Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of NervousnessCarroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Science
Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
Carroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Nervous system -- Hygiene
aunt's conventional pride was echoed by the laws and the in-laws, and
positive, later peremptory objections were urged against her entering
nursing. Again the headaches returned, the physical expression of her
emotional unhappiness, and finally, almost in recklessness, certainly
in desperation, she cast her lot in the self-effacing demands of a
student-nurse's life in a city hospital, far from family and friends.
How shall we tell of the next three years? Training, reeducation,
evolution?--some of all perhaps. They were years of much travail.
Physical wholeness was won promptly through the wholesome habits of
active, daily effort, routine, regularity and rational diet. There was
suffering--months of suffering, under correction, for rebellion had
long been a habit, and hospital discipline is military in character.
But she had given her pledge, and fear-conscience and love-conscience
were later augmented by duty-conscience, and she never seriously
thought of deserting. Cheer expression is demanded in the nurse's
relations with her patients, and irritability and impatience slowly
faded through hourly touch with greater suffering; and the cheer habit
grew into cheer feeling. The old storms of anger seemed incongruous in
the imperturbable atmosphere of the hospital, moreover her dignity as
a nurse could not be risked. Thus was she helped till the solidity of
self-control made her safe. Her truly formidable battle was with fear
--no one can know what she faced alone on night duty. Her dread of the
dark was overcome painfully when through helpful counsel she gained an
intelligent insight into her defect, and was inspired to apply for
night duty in excess of her regular schedule. Later, at her own
request, she performed alone the last duties for the dead, that she
might put fear under her feet. Her dread of negroes gradually gave
place to a better understanding of the race through the daily
association of ministration on the ward, reenforced by personal
confidence in her own strength and skill, growing out of a wholesome
training in self-defense--a training her love for athletics and her
growing understanding of her fear-weakness moved her to take on her
off-duty time. She became competent; anxious to help, her fineness of
intuition and her capacity for devotion with her vision of service
made her in every way worthy. And finally her fear of the Lord was
lost in a wholesome faith in His "Well-done!"
To-day, hers is a life of peace. Emotional instability and
wretchedness have been displaced by habitual right feeling.
Stabilizing her emotions has not impoverished, but enriched her
nature. She has mastered the art of enjoying, for self-interests have
expanded into love for service. To-day she is a capable, efficient,
cheerful, wholesome, self-forgetting woman, filled with a faith in an
able, worthy self--a God-given faith.
CHAPTER XVI
JUDICIOUS HARDENING
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