Book Review | Hope and Help for Your Nerves | Claire Weekes. 1962. | View on Libby | Author Wikipedia
I am pretty good at putting out fires.
Not actual fires, mind. Fire is terrifying.
Every day problems or snafus. Metadata encoding problems. Where am I going to eat? problems. Coordinating multiple flight schedules. Deciding when to call an expert like a dermatologist or a plumber. Et cetera. I am never so comfortable as when I have something to solve, preferably without having to take anyone else’s opinion into account.
When faced with a situation in which I have no problem to solve, I will invent one. Or try to solve one for the other person in the room. Or try to invent one, and then solve it, for the other person in the room. I am sure that this is not at all annoying.
The result of this is that I am always looking for problems. And how to solve them. Even with there are no problems or they can’t be solved by me. As with many things related to my anxiety, this was more obvious once I quit drinking. Examples:
- What if I get hungry in the middle of the <insert non-regular activity here>?
- Is <insert name here> mad at me? How can I make them not mad at me? (Asking them 5 times seems like the correct solution, right?)
- Will this event be politically tricky up the command line at my job?
- How is my drunk friend going to get home after this event?
- Why is the girl sitting in front of me at the Crew game mad at her boyfriend? Did he cheat on her with the girl sitting over two seats?
- How can I fix <problem xyz> for this other person, since it is causing them pain?
- What if my cancer comes back?
Some of this anticipation is useful. I am the poster child for hangry. If I haven’t eaten, you don’t want to know me. I don’t want to know me. Eating at regular intervals ensures that I don’t turn into that chef on television who is constantly screaming at everyone (I refuse to learn his name).
In other cases, I am borrowing trouble, wasting time and making things awkward. In the worst cases, I am sending the message to those around me that they can’t solve problems for themselves.
I was pretty comfortable with the idea that this was a phenomenon from my personal life. Then, I participated in a 360 survey process – feedback from bosses, peers, and direct reports – and turns out I’m like this at work, too. Because of course I am. I am almost universally reported as super capable and friendly, but doing too much, risking burnout and covering too many things for other people.
Recently, I had an anxiety episode.
I have struggled in the past to explain what this feels like. Anxiety evokes the idea of troublesome thoughts or worries, which is definitely part of it. But anxiety is also a physical experience, and that’s the part that always sends this hypochondriac into a spiral. It is feeling the fight or flight response in your body when no flight or fight response is needed.
(If that makes sense to you, if you can feel what that might be like, feel free to skip the tortured metaphor in the following paragraph.)
Have you ever had someone accidentally sneak up on you? Like, you are cooking with headphones in and your partner comes into the kitchen and you don’t hear them, and when you turn around they’re there and you jump? And then they jump, because knife? If you think of how your chest feels at that moment, how your body feels, it might be tensed up and ready to pounce, to defend yourself, your kitchen and your chopped onions against the marauder.
You may have heard “flight or fight or flee” – this a totally normal threat response. And until you recognize that you know this person and you are safe, your body defaults to “threat.” In a normal person, this happens and it’s wild and then everything returns to baseline for both of you. In a person with anxiety, the second person isn’t needed at all.
One recent Sunday night, after a relatively normal Sunday, my body started to react as if someone had snuck up on me. It’s a strange feeling. My chest felt constricted from inside, like my lungs were wearing a sports bra. My body filled with energy that had nowhere to go. My skin became overly sensitive to the environment. My hands got shaky and my breathing got shallow.
And as you can imagine, for someone who is drawn to solving problems, the situation immediately becomes a problem to solve. “What did this? Was it the Korean reality show we just watched that was bizarrely paced and everyone was fighting? Was it planting plants that I might kill despite my best intentions? Fear that I brought bugs inside with the dirt?”
And then, “I’ve been doing so much to understand my anxiety and reduce it’s frequency. Am I doing it wrong? Why haven’t I been meditating regularly?” And then, “this stupid rain, I haven’t been walking, I need to re-join the gym, I’m so lazy.”
And then, and then, and then…
Fortunately for me and millions like me, there’s a lot of research on this phenomenon. (Thank goodness she’s getting to the book, amiright?)
Hope and Help For Your Nerves was a book recommended by my first therapist 20 years ago. At the time, I couldn’t find it, but I found the sequel really helpful.
In the last 3 years, though, I’ve learned a ton about how my body reacts to things and my anxiety and I saw this book reviewed and thought I’d pick it up. I’ve read a bunch of research that quotes the author, Dr. Claire Weekes.
The book is broken into very small chunks within chapters. Within these chunks, there is a lot of repetition. But also, if someone picked it up and flipped through it to find the chapter on what ails them, they would receive relevant advice and not know it was the third time she’d mentioned it. And also, with this repetition, the core concepts stick with the reader.
It is decidedly strange to read a book about mental health treatment from the 1960s, even while knowing that it was groundbreaking at the time. Dr. Weekes has to dedicate some time in the beginning removing stigma from the term “nervous breakdown”, which was in common use then but I rarely hear now.
a nervous breakdown is no more than an intensification of […] symptoms. Although this book is concerned mainly with the development and treatment of nervous breakdown, almost every symptom complained of by people with “bad nerves” will be found here, and such people will recognize themselves again and again in the patients with breakdown described in the following pages. The symptoms are the same, it but their severity that varies. The person with breakdown feels these symptoms much more intensely. (7, “What is Nervous Breakdown”)
She really believes in the power of sedatives. Upon a re-read, I might try substituting “SSRI” for “sedative” and see if I find those sections as dated. The larger idea still feels true, which is that sometimes things are to the point where you need chemical assistance to calm your body and brain so you can implement non-pharmaceutical advice. It was just strange to read, “Go get you some sedatives!”
She’s also promoting her LPs. “It is often difficult, even impossible, to persuade a husband to read this book. Here my long-playing records have a special mission. Many reluctant hustands find themselves listening despite themselves.” (196, “Long Playing Records”) The book dedicates a lot page space to convincing men in power positions – specifically husbands – that women need intellectual and social stimulation as much as anyone else (duh).
Sometimes, Weekes veers into “just do it” territory. If it was possible to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” in terms of mental illness, this book wouldn’t exist. However, I can understand that it’s a fine line to walk. In terms of anxiety and stress, research does show that how you think about the experience can have a profound effect on its physical severity. I don’t think Weekes is intending this to be bootstrap advice – she specifically says it’s unlikely for you to will yourself out of nervous illness, instead you have to accept it. But in her pep talks at the end, it does start to feel like a little bootstrappy.
Overall, it was fascinating to read the origins of some of the advice I’ve received over the years.
I’m writing this review a couple of months after I finished the book, and I must say, I’ve already employed some of her techniques. Face, Accept, Float, Let Time Pass is a great method. To paraphrase Weekes, sufferers of nervous illness need to face the reality of what is happening, accept it for what it is, float through the feelings, and let time pass. She describes floating as, “Just as a person, floating on smooth water, lets himself be carried this way, that way by the gentle movement of the water, so should the nervously ill let his body “go with” the feelings his nervous reactions bring instead of trying to withdraw from them or race his way through them.” (35, “Floating”). Your body is going to take the time it needs, whether you fight it or not.
Accepting my body’s reactions to the world and not judging myself so harshly for my anxiety seems like a good goal. “So much nervous illness is no more than severe sensitization kept alive by bewilderment and fear.” (p 11, The Three Main Pitfalls…my keyboard really wanted this chapter to be called, The Three Main Pitbulls, but alas.)
In dealing with a difficult person in my life, a situation for which everyone has had some advice, I have found that this book’s deceptively simple advice worked: they’re going to be in your life. You might as well focus on their good qualities so you don’t lose your mind. (p 97, “The Insoluable Problem”). And I’ll be damned if I’m not getting along better with them.
And interestingly, she offers some of the same advice I’ve heard from fitness coaches: a few days does not make a life. “It may have been some trivial event that drew him back, but is it so important to find out? Strangely enough, it always seems so to the sufferer. Actually, it is important only to realize that tomorrow is another day and could be the best yet, however upsetting yesterday or today may have been. Do not measure your progress day by day.” (118, “Do Not Measure Progress Day by Day”)
And so it was, on Monday of The Great Anxiety of April 2024, that I decided to embrace my racing heart.
Face the fact that I have anxiety. Accept that sometimes, my body is going to go rogue. Float through it, keep doing your things but don’t fight the feeling. Let time pass.
(And for those of you with Whitesnake in your head now, I apologize.)
I repeated this out loud to my partner. I told my team at work, “I have anxiety and today is particular bad. I’m here because it’s helpful to have something to do as a distraction.”
Monday sucked. Tuesday was a little better, but aggravated by time in a large crowd at a soccer game. Wednesday I started to come down. Thursday I was exhausted. Friday I was back to normal. Tired, but who’s not tired on Fridays? I had some other feelings, post episode. But the heightened physical anxiety lasted less than a few days, and never blossomed into a full panic attack, thank goodness.
Today, I opened the book to check my citations for the paragraphs above, and my Kindle app opened to Ch 24 – Do’s and Don’ts. I hadn’t noticed it before but it’s a great summary of the advice from the book.
It’s all easier said then done, right? She must know that because it’s followed by a chapter specifically dedicated to cheerleading by Weekes. You can do this.
You are not a problem to solve.