Asthma and laryngeal dyspnea
It is the conflict of the newborn arriving in a world that is both hostile and vital. It is the conflict of the Blackfoot repatriated against his/her will.
Affected Organs:
Muscles and motor nerves of the bronchi.
Muscles and motor nerves of the larynx.
There are two forms of asthma:
– Bronchial asthma: difficulty while exhaling.
– Laryngeal dyspnea (larynx or trachea): difficulty while inhaling.
Bronchial asthma:
Asthma is a difficulty to breathe when exhaling, an expiratory (expiatory!) dyspnea, one can only contract one’s bronchi with effort. In this case, the priority is for the air to at least be able to enter. To figure out the conflictual tonality or coloration, one must always rely on the pathophysiology of a disease.
What is asthma all about? It is about the nerves creating problem spasms to the respiratory muscles (often accompanied with issues of the mucosa). The brain gives two orders to the nerves that command the muscles: to open and not to open.
In the portal of entry into biology, we find two entries: neurological and respiratory. What is the possible conflict from these observations? It is similar to a multiple sclerosis yet experienced on a respiratory level, it is a double constraint. The brain gives the order to open and to tighten at the same time; for MS, the brain gives, for example, the intense order to go to the right and to the left at the same time.
With asthmatics, the space they want is impossible, forbidden (such the story of the Blackfoot people leaving Algeria), and they are forced to go to a place they refuse (the apartment in France that they dont want).
In this disease, the brain gives the order, through the nerves, to the muscles of the bronchi at the same time to open: “I want this space of freedom, of comfort…, but it is prohibited to me or it is simply impossible”, and to close: “I don’t want this space that is imposed on me, a stale, stinky, boring, noisy, restrictive space…”
The central tonality is: social.
“I LONG FOR A SPACE I AM NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE AND I AM FORCED INTO A SPACE I DO NOT WANT.”
“I don’t want to make mine this space around me.”
“I prefer my air to that of others.”
“I desire what is not, I refuse what is.”
Bronchial asthma with productive bronchitis (mucus)
When asthma is productive, the person has an additional feeling which is: the fear of death, the fear of running out of air due to suffocation (conflict of the lungs). For the body, it is necessary to free the bronchial ducts from any obstruction. The glands in the bronchial ducts produce more mucus in order to expel what is suffocating, that is their role: to evacuate dust, peanuts, death threats…
Sometimes, it is the asthmatic attack itself that provokes this fear of suffocating death and the asthmatic attack is reinforced by the fear that the air will not arrive (which becomes a self-programming conflict).
Dry bronchial asthma:
Conflict over bronchial muscles without mucosal issues.
An additional and frequent conflict is: “I want to show that I am alive”. In fact, a noisy breathing, even if it anguishes or disturbs in a way, in another biological and unconscious way it reassures: “as long as I breathe, I am alive, and by showing it noisily to the other person, I tell him that I am alive”.
Here is the example of a woman who gives birth to a stillborn baby. Then, when a second pregnancy avails, she is afraid that this new baby will also die. For her unconscious mind, her biological brain, hearing her baby’s breath tells her that it is alive! This is the biological sense. A mother who has had a stillborn baby, as soon as she has another child, watches at birth to see if he is breathing and if he is breathing loudly. You have to hear the other person’s breathing, or your own breathing, to know that you are alive. When I breathe loudly, I hear my breath or I hear breathing that which reassures me.
There are two forms of asthma. Bronchial asthma: difficulty breathing out. Laryngeal dyspnea (larynx or trachea): difficulty breathing in. A conflict of the bronchi plus a conflict of the larynx create the most important asthmatic attack, it is the asthmatic disease, a double asthma, at the same time inspiratory and expiratory. When the conflicts are resolved, the asthma stops.
The asthmatic attack can be an expression of the epic crisis of the conflict. Thus, although healing occurred, the related brain relay becomes active again for a short period of time. In fact, asthma can occur at two times: either during the active phase of the conflict, or during the short epic crisis, which is equivalent to a short relapse of the active phase. The peak of the crisis (like epilepsy) is reached during the epic crisis.
Cortisone relieves asthma.
The control center of the adrenal cortex is often blocked when there is a great vital danger. There is thus high need for cortisone: hence its importance in cases of laryngeal edema with risk of suffocation (corticoids are drugs that require a medical prescription).
Sometimes a person experiences both a fear conflict and a separation conflict
When the separation conflict is resolved, eczema (a dermatitis) occurs, with the possibility of alternation between the asthma attack and the eczema (depending on the conflictual activity of one or the other). The alternation takes place because there are two conflicts while sometimes one is resolved, sometimes the other.
Summary:
“I am separated from the space I want, I am assaulted by the space I’m in.”
Fear of death.
“I have to show that I am alive.”
Epic crisis.
Pedagogical point: therapeutic behavior and calibration
In the course of this kind of sessions, the patient must fully enter into his/her emotions, be associated with his/her memory, live his/her emotions without giving them either a meaning nor a resource. One must just feel it all. To do this, we must take them back into the moment of shock, re-associate them with the problem. This is where we check their inner resources, otherwise we risk maintaining a whim: “if I could have stayed in Algeria and the war had never happened…”, one would not have had asthma, of course! But we have to put them back facing reality: in the boat that leads to France or in the womb with the stillborn baby a few months earlier, etc.
What does one feel? What is happening at that moment? When there is emotion, one gets into it, associates with it, cries, screams. For me, the great resource is to be inside, to go back into the problem, to relive it, accompanied by the benevolence of a therapist. And this is done for the triggering events. When one had the most recent asthma attacks, what happened just before that? Every time one feels anguish, one has an asthma attack. Anguish, where is it, when is it? At what time, where? We have to be specific.
Then, one must always find the programming bio-shock. As soon as the therapeutic work is engaged in, the body reacts, responds, expresses itself. It always does. It is up to the therapist, to the professional, to pick up on that, to observe it: this is the biological calibration.
– If the person is respiratory, s.he or she will gasp, feel tightness in the chest, tightness in the throat, shortness of breath, or simply be unable to take a full breath. Then the person will breathe a big sigh of relief.
– If the person is cutaneous, s.he will scratch this or that part of the body.
– If in his blood, she’s ll get red, feel hot.
– If renal, she will want to urinate.
– If digestive, she will belch or the intestines will gurgle.
We all have a way of being in the world, an organic, biological way that is uncontrollable yet observable. These ways inform us directly about subconscious activities and messages.