Effects of Worry and Nerve Tension
Few mothers realize to what a great extent constipation may be termed a nervous disorder. I confess that I used to laugh at the suggestion, so firmly convinced was I that it was a purely functional trouble. But there came a time when I was convinced that in my own case, and probably in the experience of many others, it is largely nervous. Most housekeepers rise in the morning just long enough before breakfast to dress, prepare the meal, and get the wage-earners off to work at a certain time. Every minute is so planned that the most possible may be accomplished in a short time. After breakfast the children must be dressed and started off for school, the table cleared, the dishes washed, and all the other duties of a housekeeper and mother performed. On arising from her bed,—even from laying herself down there the night before,—the mother has in mind all there is for her to do through the day, and in what order duties must be done, that all may be accomplished. Now, stop and think for a moment; are not these early morning hours filled with the feeling of hurry—of the necessity for haste to accomplish what the day holds? Is not every nerve on a tension? Analyze your morning feelings, and see if this is not so. You have no time to give thought to the needs of your own physical organism; indeed, I doubt if you would even provide food for yourself if there were not others to be fed. Some of us are most scrupulous in seeing that the children’s habits are kept regular, and we watch over them to see that their bodies are kept in condition to ward off disease. But for ourselves we have no thought; we never stop to think that the cultivation of a habit in our own bodies whereby the waste of our system shall be thrown off regularly, requires thought and care. The realization of the truth of all this came to me one week when I concluded that I was cured of this trouble. I wondered what had made the change, and stopped to think of all I had been doing the previous months. The fall sewing was all done, the house had been cleaned, the last of the fruit had been put up, and I had no particular thing to do, for which the housework had to be hurried. I had been living “on my nerve,” and that week the tension had been removed. That opened my eyes. I resolved to rise half an hour earlier, and do my work more leisurely, and, most of all, not to allow myself to give thought to the day’s work for one and one-half hours after breakfast. It was a simple resolution, but a bit hard to abide by sometimes when I found duties almost forcing themselves upon me before their time. Do not misunderstand me, and think that I do nothing for that length of time. I do; but I work leisurely. After the leisure has accomplished its purpose, I work as fast as ever. Every day I hold to my resolution, the body performs its functions as naturally as could be possible; and almost invariably on the days I do not, it fails to throw off the accumulated waste. I made this discovery only after spending a great many dollars for the cure of this trouble, which I considered chronic, and the performing of many exercises that I now consider unnecessary for the women who do their own housework. What we need more than anything else is the dropping of the tension we keep on ourselves,—a determination to take things more leisurely at the beginning of the day.—American Motherhood.