Moving deeper inside of herself: a case of Pearlby Peter Tumminello
The patient is a 45 year old woman who has two teenage children. She tells about the situation around the death of her father-in-law; her husband’s reaction to the death and his concerns about his mother.
“I am losing myself, losing my feeling of being centered. I realise that I have come a long way and I don’t want to lose my centre. I feel I am losing my soul; I am losing what I am! I start to shut down; it feels like the heart centre and the throat closes down. I don’t want to be around my husband, I don’t know how to deal with this. Do I want to deal with this! I am fearful, running away. I have dreams of being totally alone and homesick for the real home, where you don’t have the limitations of Earth. The homesickness is set off by any simple but special experience, for instance seeing someone’s grief or feeling great pain, and immersing myself in the feeling.”
“I am reminded of a time when I was 14; I was looking forward to a school dance but my ballet teacher wouldn’t let me go because I was required to go to a ballet class. I was denied fun and light-heartedness. I was closing down in order to do the right thing; what I wanted wasn’t important.”
Physical: she complained of a gluggy feeling in her throat, a strong lump in her throat. She has been putting on weight in the last few weeks. She has developed an aversion to vegetables and greens in the last six months, and she desires curries and rice+++, as well as ginger and lemon tea, which helps relieve her indigestion.
Analysis:
Her loss of centre and being true to herself immediately drew me to
Pearl as a remedy. This
Phosphorus-like sensitivity to another’s feeling world is typical of
Pearl. The idea was supported by her feelings of being ‘totally alone.’ The homesickness made me think of
Calcium carbonicum and with the spiritual accent, I realised that the higher vibration of the substance of the
Pearl was in order. The strong need for security together with the expressed desire to find oneself and be true to it, is an inner conflict typical of
Pearl.
Prescription:
Pearl immersion 200C for three days.
Follow-up:
After eight weeks, she reports that the feeling of shutting down and losing her centre had disappeared. Gone, too, are the feeling of homesickness for the ‘real home’ and her physical symptoms. “I am more in touch with the real me, operating from my truth rather than reacting.” In the course of the following two years, she took the remedy several times, as needed, during periods of tiredness or insecurity. During that time, her relationship with her husband and her needs from him changed. “I stopped one morning and thought ‘what do I really want out of this relationship?’ I realised that I didn’t resent the time he spends with his mother; I admire him for taking such good care of her. I realised that my resentment came from a fear that he would leave me, a deep-seated insecurity. It was because he wasn’t meeting all my needs for reassurance, the feeling that I am important to him and him to me.” She is increasingly able to voice her feelings and to speak what is truly inside her, even if that means becoming angry and irritable at times. She became able to draw her boundaries and state her expectations with a family member who had been taking advantage of her goodwill and that of her husband, something she would never have done in the past. This is reminiscent of the “irritation” of the pearl, coming into being as a grain of sand that irritates the oyster. Eventually, she began to help others in need, especially those who were depressed.
Keywords: insecurity, fearfulness, homesickness, aloneness, loss of centre
Remedies:
Pearl.