"For goodness' sake, don't tell that to Alice," a young fellow said
of his sister. "She will have fits first, and then indigestion and
insomnia for six weeks." The lad was not a nerve specialist; neither
was he interested in nerves--except to get away from them; but he
spoke truly from common sense and his own experience with his
sister.
The point is, to drop the emotions and face the facts. If nervous
women would see the necessity for that, and would practice it, it
would be surprising to see how their nerves would improve.
I once knew a woman who discovered that her emotions were running
away with her and making her nervously ill. She at once went to work
with a will, and every time something happened to rouse this great
emotional wave she would deliberately force herself to relax and
relax until the wave had passed over her and she could see things in
a sensible light. When she was unable to go off by herself and lie
down to relax, she would walk with her mind bent on making her feet
feel heavy. When you drop the tension of the emotion, the emotion
has nothing to hold on to and it must go.
I knew another woman who did not know how to relax; so, to get free
from this emotional excitement, she would turn her attention at once
to figures, to her personal accounts or even to saying the
multiplication table. The steady concentration of her mind on dry
figures and on "getting her sums right" left the rest of her brain
free to drop its excitement and get into a normal state again.
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