I want to write a little about a question I’ve been sitting with lately: When your body does something extreme, something that interrupts your life, what message is it sending?
We tend to think of symptoms as mechanical failures, a seizure is a neurological misfire or hot flashes are a hormone deficiency. The body, in this view, is a machine that has broken down, and our job is to find the right specialist to fix the right part.
But what if the body is not breaking down, but communicating? What if the symptom is not the problem, but a dramatic, involuntary attempt at protecting you?
The Body Takes Over
I’ve been working with a woman I’ll call Evelyn. She’s in her 50’s, an artist and teacher, and when she came to me she was in the thick of perimenopause. But her chief complaint wasn’t hot flashes or mood swings. It was something stranger and more frightening: she was experiencing focal seizures: sudden moments of “phasing out” where she would become unresponsive and distant, sometimes in the middle of a conversation.
If you looked at this mechanically, you’d see a neurological problem coinciding with a hormonal transition. Maybe two separate specialists, two separate treatment plans.
But Evelyn told me something that made me look deeper. She described feeling, in the years leading up to this, an overwhelming sense of being used by the people around her. She felt constant demands from her community. She desperately wanted to express her anger, to enforce boundaries, to push back. But instead, she forced herself to keep the peace. She suppressed it all.
And then, one day, the fuse blew. That first phase out was, perhaps, her body’s way of saying I’m taking over now.
The Worst Version of Treatment
Whenever I’m setting out to work with a new client, I try to think in advance about the very worst version of their treatment plan. Not because I’m pessimistic, but because I want to know what pitfalls to avoid.
Often, the worst version is one where we just suppress the symptom: a pill for an ill. Layer upon layer of management, none of it touching the deeper question: Why does the body need to do this in the first place? What is it trying to tell us through these symptoms?
I used to worry about whether I should be looking at someone’s varying symptoms separately and individually.
But then I’d catch myself. I’d gotten so worked up about respecting the boundaries of conventional medicine that I’d forgotten the core tenet of homeopathy: we see multiple diagnoses as different expressions of a single underlying imbalance: it may shift over time, but it is still coming from the same, deep place.
A Turning Point
In addition to her physical symptoms, we selected a remedy that matched her exact feeling of being trapped, her suppressed anger, her sense that the environment around her was hostile and inescapable. We gave her body the information it needed to self-correct.
A few months later, she told me that she hadn’t had a phase out since the last time we spoke, and they used to be at least monthly. But something even more remarkable had happened.
She was in a stressful conversation, the kind that would have previously triggered an “aura,” the warning sign that it was coming. She felt it starting. And then, instead of phasing out, she told herself she could handle it. She stayed present and it passed.This was completely new and a clear sign of healing.
What the Body Knows
I think about Evelyn whenever I catch myself worrying about whether I’m overstepping, whether it’s appropriate to treat the whole person instead of the isolated symptoms. But then I remember that the symptom is not the enemy. It’s the messenger. And if we shoot the messenger, we never hear the full message.
I’ve been building out some new pages on my website that explore common constellations of symptoms that I see. Not because I want to collect them like specimens, but because I see these patterns everywhere: hormonal transitions tangled with burnout, anxiety wrapped around long-standing suppression, chronic fatigue that started as a sensible response to an unsustainable life.
If you or someone you know is navigating these interwoven loops, I’ve tried to create something useful:
Online Homeopathic Care for Anxiety
Homeopathic Care for Long COVID & Chronic Fatigue
General Practice & Family Care
They’re just starting points. A way to see if the way I think about these things resonates with how you’re experiencing them.
As always, you know where to find me.
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