Confidential Chats with Girls

by William Lee Howard

To have a highly-sensitive nervous organization is the greatest gift a woman can have; but unless she early knows its value and how to train it, it becomes a curse to her. It will run away with all her impulses—good and bad—and finally separate her from her womanly stability.

We hear a lot about “nervous women and girls;” and that the condition is increasing, due to our rapid way of living and all the pressure of trying to keep up the pace civilization has set. I have lived most of my life among nervous women and girls, and have come to the conclusion that the truth of the matter is, that instead of being due to our rapid pace of living and working, it is really due to the fact that most girls have never been taught to train and control their nervous forces.

These nervous girls and women are mostly those who are not over-nervous, but simply never have developed a nervous force that could keep pace with their physical and emotional activities. It is for this reason that their impulses get the better of them, they crave abnormal excitements, want to be on the go constantly, cannot be contented with simple and honorable home duties and finally merge into a condition where they have to seek the doctor or else go to a sanitarium.

Now just consider for a moment some simple facts. You are taught, early in life, the necessity of exercising in order to develop and be able to control your muscles. You are told to “learn to control your temper,” but unless you are in perfect physical condition, with plenty of reserve nervous force, which is really will force, to use when you need it most, how are you to “control your temper”?

I have tried to tell you how necessary it is that all your organs should be kept in perfect condition by knowing what they are, and what they do and how to help them in doing the right thing. Your teachers are constantly at you to make you train your memory, to keep your mind upon your studies, or else your employer is nagging you to pay more attention to what you are told. And how many of you try to do all this and do not succeed!

“Train every faculty, build up your abilities;” do this or don’t do that; always something is dinned into your ears about what you should do to improve yourself. But the one force, THE power which is at the bottom of every impulse or act, nerve activity, is left unmentioned as a force to be trained first, always and last of all the forces in your body.

“She has such a bad temper” is a remark we hear time after time. “If she would only learn to control her outbreaks; don’t get out of temper,” and similar expressions are only too frequently heard in homes and at school—everywhere. No wonder the helpless girl becomes discouraged and disgusted when she is scolded for petty explosions which she would gladly know how to stop.

A girl without a temper doesn’t amount to much. It is a proper attitude of revolt against personal wrong or injustice. It is the birthright of every normal woman. It belongs to her protective instincts. And what is temper? Just the explosion of a highly nervous temperament. Explosion, mind you, not a decent expression of righteous indignation. The difference is that one is uncontrolled nervous force, the other is the same expression of nervous force held in check, governed by long training and handled for some forthright deeds. It is the preserving of this nervous force so as to be able to utilize it for some valuable work, that makes the difference between wasted energy and useless efforts and applied energy with useful results.

The nervous force in woman, including the brain, is the last to become fully developed, but it should be the first to be considered in your training. It means self-control, and there is no better evidence of good birth, well-poised personality and perfect physical health, than control over one’s impulses and words.

A girl with these qualities will soon get a husband who will be kept as a husband.