Abbreviations: MG: Mahesh Gandhi; P: Patient; HG: hand gesture. The cases have been shortened for readability.
Case 5
A 27-year-old patient with panic attacks. She reports that all symptoms began after her wedding. The decision to marry had been difficult for her. The wedding had taken place only a month earlier, to a man she had known for three years. To her he had long belonged to the family, but she finds the relationship suffocating. Two years earlier they had been on holiday in Prague and she had been alone for an hour. She had felt panicky and became hysterical. She considers her boyfriend, now husband, childish and inept.
Shortly after the wedding the couple had visited the patient's father in New York. One night there she woke up feeling trapped in the marriage; she saw no way out. She immediately woke her husband and demanded a divorce in the middle of the night. She expressed her request very clearly, yet still sought her husband's closeness, pulled him to her and held him tightly. She does not find her husband attractive and often panics, asking herself why she is still married to him. She feels bound, suffocated, like a bird in a cage. She could only put on her wedding ring with great effort. Marriage, for her, means a loss of power. She has a strong desire for freedom, to break out, to explode and to do something great. In her view the marriage prevents her from flourishing. She feels disconnected, not alive. She does not feel free: the feeling of constriction and tightening gradually, but certainly, takes hold of her.
The patient then spoke of an event in her childhood: her father had harassed one of her friends, who reported him. The father left the family and the patient had to take responsibility for her mother and siblings. The family told everyone that the father had gone abroad to earn money. She had to assume the role of head of the household. She hated this role and would have preferred to be independent and free. She felt bitter towards her family because she felt her childhood had been stolen from her. She felt stuck; she had 'a hole in her stomach'. Her lungs also felt tight, she experienced shortness of breath and her life seemed 'stiff, like frozen'. She put it this way: "I want somebody to get me out of here."
Her hobbies include performing arts, acting and writing. When she pursues her hobbies, she feels she can be herself; she then feels as free as a bird, almost as if she could fly. The opposite of this feeling of freedom, she describes, is being locked up, stuck and trapped. She describes the feeling of being trapped as follows: "Being enclosed in a plastic eggshell. It is very small and encloses me completely. I sit crouched, there is not enough room to stand up (she assumes the foetal position). Everything is stuck, no air, I feel like I'm in a coffin."
The patient's chief sensation was a feeling of suffocation, no air, being locked up, trapped and stuck, as if she were a foetus in the eggshell. This is a typical expression for patients who need a remedy from the second row. The construct resembles the womb, which for the patient no longer feels pleasant, warm and cosy, which directly leads us to the right-hand side of the second row. Another indication of the right-hand side is the fact that she wants a divorce from her husband, with whom she has been together for over three years. We see that the energy of the case focuses on separation from the partner who, for her, actually belongs to the family. The patient behaves very interestingly when she demands a divorce from her husband: she clearly states that she wants a divorce, yet at the same time pulls her husband to her and clings to him. Consequently the themes of 'clinging' and 'separation' are present here; the two terms form the main theme of the case. Lithium clings — and exclusively so. Fluorine desires separation. Oxygen has both — clinging and the desire for separation. [8]
Prescription: Oxygenium C200
Follow-up: The panic attacks are much improved. She now has a healthy physical relationship with her husband. She has become the mother of a charming little son. The feeling of suffocation has markedly decreased. She faces the demands of this world more positively than before. Finally she feels like a woman. Her relationship with her sister and her mother has also improved. Words such as 'being locked up, suffocating, being trapped' no longer belong to her vocabulary.
Summary of the Lithium series:
In the mineral kingdom everything revolves around structure and the ability to act. The mineral kingdom represents a person's journey from birth to death. Each row (series) symbolises the different phases (stages) a person passes through in the course of their life. A person who needs a remedy from the mineral kingdom is stuck at a certain point in their personal development.
It is important that we understand the Lithium series, particularly with regard to psychiatric disorders. Practising psychiatrists can draw from a veritable treasure trove of wonderfully effective medicines here.
The Lithium series mirrors the birth process and the infant's separation from the mother/womb. All patients who need a remedy from this series must be protected from the outside world. The world appears threatening and frightening to them. An independent existence is experienced as unbearable. In my clinical experience it has been shown that all remedies from this series have a fear of downward movement. They have a weakly developed ego and are very fragile.
Lithium: Like a foetus still completely dependent on the womb; the umbilical cord has not yet been severed.
Beryllium: Like a nine-month foetus who is comfortable in the womb and does not want to go outside. He is very content where he is.
Boron: At this point labour begins, the first contractions start. The child is confused — should it stay or go? The world as he/she has known it up to now is shaken. This leads to a feeling of panic; he/she tries to hold on.
Carbon: The child has decided: it wants to go outside. The head has entered the pelvis. The crucial question at this moment is: "Do I have enough strength to go out, into the world?"
Nitrogen: Feels constricted and compressed in the birth canal and wants to get out as quickly as possible.
Oxygen: Represents the child's emergence from the birth canal and the first independent breath.
Fluorine: Represents separation, the moment when the umbilical cord is cut. Wants to be separate. This basic desire is reflected in the rubric 'Delusion — Marriage — dissolve, get divorced; must leave the marriage'. [9]
The cases were edited and compiled by Sneha Vyas and Devang Shah.
Sources:
8 - Rajan Sankaran, Structure, Volume 1, Row 2, Oxygen
9 – For further references, Structure, Volume 1, Row 2
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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
