如何停止焦虑开始新生活-7

"I was clear-headed enough now to face Step III-improve on the worst. As I thought ofsolutions, an entirely new angle presented itself to me. If I told my attorney the wholesituation, he might find a way out which I hadn't thought of. I know it sounds stupid tosay that this hadn't even occurred to me before-but of course I hadn't been thinking, Ihad only been worrying! I immediately made up my mind that I would see my attorneyfirst thing in the morning-and then I went to bed and slept like a log!"How did it end? Well, the next morning my lawyer told me to go and see the DistrictAttorney and tell him the truth. I did precisely that. When I finished I was astonished tohear the D.A. say that this blackmail racket had been going on for months and that theman who claimed to be a 'government agent' was a crook wanted by the police. What arelief to hear all this after I had tormented myself for three days and nights wonderingwhether I should hand over five thousand dollars to this professional swindler!"This experience taught me a lasting lesson. Now, whenever I face a pressing problemthat threatens to worry me, I give it what I call 'the old Willis H. Carrier formula'."At just about the same time Willis H. Carrier was worrying over the gas-cleaningequipment he was installing in a plant in Crystal City, Missouri, a chap from Broken Bow,Nebraska, was making out his will. His name was Earl P. Haney, and he had duodenalulcers. Three doctors, including a celebrated ulcer specialist, had pronounced Mr.Haney an "incurable case". They had told him not to eat this or that, and not to worry orfret-to keep perfectly calm. They also told him to make out his will!These ulcers had already forced Earl P. Haney to give up a fine and highly paid position.So now he had nothing to do, nothing to look forward to except a lingering death.Then he made a decision: a rare and superb decision. "Since I have only a little while tolive," he said, "I may as well make the most of it. I have always wanted to travel aroundthe world before I die. If I am ever going to do it, I'll have to do it now." So he boughthis ticket.The doctors were appalled. "We must warn you," they said to Mr. Haney, "that if you dotake this trip, you will be buried at sea.""No, I won't," he replied. "I have promised my relatives that I will be buried in the familyplot at Broken Bow, Nebraska. So I am going to buy a casket and take it with me."He purchased a casket, put it aboard ship, and then made arrangements with thesteamship company-in the event of his death-to put his corpse in a freezingcompartment and keep it there till the liner returned home. He set out on his trip,imbued with the spirit of old Omar:Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,Before we too into the Dust descend;Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and-sans End!However, he didn't make the trip "sans wine". "I drank highballs, and smoked long cigarson that trip," Mr. Haney says in a letter that I have before me now. "I ate all kinds offoods-even strange native foods which were guaranteed to kill me. I enjoyed myselfmore than I had in years! We ran into monsoons and typhoons which should have put mein my casket, if only from fright-but I got an enormous kick out of all this adventure."I played games aboard the ship, sang songs, made new friends, stayed up half thenight. When we reached China and India, I realised that the business troubles and caresthat I had faced back home were paradise compared to the poverty and hunger in theOrient. I stopped all my senseless worrying and felt fine. When I got back to America, Ihad gained ninety pounds. I had almost forgotten I had ever had a stomach ulcer. I hadnever felt better in my life. I promptly sold the casket back to the undertaker, and wentback to business. I haven't been ill a day since."At the time this happened, Earl P. Haney had never even heard of Willis H. Carrier andhis technique for handling worry. "But I realise now," he told me quite recently, "that Iwas unconsciously using the selfsame principle. I reconciled myself to the worst thatcould happen-in my case, dying. And then I improved upon it by trying to get the utmostenjoyment out of life for the time I had left. ... If," he continued, "if I had gone onworrying after boarding that ship, I have no doubt that I would have made the returnvoyage inside of that coffin. But I relaxed-I forgot it. And this calmness of mind gave mea new birth of energy which actually saved my life." (Earl P. Haney is now living at 52Wedgemere Ave., Winchester, Mass.)Now, if Willis H. Carrier could save a twenty-thousand-dollar contract, if a New Yorkbusiness man could save himself from blackmail, if Earl P. Haney could actually save hislife, by using this magic formula, then isn't it possible that it may be the answer to someof your troubles? Isn't it possible that it may even solve some problems you thought wereunsolvable?So, Rule 2 is: If you have a worry problem, apply the magic formula of Willis H. Carrierby doing these three things-1. Ask yourself,' 'What is the worst that can possibly happen?"2. Prepare to accept it if you have to.3. Then calmly proceed to improve on the worst.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Chapter 3 -What Worry May Do To You~~~~Business men who do not know how to fight worrydie young.-DR. Alexis Carrel.~~~~Some time ago, a neighbour rang my doorbell one evening and urged me and my familyto be vaccinated against smallpox. He was only one of thousands of volunteers who wereringing doorbells all over New York City. Frightened people stood in lines for hours at atime to be vaccinated. Vaccination stations were opened not only in all hospitals, butalso in fire-houses, police precincts, and in large industrial plants. More than twothousand doctors and nurses worked feverishly day and night, vaccinating crowds. Thecause of all this excitement? Eight people in New York City had smallpox-and two haddied. Two deaths out of a population of almost eight million.Now, I have lived in New York for over thirty-seven years, and no one has ever yet rungmy doorbell to warn me against the emotional sickness of worry-an illness that, duringthe last thirty-seven years, has caused ten thousand times more damage than smallpox.No doorbell ringer has ever warned me that one person out of ten now living in theseUnited States will have a nervous breakdown-induced in the vast majority of cases byworry and emotional conflicts. So I am writing this chapter to ring your doorbell andwarn you.The great Nobel prizewinner in medicine, Dr. Alexis Carrel, said: "Business men who donot know how to fight worry die young." And so do housewives and horse doctors andbricklayers.A few years ago, I spent my vacation motoring through Texas and New Mexico with Dr.O. F. Gober-one of the medical executives of the Santa Fe railway. His exact title waschief physician of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Hospital Association. We got totalking about the effects of worry, and he said: Seventy per cent of all patients whocome to physicians could cure themselves if they only got rid of their fears and worries.Don't think for a moment that I mean that their ills are imaginary," he said. "Their illsare as real as a throbbing toothache and sometimes a hundred times more serious. Irefer to such illnesses as nervous indigestion, some stomach ulcers, heart disturbances,insomnia, some headaches, and some types of paralysis."These illnesses are real. I know what I am talking about," said Dr. Gober, "for I myselfsuffered from a stomach ulcer for twelve years."Fear causes worry. Worry makes you tense and nervous and affects the nerves of yourstomach and actually changes the gastric juices of your stomach from normal toabnormal and often leads to stomach ulcers."Dr. Joseph F. Montague, author of the book Nervous Stomach Trouble, says much thesame thing. He says: "You do not get stomach ulcers from what you eat. You get ulcersfrom what is eating you."Dr. W.C. Alvarez, of the Mayo Clinic, said "Ulcers frequently flare up or subsideaccording to the hills and valleys of emotional stress."That statement was backed up by a study of 15,000 patients treated for stomachdisorders at the Mayo Clinic. Four out of five had no physical basis whatever for theirstomach illnesses. Fear, worry, hate, supreme selfishness, and the inability to adjustthemselves to the world of reality-these were largely the causes of their stomachillnesses and stomach ulcers. ... Stomach ulcers can kill you. According to Lifemagazine, they now stand tenth in our list of fatal diseases.I recently had some correspondence with Dr. Harold C. Habein of the Mayo Clinic. Heread a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association of Industrial Physiciansand Surgeons, saying that he had made a study of 176 business executives whoseaverage age was 44.3 years. He reported that slightly more than a third of theseexecutives suffered from one of three ailments peculiar to high-tension living-heartdisease, digestive-tract ulcers, and high blood pressure. Think of it-a third of ourbusiness executives are wrecking their bodies with heart disease, ulcers, and high bloodpressure before they even reach forty-five. What price success! And they aren't evenbuying success! Can any man possibly be a success who is paying for businessadvancement with stomach ulcers and heart trouble? What shall it profit a man if hegains the whole world-and loses his health? Even if he owned the whole world, he couldsleep in only one bed at a time and eat only three meals a day. Even a ditch-digger cando that-and probably sleep more soundly and enjoy his food more than a high-poweredexecutive. Frankly, I would rather be a share-cropper down in Alabama with a banjo onmy knee than wreck my health at forty-five by trying to run a railroad or a cigarettecompany.And speaking of cigarettes-the best-known cigarette manufacturer in the world recentlydropped dead from heart failure while trying to take a little recreation in the Canadianwoods. He amassed millions-and fell dead at sixty-one. He probably traded years of hislife for what is called "business success".In my estimation, this cigarette executive with all his millions was not half as successfulas my father-a Missouri farmer-who died at eighty-nine without a dollar.The famous Mayo brothers declared that more than half of our hospital beds areoccupied by people with nervous troubles. Yet, when the nerves of these people arestudied under a high-powered microscope in a post-mortem examination, their nerves inmost cases are apparently as healthy as the nerves of Jack Dempsey. Their "nervoustroubles" are caused not by a physical deterioration of the nerves, but by emotions offutility, frustration, anxiety, worry, fear, defeat, despair. Plato said that "the greatestmistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting tocure the mind; yet the mind and body are one and should not be treated separately!"It took medical science twenty-three hundred years to recognise this great truth. Weare just now beginning to develop a new kind of medicine called psychosomaticmedicine-a medicine that treats both the mind and the body. It is high time we weredoing that, for medical science has largely wiped out the terrible diseases caused byphysical germs--diseases such as smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, and scores of otherscourges that swept untold millions into untimely graves. But medical science has beenunable to cope with the mental and physical wrecks caused, not by germs, but byemotions of worry, fear, hate, frustration, and despair. Casualties caused by theseemotional diseases are mounting and spreading with catastrophic rapidity.Doctors figure that one American in every twenty now alive will spend a part of his lifein an institution for the mentally ill. One out of every six of our young men called up bythe draft in the Second World War was rejected as mentally diseased or defective.What causes insanity? No one knows all the answers. But it is highly probable that inmany cases fear and worry are contributing factors. The anxious and harassed individualwho is unable to cope with the harsh world of reality breaks off all contact with hisenvironment and retreats into a private dream world of his own making, and this solveshis worry problems.As I write I have on my desk a book by Dr. Edward Podolsky entitled Stop Worrying andGet Well. Here are some of the chapter titles in that book:What Worry Does To The HeartHigh Blood Pressure Is Fed By WorryRheumatism Can Be Caused By WorryWorry Less For Your Stomach's SakeHow Worry Can Cause A ColdWorry And The ThyroidThe Worrying DiabeticAnother illuminating book about worry is lion Against Himself, by Dr. Karl Menninger,one of the "Mayo brothers of psychiatry." Dr. Menninger's book is a startling revelation ofwhat you do to yourself when you permit destructive emotions to dominate your life. Ifyou want to stop working against yourself, get this book. Read it. Give it to your friends.It costs four dollars-and is one of the best investments you can make in this life.Worry can make even the most stolid person ill. General Grant discovered that duringthe closing days of the Civil War. The story goes like this: Grant had been besiegingRichmond for nine months. General Lee's troops, ragged and hungry, were beaten.Entire regiments were deserting at a time. Others were holding prayer meetings in theirtents-shouting, weeping, seeing visions. The end was close. Lee's men set fire to thecotton and tobacco warehouses in Richmond, burned the arsenal, and fled from the cityat night while towering flames roared up into darkness. Grant was in hot pursuit,banging away at the Confederates from both sides and the rear, while Sheridan's cavalrywas heading them off in front, tearing up railway lines and capturing supply trains.Grant, half blind with a violent sick headache, fell behind his army and stopped at afarmhouse. "I spent the night," he records in his Memoirs, "in bathing my feet in hotwater and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of myneck, hoping to be cured by morning."The next morning, he was cured instantaneously. And the tiling that cured him was nota mustard plaster, but a horseman galloping down the road with a letter from Lee,saying he wanted to surrender."When the officer [bearing the message] reached me," Grant wrote, "I was still sufferingwith the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured."Obviously it was Grant's worries, tensions, and emotions that made him ill. He was curedinstantly the moment his emotions took on the hue of confidence, achievement, andvictory.Seventy years later, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury in Franklin D.Roosevelt's cabinet, discovered that worry could make him so ill that he was dizzy. Herecords in his diary that he was terribly worried when the President, in order to raisethe price of wheat, bought 4,400,000 bushels in one day. He says in his diary: "I feltliterally dizzy while the thing was going on. I went home and went to bed for two hoursafter lunch."If I want to see what worry does to people, I don't have to go to a library or a physician.I can look out of the window of my home where I am writing this book; and I can see,within one block, one house where worry caused a nervous breakdown-and anotherhouse where a man worried himself into diabetes. When the stock market went down,the sugar in his blood and urine went up.When Montaigne, the illustrious French philosopher, was elected Mayor of his hometown-Bordeaux-he said to his fellow citizens: "I am willing to take your affairs into myhands but not into my liver and lungs."This neighbour of mine took the affairs of the stock market into the blood stream-andalmost killed himself.Worry can put you into a wheel chair with rheumatism and arthritis. Dr. Russell L. Cecil,of the Cornell University Medical School, is a world-recognised authority on arthritis;and he has listed four of the commonest conditions that bring on arthritis:1. Marital shipwreck.2. Financial disaster and grief.3. Loneliness and worry.4. Long-cherished resentments.Naturally, these four emotional situations are far from being the only causes of arthritis.There are many different kinds of arthritis-due to various causes. But, to repeat, thecommonest conditions that bring on arthritis are the four listed by Dr. Russell L. Cecil.For example, a friend of mine was so hard bit during the depression that the gascompany shut off the gas and the bank foreclosed the mortgage on the house. His wifesuddenly had a painful attack of arthritis-and, in spite of medicine and diets, thearthritis continued until their financial situation improved.Worry can even cause tooth decay. Dr. William I.L. McGonigle said in an address beforethe American Dental Association that "unpleasant emotions such as those caused byworry, fear, nagging ... may upset the body's calcium balance and cause tooth decay".Dr. McGonigle told of a patient of his who had always had a perfect set of teeth until hebegan to worry over his wife's sudden illness. During the three weeks she was in thehospital, he developed nine cavities-cavities brought on by worry.Have you ever seen a person with an acutely over-active thyroid? I have, and I can tellyou they tremble; they shake; they look like someone half scared to death-and that'sabout what it amounts to. The thyroid gland, the gland that regulates the body, hasbeen thrown out of kilter. It speeds up the heart -the whole body is roaring away at fullblast like a furnace with all its draughts wide open. And if this isn't checked, byoperation or treatment, the victim may die, may "burn himself out".A short time ago I went to Philadelphia with a friend of mine who has this disease. Wewent to see a famous specialist, a doctor who has been treating this type of ailment forthirty-eight years. And what sort of advice do you suppose he had hanging on the wall ofhis waiting-room-painted on a large wooden sign so all his patients could see it? Here itis. I copied it down on the back of an envelope while I was waiting:Relaxation and RecreationThe most relaxing recreating forces are a healthyreligion, sleep, music, and laughter.Have faith in God-learn to sleep well-Love good music-see the funny side of life-And health and happiness will be yours.The first question he asked this friend of mine was: "What emotional disturbancebrought on this condition?" He warned my friend that, if he didn't stop worrying, hecould get other complications: heart trouble, stomach ulcers, or diabetes. "All of thesediseases," said that eminent doctor, "are cousins, first cousins." Sure, they're firstcousins-they're all worry diseases!When I interviewed Merle Oberon, she told me that she refused to worry because sheknew that worry would destroy her chief asset on the motion-picture screen: her goodlooks."When I first tried to break into the movies," she told me, "I was worried and scared. Ihad just come from India, and I didn't know anyone in London, where I was trying to geta job. I saw a few producers, but none of them hired me; and the little money I hadbegan to give out. For two weeks I lived on nothing but crackers and water. I was notonly worried now. I was hungry. I said to myself: 'Maybe you're a fool. Maybe you willneuer break into the movies. After all, you have no experience, you've never acted atall-what have you to offer but a rather pretty face?'"I went to the mirror. And when I looked in that mirror, I saw what worry was doing tomy looks! I saw the lines it was forming. I saw the anxious expression. So I said tomyself: 'You've got to stop this at once! You can't afford to worry. The only thing youhave to offer at all is your looks, and worry will ruin them I'"Few things can age and sour a woman and destroy her looks as quickly as worry. Worrycurdles the expression. It makes us clench our jaws and lines our faces with wrinkles. Itforms a permanent scowl. It may turn the hair grey, and in some cases, even make itfall out. It can ruin the complexion-it can bring on all kinds of skin rashes, eruptions,and pimples.Heart disease, is the number-one killer in America today. During the Second World War,almost a third of a million men were killed in combat; but during that same period,heart disease killed two million civilians-and one million of those casualties were causedby the kind of heart disease that is brought on by worry and high-tension living. Yes,heart disease is one of the chief reasons why Dr. Alexis Carrel said: "Business men whodo not know how to fight worry die young."The Negroes down south and the Chinese rarely have the kind of heart disease broughton by worry, because they take things calmly. Twenty times as many doctors as farmworkers die from heart failure. The doctors lead tense lives-and pay the penalty."The Lord may forgive us our sins," said William James, "but the nervous system neverdoes."Here is a startling and almost incredible fact: more Americans commit suicide each yearthan die from the five most common communicable diseases.Why? The answer is largely: "Worry."When the cruel Chinese war lords wanted to torture their prisoners, they would tie theirprisoners hand and foot and put them under a bag of water that constantly dripped ...dripped ... dripped ... day and night. These drops of water constantly falling on thehead finally became like the sound of hammer blows-and drove men insane. This samemethod of torture was used during the Spanish Inquisition and in German concentrationcamps under Hitler.Worry is like the constant drip, drip, drip of water; and the constant drip, drip, drip ofworry often drives men to insanity and suicide.When I was a country lad in Missouri, I was half scared to death by listening to BillySunday describe the hell-fires of the next world. But he never ever mentioned the hellfiresof physical agony that worriers may have here and now. For example, if you are achronic worrier, you may be stricken some day with one of the most excruciating painsever endured by man: angina pectoris.Boy, if that ever hits you, you will scream with agony. Your screams will make thesounds in Dante's Inferno sound like Babes in Toyland. You will say to yourself then: "Oh,God, oh, God, if I can ever get over this, I will never worry about anything-ever." (If youthink I am exaggerating, ask your family physician.)Do you love life? Do you want to live long and enjoy good health? Here is how you can doit. I am quoting Dr. Alexis Carrel again. He said: "Those who keep the peace of theirinner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervousdiseases."