Hope and Help for Your Nerves

I was given this book by a friend to use in my Little Free Library. However she suggested I read it because I am dealing with anxiety I developed during the pandemic. My friend is a retired psychotherapist. She said she skimmed parts of this book, but she thought it might help me.

Although this book is very dated, I enjoyed reading it. I especially liked that author suggested we deal with anxiety by focusing on our body reactions rather than on the fear which causes them. There are other parts of this book that deal with depression and agoraphobia, but the author’s approach to those problems also seem down to earth and doable.

I also like the idea the author presented of thoughts being bluffing. Scary thoughts are just that. Often they show more are worst case scenarios. Our thoughts must be called for that bluffing. What hasn’t happened yet is not reality. It is only a bluff which raises our anxiety level and causes us to panic.

I’m going to try some of the ideas presented in this book and feel that reading it was indeed helpful. show less

I don't really know how to rate this book. On the one hand, the material and terminology suffers from being more than 50 years out-of-date. On the other hand, it's not entirely wrong. This book is more like looking at an evolutionary ancestor of current anxiety treatment books. Pretty good for the time, but not so great if looked at with current standards.

This book outlines treatment methods for "nervous illness," which today we'd call anxiety (including generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder). Many of these treatment options still exist today under the guise of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). At the time this book was written, I'm assuming the show more treatment methods weren't so formally studied to warrant official names or acronyms, making them sound more like folksy advice or words of wisdom. These treatment methods consist of such things as mindfulness, cognitive defusion, radical acceptance, "riding the wave," reframing, relaxation (deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation) and goal setting and achievement.

Some of the treatment methods in this book are outdated and probably not the greatest ideas anymore. These include heavy sedation (taking barbiturates continually to sleep for several days is one of the treatment suggestions for severe "nervous illness") as well as electroshock treatment before trying antidepressants. Of course, in the 1960s, SSRIs didn't exist, but at that time electroshock treatment wasn't as benign as it is today, so I don't know why it would be so casually suggested.

I found the depression section of this book particularly unhelpful, but being that this is a book about anxiety written in the 1960s, I'm not terribly surprised. While many of the above-mentioned treatment methods are very useful for depression, the author takes the view that depression is a result of emotional exhaustion, and will go away if the emotions are restored. She states that "[d]epression always passes because, as I have already explained, it is a state of emotional depletion, and as emotional reserves rebuild, spirits automatically rise." Which is totally untrue.

Additionally, I found it interesting that many of the "nervous illness" problems that she discusses in the context of housewives seem to be equivalent to Betty Friedan's "problem that has no name."

Finally, there was a brief (one side of a page) afterward to this book written in 1989. I was hoping it would discuss a bit of the changes in treatment methodology that had occurred in the past 30 years. However, it just goes on to mention the book and author's many accomplishments, and that antidepressant treatment is not helpful by itself. Technically true, but discounting SSRIs so quickly does a disservice to all of the people whom antidepressants help. show less

Dated but still helpful. I found the suggested exercises effective. Some of the stories were affirming, even with the 50's-60's style sexist assumptions behind them. .