Hydrogen: a 64-year-old man with cramps

Nevertheless he could not find the support he needed, and now he says: „I feel a little lost. Nobody seems to need what I have to offer!“ During the case-taking he jumps from one topic to another, just as he jumped around in his life without finding the stability he so desperately sought. He seems innocent and naive; he communicates in an open and simple way and appears to love the attention of an audience so much that he turns his back on Jayesh, who comments: „I felt excluded!“ Currently he has a very simple job, helping schoolchildren to cross the road safely, and he loves the attention he gets from the children and the pleasure a hug gives him. Jayesh notes a kind of euphoria when he talks about butterflies, sunrise and sunset, flowers and the beauty of nature: „There must have been something so painful in his life that he needs this euphoria to survive.“

In fact he speaks about being unwelcome and unwanted as a child: „I was a very ugly child with huge ears and thick lenses in my glasses. I was very thin, not the sort of child you want to take home and say, ‘Oh how sweet, we’ll keep him!’ I got no support from my family; only when I grew up did I begin to develop an ego of my own.“ (Which means that he has no ego at all.)
Nothing he ever did seemed to make any impression on his family or draw their support and admiration; on the contrary. No one from his family appeared when he won prizes at school or at his school-leaving ceremony. His birthday was forgotten while his sister’s was celebrated. He ended up singing “Happy Birthday” alone in his room, completely abandoned. He tells how his sister locked him out of the house in winter when he went out into the cold to knock icicles off the gutter. He knocked at the door for hours while his sister stuck her tongue out at him through the window until the mother finally asked what that hooligan outside was. „I was only cared for when I was injured, but otherwise no one took any notice of me. My existence was given no significance.“ His mother and grandmother played a game with him by repeatedly asking: „Whose little boy are you?“ When he answered: „I am your little boy!“ they laughed and shouted: „Are you sure? Who told you that?“ Eventually he stopped answering and merely said: „I belong to myself!“ There was no confirmation of his existence, of his being on this planet.

He adopted a boy who was born prematurely and apparently looked as unattractive as he did: „The ugliest baby I ever saw! Nobody wanted to take him!“ He is very proud of his son: „Something has come of him; he has become what I always wanted to be!“ He is devastated when his son is turned against him by his first wife and refuses to acknowledge him, even ignoring him in the street.
He describes his mother as a split personality with two sides: one loving and caring and the other who would tolerate no man near her. She had been abused by her brothers, and she kept her distance from her husband, with whom she hardly spoke. At night she would go out into the nearby desert and talk to herself. My patient fought all his life for her attention by doing things for her or giving her small presents, yet she did not notice him.

He had no place in the family – even his inheritance was taken from him by falsifying family documents and deleting his name. His son never received any recognition while his sister’s children were always praised. Now at last he is happy because he has been warmly accepted by the large family of his current wife.

As a schoolboy he once had a terrible accident. He was run over by a lorry and completely crushed. He looked so bad that his mother did not recognise him at all and turned away. Since then he has had convulsions and is on medication. His worst complaint is the panic-like anxiety that besets him in attacks, a kind of existential fear.

His theme is „To be or not to be – am I somebody or am I nobody?“ – a first indication of a mineral remedy: „How much am I worth?“ The question of the value of the self is very frequent here. In the mineral remedies the question of self-worth appears relatively often. In this case the underlying theme is clear and simple: it is about recognition of one's own existence.

Analysis

Jayesh: „This man identifies with people who have nothing: a little girl whose mother has not come home, a man who lies on the street with only a sleeping bag. His basic feeling is not to be noticed and to have very little identity. He still appears quite childlike and his themes are very simple. He is terribly alone, without support, without parents and without identity.“

Jayesh looked in the „Reference Works“(1): ‘alienated / neglected’ in connection with ‘family’: 46 remedies. Then he searched for remedies that have terms like ‘ostracised’, ‘beautiful’, ‘naive’ or ‘childish’ or the feeling of ‘not being noticed’ in the remedy picture. For Hydrogenium (hydrogen) we find the proving symptom: „I have the feeling that nobody notices me.“
Hydrogen needs the most elementary form of support, much more fundamental than, for example, Calcium or Magnesium. The lack of identity is comparable to that in Anhalonium, but here it is not about sensitivity and reactivity, rather about the kind of support that gives one a certain value. He boasts a little about his worthlessness in a naive way. In the hydrogen proving there is 'boasting' as well as the 'delusion of being dirty, ugly and cut off from the world'. With hydrogen one is abandoned and forsaken, but in a naive way, as in the prenatal state: „He has the delusion of being left alone and despised; he is afraid of poverty, afraid for his money, suffers from insecurity and self-doubt.“ His existence is not recognised by his own mother – even on the mental level.

Prescription: Hydrogenium LM 1

Follow-up

Six months later his tendency to convulse had greatly decreased.