Anxiety and food allergies: speaking straight from the mouth of source.

Paralyzed by the Food She Eats

Susan was a thin, nervous, forty-sixty-year-old housewife with digestive problems and food allergies. "Everything has fallen apart in the last two years," she complained. She thought she might have an ulcer or gastritis, because she had stomach pain three hours after eating, and she felt hungry all the time. Allergic to a wide variety of foods, including dairy, eggs, pineapple, bananas, psyllium, wheat, and many others, Susan was reduced to eating rice, bok choy, and salmon. She also reacted to tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. Her lips blistered from fruits, sweet potatoes, and nuts.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Anxiety also plagued Susan; she worried constantly about suffering from cancer and parasites. Always the same perseveration:

  I won't regain my vitality, and I'll have a degenerative illness
  going on forever. I feel paralyzed. It affects everything: food,
  friends, family. I feel paralyzed by food. Pressure. I'm different. I
  can't eat. I can't chat. My mother-in-law is always asking why I'm so
  skinny. I just want things to flow and be progressive.

It was a challenge for Susan to refuse requests from friends and family:

  I don't have enough time for my own family. I get into a cycle of
  helping people. It's stressful to me. I feel selfish if I say no. My
  dad trained us to think of others' needs first. I regret not being
  available enough during my mom's breast cancer. I get manipulated
  into doing stuff. My whole family has boundary problems.

  I have trouble with both my dad and my mother-in-law. My dad is an
  angry, explosive man. He beat me down, while I was growing up, by
  telling me how/felt. I'd get the brunt of his wrath and punishment if
  I fought back. I have trouble making choices because of the way he
  treated me. I never felt valued or important to him. When I moved in
  with my boyfriend, my father accused me of being a fornicator and
  assured me that I would burn in hell. That was like being called the
  worst thing in the world.

  My mother-in-law [acts] like a three-year-old, or a shark, to get
  what she wants. She harassed and browbeat my husband and me. Now all
  she can talk about is how skinny I am. It makes me feel defensive,
  and I can't think straight. I feel tight in my whole upper body down
  to my toes. It feels tight, restrictive, and paralyzing. I have
  restricted my emotions and my expression of myself. I might as well
  shut down my life. I can't get anywhere. There's no hope to be myself
  or to progress in life.

When asked about the word "paralyzing," Susan described that everything was just stopped-emotions, movements and thoughts:

  For a moment, there is euphoria, because there is nothing. Someone
  else has control. You aren't responsible. You can't get in trouble.
  Fear stops my expression. Fear of being wrong, of others'
  disappointment. It invalidates who I am. I feel tossed aside,
  disregarded. What's the point of existence? My opinion doesn't
  matter. I'm just trying to protect myself from being
  disregarded. ... Tension comes from trying to be regarded, a chicken
  fluffing myself up to be noticed. I'm forcing and shielding myself.
  I must protect and push!

When asked what "disregarded" meant to her, Susan remembered that she felt the same way during her first divorce. "I felt abandonment. I am always trying to avoid getting hurt or abandoned. My ex-husband had affairs. I feel vulnerable, lonely. Exposed in an ugly way. It feels like being alone in a scary place, where you are craving interaction with people. It is scary to be disconnected with no feedback." Susan reported having had dreams of abandonment by her father, husband, or a work figure. "I'm told to leave a job, or they leave me. I feel abandoned. I'm frantic to prevent them from leaving me."

Susan ended the interview by sharing her with us her physical symptoms. They included sleeplessness from aching stomach pains, which were worse from coffee, dairy, and eggs. The foods also caused her to have chest pain. Knife-like pains in the duodenal area were accompanied by bulging of her right temporal veins. She also complained of right-sided headaches and sinuses pain. Susan craved salt and meat.

In assessing her case, we took into account Susan's feelings of abandonment, her desire to help others, father issues, vulnerability, food allergies, and stomach pains, as well as right-sided symptoms. Susan benefited quite a bit from three doses of Natrum carbonicum (sodium carbonate), then to a lesser degree from Arsenicum album (arsenic). But it was clear to us that some of her symptoms, including her reactions to foods, eventually returned. We had the nagging feeling that there must be a better medicine for Susan and, as we do in such cases, did a retake of the case.

Time for a Retake of the Case

We expect our patients' symptoms to improve by at least 80% across the board in a lasting way. If not, we will consider doing a retake, which involves a one-to-two-hour interview, as if we were taking the case for the first time. We include the key features of the retake here:

  The only thing that is irritating me is I feel kind of like this
  anger. It's pushing up and it's up in here and wants to get
  out ... I feel collapsed in there. Everything is tightened in
  there ... Heaviness, constriction, squeezing ... I can't relax. I
  feel a little nervous and tight. Unsure, nervousness. It's
  constriction. It's stuck. Inward. If I could breathe deep, it would
  help. Breath is short. My rib cage feels collapsed. It feels better
  to pull my rib cage up. It's not like smashed.

At this point, we knew that Susan was using the language of the level of sensation, which is at the core of the case (See Sankaran's The Sensation in Homeopathy.) It was very exciting to see what would come next and how it would all fit together to express the source of the homeopathic medicine that Susan needed.

The Patient Speaks Directly from the Source

  I feel pressure pushing from both sides, like a vise. If you try to
  breathe, it can't move out. It feels like collapse. It's hard to
  function or move anything but very slowly. It is non-progressive.
  Kind of like paralyzed, you can move but slowly. [Note the sensation
  word "paralyzed" from the very first case taking.] It's like a dream
  of trying to turn over.

  You are trying to make yourself move, but you can't. Stuck. Numb.
  It's not that I can't move, but so much thought and energy go into
  moving. Lots of energy for little movement.

  Anger stems around people who are stuck. Stuck means can't move
  forward, can't move out of the situation. Trapped, small world, lack
  of control, rest of the world chooses for you. Frustration is trying
  to break out of that. Break out, letting go, freedom, flow, ease, not
  concerned about others' feelings. Expanding beyond that vise.
  Shattering the vise or whatever is keeping everything in. A shell can
  be shattered. It's flat, feels round like a disc. It's a safe place
  for part of me. I want to break it, pop out the top. It wants to come
  up and out. What's in there needs to get out of that shell and not go
  back. Freedom and anger need to get out.

  Freedom in the shell is being squelched, not at ease. The anger is an
  explosion of something. It needs to be burst, a one-time thing. It
  needs an expression. I'm afraid of it. I don't want to harbor
  it.Explosive, not angry, not mean. It needs to vent. It needs to
  breathe, get some air. Shell-solid you can see through it. It is
  opaque but substantial - but not like a solid. Shattered - it breaks
  into tiny little pieces and falls to the ground. Like something would
  hit it, and it would break into tiny pieces, and you would throw it
  away. No need to save it. It provided security. Some false, safe
  haven. Protection from others hurting me, not honoring parts of
  me.

  A place I could retract to and think I was not being hurt. A place
  that was safe. Away from being hurt by other people or situations
  Spiraling inward, getting smaller, really small, to get into this
  place. A less significant thing to squeeze into this place, warm,
  safe, small, and restrictive. Dark, not black, not bright. This
  opaque thing keeps The light from being too bright. Fluid in there
  Like the sensation of a warm bath, relaxing. Soothing. An inward
  spiral, turning in on itself. As it turns, it gets smaller and
  smaller, tighter and tighter.

By the time Susan finished this remarkable, beautiful description of the pure sensations of the source of the remedy she needed, we knew that it was a mollusk, with a spiral shell. The mollusk with that description in the homeopathic materia medica is called Murex purpurea.

Of the Marine animals employed in homoeopathy, Murex is the only one belonging to the large class Gastropoda, which consists of some 60,000 species of whelks, slugs, limpets, conches, and snails. Gastropod means "walking stomach." Murex often have very thick, colorful, spiral shells and can have delicate webbing or long thin spines. All Murex species are carnivorous or scavengers that prey on other mollusks, notably bivalves such as clams, mussels, and oysters. Some produce a purple pigment once used to make dye (Vermeulen Prisma).

Mollusk Family

* Invertebrates on sea and land, divided into bivalves (clams, oysters, mussels), gastropoda (snails, conches), and cephalopoda (octopi, squids)

* Shells and soft parts; issues of protection, withdrawal into shell, threat of shell breaking

* Feel vulnerable, threat from outside, cut off from the world by withdrawal

Murex purpurea

* Sepia-like, but strong sexual desire; uterine problems like Sepia; great depression of spirits, a sort of deep hypochondriacal state (Phatak)

* Lively, affectionate people who suffer form recurring nervousness and anxious apprehension

* Vulnerability, retreat, and simultaneous longing for closeness (Boedler)

* Increased sexual desire from mere touch

* Bearing down pains in the uterus > crossing limbs, pressing on vulva,

* < standing

* Sinking at stomach not > eating

It is particularly interesting to note that gastropods, including Murex, are almost entirely shell and stomach and that Susan's chief complaint centered around stomach issues and sensitivities to food. It is not surprising that she would need a medicine derived from a gastropod.

Susan has done very well on Murex LM 2 and 3 for more than one year. She has felt calmer, more tolerant, with little anger. Her hot flashes have reduced, and her food reactions are much more infrequent. She no longer feels locked up or blocked. Her relationships with her parents and mother-in-law have also improved. She no longer cares excessively for her mother to her own detriment, but rather encourages her mother to take more responsibility for herself.

Though it took quite some time to arrive at the correct prescription, we persevered in hopes that the source would be revealed. Hints of those sensations were present in the first case, but it was in the retake that the source and curative medicine were so eloquently revealed by the patient.

Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman, ND, DHANP, LCSW, and Robert Ullman, ND, DHANP, are licensed naturopathic physicians board certified in homeopathy. In practice for 25 years, they practice at the Northwest Center for Homeopathic Medicine in Edmonds, Washington, and treat patients by telephone and video consultations as well as in person. They are co-authors of eight books, including the best-selling Ritalin-Free Kids, Rage-Free Kids--and Prozac Free; A Drug-Free Approach to Asperger Syndrome and Autism; Whole Woman Homeopathy; Homeopathic Self-Care; The Patient's Guide to Homeopathic Medicine; and Mystics, Masters, Saints, and Sages: Stories of Enlightenment. They have taught internationally. They live on Whidbey Island, Washington and in Pucon, Chile, and can be reached at 425-774-5599, Fax: [phone], or at www.healthyhomeopathy.com.

by Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman, ND, DHANP, LCSW, and Robert Ullman, ND, DHANP www.healthyhomeopathy.com