Inner World

    "A chronic hatred or even a cherished grudge tears to pieces the one who harbors it.  A strong feeling of resentment is just as likely to cause disease as is a germ.  The worst thing one can do to oneself is to let resentment dig in and for hatred to become chronic.  … Fear is another indispensable element in the human make-up. Even in its simpler form we cannot dispense with it; on the streets of a modern city a fearless man, if the phrase be taken literally, would probably be dead before nightfall. And fear can be a powerfully creative motive. In a profound sense industry springs from fear of penury, medical science from fear of disease. But fear's abnormalities - hysteria, obsessive anxiety -  may tear a personality to pieces.

   Human life is full of secret fears, thrust into the dark corners of the personality.  Fear of the dark, of cats, of closed places, of open places, fear of responsibility, of having children, of old age and death; guilty fears, often concerned with sins long passed religious fears, associated with ideas of a vindictive God and an eternal hell; and sometimes a vague fearfulness, filling life with anxious apprehension - such a wretchedness curses innumerable lives. The disruptive effect of such secret, chronic fearfulness is physically based.  The adrenal glands furnish us in every frightening situation with a 'swig of our own internal fight-tonic.'  A little of it is stimulating; too much of it is poison.  Habitual anxiety and dread constitute a continuous false alarm, turning the invaluable adrenal secretion from an emergency stimulant into a chronic poison."   -  H. E. Fosdick