Читать книгу Self-Help for Your Nerves: Learn to relax and enjoy life again by overcoming stress and fear - Dr. Weekes Claire - Страница 20

If you have this type of breakdown you will notice that, as already mentioned, you have certain symptoms as a fairly constant background to your day, while others come from time to time. For example, the churning stomach, sweating hands and rapidly beating heart are more or less always with you, while fear-spasms, palpitations, ‘missed’ heartbeats, pains around the heart, trembling turns, breathlessness, giddiness and vomiting come in attacks, at intervals. The constant symptoms are those of sustained fear, hence their chronicity, while the different recurring attacks are the result of varying intensity in sustained fear, hence their periodicity.

The treatment of all symptoms depends on a few simple rules. When you first read them you may think, ‘This is too simple for me. It will take something more drastic to cure me.’ In spite of this, you will need to be shown how to apply this simple treatment and may often have to re-read instructions.

The principle of treatment can be summarized as:

Facing.

Accepting.

Floating.

Letting time pass.

There is nothing mysterious or surprising about this treatment, and yet it is enlightening to see how many people sink deeper into their breakdown by doing the exact opposite.

Let us look again briefly at the person described in the last chapter, the person afraid of the physical feelings aroused by fear, and see if we can pinpoint his own treatment of his breakdown.

First, he became unduly alarmed by his symptoms, examining each as it appeared, ‘listening in’ in apprehension. He tried to free himself of the unwelcome feelings by tensing himself to meet them or by pushing them away, agitatedly seeking occupation to force forgetfulness. In other words, by fighting or running away.

Also, he was bewildered because he could not find cure overnight. He kept looking back and worrying because so much time was passing and he was not yet cured, as if this thing were an evil spirit which could be exorcized if only he, or the doctor, knew the trick. He was impatient with time.

Briefly, he spent his time:

Running away, not facing.

Fighting, not accepting.

Arresting and ‘listening in’, not floating past.

Being impatient with time, not letting time pass.

Now let us consider how you can cure yourself by facing, accepting, floating and letting time pass.

We will first consider cure of the constant symptoms and then of the recurring attacks.