Beware Of The “Worry Bug” Value Of Controlled Feelings

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 295, 24 September 1938, Page 4

Beware Of The “Worry Bug” Value Of Controlled Feelings

HO you worry? If so, are you just an average worrier, or are you an expert? Do you know that worry is a luxury and that it increases with practice? Are you also aware of the fact that only very intelligent and sensitive people become “topnotch worriers,” and that if they have the brains rmd imagination enough to become proficient in the “art” of worry they also have the ability to “unlearn” it? Remember that, if you are not a worrier yourself, the next time you look down your nose at some old fussbudget. Worriers are popping up by the hundreds these days. Doubtless, all of them would like to learn a simple method of ridding themselves of the habit of worry, thus eliminating its attendant ills. Now comes Matthew N. Chappell, Ph. D., a real benefactor of the human race, for he knows all about worry and its control. He is a New York consulting psychologist, a member of the psychology department of Columbia University, ahd he says: “The worrier has two kinds of fears; those that have adequate cause and those that have not. The ordinary worrier has only the first kind; expert worriers hav'' both. But any kind of worrier can lose his proficiency by reducing the amount of his worrying. He can shift from unpleasant to pleasant thoughts and thus break the dark cycle

of his thinking.” It is as simple as that. Now, if you are an expert, start worrying about that one! Just say to yourself: “Will it work in my case? But, no, of course not, I’m too far gone!” Dr. Chappell, who has x’ecently written a book called “In the Name of Common Sense: Worry and its Control,” is a man with robust common sense himself. He speaks with scientific accuracy, and he also is able to make the worrier laugh in spite of himself. Thus the battle is more than half won. His autobiographical revelations explain how and why he entered the field of psychology. He says: “I was born in 1900 in an old farmhouse through which a new cement road has recently been constructed, on Tower Hill, just outside of Wakefield, K.I. Early in life I thought I wanted to be an engineer and to that end trained for electrical engineering at Rhode Island State College. I subsequently connected with several companies, but finding no absorbing interest in engineering, I took up psychology at Columbia University, and was soon given a place son ' the teaching staff. “My interest then turned to the nervous system. At this time, peptic ulcer, a condition with which I had been afflicted .'ice I was 15 years old, began to play an important part in my life, inconveniencing < my activities on occasion. Having been treated many timgs with no permanent gains, I undertook to discover what part emotion played in preventing recovery from the condition. [ corrected my own difficulty and that is how the experimental work was started which resulted in my study cf worry and its harmful effects.” On the subject of worry, Dr. Chappell says that it is “a perverted use of the human brain,” a bad habit acquired in the course of -civilisation, '.and was no part of primitive man’s mental equipment. “Worry,” said Dr. Chappell,* discussing the pernicious . habit,, is not natural mode of reacting.' It is a common practice resulting from the complexities of civilisation. Man no longer directs his own destiny. His successes and failures depend not on his ov/n efforts alone, but on forces arising from the organisation he has built around himself—civilisation. “Civilisation gives rise to worry. But worry does not solve the difficulties. It merely creates bigger nroblems to be solved. Worry throws a burden on every part of modem life, creating discord in various fields—international, industrial, social and in family activities. It is about time that we all realised that worry is not a necessity. The mere fact that people do worry under certain circumstances proves nothing and does not justify its continuance. They have merely developed the habit; a futile, detrimental one, serving no useful end. “The worrier develops expertness in calling forth emotion. He maintains an unbroken chain of dark thought. His mind is filled with unpleasant ideas; everywhere he seeks he finds them. His thoughts carry dread,- fear, anxiety. Like the expert pianist, the worrier gives over many hours a day to acquiring his accomplishment. Great proficiency cannot be avoided under such conditions. “Eventually he achieves the peak. Then lie worries to the exclusion of all else. He practices his gloomy emotional ideas in speech as well as in thought. He is a dreary companion. Everything he says has something to do with calamity, disaster. The world is going on the rocks. “If worry, 1o give its concrete definition, is ‘undue preoccupation with painful thoughts,’ the remedy is to break

the chain of unpleasant, unhappy thinking. An accomj lished worrier gathers momentum with each unpleasant thought until he works himself into a panic. Worry furnishes the practice required to arouse the strong emotions with ease.” The cure? Dr. Chappell sums it up briefly: “The emotional practice must be eliminated. The obvious sources of learning—worrying and the discussion of disturbing topics—must be controlled. Forgetting must be given opportunity to reduce the emotional proficiency. The worrier must dispense with anxiety, selfpity and prolonged sorrow. He must direct his thoughts unemotional channels, discuss his troubles with no one except his physician, discourage others from reminding him of his difficulties, and resort to tranquil methods, dispensing with force or the use of ‘will power’ in changing his emotional habits. He must think along pleasant channels, even if he has to retrace his thoughts to periods of a happy childhood, or other times in his life when he has been carefree and hanDV.”

Wondering whether men or women worry most, we asked Dr. Chappell about this. He said: “Men probably worry a little more than women do. This is because a man is, in most cases, more familiar with t ie precariousness of his situation than his wife is. He knows all of the disastrous things that may happen to him, particularly in business. He does not tell his wife about these troubling things, as husbands soon get out of the habit of sharing their business worries with their wives. “Women worry about other things, primarily with regard to the children. The wives are closer to the children, more particularly aware than their husbands of the problems their children are facing. 7. think wives, however, are quite likely to share these worries with their husbands, although the husbands are not quite so apt to take them on. “Then, too, women are more given to worrying about their relations to their husbands than men are to worrying about their relations to their wives. The wife does not have as many important

things to take up her attention as the husband has, so she also worries about little things, household annoyances and so on. “People • are usually most concerned with the things they are working with, and if a woman’s major interests are her domestic affairs and her children and her husband, then she will worry about these, while her husband will do most of his worrying about his work. “While women worry almost as much as men do, they do not suffer with stomach trouble induced by worry to the same extent that men do. They are more likely to have thyroid trouble. “Topnotch worriers worry at all periods. However, when people get to be around 45, and start to realise that their ambitions have not been fulfilled, they feel frustrated and they begin to worry. But a good many things happen to save a person, too. As people get older, beyond the 45-year period, they worry less. They have learned, by trial and. error, how futile it is to worry.” ;