p. 6 | The Mother Who Worries

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 11, 1911

The Mother Who Worries

The disease called worry may be said to assume both a local and a general form. The sufferer from the former may take a cheerful view of every subject except one, but is under the thrall of a single wearing anxiety, which may in time come to poison her whole existence. Worries of this type, when lived with year after year, are apt to become the “fixed ideas,” or obsessions, common in some forms of nervous disease. The other type of worrier,—and it is she whom we know best,—instead of settling upon one chronic anxiety, has a fresh one every hour, and makes little distinction between the important and the trivial. She wakens early in the morning to worry lest the alarm-clock may not go off; she lies awake after retiring to worry over the possibility of unlocked windows and midnight marauders. Her forehead is chronically puckered, her nerves forever on the stretch; the thorns upon her roses of life have grown to such gigantic proportions as almost to hide the blossoms themselves.

Pernicious as the habit of worry is for any one, it is especially so for the wife and mother. It not only affects her own health and happiness, but it clouds the household serenity, infects the servants, and makes the home a less restful place for the tired head of the family. In addition, it has an especially bad effect

upon her children. In the impressionable early years of childhood, when the influences of environment are the strongest, and the imitative instinct is at its height, an atmosphere of serenity or of anxiety about a child may mean a molding of character that all the after-years spent in a different environment can not counteract.

It is by no means the case that the greatest worriers are always those who have the most cause for anxiety; often those who suffer most from the habit would be surprised to discover how little their state of mind depends upon their outward circumstances. It is not altogether a pleasing reflection, but it is none the less true, that our mental states, exalted or otherwise, are very strongly influenced by our bodily condition; and many victims of worry need more than anything else to ask themselves a few frank questions as to the sort of life they are leading.

The worrying woman is frequently the woman who does not have sufficient sleep, or who, though she may spend the proper number of hours in bed, fails to get the real rest that follows the thorough relaxation of the body,—letting the bed hold her, instead of her holding it,—and the emptying of the mind as far as possible of all active thoughts. Insufficient air in the sleeping-room at night has an injurious effect upon the mental as well as the physical health, and the same is true of the lack of open-air life and exercise during the day. Again, all work and no play is said to make Jack a dull boy, and it is quite certain to make Jill not only dull but nervous and irritable, and an easy prey to all manner of anxieties. Recreation, however, should be truly recreating and refreshing, not merely exciting or violently stimulating.

The state of the digestive organs also exerts a pronounced influence upon the mental and emotional condition; the worrying woman is often ill-nourished, and it is well worth while for her to seriously consider whether her meals are taken at regular and proper hours, whether she eats too scantily or too heartily, and whether her menu is a well-balanced and nourishing one, and her food properly cooked and attractively served. She should use special care to keep clear of constipation, in whose train come all sorts of nervous disturbances.

Reorganization of life along some of these lines would, in the case of many women, build up depleted nervous energy to such an extent that the control of the mind would become surprisingly easy. Many women, especially busy mothers, cut short their hours of sleep; eat hurriedly, injudiciously, or irregularly; sleep and work in close rooms; and take no exercise except what they get in their daily round of duties. Yet they are surprised when the resulting nerve-exhaustion begins to show itself in irritability and unnecessary anxiety.

The woman who, when she recognizes the need of rest, can lay aside her work, and drop upon her couch, relaxing entirely in body and mind, and rising in ten or fifteen minutes to resume her occupation with new energy, is using the strongest sort of preventive measure against the inroads of morbid anxiety. A condition of worry usually means fatigue somewhere; and if on the first approach of the state of anxiety, one would make use of this sane procedure, many attacks of worry would be nipped in the bud.

In spite of the energy with which the gospel of relaxation has been preached in the last few years, many women have no knowledge of how to relax, and are not even conscious of their own state of tension. To attain perfect relaxation, one should lie down flat on her back, arms dropping loosely at her sides, and the head falling back easily upon the pillow. Then, beginning with the muscles of the extremities, and thinking of the muscles of each part of the body in turn, she should proceed, by a direct act of will, to render each part limp and heavy, so that if an arm, for example, were lifted by a bystander, it would fall back as if it had no power of its own.

Physical relaxation paves the way for the mental relaxation which should follow,—the emptying of the mind, as far as possible, of definite trains of thought. These procedures may seem difficult at first, but they soon become easy; and their value in resting a tired body and mind, and as an aid in fighting unwholesome thoughts, can not be overestimated. The time spent in such self-repair is far from wasted; even if the housework and the mending-basket are clamoring for attention, the brief resting-space pays for itself many times over in the increased ease with which work is done, as well as in quieted nerves and lessened mental tension.

One of the greatest aids in curing the habit of unnecessary worry is the training of wholesome thoughts to dominate the mind, to the exclusion of mischief-making thoughts. There are plenty of fears and anxieties abroad, to come knocking at the door of our minds; but we can refuse to allow them to enter and take possession, by keeping our mind-house filled with thoughts of cheer and hope and courage. It is possible, to a greater extent than we often realize, to choose our subjects of thought. If, then, we choose those that are wholesome and optimistic, and, when a worry appears in the focus of consciousness, deliberately turn the attention to something else, the anxious train of thought, though we may be conscious of its presence at no great distance, will not get such a hold upon us.

Religious faith, with the ideas of trust, hope, serenity, courage, and Christlikeness that it inculcates, is the sovereign antidote to worry. If faith in a divine Power means anything at all for the life that now is, it ought surely to give one an assurance that above the chances and changes of mortal existence there is a beneficent Love, in the strength of which the soul may safely confide. The case of the worry-ridden woman, then, is by no means hopeless of improvement, if she will examine into the causes and the character of the anxiety that besets her. If her hours of depression are the result of an unhygienic or injudicious way of living, let her call a halt at once, before she has to face the difficult problem of a breakdown. If she is allowing herself indulgence in unwholesome broodings and fruitless speculations, let her summon to her aid all her force of will and all her strength of desire after sane thinking and rational living, and, by holding healthful thoughts deliberately before her mind, endeavor to drive out the morbid imaginings. And if the shadows are real and dark, let her teach herself to fix her eyes steadily upon what sunshine may remain, multiplying wholesome interests for herself, calling into action all her trust in the Heavenly Father, and, when the clouds fall so heavily as to cut off all else, face them with a brave front, and with an unfaltering confidence that there is no cloud without a rift somewhere, to one who seeks it with courage and in faith.—American Motherhood.