Edith was 54 when she came to see me to get help with her
depression. She was a frustrated artist and had suffered two nervous
breakdowns in her early twenties which she described as periods of being
incapacitated by fear. She was treated with electroshock therapy from which she
had never recovered. She told me with great resentment how she had been held
down by the nurses and treated like "a piece of beef". The main theme of
Edith's life, she felt, was a loss of identity. Nobody had ever cared about
her. She had never felt valued as a human being. She had always been alone.
Her childhood was terrible. Both parents were alcoholics and beat her until the
age of l3. Her father was cruel, sadistic, and took out his anger by kicking
her pet bulldog. At age 9 the boys she was playing with urinated on her. As an
adult, she was deeply disillusioned by a charismatic Christian church of which
she was a member for five years. She described herself as feeling hollow, as
if everything had fallen out of her world. She referred to herself as "the one
who God urinated on". Her response was to withdraw and to suppress her
tremendous rage and having been "thrown in a trash can" by life. She had daily
thoughts of suicide, but would never kill herself because she believed God
would punish her if she did. She never cried, but resigned herself to a life
of hopelessness and of "no more tomorrows". Her only reason for living was her
interest in "good books", the theater and opera, her painting, and in rescuing
cats. She told me she had never experienced God's love and that God had
be-trayed her. Despite her fear of God's punishment, she loathed and cursed God
for having ignored her. Her life was the epitome of humiliation.
There was something about Edith's awful life that drew me to try to help
her. I gave her a homeopathic remedy which helps those who loathe their lives
and feel utter despair and hopelessness. When Edith called a month later, she
admitted , though reluctantly, that she was feeling considerably better about
herself and her life. She subsequently quit taking the remedy, said she did
not wish to continue with treatment even though I "actually treated her like a
human being". I have been told that Edith has rejected not only my help, but
that of a number of others who have tried to help her out of the deeply
depressing pit of her life.
A second patient, Roberta, age 30, came to me complaining of constant
bladder pain, painful vaginal burning, terrible ovarian cramping with her
periods, and genital herpes. She told me she felt sick all the time and never
felt refreshed after sleeping. She de-scribed herself as shy, withdrawn,
intoverted, fearful, anxious, and nervous. She re-ported fearing everything,
including life, death, crowds, the dark, and something bad happening. She would
suffer from panic attacks in groups of people where she would stiffen, feel
faint, breathe shallowly, be unable to talk, and feel like she was emotionally
"breaking into a million pieces". She was raised in an authoritarian household
where she had to sit quietly with her arms folded. She never said anything,
behaved sweetly in order to please her parents and everyone else, and became
extremely fearful, withdrawn, and avoided risks at all costs. She described
herself as being in a state of permanent "major" depression since the 6th
grade, which had left her debilitated. During counseling, I asked her to
connect with her frightened child part which said she felt smaller than
everyone else, considered all people scary, and would prefer that Roberta live
alone in the country on a farm with lots of animals where she could be safe.