HELEN''S HIVES

This article shows that the feelings of guilt [a derivative of fear] are capable of having physical properties.  Why it shows up as a case of hives, rather than some other physical embarrassment, is a mystery to me; except of course that Helen is also embarrassed because she failed to follow up on her plans to hold a family picnic that would have included her Mother.

I know that I will sound conceited here but it is beyond me why the simple facts that I am trying to put forward are not accepted for the unvarnished truth that they represent.   I can only conclude that it is a combination of my inability to market my ideas correctly and the unwillingness of the psychological profession at large to believe that an unskilled [I am not a psychotherapist] individual such as myself could see the truth where others before me have not.   Let us hope that my attempts to market my ideas meet with more success this time.   Not necessarily for my own personal benefit but for the benefit that these ideas can have for the entire human race itself.      

HELEN’S HIVES

An investment in knowledge pays the best dividend.

Helen Irving had a loving and compassionate childhood environment but her parents did not verbally express their love to their children.  In her late 30’s, Helen had four children of her own and since she and her husband  had split up, Helen was left to support her young family herself.

A colleague at work who had just came back from holidays, mentioned to Helen that her extended family held a family picnic get together each summer.   Since Helen had moved some 100 miles away from her childhood home, she  decided to set up the same kind of picnic for her family also.

The next year came and once again her colleague talked about a family reunion and Helen realized that she had not followed through with her plans.   She made a promise to herself to make it happen the next year and this time, she followed through with the plans.  

Two months before the family picnic was to occur, Helen’s mother died.   Helen blamed herself for her procrastination.  It was her fault that they never had the family reunion in time for her Mother to attend.  For more than a year after her death, Helen found herself pretending that her Mother was still alive, as if to assuage her guilty feelings.

Helen broke out into hives and visited her family Doctor.  After 1 or 2 months of trying to find a physical cause for the hives, her Doctor said, on her next visit, that she wasn’t leaving his office until they found out what was bothering her.  He said that it didn’t necessarily have to be something that happened recently, it could be something from the past also.

Again they went through all of the possibilities for allergies and other physical causes, all to no avail.  Helen said that she could not think of anything that was bothering her unless it had something to do with the fact that a year and a half ago her Mother --- she never got to finish the sentence.  She broke down and cried for about 10 minutes.   She apologized profusely for her behavior, telling the Doctor how she was sorry to waste his time while a room full of patients waited for his help.

Fortunately for Helen, she had one of the finest Doctors a person could ever hope to have.  Never mind that he was not a psychiatrist, he had just performed a psychic miracle.  He told her not to worry about his other patients; she was more important than any one else at that moment.  He also told her to go ahead and cry until she released all of the built-up inner tension.  Within two weeks the hives had disappeared.

Helen’s physical problem was psychic in nature.  How could a pill, prescribed by a psychiatrist, or anyone else, --- solve this problem?  Only by using the “talking therapy” could this problem be solved directly.  What if a Doctor had given her a pill for her nerves and seen her for 10 minutes once every 3 months?  The odds of him helping to unearth the real cause of the hives would, in all probability approach almost zero.