Nerves and Common Sense by Annie Payson Call (ebook voice reader TXT) 📖

IT is surprising how many invalids there are who have got well and do not know it! When you feel ill and days drag on with one ill feeling following another, it is not a pleasant thing to be told that you are quite well. Who could be expected to believe it? I should like to know how many men and women there are who will read this article, who are well and do not know it; and how many of such men and women will take the hint I want to give them and turn honestly toward finding themselves out in a way that will enable them to discover and acknowledge the truth?

Nerves form habits. They actually form habits in themselves. If a woman has had an organic trouble which has caused certain forms of nervous discomfort, when the organic trouble is cured the nerves are apt to go on for a time with the same uncomfortable feelings because during the period of illness they had formed the habit of such discomfort. Then is the time when the will must be used to overcome such habits. The trouble is that when the doctor tells these victims of nervous habit that they are really well they will not believe him. “How can I be well,” they say, “when I suffer just as I did while I was ill?” If then the doctor is fortunate enough to convince them of the fact that it is only the nervous habit formed from their illness which causes them to suffer, and that they can rouse their wills to overcome intelligently this habit, then they can be well in a few weeks when they might have been apparently ill for many months—or perhaps even years.

Nerves form the habit of being tired. A woman can get very much overfatigued at one time and have the impression of the fatigue so strongly on her nerves that the next time she is only a little tired she will believe she is very tired, and so her life will go until the habit of being tired has been formed in her nerves and she believes that she is tired all the time—whereas if the truth were known she might easily feel rested all the time.

It is often very difficult to overcome the habit which the nerves form as a result of an attack of nervous prostration. It is equally hard to convince any one getting out of such an illness that the habit of his nerves tries to make him believe he cannot do a little more every day—when he really can, and would be better for it. Many cases of nervous prostration which last for years might be cured in as many months if the truth about nerve habits were recognized and acted upon.

Nerves can form bad habits and they can form good habits, but of all the bad habits formed by nerves perhaps the very worst is the habit of being ill. These bad habits of illness engender an unwillingness to let go of them. They seem so real. “I do not want to suffer like this,” I hear an invalid say; “if it were merely a habit don’t you think I would throw it off in a minute?”

I knew a young physician who had made somewhat of a local reputation in the care of nerves, and a man living in a far-distant country, who had been for some time a chronic invalid, happened by accident to hear of him. My friend was surprised to receive a letter from this man, offering to pay him the full amount of all fees he would earn in one month and as much more as he might ask if he would spend that time in the house with him and attempt his cure.

Always interested in new phases of nerves, and having no serious case on hand himself at the time, he assented and went with great interest on this long journey to, as he hoped, cure one man. When he arrived he found his patient most charming. He listened attentively to the account of his years of illness, inquired of others in the house with him, and then went to bed and to sleep. In the morning he woke with a sense of unexplained depression. In searching about for the cause he went over his interviews of the day before and found a doubt in his mind which he would hardly acknowledge; but by the end of the next day he said to himself: “What a fool I was to come so far without a more complete knowledge of what I was coming to! This man has been well for years and does not know it. It is the old habit of his illness that is on him; the illness itself must have left him ten years ago.”

The next day—the first thing after breakfast—he took a long walk in order to make up his mind what to do, and finally decided that he had engaged to stay one month and must keep to his promise. It would not do to tell the invalid the truth—the poor man would not believe it. He was self-willed and self-centered, and his pains and discomforts, which came simply from old habits of illness, were as real to him as if they had been genuine. Several physicians had emphasized his belief that he was ill. One doctor—so my friend was told—who saw clearly the truth of the case, ventured to hint at it and was at once discharged. My friend knew all these difficulties and, when he made up his mind that the only right thing for him to do was to stay, he found himself intensely interested in trying to approach his patient with so much delicacy that he could finally convince him of the truth; and I am happy to say that his efforts were to a great degree successful. The patient was awakened to the fact that, if he tried, he could be a well man. He never got so far as to see that he really was a well man who was allowing old habits to keep him ill; but he got enough of a new and healthy point of view to improve greatly and to feel a hearty sense of gratitude toward the man who had enlightened him. The long habit of illness had dulled his brain too much for him to appreciate the whole truth about himself.

The only way that such an invalid’s brain can be enlightened is by going to work very gently and leading him to the light—never by combating. This young physician whom I mention was successful only through making friends with his patient and leading him gradually to appear to discover for himself the fact which all the time the physician was really telling him. The only way to help others is to help them to help themselves, and this is especially the truth with nerves.

If you, my friend, are so fortunate as to find out that your illness is more a habit of illness than illness itself, do not expect to break the habit at once. Go about it slowly and with common sense. A habit can be broken sooner than it can be formed, but even then it cannot be broken immediately. First recognize that your uncomfortable feelings whether of eyes, nose, stomach, back of neck, top of head, or whatever it may be, are mere habits, and then go about gradually but steadily ignoring them. When once you find that your own healthy self can assert itself and realize that you are stronger than your habits, these habits of illness will weaken and finally disappear altogether.

The moment an illness gets hold of one, the illness has the floor, so to speak, and the temptation is to consider it the master of the situation—and yielding to this temptation is the most effectual way of beginning to establish the habits which the illness has started, and makes it more difficult to know when one is well. On the other hand it is clearly possible to yield completely to an illness and let Nature take its course, and at the same time to take a mental attitude of wholesomeness toward it which will deprive the illness of much of its power.