Although I myself have never received inpatient treatment under Morita therapy, I would like to quote from the writings of Tomonori Suzuki, based on the experiences of patients who have received inpatient treatment.
It is stated that by continuing to engage in necessary daily activities while still experiencing symptoms of Morita therapy for several years, the symptoms and quality of daily life improve.
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From “A Proactive Solution to Neurosis” (Seishin Shobo, April 1980)
Written in 1979, diagnosed as related paranoid social phobia, hospitalized in 1976, age 19 at hospitalization, onset age 13, university student, genetically, father has a tendency towards neurosis.
I am currently 22 years old and a student at Hosei University. From March 1976, at the age of 19, I received inpatient Morita therapy under Dr. Tomonori Suzuki for four months, and it has been over three years since my discharge. My main symptom is social phobia. My father was also nervous, and I was nervous from a young age, timid, prone to worrying unnecessarily, but also very competitive.
Around the age of 13, in the second year of junior high school, I suddenly began to feel pain when making eye contact with others. Gradually, I came to believe that I was inflicting the same pain on others, and I also became aware of their reactions to this, suffering from a sense of guilt. Therefore, when I was talking to someone and they averted their gaze, I was certain that it was to avoid the pain I was inflicting on them. This continued until I was seventeen, in my second year of high school, when I suddenly became bothered by the person sitting next to me, and that became painful for me. From that point on, I was constantly preoccupied with the person next to me, and I suffered from the guilt of knowing that I was inflicting, or rather transferring, the same pain I felt on them. For example, I was certain that when the person sitting next to me turned their face away or stretched, it was because I had inflicted the same pain on them that I felt, and they were feeling fatigued from that pain. Because of this, during classes, I couldn’t lift my head to look at the blackboard, I would hang my head in crowds, and sometimes I would feel so uncomfortable that I would close my eyes, feeling completely out of place. Therefore, interacting with people was extremely painful for me. And it became impossible for me to meet people or attend classes at school. So, when I was seventeen, I tried hypnotherapy. This was done by someone who was not a licensed doctor. I underwent hypnosis about eight times, but it never worked. This hypnotherapy did absolutely nothing to resolve my symptoms. Afterwards, I went to see a doctor at the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Higashiyama University. When I described my symptoms there, I was told something along the lines of, “This kind of condition happens to everyone, and there’s no way to cure it other than yourself. Don’t worry about it too much,” in a short amount of time, and I was just given some medication and sent home. I had come to see a doctor because I couldn’t do anything about it on my own. I had gone to the hospital because I couldn’t help but worry about it no matter how hard I tried, but I was told “don’t worry about it too much,” and I wasn’t treated as if I had an illness at all. I remember leaving the hospital feeling extremely disappointed.
It was during this time that I was fortunate enough to come across Professor Tomonori Suzuki’s book, “One Way of Life,” published by Hakuyosha, and I was admitted to the hospital immediately after graduating from high school. This was in 1976, when I was 19 years old. I felt both a sense of relief and skepticism. During my hospital stay, I followed the hospital’s rules.
I woke up at 7:00, had breakfast at 8:00, lunch at 12:30, dinner at 5:00, did radio calisthenics, sat quietly, kept a journal, played Hyakunin Isshu karuta, and went to bed at 10:00. Life here involved doing what was necessary at each moment within this routine. One of these was various assigned duties. These duties were directly determined by Professor Suzuki. There were many, including cleaning, cooking, shopping, heating the bath, taking care of the dogs and birds, tending to the flowers, bringing in the laundry, cleaning the toilets, and so on. These duties, or other tasks, were of a nature that, even if you felt reluctant or bothered by them, you had to do them because they were assigned, even while harboring those feelings. So even though I was worried about the person working next to me and felt anxious, and even though I was incredibly anxious, I just focused on doing what was right in front of me.
Now, I’d like to talk about this duty. First, there’s the cooking duty. Suzuki Clinic has a large kitchen. Inpatients also help with meals here, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are three kitchen staff members. Meal times are set, so preparations must be completed by that time. Since it’s preparing meals for a large number of people, you can’t be idle. You have to constantly think about what needs to be done next, otherwise the planning will be poor and it will just take a lot of time. This duty is always very busy.
Furthermore, being on bath-heating duty isn’t simply a matter of burning wood. It requires considering the water temperature and the amount of smoke. If you’re not paying attention and produce too much smoke, you’ll immediately get a loud scolding from Mr. Suzuki. Thick smoke is a nuisance to the neighbors, so it must not be produced. This means you can’t be absent-minded even when heating the bath. You burn one piece of wood at a time and observe the smoke coming out of the chimney. You have to consider when to add more wood, how much to adjust the air vents, and keep the water temperature constant—neither too hot nor too cold. If it’s too lukewarm, you have to heat it up quickly. However, burning too much wood at once will produce a lot of thick smoke. To burn as much wood as possible without producing too much smoke, you have to open the air vents all the way, fan the fire with a hand fan to increase the intensity of the fire as you burn the wood. In this state, even if someone was nearby and felt anxious, there was no opportunity to alleviate that anxiety.
Also, the person in charge of bringing in the laundry has to unlock the rooftop door at 10 AM and 4 PM. If you accidentally forget the time, the time for hanging the laundry out is shortened, or the time for bringing it in is delayed, causing the clothes that were just dried to become damp. If it suddenly starts raining, you have to rush to the rooftop and bring the drying clothes inside. On days when it’s your turn, no matter what you’re doing or where you are, you constantly pay attention to the time and the weather.
Then, in spring and autumn, I was extremely busy tending to the roses. In addition to the hospital, Suzuki Tomonori Clinic has a 300-tsubo (approximately 1,000 square meters) rose garden. Protecting these roses from the rain and wind becomes a rose-related commotion. I was immersed in this, and all day long I was preoccupied with rose-related matters.
It’s also difficult when the irises are in bloom. Their long, slender stems support the large flowers, so you have to avoid placing them in windy areas. You have to be careful of the wind’s movement, even at night. If the wind starts to blow, you have to quickly move them to a sheltered spot. Then, to light the charcoal briquettes, you place newspaper on top of the briquettes, put some charcoal embers on top of that, and fan them with a hand fan. If you use a lot of charcoal embers, the briquettes will light more easily, but that will be wasteful. On the other hand, if you use too little, the briquettes won’t light easily. You have to use just the right amount. You’re fanning them with a hand fan, so ash inevitably flies into the air. You have to change your body position and how you fan to prevent the ash from falling on you. In these situations, even if you feel anxious, you don’t have time to fight that anxiety. You don’t have time to resist that anxiety. There was no opportunity to tell myself to “accept anxiety as it is.” There was an attitude there that didn’t consider anxiety or reassurance as issues. There was a state where there was no need to seek reassurance every time I felt anxious. Also, as I mentioned, during my hospitalization, I was in a situation where I had to constantly pay attention to everything. In this environment, as soon as I finished one thing, the next thing was always waiting. And there were things that came suddenly, like bringing in the laundry when it started to rain. I was in a completely unstable environment. However, even in this instability, I experienced things that were stable or enjoyable. For me, who couldn’t move on to the next thing until I always felt reassured about everything, this was a valuable experience. Through this state, not through intellectual understanding of words, but through my own emotional experience, I learned the attitude of doing what is necessary even while feeling anxious.
The environment at Dr. Tomonori Suzuki’s clinic provides ideal conditions for experiencing this kind of attitude. Dr. Suzuki uses the phrase “cultivating such a mindset.” Initially, patients worked with the mindset that “if I do this, I’ll get better,” or “if I do that, I’ll get better,” constantly trying to cure themselves. However, as their hospital stay increased, they were naturally pushed into a position where they had to actively engage with the clinic’s environment. This is the nature of Dr. Suzuki’s clinic. In this state, necessary actions within that environment became apparent, and these were naturally carried out. Even when feelings of dislike or annoyance arose, or when anxiety arose, the mind naturally moved forward, allowing one to do what was necessary at that moment. In this way, the hospital environment of the clinic, acting independently of one’s own thoughts and willpower, allowed necessary actions to be carried out naturally without strain. It was entirely influenced by the environment. I believe that this is how the foundation for an attitude where one can do what is necessary, even when experiencing anxiety symptoms, is built.
After about four months in the hospital, I was discharged. Even after being discharged, whether I was feeling well or not, I went to see Dr. Tomonori Suzuki once a month, from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, to relive the experience. However, for a while, whenever I felt anxious, I would repeat words like “just stay the way you are” to myself, trying to eliminate the anxiety. No matter how much I did that, the anxiety didn’t go away, and instead, I ended up fighting against it even more. It was much less than before I was hospitalized, but I still had some mental conflict.
And as I mentioned earlier, by continuing to visit Professor Suzuki once a month in a form of reliving the experience, after about a year, I no longer needed to tell myself things to seek reassurance in response to my anxiety, and now, two years later, I no longer feel the need to do something because I’m anxious, or to think that it’s okay because I’m at ease. It’s not that I’m trying to prevent it; it simply doesn’t happen. Therefore, the mental conflicts I used to experience have completely disappeared. What I learned through these experiences is that an intellectual understanding of the phrase “as things are” alone is not enough to achieve the mental attitude expressed by that phrase. Furthermore, trying to gain mental stability through an intellectual understanding of phrases like “as things are” is the same as what Professor Morita calls “this is how things should be.” I think this is a point that is difficult for people who are currently preoccupied with neuroticism to understand. I believe that you will only truly understand it once you yourself have achieved that mental attitude. Moreover, mental stability is not something that you obtain through the power of your will, but something that comes naturally through simply living in the present moment, something that happens spontaneously, regardless of your will.
Currently, there are moments when I feel anxious, for example, when someone is sitting next to me. However, I don’t try to eliminate that anxiety, nor do I try to convince myself that it’s okay to feel this way. These anxieties are simply anxiety, nothing more. Since I don’t fight against them, they disappear quickly; I don’t even think about what’s going on. Before my hospitalization, I was constantly preoccupied with how others perceived me, the feeling that I was making them uncomfortable, and this awareness was always etched in my mind. But now, I’ve truly forgotten that I ever struggled with such things. And I’m studying very hard.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have met Dr. Tomoaki Suzuki and received isolation therapy during my hospital stay, which allowed me to reach my current state in such a short time. If you are currently struggling with heart or gastrointestinal anxiety, inability to study, or social phobia, I strongly recommend trying hospitalization, even if only for a short period.
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This person’s symptoms improved to the point of being considered fully recovered two years after a four-month hospital stay. Even so, it took a total of two years and four months, including the hospital stay, to reach this point, during which time they continued to engage in necessary daily activities while leaving their symptoms untreated.
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