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VIRGINIA NATURAL HEALTH
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Dr. Byron "Ted" Butchart, ND Naturopathic Physician
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"Treat the patient, not the disease."
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Offices in Charlottesville and Staunton Virginia
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Psycho-Emotional Approaches to Natural Health
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There is a passage in Moby Dick that describes a young seaman
falling from the small whaling boat and being swiftly left in its wake
to drown.
Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably
By the merest chance the ship itself rescued him
From that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot
Such at least they said he was
The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up
But drowned the infinite of his soul
Not drowned entirely though
Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths
Where strange shapes of the unmarked primal world
Glided to and froe before his passive eyes
I believe the poetics of that description mirror the internal reality of
a child who has been abused and neglected. The body survives,
but a large piece of the soul sinks silently below the waves, and the
child goes on through life silenced and fearful on some level.
Certainly many adults with that history are able to compensate and
become quite wonderful people. But for many the trauma clings to
them for a lifetime, an unseen stone around their neck that they
are forever trying to work around. A stone that lurches up from the
subconscious to bedevil them and keep them from flying to their
potential.
If we don’t have this history ourselves, we certainly have been
rubbing shoulders with people who do. Remember those silent
kids in the back of the classroom, striving with all their might just to
disappear and not be seen? Maybe we thought they were ‘idiots’
because they never interacted in class. Not slow usually, just
frightened out of their minds. The life the rest of us took for
granted just glided to and froe before their passive eyes.
One of my patients, a 50-year old with AIDS, said to me, “If I was
sitting in class and I heard a siren, I didn’t know if anyone would be
home when I returned, or if they would still be alive.” He had
watched rapes, beatings, murders; been beaten and raped
himself. Maslow postulated decades ago that a human must have
his/her physical needs met first. After that s/he needs to feel
secure. Once that is in place they need to feel loved and
respected. This young fellow had had none of it, not security, not
safety, and certainly not love. He was raised on anti-love, and 47
years later a good part of his soul was lost to him.
His method to survive was to wall himself off from his feelings. It
was a smart and reasonable move for a 3- or 4-year old to make.
Better for part of the being to survive than have the whole being
die from the crush of the horror. But then he became stuck inside
that defense. To feel anything at all required massive stimulation,
leading him to a life of S&M until he finally realized that he needed
a more gentle way into his inner world.
We have various tools to use with these scarred souls, but many of
them are only partially effective. Talk therapy? I had a patient who
was an MD Psychiatrist. For the better part of 50 years he had
had access to the best psychiatry around. And he was certainly
well compensated psychologically. He still practiced part-time at
75, wrote poetry for 4 hours a day. He was truly an exceptional
and impressive person. But look closer: he wrote poetry for four
hours every morning because “That is the only time my mother can’
t get at me.” His mother had been dead for 28 years. He woke
every morning of his life “with terror, exhaustion, and a blinding
headache.” He couldn’t sleep with his back to his own wife, 70 plus
years after the initial trauma. Did psychiatry help him? Absolutely.
Did it remove the trauma? Clearly not. But treatment with carefully
selected homeopathic remedies did help.
As with other aspects of health, prevention is so much better than
thrashing about for cures after the fact. A child does not have to
be literally raped or beaten to be abused. Simple neglect, constant
criticism, or an environment of anger and violence can do just as
much damage. Often times it is the more subtle damage that
causes the longest-lived harm as the child never realizes that their
childhood was robbing them of the one thing they needed most:
love and self-esteem. They grow up to be adults who have no
compass with which to steer themselves through relationships.
The ‘love’ they received as children was warped and scary, so they
find themselves drawn to warped and scary people. That racing
heart, which they interpret as love–at-first-sight, is more likely just
fear. Or they live a life with one foot in grief and one foot in the
sunshine, never really understanding where the grief comes from,
or that the grief can be set aside.
Just as I would want to work with a patient to make sure their diet
was adequate and proper for their situation rather than wait until
serious chronic disease had set it, just so I would much rather work
with young families to sort through the issues preventing them from
opening up to love their children. A referral to a good therapist,
some serious work with their own issues – these are far wiser tools
than trying to unwind the damage in the adult decades later, but for
those already scarred there is good news. We do have valuable
tools that we can use that do work to release old, old trauma.
These, integrated within a holistic approach to the health of the
individual, make it possible to throw a rope down to that sinking
soul and haul it back up from the briny deep. Few cases bring me
more pleasure than these: to reunite the broken seaman with his
drowning psyche. That is why I do medicine.
© 2009, Dr. Ted Butchart. All rights reserved.
Virginia Natural Health 540-213-1350
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Dr. Butchart's Articles
Keep the Energy Moving
Psycho-Emotional Health
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