repression

Is is as if life or reality itself has had it in mind all along to unravel the very design i have been trying all along to impose on it.

Now, however open a person manages to be, there is one possibility to which he remains as closed as ever: the possibility that when he uncovers his deepest anxieties he will find hidden inside them certain horrifying truths which his whole effort to control his life has been designed to keep repressed.

When we operate on the basis of the will to control, we are aware of only one kind of "evil": the failure of existence to conform to the plan we have for it.

What we work so hard to avoid is the shattering of our lives by horrors we know we will be helpless to control.

There is no great reward for being emotionally withdrawn, no pity prize for bottling your frustration. No one is coming to congratulate your chronic self-repression. By opening up, maybe you will inconvenience some people. Maybe you will trigger some conflict. Maybe you will be rejected, criticized, judged. Everything comes with a price and everything has its compensation. Authenticity may require pain, but it also opens the doors to joy, creativity, self-respect, empathy. Self-repression, on the other hand, costs you all the beauty of the world in exchange for a prison of comfort. Is it really worth it? Isn't it time to break free?

It felt important to be able to pick up and go whenever this endless stirring and inevitable craving for a change of scenery would bubble over because I didn__ want to die someday yearning for something else when it was only __omething else_ worth living.

[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result - and have been since at least the time of Odysseus - of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had: then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret.

Dissociation is the common response of children to repetitive, overwhelming trauma and holds the untenable knowledge out of awareness. The losses and the emotions engendered by the assaults on soul and body cannot, however be held indefinitely. In the absence of effective restorative experiences, the reactions to trauma will find expression. As the child gets older, he will turn the rage in upon himself or act it out on others, else it all will turn into madness.

Repression is dangerous. It makes anvils of memories and drops them from impossible heights when you least expect it.

When you__e finally finished crying, I hope you run as fast and as far as you possibly can from me. When you land, out of breath, and I__ finally out of sight, finally out of mind, you__l be honestly fine. All wounds will be healed. All fires will be extinguished. I__l be a memory. Feel free to repress me.

The psychoanalytic liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressed individual. As cognition gives way to re-cognition, the forbidden images and impulses of childhood begin to tell the truth that reason denies.

Unexpressed grief leaves the deepest scars.

You can control the visibility of my name and my popularity, but you cannot control the frequency at which people are quoting me. Truth always rises with time.

Repression. Her therapist, Dr. Solomon, loved the word. He'd say it slowly, letting it roll off his tongue. Sometimes he'd add a chin stroke for good measure. He always looked pleased when he did this, like he'd discovered the Caramilk secret or something.

Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude - even dishonor and betrayal- to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self effacement, surrender to the "others", disavowal of any personal dignity and freedom-on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces.

Those who nurse secrets, nurse a chaotic world of amplified silence.

Grief denied will surface in borrowed clothes, the mad, sad clothes of paranoia, fear or loneliness

When inhibition has become the de facto setting in a person's manner, stiffness and lack of spontaneity produces an unnatural self-repression. Life looks gray, dull, and rigid, without space for relaxation or play to burst forth in natural ways.