The article below builds upon the book Weekes, C. (1990). Hope and Help for Your Nerves: End Anxiety Now. Penguin. as well as expands on the summary by CalmClinic. Image by storyset on Freepik.
Nervous illness
“My heart beats too fast. My hands tremble and sweat. I feel like there’s a weight on my chest. My stomach churns. I have terrible headaches. I can’t sleep. Sometimes I can’t even leave my house”. These common symptoms of anxiety are “minor” only to the people who don’t suffer from them. But to the millions they affect, these problems make the difference between a happy, healthy life and one of crippling fear and frustration (Weekes, 1990).
In the 1960s Dr. Weekes wrote several books on the topic of anxiety, based on years of experience treating patients. Claire Weekes was a phenomenon back in those days with television appearances, radio shows and audio books. She herself experienced anxiety and had a scientific mindset which led her to get to the core of the anxiety phenomenon and explain it in unexpectedly simple terms. These explanations were not always taken serious by fellow expert practitioners. However, over the years people have time and time again referred to her books as eye opening and providing the solution when all hope was lost. Some call the books a life saver, as can be read in reviews on websites such as amazon.com and audible.co.uk. Below you find a summary of her most important teachings regarding (1) the phenomenon of nervous illness, and (2) recovery.
The phenomenon of nervous illness
“However long you may have been nervously ill, your body is waiting to recover in exactly the same way as the body of a person who has been ill for only a short time. It is important to understand this, because your illness is very much an illness of how you think. It is very much an illness of your attitude to fear and panic. You may think it is an illness of how you feel (it most certainly seems like this), but how you feel depends on how you think, on what you think. Because it is an illness of what you think, you can recover. Thoughts that are keeping you ill can be changed. In other words, your approach to your illness can be changed” (Weekes, 1990).
Before you can accept Dr. Claire Weekes simple four step solution of ‘face-accept-float-let time pass’ you must understand how your nervous system works. In essence you must understand how it produces an interconnected set of overwhelming symptoms. Once you understand the interconnectedness you can start to accept your experience and how it can unravel, slowly back to its normal state.
People suffering from nervous illness complain of some, or all, of the following symptoms: fatigue, brainfog, churning stomach, indigestion, racing heart, banging heart, palpitations, sweating hands, a choking feeling, sleeplessness, depression, diarrhea, the need to urinate often (Weekes, 1990). Often such patients feel that they are on the verge of insanity and feel overwhelmed by the chaotic ‘black box’ experience of how it all connects. They are rarely aware that their symptoms are nervous in origin and follow a well-recognized pattern.
Three main pitfalls can lead into nervous illness. They are sensitization, fear and bewilderment. Sensitization is a state in which our nerves react in an exaggerated way to stress. Over a prolonged time the original trigger of stress (a bad experience) may no longer be the cause of nervous illness. It may simply be the overheated nervous system by itself that produces fear and strange sensations. The problem becomes not the traumatic experience but simply the fear-adrenaline-fear cycle that the person is afraid of and can not get a grip on. This leads to a state of bewilderment where they don’t understand what is going on in their mind and body. They try all kinds of solutions, but can not find a way out of the state of anxiety. That is, unless you understand that it is simply a chain reaction caused by sensitized nerves that need to calm down.
Because of such understanding Dr. Claire Weekes distrusted the methods of psychoanalysis being used during her lifetime. She wanted simpler explanations for anxiety that did not involve sifting through childhood to latch onto (or in some cases, imagine or create) any event that could be blamed for the disorder.
Go to part 2: the recovery method