3.1.2 Natrium causticum, Case 1A 40 year old woman has a nervous breakdown. She feels tired and depressed, and doesn’t feel like doing anything. She cannot concentrate. She feels suicidal and wants to cut her wrists. Everything is worse when she has lots to do, when she has to take care of herself and when the weather is warm and damp. When she drinks alcohol things go a little better, and it helps her through the day. She has suffered from periodic bouts of depression for 15 years.
She has no work; she is doing a course to become a librarian, but it isn’t going very well because she can’t concentrate. She has never had a relationship because she feels asexual and she is a lesbian.
She is a rational type of person but underneath lies an emotionally immature little child. Her father was like this too: he had the tendency to make life as difficult as he possibly could. She feels very alone, although she says that she is very kind and loyal. She tends to ‘stick to her guns’, especially because nobody ever supports her. She once lodged a complaint against a woman psychiatrist and took her to court because of improper treatment. Apparently this psychiatrist had asked her G.P. for some background information without asking her first, and had called her a ‘spoilt child’.
She is an only child and her parents were quite old when she was born. Her father never showed much feeling, he was only interested in school reports. He always talked school and duties. Her relationship with her mother was very good, almost ‘too good’. Her mother had an aversion to sex and her father respected this. Her father used to smoke and drink a lot, especially after her mother died. She is very like her father.
She was good at school and her father thought this was very important, although he had been a poor learner. She did not like art or games. She felt left out because she was interested in homework. She went to dancing lessons for a while because her father told her to. She hated it because she was always a wallflower. She couldn’t keep to the rhythm and she did not like the boys. She also sweated a lot because she had to wear nylon tights and dresses. She often as if felt her feet were on fire.
She was often homesick as a child. Her mother died when she was 20 and her father when she was 37. After that she felt as if she did not belong anywhere.
She is afraid of heights (2), insects, wasps, mosquitoes, bees and large dogs (2).
When she was a 7 week old baby she had to go to hospital because there was something wrong with her thyroid, so she was given hormones. When she was 14 her thyroid was 100% inactive. When she was 4 she had an operation to correct her eyesight: she had a squint in her left eye. When she was 18 she had another operation because her eye was turning towards the outside this time. She still has a squint, she is shortsighted in the right- and far sighted in the left eye. She also has a lazy left eye.
When it is sunny she keeps the curtains shut all day, because the windows face south-west. Her mood can best be described by quoting some passages from a letter she wrote to me after the first consultation: ‘I feel that there is nothing to look forward to, and my situation will never improve. I feel like a piece of dirt, nobody is interested in me. All they do in the ‘Crisis centre’ is to pump you full of anti depressants and then talk about what might have caused the depression. And all a psychiatrist does is to give you electric-shock treatments, then some devastating medicine, and then some talk.
I know very well what has caused my depression. What I want is one single person who will stick up for me, who will take care of me when I am unable to do so myself, one single person who really cares whether I am alive or dead.
Other people tell me how strong I am, but that is only an excuse so they won’t have to do anything. As far as they are concerned I might as well drop dead. Nobody who thinks that I should carry on living is prepared to do anything to help me do this. Nobody wants me to commit suicide, but nobody wants to be there for me either. Nobody wants to care for me until I can manage by myself again. My life is not important to anybody. So why should it be important to me? I have nothing to look forward to, only misery. I find no pleasure in hobbies or in study or in anything. There is nothing to relieve the endless misery.
The only thing that would really help me is an unpotentised dose of arsenic. My life is meaningless. Nobody is dependent on me, either emotionally or financially. An easy death is all I desire. The only thing that would change this is if somebody were to come and put his arm around me and tell me: ‘It’s you I want to live for: together with you life would be good. I will help you until you feel deep down that life is worth living again’. But this is merely an illusion. There is nobody who will do this for me. I won’t be missed if you dump me on to the rubbish heap.
GeneralsWeather: < damp heat (2), sun and sea; -> thundery and stormy weather; > outside, wind, mountains, woods (2).
Perspiration: < damp heat, synthetic clothes.
Time: < 9 am; < summer and December.
Desire: milk, yogurt, alcohol (3), filleted or smoked fish like salmon.
Aversion: A hot meal that has gone cold, sour, pepper, fish (3), ginger (2), chicken, tobacco, curry, too much pepper.
Food: < ginger, curry, lemon juice; > alcohol.
Menses: restless and depressed before menses.
Sleep: wakes up at 4 am. and can’t sleep again, < after alcohol.
AnalysisThe desperation this woman feels is very obvious, together with the feeling of extreme loneliness. This makes us think of
Natrium, further confirmed by the desire to have one special person in her life.
And what does she expect from this one single person? That he will stick up for her, that he will appreciate her and that he really cares that she stays alive. These themes indicate the
Carbon series. Other indications for the
Carbon series: she is an emotionally immature child, < death of her parents, homesickness, listlessness, asexual.
She feels as if she is merely a piece of dirt, which is typical of Oxygen.
Adding up all these different pieces we get to
Natrium oxidatum which, when dissolved in water, gives
Natrium causticum.
Her fights against injustice fit with the causticum element. She rebels against the impersonal treatment she gets from the psychiatrist, and from other people who don’t want to get involved.
Other confirming symptoms for
Natrium: wallflower, depressed, suicidal, < sun, < warm, -> salt, <- fish.
Other Oxidatum symptoms: suicidal, listless, many fears, < heat, < damp, not wanting to eat, -> sweet, -> and > alcohol.
ReactionOne month after
Natrium causticum 1M she feels a lot better. The utter misery has gone and although the fits of depression still come and go. Six months later she no longer feels suicidal and she has moments when she does not feel depressed anymore. After a year she tells me that other people have started to like her because she no longer bothers them with her sob stories.