Nervous excitement

“ The real feelings of life are too exquisite and strengthening in their depth and power to be crowded out by those gross forms of nervous excitement which I can find no better name for than sham emotions. If we could only realize this more broadly, and bring up the children with a wholesome dread of morbid feeling what a marked change would there be in the state of the entire race!
All physicians agree that in most cases it is not overwork, it is not mental strain, that causes the greater number of cases of nervous disturbance, but that they are more often brought on by emotional strain. ”

“ There must therefore be some nervous excitement on which the feeling of amusement directly depends, although this excitement may most often coincide with a sudden transition to an incongruous or meaner image. ”

“ How many foolish, almost insane actions of men and women come from sham emotions and the nervous excitement generated by them, or from nervous excitement and the sham emotions that result in consequence!
Care should be taken first to change the course of the nervous power that is expressing itself morbidly, to open for it a healthy outlet, to guide it into that more wholesome channel, and then help the owner to a better control and a clearer understanding, that she may gain a healthy use of her wonderful nervous power. ”

“ She had no words, but as he gently took one of her hands, the convulsive squeeze it gave him showed the state of nervous excitement she was in. It was very long before his utmost efforts could soothe her, or she could command herself enough to tell him her story. ”

“ The excitement of each acts upon the whole body, and is itself increased by reaction from the aggregate emotion. Each receives impressions from the other, which are vividly felt even without being verified by personal experience. The most nervous temperament in the assembly gives the final impetus to the excited imagination of the rest. In moments of supreme expectation and doubt, enthusiasm overcomes reason. ”

“ Whatever may have been the nature of the event itself, it cannot be doubted that the minds of both friends were far more deeply impressed by its mysteriousness than they would probably have been willing to acknowledge to themselves, and that the nervous excitement thus produced brought out an illness lurking already in their system, and rendered it fatal. ”

“ The feeling awakened by the nascent excitement of each alternative nerve-tract seems by its attractive or repulsive quality to determine whether the excitement shall abort or shall become complete. Where indecision is great, as before a dangerous leap, consciousness is agonizingly intense. Feeling, from this point of view, may be likened to a cross-section of the chain of nervous discharge, ascertaining the links already laid down, and groping among the fresh ends presented to it for the one which seems best to fit the case. ”

“ But this lofty excitement is not, except in weak bodily constitutions, a mere flash, which passes away immediately, leaving no permanent traces, and incompatible with persistent and steady pursuit of an object. It is the character of the nervous temperament to be capable of sustained excitement, holding out through long continued efforts. It is what is meant by spirit. It is what makes the high-bred racehorse run without slackening speed till he drops down dead. ”

“ To work up an emotion, a most pernicious practice followed by young aspirants, means to work your nerves up to a state of mild or even severe hysteria. This morbid, inartistic, nervous excitement actually trains men and women to the loss of all emotional control, and no wonder that their nerves play the mischief with them, and that the atmosphere of the stage is kept in its present murkiness. The power to work the nerves up in the beginning finally carries them to the state where they must be more artificially urged by stimulants ”

“ Last night I came home with such a dreadful nervous headache from sheer exhaustion, that I could scarcely see. You know in a dancing party the excitement keeps one up, and one doesn't feel the fatigue until afterward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Heart, lungs, blood stream, the great viscera and the internal glands, cerebrum and sympathetic nervous system, all participate in this activity, and the outward visage of excitement is always the wide-open eye, the slightly parted lips, the flaring nostrils and the slightly tensed muscles of the whole body. Shouts, cries, the waving of arms and legs, taking the specific direction of some emotion, make of excitement a fierce discharger of energy, a fact of great importance in the understanding of social and pathological phenomena. ”

“ Imagine the state of mind when such a thing really produces almost a feeling of nervous excitement.
I simply must keep on writing out of sheer desperation. I have tried to use up some minutes by rearranging my clothes, pulling up my socks, and tightening my belt ”

“ He reminds us that "the emotional excitement, with the accompanying nervous activities of the central part of the disposition, is the only part of the total instinctive process that retains its specific character and remains common to all individuals and all situations in which the instinct is excited." ”

“ Connected with the physics of the brain, apart from the nervous substance and its conditions, is the important state known as excitement, with its opposites quiescence, languor, repose, drowsiness, sleep, and insensibility. ”

“ The mind having been led to form a certain conclusion, and the result producing an immediate solution of continuity in the chain of our ideas, this alternate excitement and relaxation of the imagination, the object also striking upon the mind more vividly in its loose unsettled state, and before it has had time to recover and collect itself, causes that alternate excitement and relaxation, or irregular convulsive movement of the muscular and nervous system, which constitutes physical laughter. ”

“ But her fearfulness and excitement was not that of weakness, rather that of a finely nervous nature, having strong elements of imagination, and, therefore, great capacities for suffering as for joy; but yet elastic, vigorous, and possessing unusual powers of endurance. Such natures rebuild as fast as they are exhausted. ”

“ A very slight change occurring suddenly will often cause an ejaculation of alarm or admiration, especially among those of nervous temperament; but upon a repetition the excitement is less, and the nerves are scarcely affected. ”

“ The first effects will often be exceedingly unpleasant. The same results are apt to follow that come from the reaction after extreme excitement,—all the way from nervous nausea and giddiness to absolute fainting. This, as must be clearly seen, is a natural result from the relaxation that comes after years of habitual tension. The nerves have been held in a chronic state of excitement over something or nothing; and, of course, when their owner for the first time lets go, they begin to feel their real state, and the result of habitual strain must be unpleasant. ”

“ In a certain sense, we are all Jumpers; under sudden excitement, as of a blow, or a violent, unexpected sound, any person, even not very nervous, may jump and cry, somewhat as these Jumpers do, though not with all the manifestations of the Jumpers. Hysterical women, jumping and shrieking on slight excitement, we have all seen. ”

“ It is the intensity of the excitement which produces the expression; the stronger it is, the more numerous are the paths through which the nervous tension forces its way; as it increases, it overcomes all obstacles and resistance confronting it [164] in other paths impassable till that movement, and contracts muscles which till then had remained neutral. ”

“ The heart is supposed to be the seat of the affections because mental emotion stimulates the nervous system and acts upon the heart as the centre of all organic functions. A healthy natural excitement will cause the heart to vibrate more firmly and evenly; but an unhealthy excitement, like fear or anger, will cause it to beat in a rapid and uneven manner. Contrarily, despondency, or a lethargic state of mind, causes the movement of the blood to slacken. ”

“ Among the causes of nervous exhaustion this same truth is manifest—that excessive demands upon the individual exciting the complex emotions of anxiety, worry, are largely responsible for inducing this affection. We believe, indeed, that hard work, unaccompanied by emotional excitement, seldom injures either man or woman. ”

“ The absence of sound, the inability to see for more than a few feet, the sense of isolation which every group experiences, the strange surroundings, the uncertainty of the future, the idea that some untoward event may happen,—all contribute to produce a suppressed excitement almost akin to nervousness. ”

“ But if the words by which this excitement is produced are in themselves powerful, or the images and feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with them, there is some danger that the excitement may be carried beyond its proper bounds. ”

“ And then came that odd little incident of the nurse to connect me with the past by a new form of excitement. I have to confess that it was excitement largely compounded of wonder and distress. A dull ache told me that sensation was returning to a deadened nerve, and that where I had supposed there was paralysis at least there was going to be reaction and perhaps a pang.
For by this time I had passed through that process which is commonly known as “getting over it.” That is, a new self was living a new life on a new plane of existence. ”

“ Many a time had I read and heard of the capacity human beings have of experiencing joys purely nervous. Nearly all present human pleasures are based upon the fineness and susceptibility of the nerves to receive and impart magnetic impressions. ”

“ With the warm and passionate temperaments, enthusiasm had reached to frenzy, while, with the cold and passionless, it smouldered, a hidden fire, ready to burst out into lurid flame upon the first occasion of excitement. ”

“ Similarly in great delight, especially as manifested by children who have its display less under control, there are visible variations in the intensity of feeling shown—fits of laughter and dancing about, separated by pauses in which smiles, and other slight manifestations of pleasure, suffice to discharge the lessened excitement. Nor are there wanting evidences of mental undulations greater in length than any of these—undulations which take weeks, or months, or years, to complete themselves. We continually hear of moods which recur at intervals. ”

“ There are moments in which the intensity of nervous strain seems to make every sense trebly acute, in which, without knowing it, we are aware of every detail of sight and sound that forms the material setting for a moment of great emotion. ”

“ He who remembers his own adolescence, or who watches the boy or girl of that age, sees the excitement in the readiness to laugh, cry, fight or love that is so striking.
Undoubtedly the mother-stuff of all emotion is the feeling of excitement. Before any emotion reaches its characteristic expression there is the preparatory tension of excitement. Joy, sorrow, anger, fear, wonder, surprise, etc., have in them as a basis the same consciousness of an internal activity, of a world within us beginning to seethe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It riveted my eyes this line—this channel of colour burnt fiercely beneath my lids.
I could see nothing but it; it seemed everywhere, to fill the room, to scorch into my brain, this palpitating, throbbing, crimson line. That terrible impulse of blind excitement was rapidly drawing me into itself—the impulse that counts nothing, knows nothing, reckons nothing but itself; that will buy the present hour at any sacrifice—that accepts everything, ignores everything but that one moment it feels approaching. This impulse urged me, pressed me, strained violently upon me. ”

“ Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things mainly to be done—to keep the delicate brain from the evil of the present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, and to break the habit of passion. ”

“ All that I had ever dreamed or pictured to myself of a soldier's enthusiasm was faint and weak, compared to the rush of sensations I now experienced. There must be a magic power of ecstasy in the approach of danger,—some secret sense of bounding delight, mingled with the chances of a battle,—that renders one intoxicated with excitement. ”

“ And then she said to me this morning, “How unhappy, I always think, one always is, when there is nothing and nobody as one may say, about one to amuse one. It makes me so nervous.” She eats, drinks, snores, and simply the being stupid, and silly, and vacant the learned body calls nervous. ”

“ Events so strikingly opposite in their character and influences succeed so rapidly one upon another that the mind is kept in one whirl of excitement, and at length accustoms itself to change with every phase of circumstances; and between joy and grief, hope and despondency, enthusiasm and depression, there is neither breadth nor interval,—they follow each other as naturally as morning succeeds to night. ”

“ The nervous balance has been upset by the shock (we call them "shocking accidents") , and the emotional joy of escape, the joy of recovered life, asserts itself in what appears to the onlooker to be an unseemly, an unfeeling laugh. ”

“ To carry the inquiry to this point would be, however, to take it into a somewhat speculative and metaphysical region, and we have perhaps done well not to attempt to analyze further the joy of emotional expansion. We must be content to regard the profound satisfaction of emotion as due to a widespread motor excitement, the elements of which we cannot yet completely analyze. ”