Abbreviations: MG: Mahesh Gandhi; P: Patient; HG: Hand gesture. The cases have been shortened for readability.
Case 4
The 39-year-old patient began the initial consultation with the sentence: “I don’t even know where to begin.” To her, life was one catastrophe after another. She worried about everything: her relationship, her finances, her work and much more. She had difficulty trusting other people. Physically, she had been diagnosed with cholecystitis. In addition, she suffered from recurrent migraine headaches that improve in the dark. When she has headaches she wants fresh air and needs to dress warmly. She cannot sleep with the window closed. By nature she is very impulsive: she has sudden fits of anger which subside immediately. Another complaint is a foul-smelling leucorrhoea.
The patient is very flighty and unable to plan; she never knows what she will be doing half an hour later. She cannot make decisions or differentiate. When she looks at moving objects she becomes dizzy and nauseous.
When we asked her about the “catastrophe” in her life — those had been her first words — she gave the example of her boyfriend: if her boyfriend wanted to be alone for a while, she immediately thought he no longer loved her. Even that thought felt like the end of the world. As a child she took any criticism from her teachers so seriously that she would have preferred to stop going to school. Everything feels like the end of the world, a kind of “loss”. She feels she is a burden to others and worthless. She cannot set boundaries with people close to her. She needs a great deal of care and attention; care means warmth. Warmth means being embraced, like the loving embrace of a mother. An embrace means safety to her. In an embrace she is protected from the outside world, which makes demands and where one must prove oneself.
Quite abruptly and suddenly the patient said: “I always feel I must change in order to be worth anything. I try to be perfect — there is someone inside me who demands perfection. I want to be independent, to stand on my own feet and not be reliant on external support. Once I saw a toy — it reminded me of a sphere, a closed but living system; it did not need support from outside; that is how I want to be.”
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A spontaneous association like this we call a spontaneous association. This toy was a very surprising aspect that emerged. Therefore we wanted to follow the connection further and see where it led.
The toy resembles a closed glass sphere with living beings inside who depend on support from the outside world, e.g. food. This experience concerns independence. Within the closed sphere one is safe from humiliation or the risk of being thrown out of one’s home. The patient reported a childhood situation in which she was sent away to her grandparents because she had been naughty. At that time the patient felt hurt and humiliated, as if she had been thrown out of the house. She had not wanted to go back home and would have run away into the woods forever if she had had her things with her. Then she became afraid of the dark, lonely wood. After that experience she tried to be as perfect as possible so that she would never be sent away again. Throughout her childhood she had been dependent on her mother and could not do things alone. She had always wished to be loved by her mother as she was.
When the patient was asked to describe the toy in more detail, she said it was like a glass globe, similar to a closed goldfish bowl (HG: circle). “It is a safe place for a baby (begins to cry), it is like an embrace. One is protected and receives care, tenderness and attention. It is like an unborn child; it is like something the child has before birth, but not afterwards.”
At this point she made a connection to an article she had read in a magazine. It was about a baby in China that had been thrown into the street like a sack of rubbish; it had been completely defenceless. She imagined how the baby must have felt — vulnerable and helpless, exposed to deadly dangers. The patient said she had also felt “discarded” when she learned of her husband’s extramarital affair.
In this case there are two important aspects: first the intrauterine experience and the aspect of primal trust, humiliation and respect. On the other hand the patient is completely dependent on others; she feels like she is in a glass sphere that gives her security, protection, tenderness, care and love. Then again she feels disappointed by her husband and by her mother because they tore her out of the protective shell. She experienced this as humiliating and disrespectful. This complete dependence, equivalent to the dependence of a child in the womb, is seen in Lithium. The disappointment, mistrust, humiliation and lack of respect are themes of Muriaticum (the element Chlorine) [7].
Prescription: Lithium muriaticum C200, later 1M was also given.
Follow-up: Six months later the panic attacks had improved significantly. The cholecystitis and the migraine were cured. The feeling of dependence had also improved, although she still needs a lot of support. She had separated from her husband, a sign that she had become much more independent.
The cases were edited and compiled by Sneha Vyas and Devang Shah.
References:
7 – Rajan Sankaran, Structure, Volume 1, Columns, Column 17 and Row 3, Chlorine
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Photos: Shutterstock
Green two-way sign; iQoncept
Single soap bubble; PanicAttack
Category: Cases
Keywords: Anxiety disorder, panic attacks, schizophrenia, trauma, catastrophe, convulsions, confusion, hysteria, lithium series, suffocation, separation.
Remedies: Borium metallicum, Calcium nitricum, Lithium muriaticum, Nitrogenium, Oxygenium
Original article: Interhomeopathy.org
