Читать книгу Self-Help for Your Nerves: Learn to relax and enjoy life again by overcoming stress and fear - Dr. Weekes Claire - Страница 18

Sometimes it is difficult for a person to admit even to himself that he is afraid. One woman insisted that it was the ‘stomach shakes’, not fear, that caused her nervousness. So I avoided the word ‘fear’ when talking to her and tried to convince her that it was ‘tension’ causing her stomach shakes. Her stomach had ‘shaken’ for six months; she had eaten and slept little and looked the wreck she felt, and yet when she finally accepted that the shakes depended on the excretion of adrenalin through tension, she was able to relax and lose them within a month. However, she continued to insist that she had not been afraid of them.

Is it possible to explain the disappearance of this woman’s symptoms in any other way than that she had lost her fear of them? I asked her for an explanation and she said, ‘I disliked them. I lost my dislike of them.’ She had disliked them so much that she had let them dominate her life for six months. Surely the difference between such strong dislike and fear is only one of degree? At least we have to admit that strong dislike of physical sensations is so close to fear that it can cause the same nervous reactions.

Camouflage your fear as intense dislike if it makes you feel happier. This is of no importance, as long as you understand that the physical reactions in your body to intense dislike and fear are so similar that any difference is negligible.