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CHAPTER 7 Cure of Recurring Nervous Attacks

Now let us consider the symptoms of breakdown that may occur in attacks – panic spasms, palpitations, slowly beating heart, ‘missed’ heart-beats, trembling turns, inability to take a deep breath, ‘lump in the throat’, giddiness, nausea and vomiting. Depression and sleeplessness are such an important part of the nervous breakdown caused by problem, sorrow, guilt or disgrace, that in order to save repetition I shall leave their discussion until describing this second type of breakdown.

PANIC SPASMS

As already mentioned, fear can produce a state of constant tension, or it can take the form of intense recurring spasms of panic that start in our ‘middle’, just below the breastbone, and seem to spread, like a white-hot flame, all over the body, passing through the chest, up the spine, into the face, down the arms and even down into the groins to the tips of the toes.

If you suffer from these spasms you will probably find that whereas you had some control over them at the beginning of your breakdown, you now seem to have lost control and live in constant dread of them. Your nervous system has become so sensitized to them that it discharges them instantly and swiftly at the slightest provocation. In this sensitized state you remain tense with an apprehension which helps only to increase the frequency and intensity of the spasms. Can you see the vicious circle in which you have placed yourself?

The treatment already offered to cure the symptoms of sustained fear will also cure these spasms of acute fear. You face, analyse and try to understand them, learning how to live with them temporarily, letting time pass to bring recovery.

In the past, as soon as you have felt a wave of panic approaching, you have either tried to control it and stop it coming or have shrunk from it and tried to forget it as quickly as possible. In this way you have lived in constant dread, preparing a battleground for each approaching spasm. Now, just as you examined and described your churning stomach and sweating hands, on the next occasion when you panic I want you to examine this feeling without shrinking from it, describing it to yourself as it sweeps through you.

You will find that fear strikes hardest when it first strikes, and that if you relax and stand your ground and see it through, it quietens and disappears. When you have learnt the trick of relaxing and seeing the wave of fear through to its finish without adding further panic and tension to fear or without trying to arrest it by controlling it, you will begin to lose your fear of fear. You will probably be surprised to realize that a hot feeling in your stomach, a burning feeling up your spine, pins and needles in your hands and a throbbing feeling in your temples could have held such terror for you. You have been terrified of no more than a physical feeling. By analysing fear in this way and seeing it as physical feeling that conforms to a set pattern and disappears with acceptance and relaxation, YOU UNMASK FEAR AND WITH IT YOUR OWN BREAKDOWN, AND YOU FIND THAT ONLY A BOGEY REMAINS.

Other Ways to Conquer Fear

There are ways to conquer fear other than analysing and unmasking it, and some doctors have the experience of watching a sufferer inventing his own method. Some find the cause of the fear and try to conquer and control this, believing that with the cause removed the fear will go. For example, one woman, terrified of the palpitations because of fear of dying during an attack, so succeeded in losing her fear of death, that she lost her fear of the palpitations. I have not suggested that you use this method for this type of breakdown, because there are too many instances where much would be made from nothing and one difficulty overcome only to find a dozen in its place. At this stage I prefer to attack fear itself.

For example, Mrs G. was afraid to walk up the street to go shopping. When she analysed why she was afraid, she found many obstacles causing fear, among them passing the telephone booth where she once collapsed, passing the neighbour with the glittering eye, waiting to be served at the butcher’s, and so on – the list was long. To discover why she feared each obstacle would have been a research programme in itself. Common sense rebels at the thought. It is more satisfactory to find a common approach to meet each obstacle encountered on that journey up the street. Unmasking fear itself is such an approach. No longer afraid of the physical sensation of fear, Mrs G. can float past the telephone booth, past the neighbour’s glittering eye, even into the butcher’s.