Читать книгу Self-Help for Your Nerves: Learn to relax and enjoy life again by overcoming stress and fear - Dr. Weekes Claire - Страница 17

No doubt you have recognized some of yourself in this person and it may be a revelation to find that the basis of your mysterious symptoms is, like his, fear.

Whether breakdown be mild or severe, the basic cause is fear. Conflict, sorrow, guilt or disgrace may start a breakdown, but it is not long before fear takes command. Even great sorrow at the loss of a loved one is mixed with fear, the fear of facing the future alone. Sexual problems are most likely to cause breakdown when accompanied by fear or guilt. Guilt opens the door to fear. Anxiety, worry, dread are only variants of fear in different guises.

It could be argued that strain, as distinct from fear, may cause breakdown in certain situations. For example, there is much prolonged strain for a middle-aged woman tending an old, sick parent. However, while she copes from day to day, does not look too far ahead and does not think it too important that she is literally chained to her duties, she can sustain months, years, of such strain. She may ‘bend’ and need help from time to time, but she will not ‘break’.

I once commented on the ability of one woman to carry on for so long in such a situation and was told by her brother, ‘Yes, it is a great strain on Ada, but Ada never did think of herself.’ That was the key to Ada’s endurance. Had Ada listened to her sympathizing friends, begun to feel sorry for herself and come to dread the future, she would have sown the seeds of a nervous breakdown.

Strain may cause severe headaches (Ada had migraine) and physical exhaustion, but unless accompanied by fear it will not cause the incapacity known as nervous breakdown. When work threatens to become beyond our physical strength and our responsibilities demand that we keep going, fear usually comes into the picture and any ensuing breakdown is caused not by the exhaustion, as so many believe, but by the fears it brings.