Sometimes a woman is entirely conscious of when or why she fails to get her own way; then she knows what she is fretting about, and she may even know that the fretting is a strain that keeps her tired and nervously irritated.  Sometimes a woman is entirely unconscious of what it is that is keeping her in a chronic state of nervous irritability.  I have seen a woman express herself as entirely resigned to the very circumstance or person that she was unconsciously resisting so fiercely that her resistance kept her ill half of the time.  In such cases the strain is double.  First, there is the strain of the person or circumstance chronically resisted and secondly, there is the strain of the pose of saintly resignation.  It is bad enough to pose to other people, but when we pose to other people and to ourselves too the strain is twice as bad.

Imagine a nerve specialist saying to his patient, “My dear madam, you really must stop being a hypocrite.  You have not the nervous strength to spare for it.”  In most cases, I fear, the woman would turn on him indignantly and go home to be more of a hypocrite than ever, and so more nervously ill.

I have seen a woman cry and make no end of trouble because she had to have a certain relative live in the house with her, simply because her relative “got on her nerves.”  Then, after the relative had left the house, this same woman cried and still kept on making no end of trouble because she thought she had done wrong in sending “Cousin Sophia” away; and the poor, innocent, uncomplaining victim was brought back again.  Yet it never seemed to occur to the nervous woman that “Cousin Sophia” was harmless, and that her trouble came entirely from the way in which she constantly resented and resisted little unpolished ways.

I do not know how many times “Cousin Sophia” may be sent off and brought back again; nor how many times other things in my nervous friend’s life may have to be pulled to pieces and then put together again, for she has not yet discovered that the cause of the nervous trouble is entirely in herself, and that if she would stop resisting “Cousin Sophia’s” innocent peculiarities, stop resisting other various phases of her life that do not suit her, and begin to use her will to yield where she has always resisted, her load would be steadily and happily lifted.

The nervous strain of doing right is very painful; especially so because most women who are under this strain do not really care about doing right at all.  I have seen a woman quibble and talk and worry about what she believed to be a matter of right and wrong in a few cents, and then neglect for months to pay a poor man a certain large amount of money which he had honestly earned, and which she knew he needed.

The nervous conscience is really no conscience at all.  I have seen a woman worry over what she owed to a certain other woman in the way of kindness, and go to a great deal of trouble to make her kindness complete; and then, on the same day, show such hard, unfeeling cruelty toward another friend that she wounded her deeply, and that without a regret.