CHAPTER XXÂ
About FrightsÂ
HERE are two true stories and a remarkable contrast. A nerve specialist was called to see a young girl who had had nervous prostration for two years. The physician was told before seeing the patient that the illness had started through fright occasioned by the patient's waking and discovering a burglar in her room.
Almost the moment the doctor entered the sick room, he was accosted with: "Doctor, do you know what made me ill? It was frightful." Then followed a minute description of her sudden awakening and seeing the man at her bureau drawers.
This story had been lived over and over by the young girl and her friends for two years, until the strain in her brain caused by the repetition of the impression of fright was so intense that no skill nor tact seemed able to remove it. She simply would not let it go, and she never got really well.
Now, see the contrast. Another young woman had a similar burglar experience, and for several nights after she woke with a start at the same hour. For the first two or three nights she lay and shivered until she shivered herself to sleep.
Then she noticed how tightened up she was in every muscle when she woke, and she bethought herself that she would put her mind on relaxing her muscles and getting rid of the tension in her nerves. She did this persistently, so that when she woke with the burglar fright it was at once a reminder to relax.
After a little she got the impression that she woke in order to relax and it was only a very little while before she succeeded so well that she did not wake until it was time to get up in the morning.
The burglar impression not only left her entirely, but left her with the habit of dropping all contractions before she went to sleep, and her nerves are stronger and more normal in consequence.
The two girls had each a very sensitive, nervous temperament, and the contrast in their behavior was simply a matter of intelligence.
This same nerve specialist received a patient once who was positively blatant in her complaint of a nervous shock. "Doctor, I have had a horrible nervous shock. It was horrible. I do not see how I can ever get over it."
