Case of a 15-year old girl, who perceived herself as a victim of school-bullying
- First consultation: 26.11.2019
- Psychiatric diagnosis
- Performance anxiety
- Panic attacks
- OCD
- Case history:
- At the age of 6 years she was operated on for strabismus.
- At the age of 11 she was exhausted, restless, trembling, presented excessive worrying about her school-performance, so she was taken to a psychiatrist and neurologist
- At the age of 12 she was diagnosed with performance anxiety and treated with Sertralin, without any improvement
- At the age of 13 she got the diagnosis of OCD and was treated with Fevarin for 8 months
- For one year she has been in individual psychoterapy, but her condition remains the same.
Chief complaints
- She is suffering from bullying in her school since many years. It became so serious that three months before the consultation, her parents sold their house and moved to another city to take her away from her
- 2 months after she started the school in the new city, she started feeling again that she is bullied.
- She has an obsessive-compulsive behaviour, washing her hands frequently and turning off the light repeatedly.
- Constant high level of anxiety
My Observations at the first consultation
- The patient came with her mother
- A thin young girl, very timid, avoiding eye contact
- The mother started to describe the complaints, and the girl interrupted her and continued her story.
- She has a very specific loquacity, a hasty way of speaking, without eye contact, asking many questions
- She was crying all during the consultation
Her nature, her perception of the problem
- She is a very anxious person, worrying a lot and also perfectionist, and was the first in her class
- She feels attacked by her classmates who believe that she is the “teacher’s favorite”
- Classmates behave very badly with her
- Every day she goes home crying. She feels excluded all the time.
- She is disappointed
- She says she is despised by others
- She has no courage to turn against school mates because another girl manipulated the whole class
- She was never self-confident, she felt always looked down on by others
- She had no good relationship with anyone in her class
- Her mood is very changeable
She has many Fears
- Fear of being rejected
- Fear alone of being – she feels very lonely
- Fear of diseases, of bacteria – that is why she washes her hands frequently
- Fear of future
- Fear that she cannot make friends in this new school
- Fear that she destroys everybody’s life, especially her family’s life
- Feeling hopeless, cannot see the sense of her life
- Fear that she cannot control her thoughts
She is full of negative thoughts
- She is ugly, disgusting, irritating and also feels irritated by others
- Full of guilt, sadness, because of moving her family in the new city
- She cannot manage properly the time – spending too much time on checking her phone
- She feels jealous of others who are more popular
- She is impatient, if her family does not give attention to her
- She cannot hurry, not in the morning, neither with home works,
- She is always late
- She likes being consoled, would need the company of others
What was the biggest stress in her life? What are her interests?
- Stress – when she felt excluded from class and the relocation of her family
- She is weeping a lot at home, but not in the class, not to be perceived as a weak person
- She likes to read, to swim. Has feeling of happiness after exams – before exams she has panic attacks, feeling of suffocation.
- She liked very much her dog in their old house – for her the dog was like a family member
The relationships with her family-members
- Mother – her best friend, but there is also an ambivalence, she feels anger also
- Father – no good relationship
- Sister – a lot of fighting
Dreams, sleep
- Dreams about :
- animals: dogs, cats
- traveling
- accidents
- the death of her father
- exams
- losing her teeth
- Going to sleep late, midnight after
- Sleeplessness because of constant worrying
- Sleep-position on abdomen
Physical–Generals
- Nose obstructed, alternative side
- Sensitive on odors and noise
- Headache on stress
- Appetite: hungry constantly
- Desire for sweets, meat, onion, aversion for fish, cabbage
- Thirstlessness
- Constipated
- Chilliness
- Menses irregular
Analysis –System Approach
Themes which are present in this case:
- Victim – Aggressor
- She versus Others : classmates, sister
- She is inferior, despised, rejected, excluded
- Persecution “ everybody gossiping everybody”
- Constant conflict : “ being accused that she arranged her marks”
- Attractiveness: “She considering herself ugly, irritating”
- Competitiveness: jealous on who are more popular then she is
All these themes suggest that the remedy should belong to the Animal Kingdom.To belong to the group is also very important for her. She needs the company of others, others’ opinion is important for her. She feels guilt for her family, close relationship with her mother, she versus her classmates, as a group, irregular menses – all these suggest a remedy from the Mammal Group
The remedy belongs to the sycotic miasm.
Repertorization of the symptoms
Mind Symptoms
Repertorization of Physical-Gen. Symptoms
The remedy which covers all the mind symptoms and also the physical generals is Lac caninum, having a few very characteristic rubrics, like delusion, looked down upon, she is, delusion despised is, delusion, insulted, he is, and there is also a very specific, single remedy rubric: Fear – separation of, friends from – which in her case represents the center of her suffering. The remedy Lac can also covers her OCD symptom of Washing – desire to wash hands frequently.
Materia Medica – Theme of Lac caninum
The best description of the theme of Lac can I find, is given by Dr. Rajan Sankaran in his book The Soul of Remedies, where he had written:
“The main theme of Lac caninum is dominance ( the bigger dominating the smaller) and who is going to be on top.
They develop a feeling of low self-worth: “I am not good enough. I feel dirty and horrible”, and become contemptuous of themselves. This dirty feeling is also common to animal remedies, and it is similar to the feeling of Ambra grisea (prepared from the sperm whale).
Lac caninum patients suffer by comparison with others. They try hard to please, to be liked, cared for and accepted because they feel left out and rejected. They can develop malice and hatred because they hold somebody else responsible for their condition.
She feels she is uncared for and neglected because her body looks bad. She starts feeling dirty, and washes herself frequently.
In Mangialavori’s additions there are a few characteristic rubrics about Lac
can:
- WILL: CONTRADICTION OF (16) – Mang
- Undertakes: Things opposed to his intentions (3) – Mang
- Forsaken Feeling (38) – Mang
- Anxiety: Family, About his (14) – Mang
- Dreams: animals of: dogs (3) – Mang
- Dreams: Body, Body Parts: Teeth: Breaking off (12) – Mang
The last sentence from Roberts’ Remedies about Lac can. describes exactly her sensation.
Rx: Lac caninum 1M, 2 doses/ day for 2 days –26.11.2019.
Follow up – 7.01.2020.
- After the Remedy she was feeling better, was not sad, no weeping
- She is no longer so irritated
- She started feeling being appreciated. She said: “It is not good that I want to please others”
- Now it does not bother her if others are seeing her bad parts also:
“There is in me not to give up”
- Her compulsion to wash her hands and turning off the light reduced
- Her nose in no longer obstructed and she didn’t have headache
- Her menses started 3 days after the remedy ( In the previous month she had no menses)
But some symptoms were still there and after the remedy some new symptoms came up, like:
- She has a fear of people
- She is constantly preoccupied with “Are the others loving me or hating me?”
- She is feeling excluded even now and looked down upon
- She failed to fit in “I’m not belonging with them”
- “I can’t be natural, can’t be myself”
- She feels very irritated “when others are laughing around me”
- Cannot go to the toilet at school. She holds back until she gets home
- Cannot stay silent; it makes her tense – she speaks too much, compulsively just to avoid silence
- She is missing their old house, their dog
I repertorized her symptoms again:
The remedy which covers all her new, peculiar symptoms was Ambra grisea, having some very specific rubrics, like:
- Mind, Ailments from embarrassment
- Mind – Disgust- laughing of others, at
- Mind – Disgust – stool-odor of his own
- Mind – Fear –opinion of others
- Mind – Fear – people, of
- Mind – Loquacity – question after another, asking, not waiting for answer
- Mind – Swimming – desires
The best description of the theme of Ambra grisea is given also by Dr. Rajan Sankaran :
Ambra feels a tremendous sense of embarrassment.….. This embarrassment is more when it comes to personal habits like passing stool and urine.
This feeling of embarrassment creates tremendous shyness in company and in the presence of strangers.
Young girls with this Ambra feeling, in their embarrassment can talk in a flitting, flighty manner. ”
( Rajan Sankaran – The Soul of Remedies)
A very good description of Ambra we find also in Morrison’s Desktop Guide:
Rx: January 2020 Ambra grisea 1M, 1 dose. She repeated time at the end of March.
Follow up after 6 months:
— She is feeling much better as per her general state, state of mind, she is now calmer
— She is braver as per her behaviour in the school
— She is more open toward her classmates, more self-confident
— She doesn’t weep anymore after school ( as she did before)
Comments
Both remedies belong to the Animal Kingdom, Mammal Group.
The first remedy Lac caninum is a Milk remedy, which treated the upper layer of the case, characterised by symptoms,like delusion despised, being looked down upon, insulted being, desire to please others and also the frequent handwashing, diagnosed as obsessive compulsive disorder.
At the follow up the patient presented some remaining symptoms along with some new symptoms, which needed the next remedy, Ambra grisea.
Ambra grisea is a fat-like substance found in the intestines and among the excreta of the sperm whale (from Choudhuri’s Study of MM). This remedy covers the patient’s very peculiar symptoms related to her intense generalized anxiety and performance anxiety, like bashfullness, embarrassement in presence of strangers, aversion to laughing of others, her specific loquacity, that she cannot pass stool at school, and even her desire to swim ( rubric with only tree remedies, one of them being Ambr.)
The direction of cure respected Hering’s Law of cure, since the first remedy, Lac can treated her OCD, the last diagnosed, and the next remedy Ambra grisea completed the cure.
Conclusion
- Homeopathy can help the victim of bullying through strengthening and healing from within.
- Homeopathy can be combined with different forms of psychotherapy.
“The disease is a delusion, awareness means healing”
“ Disease is a limitation of vision, a narrow way of looking at things. Only the awareness of this illusion can remove it, just as light removes darkness. Meditation, philosophy and psychoanalysis have to do largely with the awareness of the false perception of the present. Homeopathy is also based on this.”
(Rajan Sankaran: The Spirit of Homeopathy)
