Working with our avoidance behaviour, and the whole process of recovery, means we need to learn to care of ourselves. We need to learn when it is appropriate to pull back and take a break, as long as the break doesn’t go on for weeks. After the break, begin again.

Begin again. These two words can mean so much in the working-through process. If we feel that we are not making progress, if we feel that some of our attempts didn’t quite work out the way we would have liked, let them go and begin again.

Our ultra-sensitivity also increases the sense of guilt we feel towards our families because we can’t do everything we would like to do. We need to be aware of the extra stress caused by this. We can spend a week worrying and feeling guilty over one small incident which we think of as a failure. Guilt only increases our anxiety. It keep us locked into the cycle. We need to let it go, so we can move forward to recovery and to the time when we will be able to do everything we haven’t been able to do.

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After the cause of such a disturbance is addressed, some children slip back naturally into smooth sleep patterns. Others learn new habits or are thrown such disequilibrium that the wakefulness continues. This may be the beginning of sleep difficulties. Recognizing the changes as they occur can help you I watch to see if a desirable pattern is developing.

You can decide how long to allow a child to re-establish a desirable pattern on his own. Several factors should be taken into consideration:

?    His history of being able to settle himself: after his last illness, did he return

quickly to his old patterns or did you need to “draw the line?”

?    His temperament: is he a “natural night owl” who will take any opportunity

to stay awake?

? His needs: how well is he coping during the day with reduced sleep?

? Your needs: how are you coping? How long can you wait it out? When a reasonable amount of time has passed and you have decided that a new habit has formed or has the potential to develop, you can change your response or intervene with the method that works for you.

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The idea was immediately appealing to Sylvia, but certain logistical problems presented themselves. First, she was unable to get her hands on St John’s Wort in the small town where they lived, and second she knew Sam to be highly suggestible and she wanted to be sure that he was really better and that she was not dealing with some half-baked placebo effect instead. Louise told her that the first problem could be easily solved, as she herself would send Sylvia the right type of St John’s Wort. As to the placebo effect, Louise enquired about Sam’s daily activities, and on discovering that he was in the habit of taking vitamins every morning with breakfast, suggested that Sylvia simply inform Sam that the St John’s Wort tablets were additional vitamins and add them to the mix. Sylvia approved of the plan. She knew that Sam was generally distracted by work-related matters at breakfast time and, not being by nature a suspicious person, would readily take whatever tablets Sylvia gave him. ‘He’s lucky I like him,’ she observed, adding ‘I’m a suspicious person; you could never get away with giving me extra pills.’ Nevertheless, she could not push her luck too far and ask him to take vitamins in the evening, which would have constituted a major change in his daily activities and would have elicited suspicion even in a highly trusting husband. In addition, as she noted, T have no control over his lunch.’ So even though St John’s Wort is supposed to be administered three times a day, Sylvia decided he would have to take all three tablets at breakfast. She knew that the herbal remedy was best taken with food and reckoned that ‘if he gets sick, it will be immediate and I will know what caused it.’ She was pleased to see that he tolerated the new pills just fine.

After about five to six weeks, Sylvia noticed a remarkable improvement in Sam’s mood and demeanour, which she characterized as ‘happy but not manic’. He became ‘more balanced, grounded, present and alive, better than he has been in years’. He stopped watching as much television, picked up his old musical interests again and spent more time with the baby. In addition, he became ‘like a sex machine, morning and night, he was ever-ready’ Every time Sylvia walked into the room ‘there was a look in his eye’. She had not seen anything like it in him since they were first married 10 years before.

In fact, Sam was feeling so good that he told Sylvia that he no longer needed the new vitamins. At that point she felt constrained to explain to him why he was feeling so good and why he had better not stop the new vitamins. He took the news like a good sport, and acknowledged that he felt a new lease of positive energy in him. Now he says that he feels so good that he will happily take St John’s Wort for the rest of his life, if that’s what it takes to stay happy.

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