Outwitting Our Nerves Part 19

This sister, the wife of a minister in the Middle West, had a constant pain in her eyes, compelling her to hold them half-shut all the time. When she was approached about coming to me, she said indignantly, "If that doctor thinks that my trouble is nervous, she is much mistaken," and then proceeded to get well. Once the subconscious mind gets the idea that its game is recognized, it is very apt to give it up, and it can do this without loss of time if it really wants to.

Pain at the Base of the Brain. Of all nervous pains, that in the back of the neck is by all odds the most common. It is rare indeed to find a nervous patient without this complaint, and among supposedly well folk it is only too frequent. Indeed, it almost seems that in some quarters such a pain stands as a badge of the fervor and zeal of one's work.

But work is never responsible for this sense of discomfort. Only an over-sensitiveness to feelings or a false emotionalism can produce a pain of this kind, unless it should happen to be caused by some poison circulating in the blood. The trouble is not with the nerves or with the spine, despite the fad about misplaced vertebrae. When a doctor examines a sensitive spine, marking the sore spots with a blue pencil, and a few minutes later repeats the process, he finds almost invariably that the spots have shifted. They are not true physical pains and they rarely remain long in the same place.

Pain in the spine and neck is an example of exaggerated sensibility or over-awareness. Since all messages from every part of trunk and limb must go through the spinal cord, and since very many of them enter the cord in the region of the neck and shoulder blades, it is only natural that an over-feeling of these messages should be especially noticed in this zone.

Sometimes a false emotionalism adds to the discomfort by tensing the whole muscular system and making the messages more intense. When a social worker or a business man gets tense over his work or ties himself into knots over a committee meeting, he not only foolishly wastes his energy but makes his nerves carry messages that are more urgent than usual. Then if he is on the look-out for sensations, he all the more easily becomes aware of the central station in the spine where the messages are received. By centering his attention on this station and tightening up his back-muscles, he increases this over-awareness and easily gets himself into the clutch of a vicious habit.

Sometimes a tenseness of the body is the result, not of a false att.i.tude toward one's work, but of a lack of satisfaction in other directions. If the love-force is not getting what it wants, it may keep the body in a state of tension, with all the undesirable results of such tension. The person who keeps himself tense, whether because of his work or because of tension in other directions, has not really learned how to throw himself into his job and to forget himself, his emotions, and his body.

Various Pains. Tender spots may appear in almost any part of the body. There was the girl with the sore scalp, who was frequently so sensitive that she could not bear to have a single hair touched at its farthermost end, and who could not think of brushing her hair at such a time. There was the man whose wrists and ankles were so painful that the slightest touch was excruciating; the woman with the false sciatica; the man with the so-called appendicitis pains; and the man with the false neuritis, who always wore jersey coats several sizes too large. Each one of these false pains was removed by the process of re-education.

Low Thresholds to Fatigue. Mr. H. was habitually so overcome by fatigue that he could not make himself carry through the slightest piece of work, even when necessity demanded it. On Sunday night, when there was no one else to milk the cow, he had had to stop in the middle of the process and go into the house to lie down. To carry the milk was impossible, so low were his thresholds to the slightest message of fatigue. It turned out that things were not going right in the reproductive life. His threshold was low in this direction, and it carried down with it all other thresholds. After a general revaluation of values, he found himself able to keep his thresholds at the normal level.

A fine, efficient missionary from the Orient had been so overcome with fatigue that he was forced to give up all work and return to this country. He had been with me for a while and was again ready to go to work. He came one day with a radiant face to bid me good-by. "Why are you so joyous?" I asked. "Because," he answered, "before I came home I was so fatigued that it used me up completely just to see the native servants pack our luggage. Now we are taking back twice as much, and I not only packed it all myself but made the boxes with my own hands. No more fatigue for me!"

A charming young girl who in many ways was an inspiration to all her a.s.sociates fell into the habit of over-feeling her fatigue. "You know, Doctor," she said, "that I give out too much of myself; everybody tells me so." That was just the trouble. Everybody had told her so, and the suggestion had worked. It did not take her long to learn that in scattering abroad she was enriching herself, and that her "giving out" was not exhausting to her but rather the truest kind of self-expression. It is only when a "giving out" is accompanied by a "looking in" that it can ever deplete. The "See how much I am giving," and "How tired I shall be," att.i.tude could hardly fail to exhaust, but a real self-expression and the fulfilment of a real desire to give are never anything else than exhilarating. There is something wrong with the minister who is used up after his Sunday sermons. If his message and not himself is his real concern, he will have only a normal amount of fatigue, accompanied by a general sense of accomplishment and well-being, after he has fed his flock. To be sure, I have never been a minister, but I have had a goodly number among my patients and I speak from a fairly close acquaintance with their problems.

Stopping Our Ears. Roosters seem to be a perpetual source of annoyance to the folk whose thresholds are not under proper control. But as roosters seem to be necessary to an egg-eating nation, it seems simpler to change the threshold than to abolish the roosters. There was one woman who complained especially about being disturbed by early-morning Chanticleers. I explained that the crowing called for no action on her part, and that therefore she should not allow it to come into consciousness. "Do you mean," she said, "that I could keep from hearing them?" As it happened, she was sitting under the clock, which had just struck seven. "Did you hear the clock strike?" I asked. "No," she said; "did it strike?"

This poor little woman, who suffered from a very painful back and other distressing symptoms, had been married at sixteen to a roue of forty; and, without experiencing any of the psychic feelings of s.e.x, had been immediately plunged into the physical s.e.x-relations. Since s.e.x is psycho-physical and since any attempt to separate the two elements is both desecrating and unsatisfactory; it is not surprising that misery, and finally divorce, had been her portion. Another equally unpleasant experience had followed, and the poor woman in the strain and disappointment of her love-life, and in the lowering of the thresholds pertaining to this thwarted instinct, had unconsciously lowered the thresholds to all physical stimuli, until she was no longer master of herself in any line. When she saw the reason for her exaggerated reactions, she was able to gain control of herself, and to find outlet in other ways.

Too many persons fall into the way of being disturbed by noises which are no concern of theirs. As nurses learn to sleep through all sounds but the call of their own patients, so any one may learn to ignore all sounds but those which he needs to hear. Connection with the outside world can be severed by a mental att.i.tude in much the same way as this is accomplished by the physical effect of an anaesthetic. Then the usual noises, those which the subconscious recognizes as without significance, will be without power to disturb. The well-known New York publisher who spent his last days on his private yacht, on which everything was rubber-heeled and velvet-cushioned, thought that he couldn't stand noises; but how much more fun he would have had, if some one had only told him about thresholds!

Summary

There are two kinds of people in the world,-masters and puppets. There is the man in control of his thresholds, at leisure from himself and master of circ.u.mstance, free to use his energy in fruitful ways; and there is the over-sensitive soul, wondering where the barometer stands and whether people are going to be quiet, feeling his feelings and worrying because no one else feels them, forever wasting his energy in exaggerated reactions to normal situations.

This "ticklish" person is not better equipped than his neighbor, but more poorly equipped. True adjustment to the environment requires the faculty of putting out from consciousness all stimuli that do not require conscious attention. The nervous person is lacking in this faculty, but he usually fails to realize that this lack places him in the cla.s.s of defectives. A paralyzed man is a cripple because he cannot run with the crowd; a nervous individual is a cripple, but only because he thinks that to run with the crowd lacks distinction. Something depends on the accident of birth, but far more depends on his own choice. Understanding, judicious neglect of symptoms, whole-souled absorption in other interests, and a good look in the mirror, are sure to put him back in the running with a wholesome delight in being once more "like folks."

CHAPTER XV

In which we learn discrimination

CHOOSING OUR EMOTIONS

Liking the Taste

It was a summer evening by the seaside, and a group of us were sitting on the porch, having a sort of heart-to-heart talk about psychology,-which means, of course, that we were talking about ourselves. One by one the different members of the family spoke out the questions that had been troubling them, or brought up their various problems of character or of health. At length a splendid Red Cross nurse who had won medals for distinguished service in the early days of the war, broke out with the question: "Doctor, how can I get rid of my terrible temper? Sometimes it is very bad, and always it has been one of the trials of my life." She spoke earnestly and sincerely, but this was my answer: "You like your temper. Something in you enjoys it, else you would give it up." Her face was a study in astonishment. "I don't like it," she stammered; "always after I have had an outburst of anger I am in the depths of remorse. Many a time I have cried my eyes out over this very thing." "And you like that, too," I answered. "You are having an emotional spree, indulging yourself first in one kind of emotion and then in another. If you really hated it as much as you say you do, you would never allow yourself the indulgence, much less speak of it afterward." Her astonishment was still further increased when several of the group said they, too, had sensed her satisfaction with her moods.

Hard as it is to believe, we do choose our emotions. We like emotion as we do salt in our food, and too often we choose it because something in us likes the savor, and not because it leads to the character or the conduct that we know to be good.

The Power of Choice

Whether we believe it or not, and whether we like it or not, the fact remains that we ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shall choose, or we decide not to press the b.u.t.ton for any emotion at all.

To a very large extent man, if he knows how and really wishes, may select the emotion which is suitable in that it leads to the right conduct, has a beneficial effect on the body, adapts him to his social environment, and makes him the kind of man he wants to be.

The Test of Feeling. The psychologist to-day has a sure test of character. He says in substance: "Tell me what you feel and I will tell you what you are. Tell me what things you love, what things you fear, and what makes you angry and I will describe with a fair degree of accuracy your character, your conduct, and a good deal about the state of your physical health."

Since this test of emotion is fundamentally sound, it is not surprising that the nervous man is in a state of distress. Indigestion, fatigue, over-sensibility, sound like problems in physiology, but we cannot go far in the discussion of any of them without coming face to face with the emotions as the real factors in the case. When we turn to the mental characteristics of nervous folk, we even more quickly find ourselves in the midst of an emotional disturbance. Worried, fearful, anxious, self-pitying, excitable, or melancholy, the nervous person proves that whatever else a neurosis may be, it is, in essence, a riot of the emotions.

There is small wonder that a riot at the heart of the empire should lead to insurrection in every province of the personality. It is only for the purpose of discussion that we can separate feeling from thinking and doing. Every thought and every act has in it something of all three elements. An emotion is not an isolated phenomenon; it is bound up on the one hand with ideas and on the other with bodily states and conduct. Whoever runs amuck in his emotions runs amuck in his whole being. The nervous invalid with his exhausted and sensitive body, his upset mind and irrational conduct is a living ill.u.s.tration of the central place of the emotions in the realm of the personality.

But it is not the nervous person only who needs a better understanding of his emotional life. The well man also gets angry for childish reasons; he is prejudiced and envious, unhappy and suspicious for the very same reason as is the nervous man. Since the working-capital of energy is limited to a definite amount, the control of the emotions becomes a central problem in any life,-a deciding factor in the output and the outcome, as well as in comfort and happiness by the way.

Nothing is harder for the average man to believe than this fact that he really has the power to choose his emotions. He has been dissatisfied with himself in his past reactions, and yet he has not known how to change them. His anger or his depression has appeared so undesirable to his best judgment and to his conscious reason that it has seemed to be not a part of himself at all but an invasion from without which has swept over him without his consent and quite beyond control.

A House Divided Against Itself

Most of the confusion comes from the fact that we know only a part of ourselves. What we do not consciously enjoy we believe we do not enjoy at all. What we do not consciously choose we believe to be beyond our power of choice,-the work of the evil one, or the natural depravity of human nature, perhaps; but certainly not anything of our choosing.

The point is that a human being is so const.i.tuted that he can, without knowing it, entertain at the same time two diametrically opposite desires. The average person is not so unified as he believes, but is, in fact, "a house divided against itself."

The words of the apostle Paul express for most of us the truth about ourselves: "For what I would, that I do not; but what I hate that I do." What Paul calls the law of his members warring against the law of his mind is simply what we call to-day the instinctive desires coming into conflict with our conscious ideal.

Hidden Desires. Although we choose our emotions, we choose in many cases in response to a buried part of ourselves of which we are wholly unaware, or only half-aware. When we do not like what we have chosen, it is because the conscious part of us is out of harmony with another part and that part is doing the choosing. If the emotions which we choose are not those that the whole of us-or at least the conscious-would desire, it is because we are choosing in response to hidden desires, and giving satisfaction to cravings which we have not recognized. Repeated indulgence of such desires is responsible for the emotional habits which we are too likely to consider an inevitable part of our personality, inherited from ancestors who are not on hand to defend themselves. When we form the habit of being afraid of things that other people do not fear, or of being irritated or depressed, or of giving way to fits of temper, it is because these habit-reactions satisfy the inner cravings that in the circ.u.mstances can get satisfaction in no better way.

These hidden desires are of several different kinds, when squarely looked at. Some of the cravings are found to be childish, and so out of keeping with our real characters that we could not possibly hold on to them as conscious desires. Others turn out to be so natural and so inevitable that we wonder how we could ever have imagined that they ought to be repressed. Still others, legitimate in themselves, but denied because of outer circ.u.mstances, are found to be easily satisfied in indirect ways which bear no resemblance to their old unfortunate forms of outlet.

When Knowledge Helps

The way to get rid of an undesirable emotion is not by working at the emotion itself, but by realizing that this is merely an offshoot of a deeper root, hidden below the surface. The great point is to recognize this deeper root.

Childish Anger. It helps to know that uncalled-for anger is a defense reaction-a sort of camouflage or smoke cloud which we throw out to hide from ourselves and others the fact that we are being worsted in an argument, or being shown up in an undesirable light. Better than any amount of weeping over a hot temper is an understanding of the fact that when we fly into unseemly rage we are usually giving indulgence to a childhood desire to run away from unpleasant facts and to cover up our own faults.

Enjoying the Blues. It helps to know that the easiest way to fight the blues is by realizing that they are a deliberate, if unconscious, attempt to gain the pity of ourselves and others. There seems to be in undeveloped human nature something that really enjoys being pitied, and if we cannot get the commiseration of other people, we can, without much trouble, work up a case of self-pity. Most of us would have to acknowledge that we seldom find tears in our eyes except when our own woes are under consideration. "Whatever else the blues accomplish, they certainly afford us a chance to submerge ourselves in a sea of self-engrossment." [63]

[63] Putnam: Human Motives.

The Chip on the Shoulder. It helps to know that irritability and over-sensitiveness are usually the result of tension from unsatisfied desires which must find some kind of outlet. If a person is secretly restive under the fact that he cannot have the kind of clothes he wants, cannot shine in society, or secure a college education or a large fortune,-all of which minister to our insistent and rarely satisfied instinct of self-a.s.sertion,-or if he is secretly yearning for the satisfaction of the marriage relation, or for the sense of completion in parenthood; then the tension from these unsatisfied desires shows itself in a hundred little everyday instances of lack of self-control. These mystify him and his friends, but they are understandable when the whole truth is known.

Anxiety and Fear. Nowhere is understanding more valuable than when we approach the subject of anxiety and fear. Whenever a person falls into a state of abnormal fear, his friends and his physician spend a good deal of time in attempting to prove to him that there is no cause for apprehension, and in exhorting him to use his reason and give up his fear. But how can a person help himself when he is fighting in the dark? How can he free himself when the thing he thinks he fears is merely a symbol of what he really fears? The woman who was afraid she would choke her child had been several months in the hands of Christian Scientists, and had earnestly tried to replace fear with courage. But in the circ.u.mstances, and without further knowledge, this was as impossible as it is for a man to lift himself by his own boot-straps. She had no point of contact with her real fear, as the man has no leverage contact with the earth from which he wishes to lift himself.

To be sure there are many cases in which an a.s.sumed cheerfulness and courage do have a mighty effect on the inner man. The forces of the personality are not set, but plastic, and are constantly acting and interacting upon one another. Surface habits do influence the forces below the surface. William James's advice, "Square your shoulders, speak in a major key, smile, and turn a compliment," is good for most occasions, but sometimes even a little understanding of the cause is far more effective.

It helps to know that persistent anxiety, lacking obvious cause, is found to be the anxiety of the thwarted instinct of reproduction. When the s.e.x-instinct is repeatedly stimulated and then checked it sets in motion some of the same glands that are activated in fear. What comes up into consciousness is therefore very naturally a fear or dread of impending disaster, very like the poignant anxiety that one feels when stepping up in the dark to a step that is not there.

Simultaneous with the fear lest these repressed desires should not be satisfied, there is an intense fear lest they should. The more insistent the repressed desire, and the more it seems likely to break through into consciousness, the keener the anguish of the ethical impulses. Abnormal fear, however it may seem to be externalized, always implies at the bottom a fear of something within. There is no truth which is harder to believe on first hearing but which grows more compelling with further knowledge, than this truth that an exaggerated fear always implies a desire which somehow offends the total personality. When we observe the various distressing phobias, such as the common fear of contamination, a woman's fear to undress at night, a fear that the gas was not turned off, or that one's clothing is out of order; fear lest the exact truth has not been told, or that the uttermost farthing of one's obligations has not been met,-then we may know that there is something in the fear situation which either directly or symbolically refers to some hidden desire; a desire which the individual would not for the world acknowledge to himself, but which is too keen to be altogether repressed.

The close connection between fear and desire is often shown in the unfounded fear of having committed a crime. Both doctors and lawyers in their professional work occasionally come upon individuals who believe that they have committed some heinous crime of which they are really innocent, and who insist upon their guilt despite all evidence to the contrary. A quiet, gentle youth who at the age of twenty was under my medical care, is still not sure in his own whether he, at twelve years of age, was the burglar who broke into the village store and killed the owner. It is difficult for the normally self-satisfied individual to understand the appeal of heroics to a person whose starved instinct of self-a.s.sertion makes him choose to be known as a villain rather than not to be known at all.

Breaking the Spell. When once we bring up into consciousness these hidden desires that manifest themselves in such troublesome ways, we find that we have robbed them of much of their power over our lives. Sometimes, it is true, a detailed and thorough exploration by psycho-a.n.a.lysis is necessary, but in many cases it is sufficient just to know that there are underlying causes. To know these things is far from excusing ourselves because of them. Even though emotions are determined by forces that are deep in the subconscious, we may still choose in opposition to those forces, if we but know that we can do so. The fact that some of the roots of our bad habits reach down into the subconscious is no excuse for not digging them up. As Dr. Putnam says, "It is the whole of us that acts, and we are as responsible for the supervision of the unseen as for the obvious factors that are at work. The moon may be only half illumined and half visible, but the invisible half goes on, none the less, exerting its full share of influence on the motion of the tides and earth." [64]