How the etymology of words used in recovery reveals everything…

This is an excerpt from my book Words To Change Your Life: A Dictionary For Recovery.

In the beginning was the Word…

Person – from Latin persona “actor’s mask, character in a play”, later to mean a human being like us. 
Character – from Greek kharaktēr meaning “a stamping tool”. From the early sense “distinctive mark” arose “token, feature, or trait” by the 16th Century. From this it developed to mean “a description, especially of a person’s qualities”.
Worry – Old English wyrgan “strangle”, of West Germanic origin. In Middle English the original sense of the verb gave rise to the meaning “seize by the throat and tear”, and later “harass”. This is how it feels to be worried: we are harassing ourselves, tearing at and seizing ourselves by the throat – and the more we worry the more we are strangling ourselves.
Anxiety – from Latin anxius from angere “to choke”. See above.
Stress – from Middle English stresse meaning “distress”, so a shortening of distress, and partly from Old French estresse meaning “narrowness, oppression”, based on Latin strictus “drawn tight”.
Distress – meaning “extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain” and is based on Latin distringere that means “stretch apart”, which is how we feel when we are stressed. Sometimes we are so full of stress we feel stretched apart so much that we feel in pieces. Lots of stress is due to us behaving in a manner that’s driven by an uncertainty for the future. 
Doubt – from Latin dubare “to vacillate” and vacillate means to “be indecisive” from Latin vacillat- “swayed”; akin to Latin duo meaning “two”. When we doubt ourselves then we are splitting ourselves in two: it’s the battle between hope and fear, self-love and self-loathing, self-doubt and self-confidence, an exciting life of fulfilment of natural talent or of continually feeling unfulfilled, and the going towards and living in order or the giving in to chaos.
Lunatic – from Latin luna “moon”, from the belief that changes of the moon caused intermittent insanity. The point being we are very influenced by our environment. This includes our household, extended family living spaces and gatherings, our community and even characteristics of a nation. Rat Park” was a series of studies into drug addiction conducted in the late 1970s and published between 1978 and 1981 by psychologist Bruce K. Alexander and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Alexander’s hypothesis was that drugs do not cause addiction, and that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to them is attributable to their living conditions, and not to any addictive property of the drug itself. To test his hypothesis, Alexander built Rat Park, a large housing colony, 200 times the floor area of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16–20 rats of both sexes in residence with food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating. The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis.
Talent – from Latin talentum meaning “weight, sum of money”, and then today’s meaning of “natural aptitude or skill” that comes from the Parable of the Talents in the Bible. In this story a master had three servants and he gave them a “talent” each to look after because he was going away. A talent in those days was a unit of currency that was worth a great deal. So when this master returned after a long time away he asked them what they had done with the talents they had been given. The first and the second servants stepped forward and told him they had each put their talents to work, and doubled their value. The master was very happy and rewarded them. But the third servant said he had hidden it in the ground because he was afraid and doubted himself. The master was furious because he hadn’t done anything with the talent that he’d been given. So he took the talent away from him.
Anger – from Old Norse angr meaning “grief”, also angra meaning “vex” – and vex is from Latin vexare meaning “shake, disturb”. The words angst, anger and anxiety are connected.
Wrath – from Old English wrǣththo meaning “wroth” and wroth means “twisted”. That’s how it feels. When twisted we’re out of shape and uncomfortable, probably in pain.
Trauma – derives from Greek words titroskein meaning “to wound”, and tetrainein “to pierce”. It’s connected to the word “throw”. So when traumas come they often hit us as hard as if they’ve been thrown: they pierce into us leaving a wound. Addiction expert Dr Gabor Maté says he has never seen anyone with an addiction who hadn’t suffered trauma, most usually in childhood. It is behind addiction, the addiction being the way someone is attempting to distract from the insufferable pain, to mask over it, to keep it out of sight, to be numb to it, and tragically all to often to stop the pain by ending the life it is living within.
Detrimental – a definition of addiction is “being unable to stop something that is detrimental to you and/or others”. The word “detrimental” is also connected to the word “throw”… from Latin detrimentum, from deterere meaning “to wear away, impair”, from de– and terere “to rub”.
Frustration – from Latin frustrat– meaning “disappointed”, from the verb frustrare, from frustra “in vain”. The word “disappoint” is from late Middle English meaning in the sense of “deprive of a position”. The word “vain” comes from Middle English in the sense “devoid of real worth” and that’s via Old French from Latin vanus meaning “empty, without substance”.
Melancholy – from Greek melankholia, from melas, melan– “black” and khole “bile”, an excess of which was formerly believed to cause depression. Bile is a bitter greenish-brown alkaline fluid which aids digestion. It’s secreted by the liver and stored in the gall bladder; but also to this day “bile” is used to mean “anger, bitterness, or irritability” such as “his response was full of bile and hatred”. Interestingly, although serotonin is well known as a brain neurotransmitter, it is estimated that 90 percent of the body’s serotonin is made in the digestive tract.
Sad – from Old English sæd “weary”, also ‘weighty, dense”, of Germanic origin.
Want – from Old Norse vanta “be lacking”. Many people mistake a want with a need…
Remorse – from Latin re– meaning “expressing intensive force” and mordere “to bite”. (Spanish for “to bite” is morder.) So when we have remorse it is like we are biting away at ourselves, gnawing at our insides.

Read more and get Words To Change Your Life: A Dictionary For Recovery here.