The principle of treatment can be summarized as:
Facing.
Accepting.
Floating.
Letting time pass.
There is nothing mysterious or surprising about this treatment, and yet it is enlightening to see how many people sink deeper into their breakdown by doing the exact opposite.
Let us look again briefly at the person described in the last chapter, the person afraid of the physical feelings aroused by fear, and see if we can pinpoint his own treatment of his breakdown.
First, he became unduly alarmed by his symptoms, examining each as it appeared, ‘listening in’ in apprehension. He tried to free himself of the unwelcome feelings by tensing himself to meet them or by pushing them away, agitatedly seeking occupation to force forgetfulness. In other words, by fighting or running away.
Also, he was bewildered because he could not find cure overnight. He kept looking back and worrying because so much time was passing and he was not yet cured, as if this thing were an evil spirit which could be exorcized if only he, or the doctor, knew the trick. He was impatient with time.
Briefly, he spent his time:
Running away, not facing.
Fighting, not accepting.
Arresting and ‘listening in’, not floating past.
Being impatient with time, not letting time pass.
Now let us consider how you can cure yourself by facing, accepting, floating and letting time pass.
We will first consider cure of the constant symptoms and then of the recurring attacks.
CHAPTER 6 Cure of the More Constant Symptoms
First, look at yourself and notice how you are sitting in your chair. I have no doubt that you are tensely shrinking from the feelings within you and yet, at the same time, are ready to ‘listen in’ in apprehension? I want you to do the exact opposite. I want you to sit as comfortably as you can, relax to the best of your ability by letting your arms and legs sag into the chair as if charged with lead, and take slow, deep breaths through your partly opened mouth. Now examine and do not shrink from the sensations that have been upsetting you. I want you to examine each carefully, to analyse and describe it aloud to yourself. For example, you may say, ‘My hands sweat, they tremble and feel sore …’ This may sound a little silly and you may smile. So much the better.
CHURNING STOMACH
Begin with the nervous feeling in your stomach, the so-called churning. This may feel like an uneasy fluttering or may bore steadily like a hot poker passing from your stomach through your back. Do not tensely flinch from it. Go with it. Relax and analyse it. Take a few minutes to do this before reading further.
Now that you have faced and examined it, is it so terrible? If you had arthritis in your wrist, you would be prepared to work with the arthritic pain without becoming too upset. Why regard this churning as something so different from ordinary pain that it can frighten you? Stop regarding it as some monster trying to possess you. Understand that it is but the working of oversensitized adrenalin-releasing nerves and that by constantly shrinking from it you have stimulated an excessive outflow of adrenalin which has further excited your nerves to produce continual churning.
While you examine and analyse this churning a strange thing may happen: you may find your attention wandering from yourself. This ‘thing’ that seemed so terrible while you stayed tense and flinched from it, may fail to hold your attention for long when you see it for what it is – no more than a strange physical feeling of no great medical significance, and causing no real harm.
So, be prepared to accept and live with it for the time being. Accept it as something that will be with you for some time yet – in fact while you recover – but something that will eventually leave you if you are prepared to let time pass and not anxiously watch the churning during its passing.
But do not make the mistake of thinking that it will go as soon as you cease to fear it. Your nervous system is still tired and will take time to heal, just as a broken leg takes time. However, as you improve and are no longer afraid of the churning, and do not try to cure it by controlling it, and are prepared to accept it and work with it present, you will become more interested in other things and will gradually forget to notice whether it is there or not. This is the way to recover. By true acceptance you break the fear – adrenalin – fear cycle, or, in other words, the churning-adrenalin-churning cycle.
True Acceptance
From this discussion you will appreciate that true acceptance is the keystone to your recovery, and before you continue with the examination of your other symptoms we should make sure that we understand its exact meaning.
I find that some patients complain, ‘I have accepted the churning in my stomach, but it is still there. So what am I to do now?’ How could they have accepted it while they still complain about it?
Or, as one old man said, ‘After breakfast the churning starts, I can’t just sit there and churn. If I do, I’m exhausted after an hour, so I have to get up and walk round, so what am I to do?’ I said to him, ‘You haven’t really accepted that churning, have you?’ ‘Oh, yes I have,’ he answered indignantly. ‘I’m not frightened of it any more.’
But he obviously was. He was afraid that after an hour’s churning he would be exhausted, so he sat tensely dreading its arrival, shrinking from it when it came and worrying about the exhaustion to follow. Of course the churning, itself a symptom of tension, must inevitably come while so tensely awaited.
I tried to make him understand that he must be prepared to let his stomach churn and to continue reading his paper without dwelling on the churning. Only by so doing would he be truly accepting. In this way, and only in this way, would he eventually reach the stage when it would no longer matter whether his stomach churned or not. Then, freed from the stimulus of tension and anxiety, his adrenalin-releasing nerves would gradually calm down and the churning would automatically lessen and finally cease.
This man was asked to do no more than change his mood from apprehension to acceptance. The symptoms of this type of breakdown are always a reflection of your mood. However, it is well to remember that it may be some time before your body reacts to the new mood of acceptance and that it may continue for a while to reflect the tense, frightened mood of the preceding weeks, months or years. This is one reason why nervous breakdown can be so bewildering and why this old man was bewildered. He had begun to accept, but when the symptoms did not disappear immediately, he quickly lost heart and became apprehensive again, although trying to convince himself that he was accepting. It takes time for a body to establish acceptance as a mood and for this eventually to bring peace just as it took time for fear to become established as continuous tension and anxiety. That is why ‘letting time pass’ is such an important part of your treatment and why I shall emphasize it again and again. Time is the answer. But there must be that background of true acceptance while waiting for time to pass.
SWEATING,
