Allergies and Aversions
Description ~
Introduction ~ Allergies represent on-the-edge functioning, due to rather severe emotional difficulties arising from early non-acceptance, lack of nurturing, rejection, neglect and/or traumatic initial emotional development, primarily in the individual's relationship with their mother. Allergies are sometimes also residuals of past-life traumas, such as having been killed by a large cat -- thus leading to an allergy to cats in this life. The particular past life traumas involved seem to determine the type of maternal parenting trauma in this life that is required to work through that earlier trauma, thus creating the kind of allergy or allergies that one suffers from in this life. Allergies reflect an overwhelmed soul/fetus/infant/child's experiencing their mother as the “local representative of the “Home Office” (All that Is) at the beginning (especially up to the end of the first year after birth). What essentially happens is that since the untenable experiences began from the very start, it must mean that something is wrong with US (being as “God doesn't make mistakes”). The implication of this is that “God” (mother) is reacting with “giving us our just desserts,” in the form of emotional deprivation and/or rejection. There results a denial of one's own self-worth that seems “marked with the Seal of God.” Essentially, we reach for God and we get Godzilla. To make matters even more difficult, our mental body doesn't have any real equipment to work with until about the beginning of the fourth year after birth – and then it is only shifting from perception to conception in the most primitive sense. In essence, we don't have our mind to work with until around seven years of age, and even then it is rather intensely concrete-minded. Which means we have to work with whatever the physical body and the emotional body can provide us, and we have to flounder along with only the vaguest comprehension, if any, as to what is actually taking place and the context that causes it all. In the very early stages, we are still feeling what it was like before we entered 3-D, and our frame of reference is that we are still in the Cosmos and that God (mother) is very displeased with us. And as a survival thing, we seek to please, appease and placate the angry, indifferent or rejecting “God.” As a result, we sublimate our emotions and anxiety, so as to not further “evil up” the situation. We seek to repress the processes and expressions of being alive and of being who and what we are, because whatever we are has generated this “Cosmic Expulsion,” so to speak. We then often tend to take a reactive, rather than a pro-active or interactive orientation and approach to life. As a result, much of life ends up seeming irrelevant, incomprehensible and/or unmanageable to us, in consequence of what has happened. Underlying all this is a deep longing for Mother's (“God's”) love, as we desperately desire to attain the seemingly unachievable “God Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” We then make an obsessive goal of trying to “make up for” our “evilness,” and to turn our mother around regarding her feelings toward us. This all originates in the state of being that we are in during the very early stages of our development. Indeed, it often commences in the intra-uterine period, perhaps even at the point of conception. This then becomes an unresolved aggravation, and the unexpressed grief over the felt “Fall” dominates our emotional/physical life. There develops a generalized fear of loss and abandonment-anxiety, and not infrequently, a “rejecting first” pattern develops. For instance, an infant will “back arch” when picked up, because s/he feels threatened and overwhelmed much of the time. This, in turn, generates a “reject back” reaction from our mother. Of course, all of this operates on the largely unconscious level. In most cases, this is the outcome of what could be called “smother-mothering” from a pseudo-accepting but actually avoidant, self-immersed and/or rejecting mother. In reality the mother is in effect overwhelmed with the 24/7/365 on duty thing, plus whatever the other stresses, situations, handicaps and life history-caused neuroses she has to cope with. To make matters worse, in the predominantly patriarchal nature of the world culture, kids come last in the world today, and there are precious few resources set aside to assist in the parenting process. This is especially true in the United States , the only major world power that doesn't provide for job site child care, maternity leave with pay, etc. What typically happens as a result of all this is that the physical needs and the “proper” and “good appearances” protocols are handled in the parenting process, but for all of these reasons, there is little or no “heart” in it. In addition, there is often an underlying deep alarm and seething resentment or even open hostility that permeates the mother's experience, reactions and functioning, of which she and everyone else is usually utterly unaware. And that, in turn, leads to an intolerance reaction in the infant to whatever is related to the presumed basis of this reaction from the assumed “Home Office” (All That Is) -- namely one's fundamental selfhood. So when some one is having an allergy or an allergic reaction, they are in effect having an over-reaction to felt threats to their well-being in the Cosmos that is experienced as being hostile to their welfare, as a function of how it was in their early life. The allergic individual then engaged in on-the-edge functioning, due to the severe emotional difficulties involved in trying to master survival here under these conditions. It is due also to their denying of their own potency and self-worth arising from this foundational seeming rejection reaction from what appeared to be the “Home Office” (All That Is). In addition, the individual is repressing their rather strong resentment, anger and aggressive reactions to all this. The question then becomes “Who am I allergic to?,” and the answer unfortunately comes to them as, “Moi.” They end up with an irritation reaction to life, and they tend strongly to react to people, systems and situations, instead of interacting with them in an inter-dependent, competent manner. They feel threatened and they fear loss, so they are prone to put out the “reject first” stance and approach, in an exaggerated self-defense response. They are dominated by abandonment-anxiety, suppressed emotions, and unresolved aggravations and irritations from early childhood on. There is an underlying profound level of fear about having to participate fully in life and/or about potential annihilation. The allergic individual has an intense distrust of letting anyone or anything inside their personal boundaries, at least at the deep subconscious level. They are also seeking to elicit love in an indirect manner all the time, since they found that they didn't get the love, they needed as a very young child. In addition, they are deeply afraid of alienating and driving away their source of love should they act directly on their deep need. They are continuously experiencing the effects of unexpressed grief over felt rejection by a “smother-loving” but functionally emotionally unavailable or even hostile mother. They are longing for mother's love or that of a mother stand-in. Interestingly in this context, allergic reactions run in families. About 70% of all allergy sufferers have other family members who are also allergic, though the particular allergies can vary from family member to family member. This is often interpreted as representing the action of an underlying genetic sub-stratum for the allergic problem, and there may indeed be some truth to that. However, it is also highly probable that this “family pattern” propensity is more likely to be a function of the fact that the mother is no more able to “be there” for the others in the family than she was for this individual. Furthermore, she herself is typically “doing unto others what was done unto her,” and she therefore has come from a family in which unmet deep emotional needs and felt rejection ran rampant. And so it goes for generations on back. She would also be highly likely to be attracted to a man who is from a similar family, as she continues to try to “earn the God Housekeeping Seal” with “stand-ins for the original cast.” This makes for a less-than-ideal father for their children as well. In any case, what in effect happens in allergic and aversive reactions to things is that we have physiologic intolerance reactions or we have strong rejecting reactions. These reactions occur to things which are noxious to us by their nature or as a function of what they mean to us and/or by their contextual conditioning in childhood. And this, in turn, reflects our experiencing ourselves as noxious, due to the experiences we had at the very beginning of our life. The immune system goes awry under such circumstances, and it either attacks substances, experiences or stimuli that are associated with the noxious experiences we had as infants and children in an incidental conditioning process, or it attacks our own body as an invading alien force -- producing our allergies, intolerances and intense aversions. As a result of this, many allergies involve a rejection of vulnerability, of the feminine, of sexuality, of connection, of affection, of fecundity, and/or of intimacy. Furthermore, the realms of wisdom, awareness and the sacred are frequently also systematically rejected or fled from. Clearly there is a form of “negative mother” reaction underlying or accompanying the self-rejection motif in allergies. In addition, the individual becomes fearful of all aspects of life that activate the self-rejecting issues and/or the “negative mother” complex. Within the self-rejection pattern, there are two general sub-themes that often show up with the various allergies. These are: 1) a generalized debilitation of coping capability, and/or, conversely, 2) a “steamrollering” behavioral style, with a “portable plexiglass phonebooth barrier” vulnerability-avoidance and domination-seeking pattern. There are several component “threads” to the “debilitation” sub-theme. These arrange themselves into a kind of “severity continuum.” At the mildest end is a pattern of felt powerlessness, while at the most extreme end is a life-avoidant “giving up.” In between these two ends are patterns such as feeling-suppression, reality-denial, responsibility-eschewing, and atonement-tripping. Also involved are things like masculinity-rejecting (in themselves and/or in other people), a “struggle-addict” lifestyle, self-distrust, “run amok-anxiety, self-repression, joy- and abundance-avoidance, love/intimacy-prevention, sexuality-deflecting, success-derailing, confusion, mental dullness, and a generalized sickliness. There is a similar continuum in the “steamrollering” and “plexiglass phone-booth” pattern. It ranges from self-protectively separative emotional isolationism on the one end to a “hard and harsh” indifference to their environmental and emotional impact on the other end, as they operate like a survivalist “monad” with little capacity to care about or connect with anyone. Along this “steamrollering” continuum are things like generalized awareness-, thinking- and understanding-avoidance, commitment-abhorance, control-tripping, “whim of iron” willfulness, vulnerability-prevention, control-derailing, rebelliousness, and rejection of all things sacred in favor of a compulsive “bull-headed” and concrete-minded lifestyle. At the base of all these reactions in both the “debilitation” and the “steamrollering” sub-themes of allergies is an “I don't really deserve to exist!” and/or an “I don't belong here!” reaction. There is a feeling of estrangement and alienation coming from within, along with a strong sense of inhospitality and even of hostility from the surrounding environment. The fundamental foundation of all this is a deep distrust of themselves and of the Universe, and the particular allergies that the individual has are focal points of this distrust issue. Incidentally, multiple allergies are about not feeling that it's worthwhile or even “right” being here, and about it's being experienced that it's too damned difficult to cope in a number of areas of living. Of course, as was said, all of this is occurring largely on the unconscious level, while our conscious mind is handling the processes of living the best it can under the burden of all the underlying issues. The fact is that if you don't get enough love from the “maternal matrix” at the beginning of life, your immune system is damaged, which reflects a self-denigrating felt lack of personal worth and deservingness, with a resulting self-undermining pattern. What happens here is that there develop “illusional conclusions” and “emotional agreements” early in life, in which an attempt is made to compromise, in order to survive the situation, and in the hopes of earning the God Housekeeping Seal of Approval from “Godzilla.” These conclusions and agreements then become the “givens” in the individual's functioning from the starting point of life on. They determine how the person will respond to their environment in every regard. The mechanism by which this occurs is what could be called “biochemical errors” that devolve from these early “conclusions” and “agreements” and their play-outs, and which then determine the individual's physiological functioning. As a result of these developments, the person is not able to process amino acids correctly, and the metabolic pathways that are required for normal responses are in effect hard to access to one degree or another. There therefore develops a system of internal signals that serves to perpetuate maladaptive physiological and immune system responses to foods, fumes and flowers, among other things. The effect is to repress the formation of enzymes relating specifically to emotionally charged foods, other substances, and experiences. These metabolic pathways begin to take on alternate routes. All amino acids have degradation pathways that proceed in sequence in transitional stages. Any one of these stages can become blocked. To make matters more difficult, these pathways are intensely intertwined, complex and pervasive in their form of action. In any case, trouble develops “right here in River City ” as a result of these fetal and/or early infancy period-based distorting “conclusions” and “agreements,” and the result is allergies. The actual mechanism involved here is an over-reaction of the immune system to a substance or to an experience-generated chemical that is misinterpreted as an enemy to the individual's well-being. It is a hyper-sensitive exaggeration of the normal protective immune system. The culprit that provokes the allergic reaction is the anti-body “immunoglobuline E” (“IgE”). Allergy sufferers typically have around ten times as much IgE in their blood as non-allergic people. These anti-bodies seek out the “harmful” immune system “invaders” to destroy them. The “offending” allergen (the substance that trips off the allergic reaction) meets the IgE anti-body, which then attaches itself to the “mast cells” found in the respiratory and digestive systems. Then the allergen, the IgE, the anti-bodies, and the mast cells collide, resulting in excessive production of “histamine,” which in turn, causes a runny nose, tearing eyes, sneezing, itching and swelling cluster. These are, of course, the classic physiological accompaniments of the grieving process. They are reactions to early maternal emotional deprivation, non-availability and/or rejection. In severe cases, an allergy sufferer can experience anaphylactic shock -- where breathing is constricted, hives appear, and blood pressure plummets -- a reaction that can be life-threatening if not treated in time. Incidentally, though there is an interesting sub-set of allergies that does not form in infancy. In these cases, the person becomes extremely sensitive to environmental substances such as exhaust fumes, solvents, plastics, formaldehyde, pesticides, food additives, etc., later in their development or in their life. In such situations, the chemical capabilities of the body uses to handle these “artificial” substances can be abruptly or insidiously diverted, in response to a traumatic loss of trust in the Universe. The “decision” here is to disconnect emotionally from a theretofore trusted (and often essential) person, usually the mother or a mother stand-in. However, it is often some one almost as close, such as the father, the grandmother or a sibling, who operates as the “straw that broke the camel's back” in their impact on the individual. It usually happens some time in relatively early childhood, and it not infrequently carries with it the simultaneous “decision” to disconnect from all symbolically associated substances, experiences or stimuli associated with the “mistrusted one.” From then on, the capability for processing the involved physiologic effects correctly is still present, but the information necessary to do so has been rendered to one degree or another inaccessible to the body's immune response system. When this happens, what develops is a situation in which what was once a necessary protection against emotional disintegration at the time that the distrust-inducing events occurred becomes effectively a semi-permanent distortion or blockage that can't be dislodged very readily. Letting go of an allergy, then, in effect means letting go of old grievances and devastations, along with allowing the physical body to become an expression of the full spectrum of feelings within the context of loving self-acceptance. And this is often rather intensely difficult to do, because of the profundity of the emotional-cum-physiological wounds that lie at the base of the allergy. One final comment is required here. And that is that as was indicated before, there is also a significant amount of repressed rage and aggressive impulses associated with this process. This arises out of the person's reaction to the deprivation/rejection and to the angering effects of their disability on their quality of life and on their ability to function in a reasonable and effective manner. There may even be intense feelings of having been derailed from their destiny in the most extreme cases. One of the ways this resentment-rage shows up in actual behavior is in the individual's requirements of their environment, in which they are in a position to ban all manner of resources, experiences and activities around them via a passive-aggressive pattern. They are usually not aware of this process, and indeed, they are intensely repressive of their rage at their deprivation and at its resulting life-limitations and painful difficulties, for fear of in effect telling the Cosmos to take a flying leap, to the severe detriment of their immortal soul as they experience it at the subconscious level. In terms of how the symbolic process enters into the allergy phenomenon, the mechanism involved is the energy meridians talked about in oriental medicine and by shamans. These form a sort of “street system” all over the body through which the “meaning” travels. These “meanings” are derived from the cumulative collective experiences of the human race, and they are genetically transmitted in the form of “archetypes.” These “encoded information complexes” are contained in what are called “symbols” that carry all of the collective experience of the human race within them. And these team up with the “incidental conditioning symbols” of the individual's own life history. These “symbols” in turn, serve as “containers” for unique individual lifelong learnings that are related to the “symbols” via the person's experiences. The result is that the full import and impact of the whole human collective consciousness is infused as archetypic symbols into the individual's unique life experience, alongside their individual life history-generated “symbols.” It is these symbolic “meaning loadings” that are the mechanism by which the biochemical processes of environmental substances and experiences can be changed. Because of this process, it is then possible to ascertain for particular allergies something of the nature of the “meaning” of the allergen to the individual. That, in turn sets off a “healing spiral.”
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