Why Worry?

by George Lincoln Walton

The "American Disease" has been adopted abroad, and volumes have been devoted to it. Neurasthenia has been divided into cerebral, spinal, and otherwise, according as the fears and sensations of the patient are referred to one or another part of his body. While the term neurasthenia is becoming daily more familiar to the general public, it is being, on the whole, used, except as a convenient handle, rather less among neurologists. [Footnote: In substantiation of this statement I need only cite the recent contribution of my friend, Dr. Dana, on the "Partial Passing of Neurasthenia.">[ The question has arisen whether the symptoms of neurasthenia are always due to simple exhaustion. Advice regarding method, as well as amount, of work, is coming into vogue. Peterson, in a letter published in Collier's Weekly (November 9, 1907) thus arraigns a patient who has told him he is a practical business man, and that his mind has been so occupied with serious matters that he has been unable to attend to his health.

"You, practical! you, a business man! Why, you never had a serious thought in your life until now—at least not since you were a lad in the country.... Since boyhood you have never given a serious thought to health, home, wife, children, education, art, science, racial progress, or to the high destiny of man. You are simply a collector of money for its own sake, with no appreciation of what it might represent if you were really serious and really a business man or man of affairs. There are many like you in our asylum wards, where they are known as chronic maniacs. Here is one who collects bits of glass, old corks, and pieces of string. There sits another with a lap full of pebbles, twigs and straws."

Courtney (in Pyle's "Personal Hygiene") says, "The brain is an organ which, under proper training, is capable of performing an immense amount of work, provided only that the work is of a varied character and does not produce a corresponding amount of mental disquietude. The importance of the emotions, especially the depressing emotions such as grief, anxiety, and worry, as factors in the brain exhaustion, cannot easily be overestimated."

The obvious corollary to this proposition is that the constitutional worrier is likely to break down under an amount of work which produces no such effect upon the average normal individual.

The only quarrel I have with the name neurasthenia is that it diverts attention from the real condition oftenest to be treated, namely, the faulty mental tendency, and directs attention to an assumed debility which may or may not exist. Misdirected energy, rather than weakness, is the difficulty with one who is ready and anxious to walk miles to satisfy a doubt, or to avoid crossing an open square, and who will climb a dozen flights of stairs rather than be shut up in an elevator. Even the exhaustion that follows long attention to business is quite as often due to worry and allied faulty mental habits as to the work itself. In most cases the phobias, the doubts, and the scruples, instead of being the result of breakdown, must be counted among its principal causes.

This is why simple rest and abstinence from work so often fail to accomplish the cure that should follow if the exhaustion were due simply to overwork. In the "neurasthenic" rest from work only redoubles the worries, the doubts and the scruples, and the obsession to improve his time only adds to his nervous exhaustion. If a European trip is undertaken, the temperament responsible for the original breakdown causes him to rush from gallery to gallery, from cathedral to cathedral, so that no moment may be lost. Not infrequently it so happens that the patient returns more jaded than ever.

The neurasthenic is not infrequently a confirmed obsessive, with all the faulty mental habits of this temperament. If he cannot make up his mind it is not because he is tired, but because this is his natural mental trend. If he drums, twitches, and walks the floor, these movements are not always due to exhaustion, but are habits peculiar to the temperament, habits well worth an effort to eliminate while in health, since they doubtless, through precluding bodily repose, contribute their mite toward the very exhaustion of which they are supposed to be the result. If he cannot sleep it is not simply because he is tired, but because he is so constituted that he cannot bring himself to let go his hold on consciousness until he has straightened out his tangles. If, in addition, one has the hypochondriacal tendency, he may worry himself into complete wakefulness by the thought that he has already irreparably injured himself by missing something of the mystic number, eight or nine, or whatever he may deem the number of hours' sleep essential to health.

It is important that the overwrought business or professional man realize the importance of undertaking no more than he can accomplish without fret and worry; the importance of taking proper vacations before he is tired out; the importance of learning to divert his mind, while he can still do so, into channels other than those connected with his business; above all, the importance of cultivating the faculty of relaxing, and of dismissing doubts, indecisions and fears. He must cultivate what my colleague Dr. Paul succinctly terms "the art of living with yourself as you are." If he would "last out" he must learn to proceed with single mind upon whatever work he undertakes, and with equal singleness of mind apply himself, out of hours, to other occupation or diversion, preferably in the open air. For the most effective work, as well as for peace of mind, it is essential that every thought of one's office be shut out by other interests when there is no actual business requiring attention. Mental relaxation is materially hampered by such persistent thoughts of one's place of business as those cited by Dr. Knapp:

"A striking instance of the sort was related to me by a friend remarkably free from any psychopathic taint. It often happens that he does scientific work in the evening at the Agassiz Museum. When he leaves for the night he puts out the gas and then stands and counts slowly up to a given number until his eyes are used to the darkness, in order that he may detect any spark of fire that may have started while he was at work. This is his invariable custom, but it sometimes happens that when he goes back home so strong a feeling of doubt comes over him lest he may that once have omitted to do this, that he is uncomfortable until he returns to the museum to make sure."

Among the predisposing causes for nervous breakdown none is more potent than the inability of the obsessive to adapt himself to change of plan, and to reconcile himself to criticism, opposition, and the various annoyances incident to his occupation.