And found no end in wandering mazes lost.
_Paradise Lost_.
We have reviewed the various phases of worry and the elements out of which
worry is assembled. It has been seen that exaggerated self-consciousness
blocks effort through fear of criticism, ridicule or comment. The insistent
habit of mind in the worrier has been found to permeate the content of
thought, and unfavorably to influence action. The fact has been pointed
out that the obsession to do the right thing may be carried so far as to
produce querulous doubt and chronic indecision--hence worry.
It has been pointed out that over-anxiety on the score of health
(hypochondria) aggravates existing symptoms, and itself develops symptoms;
that these symptoms in turn increase the solicitude which gave them birth.
Attention has been called to the influence of over-anxious and fretful
days in precluding the restful state of mind that favors sleep, and to the
influence of the loss of sleep upon the anxieties of the following day; in
other words, worry prevents sleep, and inability to sleep adds to worry.
We have seen that doubts of fitness lead to unfitness, and that the worry
of such doubts, combined with futile regrets for the past and forebodings
for the future, hamper the mind which should be cleared for present action.
The injurious effect upon the nervous system of these faulty mental states
has been emphasized, together with their influence as potent underlying
causes of so-called nervous prostration, preparing the worrier for
breakdown from an amount of work which, if undertaken with tranquil mind,
could have been accomplished with comparative ease.
The question is, will the possessor of these faulty mental tendencies grasp
the importance of giving thought to the training that shall free him
from the incubus? He certainly has the intelligence, for it is among the
intelligent that these states are mostly found; he certainly has the
will-power, for lack of will-power is not a failing of the obsessed. The
question is, can he bring himself to make, at the suggestion of another,
a fundamental change of attitude, and will he take these suggestions on
faith, though many seem trivial, others, perhaps, unreasonable, and will he
at least give them a trial? I hope so.
In the next sections will be summed up such commonplace and simple
suggestions as may aid emergence from the maze of worry. Many of the
suggestions have been scattered through preceding sections. The worrier and
folly-doubter is more likely to be benefited by trying them than by arguing
about them, and it is within the realms of possibility that some may come
to realize the truth of the paradox that he who loses himself shall find
himself.