After your evening meal, take a quiet walk, go to bed _and sleep_. You should occasionally spend from Saturday midday to Monday morning in bed, with blinds drawn, living on milk, seeing nobody and doing _nothing_. The deepest degradation of the Sabbath is to fill it with odd jobs which have accumulated through the week.
Do not get out of bed too early in the morning, but rise in time to eat your breakfast slowly, attend to the toilet, and catch the car without haste. If your occupation be an indoor one, rise an hour earlier, and walk or cycle quietly to work.
Take a warm bath followed by a cold douche on rising. If no warm after-glow follows, use tepid water. Keep your body warm; your head cool.
Be continent. Nerve-tone and sexual delights are not compatible. Matrimony, while a convenient cloak, is no excuse for lust.
Try suggestion for fears and impulses (see Chapter XVIII), for it is useless to try to "reason them out", though it is useful for a brief period each day to try deliberately to turn the mind away from the obsession, by singing or whistling, gradually prolonging the attempts.
Rest, to prevent the manufacture of more waste products, the elimination of those present, and the generation of nerve-strength from nourishing food are the things that cure. Chapters XIX and XX deal with the drug treatment.
Do not Worry. Whatever your trouble is, it is useless to
"Look before and after, and sigh for what is not"
for the future cannot be rushed nor the past remedied. All patients reply promptly that they "can't help" worrying, when in truth they do not try.
Work never hurt anyone, but harassing preoccupation with problems which no amount of thought will solve drives many thousands to early graves. Anger exhausts itself in a few minutes, fatigue in a few hours, and real overwork with a week's rest, but worry grows ever worse. Ponder Meredith's lines:
"I _will_ endure; I will not strive to peep Behind the barrier of the days to come."
"Look on the bright side!" said an optimist to a melancholy friend.
"Then polish up the dull one!" was the sound advice tendered.
One cannot open a periodical without being exhorted to train one's memory for a variety of reasons. The neuropath needs a system of forgetfulness. Lethe is often a greater friend than Mnemosyne.