Читать книгу Self-Help for Your Nerves: Learn to relax and enjoy life again by overcoming stress and fear - Dr. Weekes Claire - Страница 23

From this discussion you will appreciate that true acceptance is the keystone to your recovery, and before you continue with the examination of your other symptoms we should make sure that we understand its exact meaning.

I find that some patients complain, ‘I have accepted the churning in my stomach, but it is still there. So what am I to do now?’ How could they have accepted it while they still complain about it?

Or, as one old man said, ‘After breakfast the churning starts, I can’t just sit there and churn. If I do, I’m exhausted after an hour, so I have to get up and walk round, so what am I to do?’ I said to him, ‘You haven’t really accepted that churning, have you?’ ‘Oh, yes I have,’ he answered indignantly. ‘I’m not frightened of it any more.’

But he obviously was. He was afraid that after an hour’s churning he would be exhausted, so he sat tensely dreading its arrival, shrinking from it when it came and worrying about the exhaustion to follow. Of course the churning, itself a symptom of tension, must inevitably come while so tensely awaited.

I tried to make him understand that he must be prepared to let his stomach churn and to continue reading his paper without dwelling on the churning. Only by so doing would he be truly accepting. In this way, and only in this way, would he eventually reach the stage when it would no longer matter whether his stomach churned or not. Then, freed from the stimulus of tension and anxiety, his adrenalin-releasing nerves would gradually calm down and the churning would automatically lessen and finally cease.

This man was asked to do no more than change his mood from apprehension to acceptance. The symptoms of this type of breakdown are always a reflection of your mood. However, it is well to remember that it may be some time before your body reacts to the new mood of acceptance and that it may continue for a while to reflect the tense, frightened mood of the preceding weeks, months or years. This is one reason why nervous breakdown can be so bewildering and why this old man was bewildered. He had begun to accept, but when the symptoms did not disappear immediately, he quickly lost heart and became apprehensive again, although trying to convince himself that he was accepting. It takes time for a body to establish acceptance as a mood and for this eventually to bring peace just as it took time for fear to become established as continuous tension and anxiety. That is why ‘letting time pass’ is such an important part of your treatment and why I shall emphasize it again and again. Time is the answer. But there must be that background of true acceptance while waiting for time to pass.