Recapitulatory

Why Worry?
by George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

(Page 15 of 17)

And found no end in wandering mazes lost.

Paradise Lost.

We have reviewed the various phases of worry and the elements out of which worry is assembled. It has been seen that exaggerated self-consciousness blocks effort through fear of criticism, ridicule or comment. The insistent habit of mind in the worrier has been found to permeate the content of thought, and unfavorably to influence action. The fact has been pointed out that the obsession to do the right thing may be carried so far as to produce querulous doubt and chronic indecision - hence worry.

It has been pointed out that over-anxiety on the score of health (hypochondria) aggravates existing symptoms, and itself develops symptoms; that these symptoms in turn increase the solicitude which gave them birth. Attention has been called to the influence of over-anxious and fretful days in precluding the restful state of mind that favors sleep, and to the influence of the loss of sleep upon the anxieties of the following day; in other words, worry prevents sleep, and inability to sleep adds to worry.

We have seen that doubts of fitness lead to unfitness, and that the worry of such doubts, combined with futile regrets for the past and forebodings for the future, hamper the mind which should be cleared for present action.

The injurious effect upon the nervous system of these faulty mental states has been emphasized, together with their influence as potent underlying causes of so-called nervous prostration, preparing the worrier for breakdown from an amount of work which, if undertaken with tranquil mind, could have been accomplished with comparative ease.

The question is, will the possessor of these faulty mental tendencies grasp the importance of giving thought to the training that shall free him from the incubus? He certainly has the intelligence, for it is among the intelligent that these states are mostly found; he certainly has the will-power, for lack of will-power is not a failing of the obsessed. The question is, can he bring himself to make, at the suggestion of another, a fundamental change of attitude, and will he take these suggestions on faith, though many seem trivial, others, perhaps, unreasonable, and will he at least give them a trial? I hope so.

In the next sections will be summed up such commonplace and simple suggestions as may aid emergence from the maze of worry. Many of the suggestions have been scattered through preceding sections. The worrier and folly-doubter is more likely to be benefited by trying them than by arguing about them, and it is within the realms of possibility that some may come to realize the truth of the paradox that he who loses himself shall find himself.

XVI.

Maxims Misapplied

"Beware! yet once again beware!
Ere round thy inexperienced mind,
With voice and semblance falsely fair,
A chain Thessalian magic bind, - "

Thomas Love Peacock.

A friend of mine has a highbred Boston terrier named "Betty." Betty is a bundle of nerves, has a well-developed "New-England Conscience," and among other deviative (not degenerative) signs is possessed of an insatiate desire to climb trees. More than once I have watched her frantic efforts to achieve this end, and she really almost succeeds - at least she can reach a higher point on the trunk of a tree than any other dog of her size I know - say six feet; if the bark is rough, perhaps seven feet would not be an overestimate. Her attempts are unremitting - once the frenzy is on it is with the greatest difficulty that she can be separated, panting and exhausted, from her task.

Betty's case furnishes an illustration of an inborn tendency, fostered neither by precept nor example, persistently to attempt the impossible, and to fret and fume when forced to discontinue. Some children are by inheritance similarly endowed. Imagine Betty a child. It is safe to assume that the mental trait which prompts this expenditure of tireless and misdirected energy has sifted down through her ancestry; the chances are, of course, against its having skipped the generation immediately preceding; in other words, one or both her parents are probably obsessive. It follows almost as a matter of course that the "indomitable will" of the child is viewed with pride by the parent. Instead of being kept within reasonable bounds, and directed into proper channels, it is encouraged in every direction, and fostered by every available means. Prominent among the incentives to renewed activity furnished by the solicitous parent, possibly by the undiscriminating teacher, will be found such precepts as: "In the bright lexicon of youth there's no such word as fail," "Never give up the ship," "Never say die," "There's always room at the top."

Excellent maxims these, for the average child, particularly for the child who is under average as regards ambition to excel. But what of their effect upon the already over-conscientious and self-exacting child? Simply to tighten fetters which should rather be relaxed.

Life becomes a serious problem to a child of this kind at a much earlier age than is generally realized. I have been surprised to learn at what tender years such children have been borne down by a weight of self-imposed responsibility quite as heavy as can burden an adult, without the power of the adult to carry it. Such, for example, are anxieties regarding the health or the financial status of the parents, matters freely discussed without a thought that the child will make these cares his own.

I realize that this line of thought will seem to some revolutionary. A friend to whom I submitted the proposition that it did harm rather than good to encourage a child of this kind to attempt the impossible answered, "Nothing is impossible," and he said it as if he more than half believed it. Here we have the ambitious maxim challenging truth itself. It is certainly not impossible that Mozart wrote a difficult concerto at the age of five; nor is it impossible that, in precocious children of a different type, worry from failure to accomplish the desired may cause profound despair productive of disastrous results.

Nor are such children either geniuses or freaks - they are merely inheritors of the "New England Conscience," so named, I suppose, because the trait has multiplied in this section more rapidly even than the furniture and fittings of the Mayflower. Without underrating the sterling qualities of the devoted band who founded this community it may safely be suggested that neither the effectiveness nor the staying qualities of their descendants will be lessened by a certain modification of the querulous insistence which dominates the overtrained adult in the rearing of the nervously precocious child.

The maxim "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well," if carried to its ultimate conclusion by the over-careful, would justify the expenditure of a quarter of an hour in sharpening a lead-pencil. This maxim, while losing in sententiousness would gain in reason if it ran thus: "What is worth doing at all is worth doing as well as the situation demands." "Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day," an excellent maxim for the shiftless, must not be taken too literally by the individual already obsessed to do to-day twice what he can and quadruple what he ought.

Neither the chronic doubter nor the prematurely thoughtful need be admonished, "Look before you leap," or "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." Such guides to conduct, however effective in the case of three individuals, in the fourth hinder accomplishment by encouraging querulous doubt; - it is for the benefit of the fourth that these pages are written. A revolutionary effort must be made before the worrier and the folly-doubter can throw off his shackles.

It may be questioned whether this sort of philosophy does not savor of laissez-faire, and tend to produce indifference; but the worry against which these efforts are directed is a state of undue solicitude, - due solicitude is not discouraged. Fortunately, as partial offset to the many maxims stirring to increased activity, there exist certain maxims of less strenuous, but not unreasonable, trend, thus: - "What can't be cured must be endured," "Patient waiters are no losers." Such maxims are quite as worthy of consideration by the obsessive as any of those previously cited. While they modify overzeal, they detract in no way from effective, even strenuous, endeavor.