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"  I think of it as a little flame inside my chest. Sometimes the flame is low, like a pilot light. Sometimes it glows a little brighter, and I can&amp;#039;t sleep. Lying awake all night feeds the flame, and pretty soon I have a roaring fire of fear and anger\u2014sleeplessness is infuriating\u2014that threatens to burn me alive. This little light of mine has been diagnosed, variously, as insomnia, anxiety, a panic condition, and even a mild form of bipolar disorder. For 20 years, I&amp;#039;ve dutifully followed the prevailing medical advice to keep the flame in check: therapy, sleep, hygiene, exercise, medication.  But last spring, after several deaths in my family and as my husband and I tangled with the dark empire of New York&amp;#039;s private schools\u2014a milieu in which two-year-olds are expected to interview for admission and preschoolers who refuse to do the hand motions to &amp;quot;The Itsy Bitsy Spider&amp;quot; are dispatched to tutors\u2014I fell over the edge.  In her recent (and excellent) memoir, Fury, about her own dance with suppressed rage, Koren Zailckas writes that &amp;quot;depression is anger without enthusiasm.&amp;quot; I have the opposite problem: I bring a surfeit of vengeful enthusiasm to my depression. For weeks, it felt like all I did was fight with strangers. One day I banged on the window of a cab a woman stole from me and my kids in the rain, so enraged I didn&amp;#039;t even notice that I was injuring my hand and that a bus was bearing down on us.  That night, as I was putting my son to bed, he asked me, &amp;quot;Mommy, what&amp;#039;s a \u00ACfuhangole?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know, honey. Where did you hear it?&amp;quot; I said absentmindedly, flicking off the light.  &amp;quot;Yousaid it to the lady who stole our taxi. You said, `You&amp;#039;re a fuhangole.&amp;#039; &amp;quot;  I froze in the glow of the night-light. &amp;quot;Hmm, I don&amp;#039;t know.&amp;quot; I was lying\u2014I knew exactly what I must have said. I&amp;#039;d been so deranged with rage that I&amp;#039;d screamed, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re a f--king asshole!&amp;quot; in front of my young children. And I didn&amp;#039;t even register it\u2014like a killer who has no memory of committing murder.  Another day, a woman held the door for me at the bank as I pushed the baby in a stroller with one hand and dragged my reluctant son with the other. But before I could say thanks and get everyone through the door, she rolled her eyes at us and gave me a derisive, preemptive &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re welcome.&amp;quot; I blushed and hurried my kids onto the street, stunned. And like the snap of a slingshot, fury propelled me back into the bank. I told the woman, in a trembling, shrieky voice, &amp;quot;If it makes you so unhappy to hold the door for a few seconds for someone who is clearly struggling, then don&amp;#039;t do it. On behalf of all parents everywhere, I just want to say: Don&amp;#039;t do us any favors if it makes you so, so miserable.&amp;quot;  She told me I was setting a bad example for my children, yelling at strangers. I told her she was setting a bad example, showing no sisterly spirit toward strangers\u2014toward children. &amp;quot;Crazy lady,&amp;quot; I heard her mutter as I huffed out.  On the street, my son, ashen-faced, asked me in a grave voice, &amp;quot;Mommy, why did you yell at that lady?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I was sticking up for us,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;She said something mean.&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;But why was she mean?&amp;quot; he asked. I paused. The woman had looked a little haggard, a little lumpen. &amp;quot;Maybe she was having a bad day,&amp;quot; I admitted. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s probably unhappy. Maybe she&amp;#039;s sad.&amp;quot; We walked along in silence for a while.  &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want you to yell at people anymore,&amp;quot; my son said, looking sad himself. I felt sad too, and ashamed\u2014I was sick over the example I was setting for the kids\u2014but I couldn&amp;#039;t stop. I threatened to call the police on a bagel store cashier who refused to give me the correct change after overcharging me (by less than a dollar). I got in a fight with a cab driver that was so intense, he abandoned his cab and chased me down the street, swearing and threatening to kill me. In each of these incidents, I had been wronged, however mildly or grievously, but, even in the midst of my rampage, it occurred to me that it might not just be chance that I was encountering so many...fuhangoles. Why were these people coming out of the woodwork, especially when I was already at the end of my rope?  In true desperation, I took a friend up on her suggestion that I visit her energy healer. I expected an old gypsy in a cramped walk-up, but Tamar Davir, an acupuncturist, herbalist, and ordained interfaith minister, turned out to be a lithe, chic young woman working out of a sparkling Trump building overlooking the Hudson River\u2014a woman so calm and lovely I immediately wanted to spend the rest of my life in her office. (&amp;quot;Be careful,&amp;quot; my friend had told me. &amp;quot;I know people who&amp;#039;ve become addicted to Tamar.&amp;quot;) She had me lie on a table, rubbed me down with aromatherapy oils (&amp;quot;whichever ones your higher self asks me for,&amp;quot; she told me), and stuck me with a few acupuncture needles. I closed my eyes and listened to her soothing patter. She said at one point that she was bringing in a new female guide for me because my old one was too spacey. She paused for a moment\u2014moving the energy, I guess? Then she laughed in delight. &amp;quot;Good, good! Nice shift. Your guides are funny.&amp;quot; She told me I had a lot of fairy energy and I should connect with that. She told me I was very sensitive and I had to block certain people&amp;#039;s energy. She told me I had unusually sensitive children, too, and that I should spend more time on their energy level. I think she waved some crystals over me. I felt relaxed afterward, but I must have faulty energy shields, because all it took was a meeting at my son&amp;#039;s school\u2014its sinister overlords strongly suggesting a $50,000 sacrifice, er, donation, on top of the $30,000 tuition\u2014to shift my energy back into sputtering, impotent rage.  And then I did something so radical that, almost a year later, I still can hardly believe it: I moved. I&amp;#039;d been living in Manhattan my entire adult life. It was the only place I&amp;#039;d ever wanted to live, the spot where almost everything that had ever happened to me had happened. I love New York\u2014not like in the cheesy tourism ads. I don&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;heart&amp;quot; New York. I love it. I raced there the minute I turned 18, as soon as I could leave my tiny New England town.  But two decades later, my retreat from NYC was a grim sprint. My husband and I made the decision with almost no discussion, in a moment of clarity. We told my son&amp;#039;s school where they could shove their \u00ACitsy-bitsy spiders and sold our apartment like a hot car\u2014hastily, in an all-cash deal\u2014before we could change our minds. And then we fled, our belongings in storage, semihomeless, not even sure where we were headed, just away, away, away.  We landed in a bucolic seaside burb, 20 minutes up the interstate from our old apartment. The upper, upper east side, I reassured myself, bracing for a new round of anxiety and sleeplessness as I mourned the city. The mourning came\u2014my husband walked into our spacious, unfurnished living room one evening and found me sitting on the floor, TV remote in hand, watching Annie Hall and weeping\u2014but my anxiety evaporated. My insomnia? Poof!  I haven&amp;#039;t taken a sleeping pill since I sizzled the last Manhattan bedbug out of my children&amp;#039;s mattresses. I fired my therapist because I couldn&amp;#039;t think of anything to say to her. It felt magical. I started to wonder: Maybe Tamar really did &amp;quot;move&amp;quot; something. Maybe I did have a zippy new spirit guide, pointing me in the right direction and bringing me good juju. But it&amp;#039;s not magic, it&amp;#039;s my amygdala\u2014at least, according to Srinivasan S. Pillay, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the former director of the Panic Disorders Research Program at McLean Hospital, and author of the recent book Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear. The amygdala is an ancient part of our brain that registers fear: Call it instinct, call it the unconscious brain. Pillay writes that brain imaging research and studies on people with damage to their cortex (the conscious, thinking part of the brain) show that we can feel fear in our amygdalae without knowing in our cortex what we&amp;#039;re afraid of. Continual activation of the amygdala can lead to stress, anxiety, fatigue, and poor cognitive functioning. And the amygdala is more reactive than accurate\u2014registering fear equally from a coil of garden hose and an actual snake, and picking up the panic of others, even when you yourself have nothing to fear.  The unconscious mind has fallen out of favor in popular psychology, as Freudian analysis (an attempt to probe the subconscious) has given way to more modern practices like cognitive-behavioral therapy (a reworking of conscious thought patterns). Freud, for many years, began to seem a little out there. &amp;quot;For those who required hard evidence\u2014for those who could not heal themselves with abstractions,&amp;quot; Pillay writes, &amp;quot;there remained a void and serious cynicism that Freud&amp;#039;s conjecture was not grounded in fact, and that it did not have any basis in reality.&amp;quot; But now in the age of brain scans, says Pillay, there is hard evidence of our unconscious minds at work.  Finding the sources of our fears doesn&amp;#039;t take daily analysis of our oral fixations and Electra complexes, however. Pillay recommends meditation, therapy, and simple attention to our fears to try to suss out their sources. He gives the example of a woman who fell asleep every night to the cops-and-robbers shows her husband watched. She wasn&amp;#039;t conscious that the simulated gun battles were activating her amygdala; she just felt like she was losing her mind. Even though her conscious brain knew the TV wasn&amp;#039;t dangerous\u2014she told Pillay his \u00ACtheory was &amp;quot;a load of BS&amp;quot;\u2014when she asked her husband to turn off the set, her anxiety levels plummeted.   When I first moved to New York City, I remember how shocked I&amp;#039;d been by the noise and crowding. I felt dirty and encroached upon all the time, but gradually (I thought), I adapted. Now I wasn&amp;#039;t so sure: Had my amygdala carried on buzzing even as my cortex was belting out, &amp;quot;I want to be a part of it! New York, New York! &amp;quot; Had I longed to be a Manhattanite so badly that, for 20 years, I ignored the fact that I don&amp;#039;t have the constitution for it?  Pillay writes that in studies in which the parts of the brain that deal with fear are stimulated by &amp;quot;non-meaningful electrical currents,&amp;quot; people come up with stories to explain their fear. Once a fearful story is created, further electrical stimulus is like a double-click, opening up the story again and again. I thought about my own anxious perseveration\u2014the worries I&amp;#039;d covered over and over again in sleepless nights. Were they just meaningless double-clicking by my unconscious, brought on by a siren or my encountering too many scary, fearful, and unpleasant faces on the street that day?  From the peace of my country manse (okay, it&amp;#039;s just a little colonial, but it feels like an estate after our sardine can of an apartment), I called up Pillay to parse my experiences last spring, when the fuhangoles attacked. First off, he told me, fear and anger are &amp;quot;very related. They&amp;#039;re both a response to a threat, and we know that they have a lot of overlapping features, in terms of the physiology&amp;quot;\u2014racing heart, increased stress hormones\u2014&amp;quot;and they share overlapping brain substrates.&amp;quot; Further, scientists have recently discovered cells in our brain called mirror neurons. These pick up on the emotions of those around us and play out some of the same feelings in our own brain. This is the basis of empathy, but also of angry mobs and bar fights. &amp;quot;When other people express emotions, we reflect their emotions,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;They may not even be acting overtly angry or fearful.&amp;quot; Pillay and a friend came up with the term yoga rage to describe people who have an outward appearance of zen but who are actually seething with anger. &amp;quot;If you have a more sophisticated empathic mirror, you could still be responding to their feelings, even if they&amp;#039;re not showing them. And if you&amp;#039;re fearful or angry, you could be presenting to people as a form of threat.&amp;quot;  Now when I look back on those months of feeling like the whole world was against me, I realize that it probably was against me: My angry, strained, anxious face\u2014I&amp;#039;ve never been able to hide my feelings\u2014could have been stirring up acrimony in my fellow New Yorkers, encouraging them to lash out at me, just as I was ready to lash out at them. I was, as acolytes of energy healers and The Secret might say, creating my own reality.  When Davir told me, months earlier, how I had to block emotions that &amp;quot;didn&amp;#039;t belong to me,&amp;quot; I thought, Yeah, yeah, sure, I&amp;#039;ll just build myself a little crystal castle, and the fairies and I will fight off the bad vibes. But now I considered this: Just because Davir didn&amp;#039;t have brain scanners backing up her work doesn&amp;#039;t mean she couldn&amp;#039;t access my unconscious rage and fear. Who was I to get in the way of a dialogue between her and my amygdala? I rebooked.  This time, with Pillay&amp;#039;s research in mind, I thought a little differently about what was going on. I could almost feel my mirror neurons relaxing in her warm presence, regardless of what she was or wasn&amp;#039;t doing to my spirit guides. (Or maybe my mirror neurons are my spirit guides?) &amp;quot;We as empaths absorb what&amp;#039;s around us, and it&amp;#039;s hard to discern what&amp;#039;s ours and what&amp;#039;s not ours,&amp;quot; Davir told me. I was struck once again by how similar she and Pillay sounded. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s this real sense of not giving credibility to what you don&amp;#039;t see. You can walk into a room where there&amp;#039;s so much emotion that&amp;#039;s not integrated. The energy lands on you, and suddenly you&amp;#039;re in total anxiety. The mind kicks in and says, `This is the reason,&amp;#039; but it&amp;#039;s often wrong. The more we can stay present and check in with our intuition, the better we&amp;#039;ll feel.&amp;quot; It was a freezing day \u00ACoutside, and she focused a heat lamp on my abdomen. I was so tranquilized by this point, it was difficult to hang on to what she was saying. I drifted off into a brief dream where a little fairy danced in the center of a pyramid, becoming smaller and smaller until it evaporated (my unconscious is a strange place).  When I got home, fragrant with essential oils and radiating benevolence toward all, I called up Harold G. Koenig, MD, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke University and author of The Healing Connection, a man who has spent his life trying to nail down the connection between our minds, bodies, and souls. I wondered, What&amp;#039;s going on in Davir&amp;#039;s office? Is she really moving unseen spiritual energy, or is it just a placebo effect, a result of my avid desire that she make me feel better?  &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t like the word you&amp;#039;re using, placebo,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Placebo comes from randomized clinical trials, where you know for sure there&amp;#039;s nothing in the placebo.&amp;quot; But, he said, we don&amp;#039;t know for sure that there&amp;#039;s no God, no metaphysical force. Koenig teaches a course and is writing a book on research methods, but he dissuaded me from thinking that only drugs and therapies with proven efficacy could improve my health. &amp;quot;Keep an open mind. Don&amp;#039;t put too much confidence in science. Science is so fragile in terms of what it can prove, and who knows what it&amp;#039;s going to say in 200 years,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;If you think science is going to solve all your problems, you&amp;#039;re barking up the wrong tree.&amp;quot;  I haven&amp;#039;t abandoned scientifically backed remedies altogether. I&amp;#039;m still keeping up with my fish oil, running, and sleep hygiene. I&amp;#039;m living in the suburbs, but I&amp;#039;m still a New Yorker at heart: Without a weekly slot with a PhD, I feel like nobody&amp;#039;s listening to me. But I will definitely make another visit to Davir. If I&amp;#039;m going to be addicted to something, I figure better the nice lady who whispers encouragement, tending my amygdala&amp;#039;s little flame, than a sleeping pill that simply snuffs it out. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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