The Ugly Duckling
Camilla was a woman in her 20’s, suffering from severe cramping pains in her abdomen, diarrhoea alternating with constipation, and sleeplessness. The doctor has diagnosed her with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. She explained that as a child, she often suffered with tummy aches, especially in the mornings on school days, and had taken a lot of time off school. It was especially bad when she felt “under stress.” I asked her what kind of situation caused her stress, and she said anything where she had to “perform,” such as tests, exams, or PE lessons, which she hated. When asked what she hated about PE, she said that she was very self-conscious and didn’t like people to look at her body. She felt fat, ugly, and awkward, and it embarrassed her to be observed. She preferred to remain as invisible as possible, keeping out of the limelight, and staying in the shadows, not drawing any attention to herself.
The cramping pains became more persistent when she went to university. She had to make friends and get used to a new environment. She became sleepless with anxiety, often going over the events of the day, and reproaching herself for her foolishness, for something she had said, or not said. All these concerns added to her anxiety, and the bowel symptoms became more severe, and occurred more frequently, resulting in the diagnosis of IBS.
It is often the case with IBS that the patient suffers with anticipatory anxiety. Camilla’s anxiety stems from a lack of self-confidence and embarrassment. The anxiety is the causation, and the cramping pain in the digestive tract is the result.
“Since my relationship with my boyfriend ended, about a month ago, the IBS has got much worse. It stops me going to work. In fact the way I feel, I would prefer not to have to go at all. I feel embarrassed and awkward because I hate being seen by my colleagues. I just feel like staying at home, under the duvet, and hiding from the world.”
Because of her self-image, that she is fat, ugly and foolish, she imagined that other people see her like this. This caused her to feel awkward in public, and even with her work colleagues. As her physician, it was important to consider why Camilla felt this way about herself? The circumstances that set this self-image in place is the root cause of her complaints.
“I can’t even remember when that started. I think I have always felt this way. I remember once when I was walking in the town with my father…” She pauses and focuses on the memory.
I asked “How old are you?”
She replied “about five years old.”
“Describe the situation. You are in the town, with your father..”
“We were walking, and I was going slow. He told me to stop dawdling. And walk properly, you’re waddling like a duck. I was overweight, and my dad used to put me down mercilessly.”
“How did you feel when he put you down like that?”
“Like I wanted to go to my room, and never come out again.”
“Is that how you feel now, when you hide from the world, under your duvet?”
The ancestral wound was grafted onto Camilla when she was a young child, and she continues to carry it to this day. When I examined the story, I was struck by the references to the ugly duckling. Even in her hiding place, under her duvet, she was surrounded by duck down feathers. In the story, the duck retreated from the world for a long winter, in a forlorn state, but when the time eventually came, she discovered that she was a beautiful and graceful swan.
I prescribed a remedy for Camilla that was prepared from the feather of a swan. It is called Cygnus Cygnus. I did not inform the patient yet of which medicine I had selected, so as not to influence the outcome.
In the next session, she came bounding in with a dream: “I was at the racecourse, and I knew which horse was about to win the race. My father used to take me to the racecourse as a child. To find the winning horse, I had to divine it with a divining rod. The divining rod was very strange. It was made of two long white feathers. Like swan feathers.”
She said that since the remedy, she has decided to stop feeling sorry for herself. She has been back at work, but now she was thinking about looking for a different kind of job. She said that she was beginning to explore what she really wanted to be doing with her precious time. She has not had any episodes of IBS.
We all have within us the potential to become free of limitations, to release the burdens from the past, and to recover the gifts that we were born with, of grace and magic. Self-healing is an intrinsic property of all life. The role of medicine is to guide, facilitate, and encourage change. The power to transform already exists within each one of us.
Healing is to become more our true self, and no longer who we thought we were. This dream was a message from her inner wise healer, gently reminding that she has the grace and beauty of the swan already within her, and the transformation is underway.
We are made of stories, and we are also the storytellers.