You have heard much about psychotherapy, suggestion and a lot about certain Movements in church circles. These all proclaim an infallible remedy for “Nerves.” There is a lot of nonsense written about this mental method of healing the nervous and soul-sick person, and, on the other hand, there has been a lot of scoffing at it. There is more in the drilling of our inner selves than the old-time physician has been willing to admit; he has so long been accustomed to consider woman a physical being of bones, flesh and whims, that her real inner self has been sadly neglected. The consequence has been that a number of well-meaning and progressive men have taken up the treatment of troubles without understanding just what relation the gross bodily organs and nerve cells bear to this inner self which we all possess. I shall not bother you with any digression, but get at once to what you can do for yourselves in this matter.
Start early to get inside of yourself; to get at that self which so bothers you at times; the thing which makes you “feel out of sorts,” that “getting mad with yourself;” the feeling that you have not said or done just what you would like to have said or done, but which some uncontrollable impulse, at the moment, made you say and do. This is the inner self, but it belongs to all the other parts of your body; is really the best part of you and will be able to put out the best in you when you have it under full control.
Take a half hour at the time when you can be alone and see into yourself. Search well your heart and learn just what you said or did that you regret. Then find out what caused you to be disagreeable, what has put you out with your better self. Write these thoughts and desires down where you can privately refer to them daily. Take the first mistake and stick to the memory of it so that, when the impulse comes to repeat it, you can check yourself. Drilling yourself this way, you will soon learn to conquer this one fault. Then start in the same way at another fault and conquer that. Don’t try to exercise all the powers of resistance at once, for if you do, there are bound to be failures and too many of these make for discouragement, and then follows recklessness. You would not try to develop a weak back by going from an apparatus meant to develop the thighs to another one for the chest, and then back again for a few moments to that for strengthening the back muscles. No, you stick to the work which develops the back until you have made some decided progress. The inner self, the will, the good girl in you, should be developed in the same way.