“The nature of stress is not always the usual stuff that people think of. It’s not the external stress of war or money loss or somebody dying, it is actually the internal stress of having to adjust oneself to somebody else. Cancer and ALS and MS and rheumatoid arthritis and all these other conditions, it seems to me, happen to people who have a poor sense of themselves as independent persons. On the emotional level, that is—they can be highly accomplished in the arts or intellectually—but on an emotional level they have a poorly differentiated sense of self. They live in reaction to others
...more
