Signal of distress

“ Thus that nervous anxiety to hastily repair broken fortunes, and to prevent still greater ruin and distress, embraces nearly all classes, and imprints upon all the movements of the social body a morbid character. ”

“ The fear of a thunder storm, for example, creates profound dread and distress of mind in some people. The dread of dirt, of sharp instruments, of certain insects and animals, of darkness, of an ocean voyage, and of great heights, are common examples of this type of mind-distress of which the characteristic symptom is an inexplicable and uncontrollable dread. The same system of self-discipline and self-control is necessary to effect a cure of these various forms of mind-distress as is necessary in the successful treatment of dread of disease. ”

“ Mental disturbance—grief, worry, excitement—produce immediate physical effect in headache, palpitations and the like. Physical exhaustion—privation, hunger and over-work—on the other hand produce mental depression and collapse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then I realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body. The stress grew and grew. I seemed an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting. For one brief, terrible moment sensation came back to me. That feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. ”

“ Let them remember that a time of distress is a time of dreadful temptation, and all the strength to resist is taken away; poverty presses, the soul is made desperate by distress, and what can be done? ”

“ If disturbances from explosion and from emotional shock, existing with or without traumatism, produce identical results, it is evident that they have a common factor and this common factor can be only the emotion itself. ”

“ The absence of personal fear, the consciousness of security as great in the midst of pestilence and storm, as amidst beds of flowers on a summer morning, and the certainty that whatever appeared evil, or was assuredly painful, must eventually issue in a far greater and enduring good—this general feeling and conviction, I say, would gradually lull, and at last put to entire rest, the physical sensations of grief and fear; so that the man would look upon danger without dread,—accept pain without lamentation. ”

“ As a girl grows older, we ask and expect some measure of restraint in emotional expression as regards any of the physical or moral troubles which call out tears in the child; for the woman who is wise understands that unrestrained emotion and outward expressions of pain or distress are the beginnings of that loss of self-rule which leads to habitual unrestraint, and this to more and more enfeeblement of endurance, and this, again, to worse things, of which more in the future. ”

“ Long days of suffering followed as the tortured nerves recorded their far-spread effects in the waste of the body and that failure of emotional control which even the most courageous feel when long under the tyranny of continuous pain. ”

“ That is the use of dreary days, on which we’re all inclined to raise a yell of bitter grief; they fill us up with woe and dread, so when the gloomy clouds are sped, we’ll feel a big relief. That is the use of every care that fills your system with despair, and rends your heart in twain; for when you see your sorrow waltz, you’ll turn three hundred somersaults, and say life’s safe and sane. ”

“ This pressure may become unbearable, but the expression of the face is less characteristic than we are accustomed to see in suffering people. In oppression and fear there is not generally that effort of will which subdues the reflex movements in voluntary pain. Tears, agitation, spasms, terror, faintness, which appear in the terrible reality of nature, can only be studied in actual sufferers. I had therefore to leave my laboratory and continue my investigations in the hospitals. ”

“ When we review the abnormal or morbid forms of the affective life: destructive impulses, phobias, incurable melancholy, sexual perversions, failure of the moral sense, insanity of doubt, etc., and seek their causes, we at once find some which are proximate or immediate. Among the most frequent are physical maladies, injuries to the head, sudden shocks, as in railway accidents; sorrow, whatever its origin, whether love, ambition, ruin, separation ”

“ And I steered, too tired for anxiety, too tired for connected thought. I had moments of grim exultation and then my heart would sink awfully at the thought of that forecastle at the other end of the dark deck, full of fever-stricken men—some of them dying. ”

“ Brain weary, nerve weary, is there any wonder that he rolls and tosses, throws over his pillow, kicks off the clothes, groans, almost cries aloud in his agony of longing for rest. Poor victim of worry and sleeplessness, how I long to help you get rid of your evil habit and save others from falling into it. ”

“ By a line of humorous reflection already suggested, we may in all cases of worry and moral disturbance reach the consolatory idea that the trouble has, in the first view of it, been grossly exaggerated. At the moment when the sensitive tissue is lacerated the shock of pain blinds us to dimensions; our disappointment fills the outlook, like a thunder-storm. The healthy nervous organism will show its vitality in the rapidity of the recuperative process ”

“ In a word, the condition of the greatest mental distress becomes the condition of the greatest bodily sickness.
The soul is informed of the threatened ruin of the organs that should have been her good and willing servants by a thousand obscure sensations, and is filled with an entire sensation of pain, associating itself to the primary mental suffering, and giving to this a sharper sting. ”

“ Tears are physical emblems of grief, and fellow-feeling calls forth sympathetic tears. Excessive anxiety of mind produces general excitability of body, which soon results in chronic disease. Pleasurable emotions stimulate the processes of nutrition, and are restorative. ”

“ Nature is slow in resenting her injuries; but the memory of them is indelibly impressed, and treasured up for a late, but certain revenge. Nervousness, lowness of spirits, headache, and all the countless train of morbid and deranged corporeal and mental action, are, at once, the cause and the effect of sorrow and anxiety, increased by a constant series of action and reaction. ”

“ Whether the dominant affect be fear, horror or shame, the sufferer strives with all his strength to banish it from his consciousness. The process of witting repression is often assisted greatly by the occupations and activities of the day, and may be apparently successful so long as occupation is able to fill the day and the fatigue it brings leads to sleep at night. ”

“ Dimly she realized that this strange, almost physical soreness, which made him shrink from her presence as a man with weak eyes shrinks from the light, was the outward sign of a secret violence in his soul, yet she ministered helplessly to each passing explosion of temper as if it were the cause instead of the result of his suffering. ”

“ Frightfully bruised, you lie annihilated in the midst of a chaos of nameless pains; then, little by little, thought follows the vertigo. As sight becomes accustomed to distinguishing the objects in the gloom, you begin, so to speak, to recognise yourself in your despair. ”

“ The physical pains, exposures, dangers, colds, heats, sleepless nights, long marches, scant food, poor raiment, &c., would be bad enough,—but we must not loose sight of the mental anguish, that memory, only two faithful, would inflict upon us, and the terror that alternate hope and despair would compel us to undergo. ”

“ A few in fancy feel ill, imagine doctor and nurse, go through the last agony, imagine others standing about weeping and praising them, or perhaps picture themselves as the bystanders and see the imaginary death of a friend and try to weep. ”

“ The physical side of agreeable emotions, as a rule, is a heightened tone of the purely animal functions. The physical side of fear is a complicated series of effects, one of them being the depression of the organic processes, digestion among the rest. In this respect, however, it more or less resembles severe pain, sorrow, shame, remorse, and other states, characterised by the general phrase “depressing passions;” the depression being both mental and physical. ”

“ Thus a hostile situation, an intensely disagreeable situation, may be met with energy: viz. planning, constructive flight, destructive action, or it may be met with a deënergization, confusion, paralysis, hopeless anger. It may cause an intense inner conflict with high constant emotions, fatigue, incapacity to choose the proper action, and the peculiar agony of doubt. ”

“ He is easily influenced by all depressing, discordant and jarring conditions. He catches the expressions of fear and anxiety in the looks, the words, gestures and actions of his attendants, relatives and friends and these intensify his own depression and gloomy forebodings. ”

“ If you have such tender feelings about the dangers and troubles of others, how great must be the estimation you place upon the losses and sufferings of our people! Streams of blood, and a stream of tears for every drop of blood ”

“ For hours we lay thus in all the intensity of an inner storm and stress, which it seemed could not fail to develop us, to mould us, to age us, to leave on us its scars, to bequeath us its peace or remorse or despair, as would some great mysterious dark experience direct from the sources of life. ”

“ The truth that recklessness brings distress, fully acknowledged though it may be, remains inoperative. The mere cognition does not affect conduct—conduct is affected only when the cognition passes out of that intellectual form in which the idea of distress is little more than verbal, into a form in which this term of the proposition is developed into a vivid imagination of distress—a mass of painful feeling. ”

“ Now in both these series of emotions the exciting and quieting feelings and the feelings of strain and relaxation in many cases often play an important part. The quieting feeling combined with displeasure we call depression. Joy and anger are exciting emotions, grief and fear are depressing, hope, sorrow, and fear are straining. When, however, an expected result takes place, or when the emotion of fear disappears, a strong feeling of relaxation generally occurs. Many emotions are also characterised by a fluctuating affective process, sometimes changing in intensity and sometimes in quality. ”

“ It is a small price to pay if emotional symptoms can be traced to a physical cause.
It is well known that virtually any serious organic illness or injury can produce emotional suffering, either in the form of physical pain or in the form of anxiety and depression. Chronic pain is a chronic stress and can lead to the same emotional problems as prolonged stress of any variety: anxiety or depression. Similarly, prolonged severe anxiety or depression can cause physical deterioration and make the body more susceptible to disease. ”

“ How strange it is that a simple feeling of discomfort, impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a nervous thread, a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most lighthearted of men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest! ”

“ And it is from this cause that in human beings bodily suffering expresses itself not only in contortions, but in shrieks and groans—that in anger, and fear, and grief, the gesticulations are accompanied by shouts and screams—that delightful sensations are followed by exclamations—and that we hear screams of joy and shouts of exultation. ”

“ Sudden news of misfortune, or great attacks of fear, have produced instant prostration and bodily suffering, and these cases occur so frequent that all within the range of an ordinary life are familiar with them. ”

“ Many anxieties, tensions, worries, feelings of guilt, anger, and depression lift. The easily distracted, constantly nervous and shifting focus of everyday consciousness gives way to a sense of integration, of being one with yourself and the activity of running. ”

“ To a stranger and bystander, this occupation appeared more dangerous than it really was; in persons habituated to bodily difficulty, the nervous system became gradually braced, and the solids attained that state of rigidity which banished irritability; while the mind, accustomed to scenes of danger, lost that timidity which frequently led to the dreadful disaster. ”

“ And now, one final word in conclusion, for the purpose of drawing together, as it were, the multiplicity of threads which constitute the complex skein of causes and effects, with their remedial measures which cover the wide range of human life's vicissitudes—the interruptions of its would-be harmonies—which take the forms, all too common in these times of stress, of physical disturbance and of mental strain which come to us in the combined and threatening guise of suffering and disease. ”