Judith Hoare writes:

[Dr Claire] Weekes distilled her understanding of ‘nervous illness’ into a six-word mantra for overcoming anxiety: face, accept, float, let time pass. In Self-Help for Your Nerves, she said that sufferers usually spent their time counterproductively:

Running away, not facing.
Fighting, not accepting.
Arresting and ‘listening in’, not floating past.
Being impatient with time, not letting time pass.

The nervously ill person usually notices each new symptom in alarm, listens-in in apprehension, and yet at the same time is afraid to examine that too closely for fear he will make it worse. He agitatedly seeks occupation to try to force forgetfulness. This is running away, not facing.

He may try to cope with the unwelcome feelings by tensing himself against them, thinking: ‘I must not let this get the better of me!’ He is fighting, not accepting and floating.

Also he keeps looking back and worrying because so much time has passed and he is not yet cured, as if there is an evil spirit which could be exorcised if only he, or the doctor knew how to do it. He is impatient with time; not willing to let time pass.

Of all those words ‘accept’ or, as she would later explain in notes in the margin, ‘don’t fight’, was fundamental. For it was only with such acceptance that this first uncontrollable fear, the primitive fight-or-flight alarm, which was now being triggered in inappropriate circumstances, could be disabled. It was not just ‘putting up with’ the distress. The objective was to yield entirely to first fear, allow it to burn itself out without adding the fuel of second fear. [Continue reading…]