Outwitting Our Nerves Part 18

Nervous insomnia is something which a part of us makes use of and another part fears. It is a mistake on both sides. Although not in the least dangerous, the habit can hardly be considered a satisfactory form of amus.e.m.e.nt. Nature has provided a better way to spend the night, a way to which she speedily brings us when we choose to let her do it.

We do not have to ask for sleep as for a special boon which may be denied. We simply have to lie down in trust, expecting to be carried away like a child. If our expectation is not at once realized we can still trust, as with relaxed mind and body we lie in calm content, knowing that Nature is, minute by minute, restoring us for another day.

CHAPTER XIV

In which we raise our thresholds

FEELING OUR FEELINGS

Finely Strung Violins

The young girl had been telling me about her symptoms. "You know, Doctor," she said. "I am a very sensitive person. In fact, I have always been told that I am like a finely strung violin." There was pride in every tone of her voice,-pride and satisfaction over possessing an organization so superior to the common clay of the average person. It was a typical remark, and showed clearly that this girl belonged among the nervous folk. For the nervous person is not only over-sensitive, but he accepts his condition with a secret and half-conscious pride as a token of superiority.

It seems that there are a good many kinds of sensitiveness. Whether it is a good or bad possession depends entirely on what kind of things a person is sensitive to. If he is quick to take in a situation, easily impressed with the needs of others, open-doored to beauty and to the appeal of the spiritual, keenly alive to the humorous, even when the joke is on himself and the situation uncomfortable, then surely he has a right to be glad of his sensitiveness. But too often the word means something else. It means feeling, intensely, physical sensations of which most people are unaware, or reacting emotionally to situations which call for no such response. It means, in short, feeling our feelings and liking to feel them. There seems to be nothing particularly praiseworthy or desirable about this kind of sensitiveness. If this is what it means to be a "finely-wrought violin," it might even be better to be a ba.s.s drum which can stand a few poundings without ruin to its const.i.tution.

"But," says the sensitive person, "are we not born either violins or drums? Is not heredity rather than choice to blame? And what can a person do about it?" These questions are so closely bound up with the problems of nervous symptoms of indigestion, fatigue, a woman's ills, hysterical pains and sensations, and with all the problems of emotional control, that we shall do well to look more carefully into this question of sensibility, which is really the question of the relation of the individual to his environment.

Selecting Our Sensations

Reaction and Over-Reaction. Every organism, if it is to live, must be normally sensitive to its environment. It must possess the power of response to stimuli. As the sea-anemone curls up at touch, and as the tiny baby blinks at the light, so must every living thing be able to sense and to react to the presence of a dangerous or a friendly force. Only by a certain degree of irritability can it survive in the struggle for existence. The five senses are simply different phases of the apparatus for receiving communications from the outside world. Other parts of the machinery catch the manifold messages continually pouring into the brain from within our bodies themselves. These communications cannot be stopped nor can we prevent their impress on the cells of the brain and spinal cord, but we do have a good deal to say as to which ones shall be brought into the focus of attention and receive enough notice to become real, conscious sensations.

Paying Attention. If a human being had to give conscious attention to every stimulus from the outer world and from his own body, to every signal which flashes itself along his sensory nerves to his brain, he would need a different kind of mind from his present efficient but limited apparatus. As it is, there is an admirable provision for taking care of the messages without overburdening consciousness. The stream of messages never stops, not even in sleep. But the conscious mind has its private secretary, the subconscious, to receive the messages and to answer them.

During any five minutes of a walk down a city street a man has hundreds of visual images flashed upon the retina of the eye. His eye sees every little line in the faces of the pa.s.sers-by, every detail of their clothing, the decorations on the buildings, the street signs overhead, the articles in the shop-windows, the paving of the sidewalks, the curbings and tracks which he crosses, and scores of other objects to most of which the man himself is oblivious. His ear hears every sound within hearing distance,-the honk of every horn, the clang of every bell, the voices of the people and the shuffle of feet. Some part of his mind feels the press of his foot on the pavement, the rubbing of his heel on his stocking, the touch of his clothing all over his body, and all those so-called kinesthetic sensations,-sensations of motion and balance which keep him in equilibrium and on the move, to say nothing of the never-ending stream of messages from every cell of every muscle and tissue of his body.

Out of this constant rush of stimuli our man gives attention to only the smallest fraction. Whatever is interesting to him, that he sees and hears and feels. All other sensations he pa.s.ses by as indifferent. Unless they come with extraordinary intensity, they do not get over into his consciousness at all.

"Listening-in" on the Subconscious. The subconscious mind knows and needs to know what is happening in the farthermost cell of the body. It needs to know at any moment where the knees are, and the feet; otherwise the individual would fall in a heap whenever he forgot to watch his step. It needs to know just how much light is entering the eye, and how much blood is in the stomach. To this end it has a system of communication from every point in the body and this system is in constant operation. Its messages never cease. But these messages were never meant to be in the focus of attention. They are meant only for the subconscious mind and are generally so low-toned as to be easily ignored unless one falls into the habit of listening for them. Unless they are invested with a significance which does not belong to them, they will not emerge into consciousness as real sensations.

Psychic Thresholds. Boris Sidis has given us a word which has proved very useful in this connection. The limit of sensitivity of a cell-the degree of irritability-he calls the stimulus-threshold. [59] As the wind must come in gusts to drive the rain in over a high doorsill, so must any stimulus-an idea or a sensation-come with sufficient force to get over the obstructions at the doorway of consciousness. These psychic thresholds do not maintain a constant level. They are raised or lowered at will by a hidden and automatic machinery, which is dependent entirely on the ideas already in consciousness, by the interest bestowed upon the newcomer. The intensity of the stimuli cannot be controlled, but the interest we feel in them and the welcome given them are very largely a matter of choice.

[59] Sidis: Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology, Chap. x.x.x.

Each organism has a wide field of choice as to which ideas and which physical stimuli it shall welcome and which it shall shut out. We may raise our thresholds, build up a bulwark of indifference to a whole cla.s.s of excitations, shut our mental doors, and pull down the shades; or we may lower the thresholds so that the slightest flicker of an idea or the smallest pin-p.r.i.c.k of a sensation finds ready access to the center of attention.

Thresholds and Character. There are certain thresholds made to s.h.i.+ft frequently and easily. When one is hungry any food tastes good, for the threshold is low; but the food must be most tempting to be acceptable just after a hearty meal. On the other hand, a fairly constant threshold is maintained for many different kinds of stimuli. These stimuli are always bound together in groups, and make appeal depending upon the predominating interest. As anything pertaining to agriculture is noticed by a farmer, or any article of dress by a fas.h.i.+onable woman, so any stimulus coming from a "warm" group is welcomed, while any from a "cold" group is met by a high threshold. The kind of person one is depends on what kind of things are "warm" to him and what kind are "cold." The superman is one who has gained such conscious control of his psychic thresholds that he can raise and lower them at will in the interests of the social good.

Thresholds and Sensations. The importance of these principles is obvious. The next chapter will show more of their influence on ideas and emotions; but for the present we will consider their lessons in the sphere of the physical. Psychology speaks here in no uncertain terms to physiology. Whoever becomes fascinated by the processes of his own body is bound to magnify the sensations from those processes, until the most insignificant message from the subconscious becomes a distressing and alarming symptom. The person whose mental ear is strained to catch every little creaking of his internal machinery can always hear some kind of rumble. If he deliberately lowers his thresholds to the whole cla.s.s of stimuli pertaining to himself, there is small wonder that they sweep over the boundaries into consciousness with irresistible force.

The Motives for Sensitiveness. Sensitiveness is largely a matter of choice, but what determines choice? Why is it that one person chooses altruism as the master threshold that determines the level of all the others, while another person who ought to be equally fine lowers his thresholds only to himself? What makes a person too interested in his own sensations and feelings? As usual there is a cause.

The real cause back of most cases of chronic sensitiveness is an abnormal desire for attention. Sometimes this love of attention arises from an under-developed instinct of self-a.s.sertion, or "inferiority complex." If there is a sense of inadequacy, a feeling of not being so important as other people, a person is quite likely to over-compensate by making himself seem important to himself and to others in the only way he knows. All unconsciously he develops an extreme sensitiveness which somehow heightens his self-regard by making him believe himself finely and delicately organized, and by securing the notice of his a.s.sociates.

Or, again, the love of attention may be simply a sign of arrested development, a fixation of the Narcissistic period of childhood which loves to look at itself and make the world look. Or there may be lack of satisfaction of the normal adult love-life, a lack of the love and attention which the love-instinct naturally craves. If this instinct is not getting normal outlet, either directly through personal relations.h.i.+ps or indirectly through a sublimated activity, what is more natural than that it should turn in on itself, dissociate its interest in other things and occupy itself with its own feelings, and at the same time secure the coveted attention through physical disability, with its necessity for special ministration?

In any case there is likely to develop a general overreaction to all outside stimulation, a hypersensitiveness to some particular kind of stimulus, or a chronic hysterical pain which somehow serves the personality in ways unknown to itself. No one "feels his feelings" unless, despite all discomfort, he really enjoys them. A hard statement to accept perhaps, but one that is repeatedly proved by a specialist in "nerves"!

Determining Causes

Accidental a.s.sociation. In many cases, the form which the sensitiveness takes is merely a matter of accident. Often it is based on some small physical disability, as when a slight tendency to take cold is magnified into an intense fear of fresh air.

Sometimes a past fleeting pain which has become a.s.sociated with the stream of thought of an emotional moment-what Boris Sidis calls the moment-consciousness-is perpetuated in consciousness in place of the repressed emotion. "In the determination of the pathology of hysteria, the accidental moment plays a much greater part than is generally recognized; if a painful affect-emotion-originates while eating but is repressed, it may produce nausea and vomiting and continue for months as an hysterical symptom." [60]

[60] Freud: Selected Papers, p. 2.

One of Freud's patients, Miss Rosalie H--, found while taking singing-lessons that she often choked over notes of the middle register, although she took with ease notes higher and lower in the scale. It was revealed that this girl, who had a most unhappy home life, had, during a former period, often experienced this choking sensation from a painful emotion just before she went for her music lesson. Some of the left-over sensations had remained during the singing, and as the middle notes happen to involve the same muscles as does a lump in one's throat, she had often found herself choking over these notes. Later on, while living in a different city and in a wholly different environment, the physical sensations from her throat muscles, as they took these middle notes, brought back the a.s.sociated sensations of choking,-without, however, uncovering the buried emotion. [61] Many a painful hysterical affliction is based on just such mechanisms as these. As Freud remarks, "The hysteric suffers mostly from reminiscences." [62]

[61] Ibid, p. 43.

[62] Ibid, p. 5.

Subconscious Symbolism. Sometimes, as we have seen, the form which a hypersensitiveness a.s.sumes is not determined by any physical sensation, either past or symbolism which acts out in the body the drama of the soul.

Facing the Facts. Whatever the motives and whatever the determining causes, hypersensibility is in any case a feeling of feelings which is not warranted by the present situation. Hypersensitiveness is never anything but a makes.h.i.+ft kind of satisfaction. Despite certain subconscious reasoning, it does not make one more important nor more beloved. Neither does it furnish a real expression for that great creative love-instinct whose outlet, if it is to bring satisfaction, must be a real outlet into the external world. An understanding of the motives is helpful only when it makes clear that they are short-sighted motives and that the real desires back of them may be satisfied in better ways.

Some Lowered Thresholds

As the public appet.i.te for specific cases appears to be insatiable, we will give from real life some examples of low thresholds which were raised through re-education. One hesitates to write down these examples because when they are on paper they sound like advertis.e.m.e.nts of patent medicines. However, there is no magic in any of these cures, but only the working out of definite laws which may be used by other sufferers, if they only know. Re-education through a knowledge of oneself and the laws at work really does remarkable things when it has a chance.

"Danger-Signals" without the Danger. There was the man who had queer feelings all over his body, especially in his head and stomach, and who considered these sensations as danger-signals warning him to stop. This man had worked up from messenger boy to a position next to the president in one of the transcontinental railroad systems. On the appearance of these "danger-signals" he had tried to resign but had been given a year's leave of absence instead. Half the year had gone in rest-cure, but he was still afraid to eat or work, and believed himself "done for." After three weeks of re-education he saw that instead of having overdrawn his capital, he had in another sense overdrawn his sensations. He went away as fit as ever, finished his leave of absence doing hard labor on his farm, and then went back to even harder tasks, working for the Government in the administration of the railroads during the war. He is still at work.

Enjoying Poor Health. There was the woman who had been an invalid for twenty years, doing little else during all that time than to feel her own feelings. Because of the distressing sensations in her stomach, she had for a year taken nothing but liquid nourishment. She had queer feelings in her solar-plexus and indeed a general luxury of over-feeling. She could not leave her room nor have any visitors. She was the star invalid of the family, waited on by her two hard-working sisters who earned the living for them all.

Her sisters had inveigled her to my house under false pretenses, calling it a boarding-house and omitting to mention that I was a doctor, because "she guessed she knew more about her case than any doctor." For the first week I got in only one sentence a day,-just before I slipped out of the door after taking in her "liquid nourishment." But at the end of the week I announced that thereafter her meals would be served in the dining-room. When she found that there was to be no more liquid nourishment, she had to appear at the family table. After that it was only a short time before she was at home, cooking for her sisters. When she saw the role she had been unconsciously playing, she could hardly wish to go on with it.

Feeling His Legs. Mr. R. suffered from such severe and distressing pains in his legs that he believed himself on the verge of paralysis. He was also bothered by a chronic emotional state which made him look like a "weepy" woman. His eyes were always full of tears and his chin a-quiver, and he had, as he said, a perpetual lump in his throat. Under re-education both lump and paralysis disappeared completely and Mr. R. took his wife across the continent, driving his machine with his own hands-and feet.

A Subconscious a.s.sociation. Mr. D.'s case admirably ill.u.s.trates the return of symptoms through an unconscious a.s.sociation. He was a lawyer, prominent in public affairs of the Middle West, who had been my patient for several weeks and who had gone home cured of many striking disabilities. Before he came to me, he had given up his public work and was believed by all his a.s.sociates to be afflicted with softening of the brain, and "out of the game" for good. From being one of the ablest men of his State, he had fallen into such a condition that he could neither read a letter nor write one. He could not stand the least suns.h.i.+ne on his head, and to walk half a mile was an impossibility. He was completely "down and out" and expected to be an invalid for the rest of his life.

But these symptoms had one by one disappeared during his five-weeks stay with me. He had done good stiff work in the garden, carried a heavy sack of grapefruit a mile in the hot sun, and was generally his old self again. Now he was back in the harness, hard at work as of old. Suddenly, as he sat reading in his home one evening, all his old symptoms swept over him,-the pains in his head and legs, the pounding of the heart, the "all-gone" sensations as though he were going to die on the spot. He became almost completely dissociated, but through it all he clung to the idea which he had learned,-namely that this experience was not really physical as it seemed but was the result of some idea, and would pa.s.s. He did not tell any one of the attack, ignored it as much as possible, and waited. In a few minutes he was himself again. Then he looked for the cause and realized that the article he was reading was one he had read several months previous, when suffering most severely from the whole train of symptoms. When the familiar words had again gone into his mind, they had pressed the b.u.t.ton for the whole physiological experience which had once before been a.s.sociated with them. This is the same mechanism as that involved in Prince's case, Miss Beauchamp, who became completely dissociated at one time when a breeze swept across her face. When Dr. Prince looked for the cause, he found that once before she had experienced certain distressing emotions while a breeze was fanning her cheek. The recurrence of the physical stimulation had been sufficient to bring back in its entirety the former emotional complex.

Another Kind of a.s.sociation. One of my women patients ill.u.s.trates another kind of a.s.sociation-mechanism, based not on proximity in time but proximity of position in the body. This woman had complained for years of "bladder trouble" although no physical examination had been able to reveal any organic difficulty. She referred to a constant distress in the region of the bladder and was never without a certain red blanket which she wrapped around her every time she sat down. During psycho-a.n.a.lysis she recounted an experience of years before which she had never mentioned to anybody. During a professional consultation her physician, a married man, had suddenly seized her and exclaimed, "I love you! I love you!" In spite of herself, the woman felt a certain appeal, followed by a great sense of guilt. In the conflict between the physiological reflex and her moral repugnance, she had shunted out of consciousness the real s.e.x-sensation and had replaced it with a sensation which had become a.s.sociated in her subconscious mind with the original temptation. Since the nerves from the genital region and from the bladder connect with the same segment of the spinal cord, she had unconsciously chosen to mix her messages, and to cling to the subst.i.tute sensation without being in the least Conscious of the cause. As soon as she had described the scene to me and had discerned its connection with her symptoms, the bladder trouble disappeared.

Afraid of the Cold. Patients who are sensitive to cold are very numerous. Mr. G.-he of the prunes and bran biscuits-was so afraid of a draft that he could detect the air current if a window was opened a few inches anywhere in a two-story house. He always wore two suits of underwear, but despite his precautions he had a swollen red throat much of the time. His prescription was a cold bath every morning, a source of delight to the other men patients, who made him stay in the water while they counted five. He was required to dress and live like other folks and of course his sensitiveness and his sore throat disappeared.

Dr. B--, when he came to me, was the most wrapped-up man I had ever met. He had on two suits of underwear, a sweater, a vest and suit coat, an overcoat, a bear-skin coat and a Jaeger scarf-all in Pasadena in May!

Besides this fear of cold, he was suffering from a hypersensitiveness of several other varieties. So sensitive was his skin that he had his clothes all made several sizes too big for him so that they would not make pressure. He was so aware of the muscles of the neck that he believed himself unable to hold up his head, and either propped it with his hands or leaned it against the back of a chair.

He had been working on the eighth edition of his book, a scientific treatise of nation-wide importance, but his eyes were so sensitive that he could not possibly use them and had to keep them shaded from the glare. He was so conscious of the messages of fatigue that he was unable to walk at all, and he suffered from the usual trouble with constipation. All these symptoms of course belonged together and were the direct result of a wrong state of mind. When he had changed his mind, he took off his extra clothes, walked a mile and a half at the first try, gave up his constipation, and went back to work. Later on I had a letter from him saying that his favorite seat was an overturned nail-keg in the garden and that he was thinking of sawing the backs off his chairs.

Miss Y-- had worn cotton in her ears for a year or two because she had once had an inflammation of the middle ear, and believed the membrane still sensitive to cold. There was Miss E--, whose underwear always reached to her throat and wrists and who spent her time following the sun; and Dr. I--, who never forgot her heavy sweater or her shawl over her knees, even in front of the fire. The procession of "cold ones" is almost endless, but always they find that their sensitiveness is of their own making and that it disappears when they choose to ignore it.

Fear of Light. Fear of cold is no more common than fear of light. Nervous folk with half-shut eyes are very frequent indeed. From one woman I took at least seven pairs of dark gla.s.ses before she learned that her eye was made for light. A good example is furnished by a woman who was not a patient of mine at all, but merely the sister of a patient. After my patient had been cured of a number of distressing symptoms-pain in the spine, sore heels, a severe nervous cough, indigestion and other typical complaints,-she began to scheme to get her sister to come to me.