Wondering: analysis of case (was rubric blood - puzzle)
Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2002 11:19 pm
Hi, Jean and others. Here's how I worked out that case to respond to the "real world" concerns of the patient.
First, to revive the thread, here's the original summary I posted:
I have a patient who said several times that she really enjoys bleeding (referring to menses). "I love my period. I have always loved bleeding. I love the wetness. I love red. I love blood, the color of it." (Strangely, she has scanty menses as well).
Other strong aspects of case: she feels at home nowhere, not in her native country (where for some reason she doesn't even have a passport), not in the US, where she's illegal -- no papers, not even, she says, in her body. She is still grieving deeply for a broken relationship several years ago.She fell recently from a sleeping loft and got bruised, and the fall seems to have really interacted deeply with something in her past history -- probably early and repeated sexual abuse, which did occur. But she screamed and screamed, and it felt good, she said -- others in the building commented that it sounded as if she were "being raped."
She feels very unappreciated. She has migraines with menses and also if she eats late at night, and depression relieved by menses. She wants to live in the commune where she's living and feels unappreciated because it includes men as well as women (she's previously lived in all-female communes and has identified as a lesbian). But she's also having huge emotional problems dealing with the men and asserting herself comfortably: "It's related to the struggle with men. They overpowered me. They;'ve hurt me. They have the power... I let myself be choked." Obviously an association with being raped and abused as a youngster.
She has joint pains >>>, desires solitude,, loves to spend long periods alone hiking in natural settings, when she's sad light >. She also says about her childhood and her mother sending her off to live with her father, who was a libertine, "I needed a mother to feed me." Again very psoric.
Jean, in response to your observations, interestingly, I wondered too about Tarent as well as lac-f, lac-h, lach, elaps. And I did conclude that the remedy had to reflect the animal energy of the case. In person, she seemed too grounded to need Cann-i. Her emotional homelessness really resonated with Merc, but not so much her physical symptoms.
When I came to analyzing the case, of course, I had to deal with the presenting symptoms and the patient's priorities. She had fallen from the loft bed during sleep a couple of weeks ago, and the fall had not only left her physically rather badly bruised but also emotionally jangled. It clearly resonated, with the shrieking, with her earlier history of incest and sexual abuse, and she herself made that connection. She also made a connection with the deep grief she felt five years ago when her lover had dumped her -- it made her feel that she could never get herself together again for another relationship, and led to her living in the present commune. In the commune, she was also having problems. She had lived there for five years and had devoted herself heart and soul to making it a good place to live, taking care of the facility, running classes and programs, picking up after others, really pouring out all the energy she could muster taking care of them more than of herself. When the room she wanted became available and she had requested it, though, they had given it to one of the male board members, someone she felt had done much less for the group than she had, and who deserved it much less, in her opinion. In addition, for some reason, they had insisted she move out of the room she had occupied to that point, into a less desirable one that was so small that the only place to sleep was in this loft. So she was totally disgusted with her living companions, and felt incredibly unappreciated. Falling from the loft in this room had forced her into realizing these feelings too. In addition, she wanted relief from hypertension, since she didn't like the side effects of the hypertension medications (allopathic), and relief from her arthritis.
What was really characteristic of this case and a bit unusual, in addition to her comments about blood and bleeding, was the concatenation of four causalities -- history of sexual abuse, grief from a disappointed love, bruises from falling, and burnout from working too hard to take care of others without feeling adequately appreciated. The first three appear only in Acon and Sep. The fourth appears with the other three only in Sep.
When I saw her, she was deep in a Sepia state, feeling exhausted and even abused pursuant to devoting herself to domestic duties in caring for her present surrogate family. Hypertension and arthritis are both well covered by Sepia. In addition, her compensations were prolonged and demanding physical exertion (hiking for days on end despite her arthritic pain) -- a crucial keynote of Sepia and in this case, because of the pain, also peculiar -- and self-identification with her professional activities along with withdrawal into solitude under stress, also strong tendencies of women who need Sepia. I used the rubric GENERALS-discharges ameliorate rather than the ones about menses specifically, because not only did she seem really happy during her menses, but also she said that her migraines would dissolve if she could make herself perspire. Finally, her menses had always lasted only one day, a rubric in which Sepia is alone.
Sepia is, of course, a marine animal, and it seemed clearly indicated as the place to open up the case, so I started her on Sepia LM1 last week. It will be interesting to see how her state evolves and what other layers, if any, surface as she responds to the remedy. Clearly, there are other potential resonances in there.
Rosemary
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
First, to revive the thread, here's the original summary I posted:
I have a patient who said several times that she really enjoys bleeding (referring to menses). "I love my period. I have always loved bleeding. I love the wetness. I love red. I love blood, the color of it." (Strangely, she has scanty menses as well).
Other strong aspects of case: she feels at home nowhere, not in her native country (where for some reason she doesn't even have a passport), not in the US, where she's illegal -- no papers, not even, she says, in her body. She is still grieving deeply for a broken relationship several years ago.She fell recently from a sleeping loft and got bruised, and the fall seems to have really interacted deeply with something in her past history -- probably early and repeated sexual abuse, which did occur. But she screamed and screamed, and it felt good, she said -- others in the building commented that it sounded as if she were "being raped."
She feels very unappreciated. She has migraines with menses and also if she eats late at night, and depression relieved by menses. She wants to live in the commune where she's living and feels unappreciated because it includes men as well as women (she's previously lived in all-female communes and has identified as a lesbian). But she's also having huge emotional problems dealing with the men and asserting herself comfortably: "It's related to the struggle with men. They overpowered me. They;'ve hurt me. They have the power... I let myself be choked." Obviously an association with being raped and abused as a youngster.
She has joint pains >>>, desires solitude,, loves to spend long periods alone hiking in natural settings, when she's sad light >. She also says about her childhood and her mother sending her off to live with her father, who was a libertine, "I needed a mother to feed me." Again very psoric.
Jean, in response to your observations, interestingly, I wondered too about Tarent as well as lac-f, lac-h, lach, elaps. And I did conclude that the remedy had to reflect the animal energy of the case. In person, she seemed too grounded to need Cann-i. Her emotional homelessness really resonated with Merc, but not so much her physical symptoms.
When I came to analyzing the case, of course, I had to deal with the presenting symptoms and the patient's priorities. She had fallen from the loft bed during sleep a couple of weeks ago, and the fall had not only left her physically rather badly bruised but also emotionally jangled. It clearly resonated, with the shrieking, with her earlier history of incest and sexual abuse, and she herself made that connection. She also made a connection with the deep grief she felt five years ago when her lover had dumped her -- it made her feel that she could never get herself together again for another relationship, and led to her living in the present commune. In the commune, she was also having problems. She had lived there for five years and had devoted herself heart and soul to making it a good place to live, taking care of the facility, running classes and programs, picking up after others, really pouring out all the energy she could muster taking care of them more than of herself. When the room she wanted became available and she had requested it, though, they had given it to one of the male board members, someone she felt had done much less for the group than she had, and who deserved it much less, in her opinion. In addition, for some reason, they had insisted she move out of the room she had occupied to that point, into a less desirable one that was so small that the only place to sleep was in this loft. So she was totally disgusted with her living companions, and felt incredibly unappreciated. Falling from the loft in this room had forced her into realizing these feelings too. In addition, she wanted relief from hypertension, since she didn't like the side effects of the hypertension medications (allopathic), and relief from her arthritis.
What was really characteristic of this case and a bit unusual, in addition to her comments about blood and bleeding, was the concatenation of four causalities -- history of sexual abuse, grief from a disappointed love, bruises from falling, and burnout from working too hard to take care of others without feeling adequately appreciated. The first three appear only in Acon and Sep. The fourth appears with the other three only in Sep.
When I saw her, she was deep in a Sepia state, feeling exhausted and even abused pursuant to devoting herself to domestic duties in caring for her present surrogate family. Hypertension and arthritis are both well covered by Sepia. In addition, her compensations were prolonged and demanding physical exertion (hiking for days on end despite her arthritic pain) -- a crucial keynote of Sepia and in this case, because of the pain, also peculiar -- and self-identification with her professional activities along with withdrawal into solitude under stress, also strong tendencies of women who need Sepia. I used the rubric GENERALS-discharges ameliorate rather than the ones about menses specifically, because not only did she seem really happy during her menses, but also she said that her migraines would dissolve if she could make herself perspire. Finally, her menses had always lasted only one day, a rubric in which Sepia is alone.
Sepia is, of course, a marine animal, and it seemed clearly indicated as the place to open up the case, so I started her on Sepia LM1 last week. It will be interesting to see how her state evolves and what other layers, if any, surface as she responds to the remedy. Clearly, there are other potential resonances in there.
Rosemary
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]