The differential diagnosis between merely nervous symptoms and the
feelings of tiredness and incapacity which come from organic disease
can often be made from the early morning symptoms. Nervous patients
feel their worst in the very early morning. They often wonder how they
will be able to get through the day without breaking down. After an
hour or two they begin to feel somewhat better, though life still
looks blue enough. On towards ten o'clock they think that the sun may
shine for them again. By noon, especially if they have done something
in the meantime, they feel much better, and after their lunch in the
early afternoon they begin to be quite chipper; toward evening they
usually are persuaded that after all life may be worth living, and by
the time they are ready to go to bed--and unfortunately they are
tempted to put off going to bed until rather late because they do feel
so well--they are inclined to wonder how it is possible that they felt
so depressed in the morning. The sufferer from organic disease,
however, always feels best in the early morning and begins to get
tired toward noon; the evening is his time of least enjoyment, and he
is quite ready to get to bed rather early. For the neurotic patient
waking to a sense of his troubles at once, nothing is better than a
prompt lifting up of his mind to God to offer Him the new {48} day
that He has given, no matter how it may turn out, and a readiness to
take things as they come so that His will may be fulfilled.
In nervous patients one would almost have the feeling that their wills
did not wake up nearly so soon as their memories, or even quite so
soon as their intellects, such as they have. Their wills need to be
aroused. For men setting-up exercises of various kinds are
particularly valuable because the will has got to be used in doing
them; many a young soldier who during the war was waked up at the
unearthly hour of five o'clock and had perforce to get out of bed,
found himself full of pains and aches not only of body, but of mind,
and wondered how he could stand it. After ten minutes of setting-up
exercises, with the blood coursing through his muscles and deep
breaths of outdoor air to oxygenate sluggish tissues, he felt like
another man. The days seemed nothing to endure then. For a good many
nervous women the exercise of getting to church after prompt rising
and dressing and then the occupation of mind with deep, serious
thoughts of prayer, will do very much what the setting-up exercises
did for the young soldiers during the war. I have tried this so often
on patients that I know whereof I speak, and I can think of nothing
that does them more good than to have some such enlivening incident
that satisfies their hearts and minds and starts them at once doing
something that will help them throw off the fear thoughts so prone to
crowd in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account