Too scared to live alone: a case of Kalium nitricumby Riddhi Jain
"Forget safety, live where you fear to live." Rumi
Facing one’s fear or one’s issue is often a first step towards a possible healing, as beautifully spoken by Rumi. Case Witnessing Process opens a window, making patients face and experience the deeper imbalance running within, which in itself initiates healing. The revealed pattern of the entire imbalance further helps the homeopath to identify the simillimum and prescribe to facilitate healing at a holistic level.
Passive case witnessing process (PCWP)
Patient (P): “On the day of my marriage, my left hand got overstretched, after which it lost its tonus; I feel as the if nerves of my left hand are raised and thickened.
“I have left sided headache which radiates to my nose, face, teeth, hands, and legs.
“Severe breast tenderness ten days before my menses, difficulty wearing clothes.
“The doctor asked for many lab investigations. I was so scared: ‘what if something is badly wrong with me? What will happen to my kids?’
“After the death of my father, I felt as if my whole body was broken. I used to tell everything to my father (weeping); he used to have a solution for everything.
“My husband has also given me loads of support.
“My father-in-law also supports me a lot.”
She mentions the support she gets from her family members and uses a peculiar expression to describe the impact of her father’s death.
P: “I am very attached to my children. They are my life.
“I always feel tense for my mother and brother. If something happens to them, nobody of my own will be left in India.
“I will be left all alone in the house and I will be in panic, I won’t be able to control myself.
“At night before sleeping, I lock all the doors; I am afraid that a ghost will come and enter me.
“In childhood, I used to hold my mother’s hand and sleep.
“When I watch horror films then go to sleep, if any part of my body is uncovered, I feel that a ghost will enter from there and take me. I cover myself completely when I sleep. Even the slightest breath of air entering my blanket means that I cannot sleep; even my toes are tucked inside the cover.
“I never go anywhere alone, I don’t have the strength.
“I switch on all the lights before I use the toilet. If I see somebody’s shadow or hear a noise, I get more scared and suffocated.”
Again, she talks about her family and extreme attachment to her kids. She has multiple fears if she is alone, making her panic.
P: “I get horrible dreams, I wake my husband up. I hold my husband’s hand and sleep. Often, I get up from my sleep.
Holding her husband’s hand during sleep at this age is peculiar.
P: “In a dream, I saw a nice house, it was my dream house. At the entrance, there was a fine garden with swings. I was so happy while entering that house. I went to the backyard and there, I saw a dangerous scary forest and I started shivering. It was very dark, with many bats around; I was very scared.
“When I watch CID and Crime Patrol (television serials that telecasts criminal cases), I think ‘what if this happens to me or to my husband or the kids.’ If my kids or husband don’t come home on time, I get anxious: ‘What if something has happened to them?’
“I dreamt about Yamraj (Death angel) taking my father away and I was wildly running behind, crying aloud, pleading not to take him away.’How will I live without him?’ Slowly, they disappeared and I was crying desperately.”
Active in subconscious areas
Riddhi Jain (RJ): Any other childhood dreams?
P: “I used to be a very scared child.”
RJ: Tell about your fears.
P: “When I am alone at home, I get very scared that someone is following me.
“Something will happen and hurt my husband or my mother.
“Whenever I have any fear or issue in my mind I discuss it and then I feel relaxed.”
AnalysisFocus: fear and anxiety: fear to be alone, fear for her family, fear in dreams and fears as child. She weeps often and has the need to hold hands.
Level: vital. She relates the focus in multiple areas of her life, including subconscious areas like dreams and fears spontaneously.
Active case witnessing process with focus
RJ: You get scared a lot, tell me about this.
P: “What if somebody cuts my purse while I am carrying it. I am very scared of black magic, what if it deliberately harms or kills my kids and husband, strangles them. I will be left all alone in this world. I am alive only because of my kids and husband. My existence is because of all these people, they are everything for me. I can’t think beyond them. What will I do? I will die without them in my world.”
RJ: Tell about that peculiar dream, where it is beautiful at first but as you go in the backyard, it is all dark, scary, with lots of bats…
P: “On one side, I see the happiness of family, the warm, relaxing environment of home and the opposite side is complete difficulty. It felt like my dream house and then, I felt scared, anxious of something bad happening with my family or me.”
After confirming the focus of ‘fear and anxiety about family and self’ we start the Active – Active process, the final step. Here, we remain with the patient’s focus until they delve deeper and help us arrive at a complete understanding of the disturbed vital energy pattern and thus towards the remedy. We understand every part of the case and we do not let them divert into conscious talk.
Active-active case witnessing process (AACWP)
RJ: What do you mean by support?
P: “My family supports me in everything I do. They give me time and they help out in the children’s routine activities. I need that cover, protection. I cannot be alone.
“At night they talk to me, we talk about the future and how we build our dream home.”
Support is about basic things; family routine, future, protection of home, feeling of them being your own. We explore the polarities of this support for complete understanding.
RJ: What if nobody is there and there is no support?
P: “I will be like a dead body; I will have life but no movement, no feelings, no emotions. Like in a coma state; my whole life is an effort not to let any damage or harm happen to them.
“I get very scared if I am left alone. I get jitters in my abdomen, a butterfly sensation, and I have to rush to the toilet immediately. I start shivering. I get restless in my body. I immediately call up my husband and tell him to come home. I want to protect my children; that cover should always be there with me.”
She needs that cover, protection, support but from her own people, her family and kids, and danger happening to them leaves her in extreme fear and panic.
Active- active CWP for confirmation
RJ: You said that a ghost will enter your body, what is the worst thing it will do?
P “It will possess me and try to kill my husband and kids. If it makes my kids weak and makes me go away from my husband, I will be broken, it will shake my confidence, my feelings, my love (weeping).”
RJ: You said your whole body was broken when your father died.
P: “He was my support. After my father, now my husband is my support.”
Active- active CWP towards awareness
This journey/step of Active – Active Case Witnessing Process (AACWP) towards awareness is for helping the patient become aware of their holistic centre, their whole state. It is called awareness only when the patient identifies, accepts and sees his holistic central state runnning in every area, every part of his life and not just the peripheral catharsis effect of expressing emotions.
This awareness either comes spontaneously or is guided by the homeopath. In the first case, it happens naturally – patient themselves identfy with their holistic centre/ state – whereas in second case, they are guided by the homeopath who asks questions in such a way that their holistic centre/state is put in front of them, which encourages them to become aware of it. Guided awareness should only be done when the patient has reached the holistic core/state completely, when the remedy language has come up and when they have travelled to a higher level of experience with the process of case witnessing.
In this case, I guide her towards awareness because in every area that she spoke of, she mentions her central state of anxiety and fear in relation to her family. She delves more deeply into it until her body language is also involved. She experiences and reveals the depth of what she talked about.
I encourage her and ask what difference the witnessing of her holistic state has made to her.
RJ: How are you feeling right now?
P: “My mind is very light now. It felt as if I was talking to a mirror and opening my heart in front of it. I feel absolutely relaxed. Nothing will happen to my family. The fear is there but now, I feel it won’t happen, it’s just my delusion, my imagination leading to all these thoughts in my mind. It feels as if the knot of my mind is opened now, I can see everything right in front of my eyes. I used to be scared even to see or acknowledge these fears on my own, I always ignored them. This is the first time I could express them completely and see them clearly. Now, I feel as if I have accepted them and I am relaxed.
“I had a strong fear of losing my family and that is why all this was happening to me.”
RJ: What was your feeling when you faced this awareness?
P: (weeping) “I never saw that fear to such an extreme. When I saw it now, at its highest peak and in its worst form, I felt that all this is not real and that these are my delusions.
“It feels as if my heart had loads of old stuff hidden inside, now it is empty and clear.”
With the case witnessing process, we encourage her to go close to this deepest experience and become aware of it consciously, which she usually avoided and ignored in her conscious life.
Understanding the case
Patient’s centre: the whole centre of her life, from childhood, after marriage, her chief complaint, dreams and fears, revolves around anxiety for her family. She fears something bad will happen to her family (husband, kids, father, mother) and without them she has no life, no confidence, almost like a dead body. She will be broken completely and in panic.
Understanding the remedy
Kingdom: Mineral
Need for support of family, lack of confidence
Column and row
Row 4: needs security for basic life requirements and protection.
Column 1: the thought itself of ‘no support’ makes her panic and feels like she will be dead. The feeling that she cannot live without the support and protection points towards the Kali group.
One more issue that runs parallel in the case: panic leading to palpitations, fear with suffocation, feeling of some danger or harm going to happen indicates the Nitricum part.
Understanding the salt
If we are prescribing a salt, it is essential that both elements of the salt should beautifully blend together in the patient’s experience and not as just separate parts of their state. In this case, the whole experience is a feeling of constant danger to family, due to which she goes into panic, shivering and sweating; she cannot think of living without the support of her family and is completely dependent on them.
Kali nitricum covers this whole experience. However, I gave her placebo after the first consultation because she consciously experienced and reached the level of awareness after the case witnessing session and that itself was a healing energy for her to start with.
Learning from the case
What is a real awareness? Real awareness is seeing and cleansing the holistic non-human state as it is.
An excerpt from the book ‘Scientifically Intuitive Case Witnessing Process’ by Dinesh Chauhan:
“The secret to such therapeutic interviews is giving the patient time and space for becoming connected to the core. We let them experience that healing when the patient has travelled whole journey of seeing his state in every area of life. Now the real self is seen in wholeness, without conscious layers. We show the patient a mirror that reflects his/her altered self (altered thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations and reactions) in totality. At this stage, when a patient comes in contact with his centre, there occurs awareness of the whole state: that is cure. This is nothing but ‘Hering’s law of direction of cure’ which says that cure moves from the centre to the periphery. The first glimpse of the centre is the initial step towards cure.”
In the above case, when she saw her altered state as a whole, she felt relaxed. Her restless panicky mind felt empty and cleared of all the stuff. She could reflect on how she perceived danger for her family in every area of her life. She understood her fears and dreams as a connection of this whole perception and she accepted them.
Follow-ups
After one month: the pain in her hand was reduced and she felt mentally calmer. The anxieties were still there but reduced in intensity, there was no suffocative feeling during tension now. She didn’t have any scary dreams during this period.
Prescription: placebo
Follow up after three months: she felt better, no more pain in her hand, no swelling of nerves on that hand. “Even the energy and tone of my left hand has come back.” None of her previous headaches. No breast pain before periods.
Mentally/emotionally feeling very relaxed. The fear to stay alone and the suffocation is less now. The feelings that ‘nobody is there for her’ after the death of her father have calmed down; she can deal with her father’s death now. But she got a dream where bats were flying around her family and she was running around with her kids in fear that they will harm her kids and her.
Prescription: Kali Nitricum 200C. For the months afterwards she was kept on placebo.
Follow up after ten months: “I am fine. I’ve had no pain in my hand or headaches during the past months, and no pain in my breasts before my periods. I am able to use my left hand efficiently now and it has good strength.
“I don’t have that fear of being alone anymore or the fear that something bad is going to happen to me or my family. I don’t have the feeling of suffocation and panic anymore, and no more scary dreams.
“I am calm now, so I can concentrate better and deal with my work and kids better. I can even dedicate time to other things that interest me.
“The whole environment of the house has calmed down. Now, the distance between me and the kids has reduced and we can understand each other better. Previously, they were very scared of me due to my irritability and anger. They now talk to me freely as a friend.”
Keywords: support, fear, alone, family, protection, danger.