Nervous breakdown

“ Occasionally arrangements for sleep and exercise, as well as for afternoons or special times of diversion, may save a man from that concentration of attention on one thing {179} which frequently leads to nervous breakdown. Not infrequently business men who are of neurotic habit have customs of doing business which add to their nervous irritability, and these might be modified so as to lessen the call on nervous energy. ”

“ NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS AND SHELL SHOCK In civil life, the complex of symptoms Beard jumbled together as neurasthenia, when associated with a loss of self-control, so that the sufferer is incapacitated for the duties of everyday life, has become the popular "nervous breakdown." ”

“ It is true that nervous troubles may cause physical complications and that physical disease very often coexists with nervous illness, but it is better for us now to make an artificial separation. Just what happens in the human economy when a “nervous breakdown” comes, nobody seems to know, but mind and body coöperate to make the‌ patient miserable and helpless. It may be nature’s way of holding us up and preventing further injury. The hold-up is severe, usually, and becomes in itself a thing to be managed. ”

“ They worry over it, feeling there must be something the matter with them, since they cannot sleep lying down though they could sleep so well in the chair, and if there should be a repetition of these feelings the next day, it is easy to understand how a psychoneurosis would be started which might easily, if eating and outing and exercise were to continue to be neglected, develop into a serious condition. Many a case of nervous breakdown has a beginning as simple as this, and people of nervous temperament must be constantly on guard against it. ”

“ And in many cases of breakdown the question of exhaustion plays no part. For most neurasthenics show no loss of energy; in fact, many of them exhibit an increased output. The crux of the whole matter is not exhaustion, but a loss of control over the nervous forces. ”

“ People say a man is nervous when they mean he is subject to attacks of anger, an emotional state. Likewise he is nervous when he is a victim of fear, a state literally the opposite of the first. Or, if he is restless, is given to little tricks like pulling at his hair, or biting his nails, he is nervous. The mother excuses her spoiled child on the ground of his nervousness, and I have seen a thoroughly bad boy who branded his baby sister with a heated spoon called "nervous." A "nervous breakdown" is a familiar verbal disguise for one or other of the sinister faces of insanity itself. ”

“ We continue to do this until our negative feelings become too strong, until we have expended so much energy to maintain our defenses that we are emotionally exhausted. If we reach such a state of real depletion, and our defenses can no longer hold against the building pressure of our feelings, the result is {33} nervous breakdown. ”

“ Under the strain and danger of life at the front there has developed a kind of nervous breakdown called shellshock or war-neurosis, which seems in some cases to be based not on the repression of the instinct of race-preservation but on the unusual necessity for repression of the instinct of self-preservation. ”

“ Army surgeons report that wounded men almost never suffer from shell-shock. The wound is enough to secure the unconsciously desired removal to the rear. But in the absence of wounds, a desire for safety may at the same time be so intense and so severely repressed that it seizes upon the neurosis as the only possible means of escape from the unbearable situation. In time of peace, however, the instinct of reproduction seems to be the only impulse which is severely enough repressed to be responsible for a nervous breakdown. ”

“ The symptoms by which a man is led to think he is on the verge of a breakdown are equally vague. That is what makes them all the harder to locate and to bear. If he has sciatica, pleurisy or a gumboil, he can speak of his ailments and tell people what is the matter with him. The neurasthenic has not even this consolation. His symptoms are so indefinite that he can scarcely find words in which to express them ”

“ There is one point which must always be kept in mind. It does not follow that because a person is easily tired, or is irritable or depressed or dreads any ordeal awaiting him, or is nervous in any direction, that he or she is drifting towards a breakdown. ”

“ But, fortunately for the average nervous patient, this lengthy process of analysis is by no means always necessary. People with troublesome nervous symptoms, and even those who have had a serious breakdown, are constantly being cured by a kind of re-education which breaks up subconscious complexes without trying to bring them to the surface. If the dead past can be let alone, so much the better. Sometimes a bullet buried in the flesh sends up a constant stream of discomfort until it is dug out and removed ”

“ But when their nervous system shows signs of damage, they lose their sense of contentment just as the others lose their flow of vivacity.
All these are the premonitory signs of a breakdown, and if they are neglected the crash may come. The man finds that he cannot face his work, the woman is unable to carry out her duties in the home. Life becomes dark and void, and all that made it worth living seems to have gone.
Then too often they are assailed by the worst dread of all, the fear that they will lose their reason. ”

“ For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," ”

“ Such a systematic psychological inquiry is the more important for questions of fatigue, as we know that the subjective feeling of displeasure in fatigue is no reliable measure for the objective fatigue, that is, for the real reduction of the ability for work. Daily experience teaches us how easily some people overstep the limits of normal fatigue, and in extreme cases even come to a nervous breakdown because nature did not protect them by the timely appearance of strong fatigue feelings. ”

“ No sign, of all those I have [Pg 183] indicated as pointing towards a breakdown, should be neglected. The time to take heed is when any man or woman finds that their powers of work are failing them, their nerves easily upset, or their minds assailed by an unreasonable dread of the future, or that in one or other of various ways they are not the people they were. It is better to slow down at the first danger signal than to run past one after another until we are pulled up with a crash. ”

“ And for all who wish to guide themselves in matters of health it is of the first importance that they should know their own temperaments.
It is said that people are always the last to hear any gossip or scandal about themselves. It is equally true that they are usually the last to observe any change in their health or dispositions. A person may be growing thinner, paler, and more tired looking, and yet be unaware of the fact. Much more does this apply to all the nervous symptoms and other peculiarities which denote that he is on the down-grade and gliding towards a breakdown. ”

“ Nature will mend the break, but tired, worn, stretched, abused nerves take time to restore. These nerve ailments call for most vigorous mental treatment.
Neurasthenia means debilitated or prostrated nerves and it shows itself first of all by worry. Worry means the inability to relax the attention from a definite fear or fancied hard luck. Worry leads to many physical and mental disorders.
Left alone this worry stage develops into an acute state and brings with it nervous prostration, and sometimes a complete collapse of the will power. ”

“ The technical term for nervousness is psycho-neurosis—disease of the psyche. There are certain "real neuroses" such as paralysis and spinal-cord disease, which involve an organic impairment of nerve-tissue. However, as this book deals only with psychic disturbance, we shall, throughout, use the term neuroses and psycho-neuroses indiscriminately, to denote nervous or functional disorders.
To still other people nervous trouble means fear,—just terrible fear without object or meaning or reason (anxiety neuroses) ; or a definite fear of some harmless object (phobia) ”

“ It is somewhat strange, though every one accepts as a mere truism the maxim that sudden emotional shock may produce almost any degree or variety of nervous disorder, the slower but far surer influence of long-continued mental habit is often practically ignored. ”

“ Nevertheless I denied my condition, and so one day the doctor tried to explain it to me. “A person,” he began, “is said to be nervous when presenting a special susceptibility to pain, or exhibiting an undue mobility of the nervous system, as when one starts, or shakes on the occasion of abrupt or intense sensorial impressions, thus showing an exalted emotional susceptibility. ”

“ The shock to the nerve-centers which these momentary frights give, and the nervous strain which the city dweller endures from keeping a lookout for such dangers, can not fail to impair the strength of the nervous system. Through the nerves an injurious influence is exerted upon the heart also. ”

“ It is known only too well today by those who seek to know, that back of all such physical conditions as nervousness, prostration, temporary insanity, nervous disorders, pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous system and mind. ”

“ Nervous Overstrain.—Both mental and physical overwork tends to weaken the nervous system and to produce nervousness. Where hard mental work is long continued, or where it is carried on under excitement, a tense nervous condition is developed which is decidedly weakening in its effects. The causes which lead to such a condition, and in fact overwork of all kinds, should if possible be avoided. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It restores the energy lost by Nervousness or Indigestion; relieves Lassitude and Neuralgia: refreshes the Nerves tired by Worry, Excitement or Excessive Brain Fatigue; strengthens a Failing Memory, and gives Renewed Vigor in all Diseases of Nervous Exhaustion or Debility. ”

“ I do not say that strong men with robust constitutions never take neuralgia, but all my experience, and that I believe of nearly all medical men, go to prove that it is more frequently an accompaniment of a weakened frame of body, with a nervous system below par. This may have been occasioned by bodily fatigue combined with want of sleep, anxiety of mind, worry, &c., or from debility from whatever cause. ”

“ We also find that the disease is often the result of some nervous strain, or over excitement The over indulgence of the passions is particularly a fruitful source of injury to the brain and spinal centres. An angry man or woman uses up more nerve energy in a few minutes than would be sufficient to serve the muscles with stimulus through hours of toil. ”

“ Our nerves enter intimately into every feeling, thought, act of life, into every function of our bodies, into every aspiration of our souls. They determine our digestion and our destinies; they may even influence the destinies of others. Let us turn a few pages of a life and see the cost of defective nervous-living. ”

“ Sometimes she goes on living in a dogged state of overtiredness until there comes a "last straw" which brings on some organic disease, and still another "straw" which kills her altogether.
We, none of us, seem to realize that our heads can save not only our heels, but our hearts, and our lungs, our spines and our brains—indeed our whole nervous systems. ”

“ For the other chief form of functional nervous disorder no more appropriate term can be found than that which I have used in this report. The meaning of anxiety-neurosis is also at once apparent. It indicates in direct fashion that anxiety is both the main factor in causation and at the same time one of the leading symptoms. ”

“ For a week or so after they come in lots of them are dazed; they just lie there scarcely stirring. All that part of it—the shock to their nerves—we see more of than the doctors do. When the word comes to go out again they have all the physical symptoms of intense nervous excitement, even nausea sometimes. ”

“ Worry is a potent factor in causing neurasthenia, and once that has come about the system is deprived of its resisting power and laid open to disease. And neurasthenics are singularly prone to forebodings. The state of the nervous system alters the circulation in the body to such an extent that it is apt to cause the feeling of illness, if not illness itself. Such people are liable to feel chilly or burning hot, even though their temperatures may be normal. ”

“ Cut the nerves that go to a limb, and the finest muscles in the world are as helpless as the meat in a butcher’s shop. Deprive the heart of its nerve supply for a single minute, and it will never beat again.
Yet we pay vastly more attention to a weak [Pg 22] heart, as it is called, or still more so to a broken leg, than we do to a threatened failure in the nervous system, which outweighs them all in importance. Once that has got out of order, the driving power is gone. Not only the heart and muscles, but every other faculty we possess loses its energy and usefulness. ”