Hope and Help for Your Nerves: Learn to Relax and Enjoy Life Again by Overcoming Fear and Nervous Tension

Claire Weekes wrote this in 1962, and it’s still one of the clearest explanations of anxiety and nervous illness I’ve come across. Some of the medical specifics are dated, but the methodology holds up.

I first encountered her ideas through DARE, which draws heavily from this book — reading the original felt like going back to the source.

The fear-adrenaline-fear cycle

The cycle starts when the symptoms themselves scare you.
Your heart races, so you panic about your heart racing.

That panic releases more adrenaline, which makes the symptoms worse, which makes you more afraid.

Asked to pinpoint the beginning of a nervous breakdown, I would say that it is at this moment when the sufferer becomes afraid of the alarming, strange sensations produced by continuous fear and tension and so places himself, or herself, in the circle of fear-adrenalin-fear.

The symptoms aren’t the problem. Your reaction to the symptoms is.

First fear and second fear

Weekes splits fear into two layers.

First fear is the initial adrenaline hit. Racing heart, stomach drop, sudden dread. It’s automatic.
You can’t control it any more than you can stop your knee from jerking when a doctor taps it.

Second fear is what you add on top. “Oh no, here it goes again.” “What if I’m having a heart attack?” “I can’t handle this.”
Second fear dumps more adrenaline into your system, which intensifies the first fear, which triggers more second fear. That’s the cycle.

You can’t stop first fear. But if you don’t add second fear, the first fear runs out of fuel on its own. It just fizzles.

I first read about this distinction in DARE, but the concepts originate here.

Face, Accept, Float, Let time pass

This is the treatment.

Face means don’t run from the symptoms. Don’t try to distract yourself or suppress what you’re feeling. Turn toward it.

Accept means stop fighting.
Let your stomach churn, let your hands sweat, let your heart thump. You don’t have to be calm about it. You just have to be willing to have the symptoms while they’re there.

True acceptance means letting your stomach churn, letting your hands sweat and tremble, letting your heart thump without being too disconcerted by them. It does not matter if at first you cannot do this calmly — who could?

Float means stop tensing against the sensations. Weekes compares it to floating on water, letting yourself be carried rather than fighting the current.
She also calls it “masterly inactivity,” which I found more intuitive than the water metaphor. It means giving up the struggle, going around the mountain instead of trying to climb over it.
You can’t control what your body does here. You can only control whether you clench against it or let it pass through.

Simply let the thought of relaxation be in your mind, in your attitude toward your body. Loosen your attitude. In other words, don’t be too concerned because you are tense and cannot relax. The very act of being prepared to accept your tenseness relaxes your mind, and relaxation of body gradually follows.

Let time pass means stop being impatient with recovery.
Stop checking if you’re better yet. Stop counting the days. Recovery isn’t instant, and watching the clock creates its own tension.

Most people do the exact opposite.
They run instead of facing, fight instead of accepting, tense up instead of floating, and obsess over how long it’s been instead of letting time pass.

Sensitization

The reason all of this happens isn’t that you’re broken or mentally ill.
Your nervous system is sensitized.

Prolonged stress leaves your nerves in a hair-trigger state. They fire off danger signals at the slightest provocation, or for no reason at all.
The palpitations, the jelly legs, the brain fog, the feeling of unreality — these are normal physiological reactions from a nervous system that’s over-reactive. Uncomfortable yes, but not dangerous.

By now you will appreciate that what is known as nervous illness is no more than extreme emotional and mental fatigue usually begun and maintained by fear.

Knowledge helps here. Once you understand why your heart is racing (sensitization, not heart disease), you don’t need to be bewildered by it. And without bewilderment, the fear has less to feed on.

The heart stuff

There’s a good section on cardiac symptoms: racing heart, skipped beats, heart “shakes,” palpitations while falling asleep. Weekes explains them all as normal adrenaline responses that feel terrifying but aren’t dangerous.

The racing heart that hits just as you’re falling asleep is a common one. The instinct is to sit up in panic, which dumps more adrenaline, which makes the heart beat faster. She says to stay lying down and let it pass.

She also covers vasovagal attacks — when the heart slows too much instead of racing. That paralyzed, faint feeling comes from the vagus nerve over-correcting.
It’s the opposite end of the same nervous system over-reaction.

Cardiac symptoms driven by anxiety and sensitization aren’t signs of heart disease.
They’re signs of a nervous system stuck in overdrive.

Setbacks and memory traces

Recovery isn’t a straight line. Even after you think you’re better, old panic can come back.
Weekes calls these memory traces. The brain has learned a habit of fear in certain situations, and sometimes it fires off an old pattern.

A memory trace isn’t a relapse. It’s an echo. If you don’t add second fear, it fades.

Never let the unexpected return of panic, whenever it may strike — even if it comes years after you think it has gone forever — never let it shock you into running away from it. Halt. Go slowly. See the panic through and then quietly go on with what you are doing.

Dos and Don’ts

Weekes ends with a list that condenses the whole book.

1. Do not run away from fear. Analyze it and see it as no more than a physical feeling. Do not be bluffed by a physical feeling.
2. Accept all the strange sensations connected with your illness. Do not fight them. Float past them. Recognize that they are temporary.
3. Let there be no self-pity.
4. Settle your problem as quickly as you can, if not with action, then by glimpsing and accepting a new point of view.
5. Waste no time on “What might have been” and “If only …”
6. Face sorrow and know that time will bring relief.
7. Be occupied. Do not lie in bed brooding. Be occupied calmly, not feverishly trying to forget yourself.
8. Remember that the strength in a muscle may depend on the confidence with which it is used.
9. Accept your obsessions and be prepared to live with them temporarily. Do not fight them by trying to push them away. Let time do that.
10. Remember, your recovery does not necessarily depend “entirely on you,” as so many people are so ready to tell you. You may need help. Accept it willingly, without shame.
11. Do not measure your progress day by day. Don’t count the months, years you have been ill and despair at the thought of them. Once you are on the right road to recovery, recovery is inevitable, however protracted your illness may have been.
12. Remember, withdrawal is your jailer. Recovery lies on the other side of panic. Recovery lies in the places you fear.
13. Do not be discouraged if you cannot make decisions while you are ill. When you are well, decisions will be more easily made.
14. Never accept total defeat. It is never too late to give yourself another chance.
15. Practice, don’t test.
16. Face. Accept. Float. Let time pass.
    If you do this, you will recover.