Notice: ob_end_flush(): Failed to delete and flush buffer. No buffer to delete or flush in /home1/ntptuqmy/public_html/quotes/includes/header_html.php on line 6 Scott Stossel Quotes - IQDb - Internet Quotes Database
During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse's office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same.
When I was 5 and my sister was 3, we went on a family trip, and she ate cheese off the floor at an airport. My mother, a germaphobe, got very upset. My sister, of course, got a stomach virus, and ever since then, I have an aversion to cheese.
The fear of vomiting, which for me is one of the most original and most acute of my fears, is actually fairly common. Emetophobia, it's called, and by some estimates, it's the fifth most common specific phobia.
I wanted to put a human face on anxiety disorders. I thought people who suffer from anxiety might recognize themselves and gain some comfort from my story and for those who don't suffer from anxiety disorders gain some understanding.
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.
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.
There's a book that's critical to understanding anxiety, a 17th-century book, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy,' by Robert Burton. I wanted to write something like that.
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.
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.
My parents were not perfect, but no one's parents are. As childhoods go, mine was pretty comfortable and good in a lot of ways, and yet I still ended up with anxiety.
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.
Carly Simon abandoned the stage for seven years after collapsing from nerves before a concert in Pittsburgh in 1981. When she resumed performing, she would sometimes ask members of her band to spank her before she went onstage, to distract her from her anxiety.
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.
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.
