sanctuary, and threatening voices within, health gone, happiness gone,—I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands it came. ”

“ And men who see us and hear us moaning so piteously, groaning so painfully, have the feeling: “No pain like this!” But how mistaken they are! For there is a cry of the soul, heard of no one, more painful than all that can be pitied or lamented. ”

“ We know the hours of distress—we also know how deeply depressing they may be. Even though we may not have wept and lamented, like the first disciples, because of the scorn and ridicule by the world, we often have shed tears that betrayed the presence of a wounded heart. ”

“ These are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. But thro' the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmix'd, incessant gall,1075
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,
Ye beds of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewel! ”

“ Tarry and list, whilst I their names to thee declare.
Memory, solicitude, sighing and languishment, Love-longing in excess and all-engrossing care,
Affliction, strangerhood and passion and lament And griefs that never cease to stir me to despair.
Patience and fortitude desert me for desire, Whose hosts, when patience fails, beset me everywhere.
Yea, passion’s troubles wax for ever on my heart. O thou that ask’st what is the fire at heart I bear,
What ails my tears a flame to kindle in my blood? ”

“ Their hearts, however, are in general so unsusceptible of tenderness, that they can view the deepest distress in those who are not immediately related to them, without the least emotion; not even half so much as the generality of mankind feel for the sufferings of the meanest of the brute creation. ”

“ Her attitude is as sick as her body. How could it be otherwise?
Look about you from an aching mind and body, after days of suffering and sleeplessness, and unless you are a rare person and have a soul that sees the sunshine back of everything—you will find the world a place of torture. Look out from despair and loss of the ones you love best, or from failure of will to meet disaster, and everybody may be involved in bringing about your suffering, or in effecting your disgrace. ”

“ Your nerves become shattered, unstrung, and sadly out of tune. Your head swims with the slightest pretexts. Your eyes grow wild, and at times glassy, even to ghastliness. Your heart feels never so sad and so lonely; never so deeply in want of another’s sympathy. ”

“ MISERY his heart hath broken—
Misery is mystery!
Let the sad one lonely be;
As the Ancients shunned the token
Of a lightning-blasted tree.
II.
Breathe no word, his doom is spoken—
Misery is mystery!
By its scathing lightning fated,
Human hearts are consecrated,
For a higher destiny.
[Pg 110]
FAREWELL
LET mine eyes the parting take,
Which my faint lips never can;
Moments such as these might break
Even the sternest heart of man.
Mournfully doth Joy's eclipse,
Shroud in grief Love's sweetest sign;
Cold the pressure of thy lips,
Cold the hand that rests in mine. ”

“ No helper hath she but tears and she reciteth the following verses:
"No turtle warbles on the branch, before the break of morn, But
stirs in me a killing grief, a sadness all forlorn.
No lover, longing for his loves, complaineth of desire, But with
a doubled stress of woe my heart is overborne.
Of passion I complain to one who hath no ruth on me. How soul and
body by desire are, one from other, torn!" ”

“ There is no one but has felt the palpitation accompanying hope, fear, anger, joy—no one but has observed how laboured becomes the action of the heart when these feelings are violent. And though there are many who have never suffered that extreme emotional excitement which is followed by arrest of the heart's action and fainting ”

“ No, there was no feeling there !
From that gloomy trance of sorrow When you woke to pangs unknown;
How unwelcome was the morrow, For it rose on you alone.
Sunk in self-consuming anguish Can the poor heart always ache 1
No, the tortur'd nerve will languish, Or the strings of life must break.
O'er the yielding brow of sadness, One faint smile of comfort stole,
One soft pang of tender gladness, Exquisitely thrill'd your soul.
While the wounds of woe are healing, While the heart is all resign'd,
'Tis the solemn feast of feeling, Tis the sabbath of the mind. ”

“ But need I confess this to you, my dear friend, who have so often endured the anguish of witnessing my sudden transitions from sorrow to immoderate joy, and from sweet melancholy to violent passions? I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy. ”

“ Sickness and bodily pain, trouble and anguish of mind, poverty and temporal misfortunes, loss of good name by detraction and calumny, and many other crosses of the kind are guests that come uninvited, that we must daily behold with weeping eyes, and bear with sweating hands, and grieve for with sorrowing hearts. ”

“ She was a helpless invalid, and I a broken man, but when that word 'love' fell from her lips, I felt the blood start burning in my veins, and all the crust of habit and years of self-control loosen about my heart, and make me young again. ”

“ These illustrate the dangers of affectional wound,—the sensitivity of personality to emotional shock. A conflict may make or break an individual.
Just what is it which differentiates between two lives of similar asocial behavior or suffering affectional wounds, one becoming disorganized, the other attaining higher levels of mental and social integration? Certain psychoanalytic biographies show struggles of eminent men and women who passed through periods of mental strain or moral failure, yet rose superior to and even strengthened by their wrestling with life. ”

“ He never even said, as I have heard men say at the first starting of tears—not after they have been flowing, like mine, for weeks and weeks—"Why don't you make an effort to control yourself? You know perfectly well that crying only makes you worse and does nobody any good"—as if a poor mother cried from choice and perversity and the pleasure of doing it, when her heart was broken! ”