Sometimes a woman is entirely conscious of when or why she fails to
get her own way; then she knows what she is fretting about, and she
may even know that the fretting is a strain that keeps her tired and
nervously irritated. Sometimes a woman is entirely unconscious of
what it is that is keeping her in a chronic state of nervous
irritability. I have seen a woman express herself as entirely
resigned to the very circumstance or person that she was
unconsciously resisting so fiercely that her resistance kept her ill
half of the time. In such cases the strain is double. First, there
is the strain of the person or circumstance chronically resisted and
secondly, there is the strain of the pose of saintly resignation. It
is bad enough to pose to other people, but when we pose to other
people and to ourselves too the strain is twice as bad.
Imagine a nerve specialist saying to his patient, "My dear madam,
you really must stop being a hypocrite. You have not the nervous
strength to spare for it." In most cases, I fear, the woman would
turn on him indignantly and go home to be more of a hypocrite than
ever, and so more nervously ill.
I have seen a woman cry and make no end of trouble because she had
to have a certain relative live in the house with her, simply
because her relative "got on her nerves." Then, after the relative
had left the house, this same woman cried and still kept on making
no end of trouble because she thought she had done wrong in sending
"Cousin Sophia" away; and the poor, innocent, uncomplaining victim
was brought back again. Yet it never seemed to occur to the nervous
woman that "Cousin Sophia" was harmless, and that her trouble came
entirely from the way in which she constantly resented and resisted
little unpolished ways.
I do not know how many times "Cousin Sophia" may be sent off and
brought back again; nor how many times other things in my nervous
friend's life may have to be pulled to pieces and then put together
again, for she has not yet discovered that the cause of the nervous
trouble is entirely in herself, and that if she would stop resisting
"Cousin Sophia's" innocent peculiarities, stop resisting other
various phases of her life that do not suit her, and begin to use
her will to yield where she has always resisted, her load would be
steadily and happily lifted.
The nervous strain of doing right is very painful; especially so
because most women who are under this strain do not really care
about doing right at all. I have seen a woman quibble and talk and
worry about what she believed to be a matter of right and wrong in a
few cents, and then neglect for months to pay a poor man a certain
large amount of money which he had honestly earned, and which she
knew he needed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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