Author:
Anne Vervarcke
Book:
Journal
Type:
Case
Chapter:
2017.02.04
A remedy of Cactaceae
Male, 48 years
Intake October 2012
I am a very sensitive person, as a result, whether physical, mental or emotional, everything makes an imprint on me. Until my twenties I was relatively well, as a child I had some cough. Towards the end of my adolescence I caught mononucleosis. I was hospitalized, my spleen was swollen and the acute stage was over and after a few months I was no longer the person I was. My strength went down. My mental emotional condition was bad, I married very young. As I finished my studies I started working, even though some years had passed since the mononucleosis, I was not able to work a day. I woke up with a sore throat, pain in the spleen area. I learned about alternative medicine, went to a famous homeopath, it was very helpful, my condition got better 60 %, all my lymph nodes became normal.
My bodily response was not like others who overcame it and it stayed until today. My whole state became sluggish. My muscles and vitality is not as it was. Before I could run and now, after 100 m I feel weak, a weakness in the whole body.
This was imprinted in my system then and other things were added. The homeopath tried some remedies that didn’t work and then he gave me a remedy in increasing potencies to take at home and I thought: if this doesn’t work So I repeated it several times and then I got terrible constriction of my chest, all my muscles twitching. The symptoms didn’t leave me until this day. I still have itching around the genitals. Its like a horror story, it has been torturing me for more than a decade, mostly at night. Its worse from heat and tight clothes. I went back to the homeopath, he gave me a different remedy which didn’t work. I contacted another homeopath and took a plane to see him. He gave me another remedy and after 10 days all went away except the itching.
I pointed out the sensitiveness, from it you see the response of my body, it is sensitive from the outside. Now I have to fix things that are done to me, many damages. After one year there was no more result with the remedy. I went to see another homeopath and she gave me a very good remedy: mental-emotionally, I got mature, more independent, but the itch stayed. When growing up its like you kill your parents. I grew up in an overprotected family.
For cold feet I went to an acupuncturist and I was OK but the next morning: vertigo, constriction, my muscles so weak that I had to stay in bed the whole week! I couldn’t hold the wheel of the car. My boss was raising hell, my body reacted to this as if it was an atomic bomb. Now when I sit behind the PC, I am very sensitive to all the surrounding environment. Like they deviate my energy and immediately I don’t feel well. If I am without homeopathic support my system collapses, the itching becomes much worse, the constriction, the weakness.
I am very sensitive to rudeness, a very basic thing in me. I am very gentle and mild and sensitive, romantic, I like the soft things in life. Everything which is tough or hard or cruel is not for me, I am the opposite, I feel them as an attack, then my response is not so soft and gentle.
What is your response?
My father is a very very dominant person, what he wants is the last word. When a gentle, mild and soft child grows in such family its whole identity is taken away, his will, his capacity to stand for himself. This was treated with the homeopathic remedies, I can stand up for myself but the sensitivity stayed.
I didn’t finish the civil service and married. I went from one framework into the other. My entire life was in a framework, she was my first girlfriend and I married her. I didn’t see much of the world. Emotionally I grew up like a very dependent child, my father didn’t let me do things, he had to direct, control. Every time I wanted to do something by myself, I got very tense. Mother was very similar to me, I had a great love for her, she read literature, poetry, not this strictness, hardness. I couldn’t fly because I had no wings, my father didn’t let me. At the university I was with my wife, I was still in my family. I was there for a few days and ran back home, only there I felt protected.
After one remedy I felt the rage towards my father, I felt more rebellious. My parents didn’t like it. My father was working for decades in the same company and he wanted me to be in the same circle, money, security, but I had a manager there, like a monster. She had tantrums, I was shivering with fear when she shouted. My father used to beat me. At some stage I resigned, took my pension and went. My father said: I will never forget this, how can you leave your security, pension etc.
I can’t be in a situation where I feel humiliated. I have to get away immediately. But in any situation where there is a powerful person, somebody who wants to put me in the corner, I will immediately react, with verbal violence. I cant be in the situation again of being powerless.
The situation that your father is beating you is the worst, you cant run away, you are a little child, he is holding you. You are small and little, you wait for hours, he will come home and maybe you will have a punishment. It is like a ritual, he is holding you and will beat your buttocks with his hands or his shoes. I was shouting with rage and helplessness (starts to cry). If my boss shouts at me, it feels as if he holds me or presses me in the corner do you know plasticine? Its like this and it becomes flat, pressed, like the machine on the road, rolling, making it flat (HG). Its like a mollusc or a snail and it is soft and a big force is making it flat. Like my boss is pushing me to the corner and I am being compressed. I am sensitive to noises, I get fears from it. In my home I don’t feel protected. In my home town I always had problems with the neighbours upstairs, they made noises and I was anxious. They had the power over me. It is a sudden noise that makes me startle (HG jumps up suddenly).
Another thing: All my childhood I was anxious something would happen to my parents I was crying (says it 3 times), and this feeling of being left alone stayed with me for decades. When I feel constricted: Someone is pressing me very hard (HG). Even the itching around the genitals is better from lose clothes.
The same feeling of being compressed I also have in my work. I feel the same jail I am in, the same framework my father wanted to put me in. Its not the romantic, singing, dancing, soft Kurt. Its again hard strict occupation, you have to provide for your family, it is the same feeling of compressed, impressed, to be shaped. Its an important word from my father: you have to shape somebody that is what I mean with plasticine, you press it and shape it. Its like rubber, you can roll it like a snake, a soft material. Do you understand the softness of me?
Analysis
The patient comes with complaints that have resisted many homeopathic and other alternative therapeutic attempts. He didn’t get cured so far and has even acquired additional symptoms, mainly an itch around the genitals, through the treatment. He has never been well since a mononucleosis, since which he feels weary.
He narrates all his complaints and stories without much asking, jumps from one subject to the other, not in a straightforward and simple way, so were dealing with a remedy from the 3rd dimension (animal or plant). His outspoken sensitiveness comes through in the whole case, treatments leave imprints, he is soft, romantic and gentle, nothing of competition, this is a Plant case.
The main and direct hint comes from his sensation, physical and emotional, that he repeats in several contexts. A feeling of being constricted, compressed, shaped, cornered is the core experience of a cactus plant, the Cactaceae.
Looking at the case from the Plant Theory’s point of view, the topics he speaks of are the relationship with his parents and his struggle for independence. His family took away his identity, he is afraid of being left alone without his parents, his father is holding him and beating him. These topics are from the Lanthanides (=> Asteranae) and the Silicon series (=> Carophyllidae).
The itch around the genitals is a symptom triggered in him by another homeopathic remedy, that has persisted all along. This and other few symptoms like weariness, touch and heat aggravate help in deciding on the species within the Cactaceae. They are not specific to the family and can be used to differentiate.
A repertorization with these symptoms was done, restricted to Cactaceae. A remedy of Cactaceae has conflict with images of authority and reacts rebellious. Maybe this is also the reflection of Stage 10 in this remedy.
Prescription: a remedy of Ccataceae