Reality behind the masked Thuja

Dr Pavankumar R Kollurkar

 ABSTRACT:
A Thuja personality is always described under the sub-headings secretive, manipulative, delicate, low self-esteem, fixed ideas, delusions, which are quite characteristic to it. This article is an attempt to unveil about the secretiveness, low self-esteem and sexual tension of thuja personality which are the prime reasons in evolution of its characteristic symptoms.

KEYWORDS: Low self-esteem, Secretive, sneaky, manipulative, delicate, fixed ideas, scrupulous deceptive.

INTRODUCTION:

• Thuja occidentalis belongs to the family coniferae. The common name of Thuja is Arbor vitae, which means the tree of life. It was used earlier as an astringent, diuretic and as an expectorant. But it was Dr Hahnemann who unfolded its life-saving and life-prolonging properties to signify its name, a real tree of life.
• The history of Thuja occidentalis is somewhat novel. Hahnemann received a case where a patient complained of some symptoms similar to gonorrhoea, like purulent discharge from urethra, small pimples and itching about glans penis etc. Hahnemann diagnosed his patient with contracted gonorrhoea, but the patient stoutly denied the claim. Hahnemann did not give any medicine to him and asked him to report in three days. To his surprised, the patient came back well. Then the young fellow disclosed the fact that a few days before, he picked some leaves of Arbor Vitae and chewed them. This led Hahnemann to investigate the properties of Thuja occidentalis. This is the reason that Thuja is indicated in cases coming from suppressed or maltreated gonorrhoea.
• Thuja struggle with self-confidence: they feel worthless and unattractive, and believe that nobody would love them if they knew what they were really like. As a result, they become desperate to ‘fit in’ and hide behind a manufactured persona to present to others as a cover for their perceived shortcomings.

TREE OF LIFE:

• Meaning behind tree of life – the cedars ability to cure scurvy.
• Also represents the trees tendency to resist rot and live a very, very long life up to 800 years.
• Trees convey THE NOTION OF GROWTH, STRENGTH, AND LONGEVITY, GRANDEUR, SURVIVAL AND INCORRUPTIBILITY through its resin and evergreen leaves
• For this reason, it is planted in graveyards and has its place as the funeral tree in Mediterranean region.
• It is tree of life but also the tree of death
• As the fragrant wood was burnt by the ancients with sacrifices.

THEME:

• Of being fragile – a feeling of weakness within oneself.
• Having something wrong with oneself, of being weak.

ON PHYSICAL SPHERE:

• Where the patient feels that any article of food or drink is surely bound to cause him problems, and that his system cannot take things such as drugs, allergens, emotional stress, or even a draught of air.

SENSATIONS:         

• Fragile
• Broken
• Brittle
• Connected/disconnected
• Empty/fullness
• Cut-off
• Fragmented

PASSIVE REACTION:

• Indolence
• Fearful
• Weak

ACTIVE REACTION:

• RIGID
• HARD

COMPENSATION:

• STRENGTH – you become strong and protective of others who are brittle and fragile.

CONSTITUTION:

Late DR. B K BOSE of Calcutta used to describe Thuja patients by complaining them to GANESHJI (having lavish growth of tissues everywhere)

• pendulous breast and abdomen-plump.
• Distended abdomen
• Waxy, shiny face as if it had been smeared over with grease (Dr kent)
• Sickly looking individual
• Fleshy appearance rounded (ovoid), face with lax musculature.
• Dark hair spread all over the body especially on face and back.
• Fixed-even tears remain fixed in the eyes.
• lax muscles – (trunk god appearance).
• unhealthy skin with warts and moles

EVOLUTION OF THUJA PERSONALITY:

 CHILDHOOD:

• Family background – usually one of the parents pass the miasm (e.g., gonorrhoea mother-vaccination during pregnancy) weak sickly child who failed to thrive, suffers from illness like asthma, recurrent infections, allergies etc.
• It weakens the vital force which then tries to express itself in some other form.
• It is not a happy family but full of abuses.
• All these lead to a sense of aloofness or being different from the rest.
• From outside they are very quiet but from within they do not want themselves to be discovered.
• These deep feelings of being separate from others (family members) makes them SECRETIVE.

THEME OF SEPARATION FROM FAMILY:

• They are very attached. Connected to family
• Biggest sensitivity is getting separate, detached and dissociating from the family.
• They try to keep everyone together.
• Estranged from wife, husband, etc.

LOW SELF ESTEEM:

• Usually, the patient suffers with low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness. These inner doubts make the patient portray a pleasing and expected image to the world. This hiding of unpleasant aspects leads to a secretiveness

SECRETIVE:

• They hit puberty and all these things start coming out and they don’t know what to do with it – SEXUAL DESIRES, ROMANCE, ANGER, they all come out.
• Hormonal changes occur and they start having strong feelings.
• One patient would have sexual fantasies and steal books and hide them.
• It’s the idea that it was not a straight forward thing.
• Then one day something comes out as negative and everyone says “UFF YOU CAN’T DO THAT, YOU CAN’T THINK LIKE THAT’S SO WEIRD, THAT’S PERVERTED, THAT’S SICK”.
• The normal sexual expressions get distorted because it’s something that you do in the dark, in secret, that no one knows about.
• This makes them MISTRUSTFUL.

MISTRUSTFUL:

• Earlier they use to conceal and hide but now they are so mistrustful, they go out of their way to appear to be doing something else and functioning in a different way.
• They will lie. They can’t really be straight with you; they use evasive tactics to conceal themselves.
• It’s a chronic of ARSENICUM.
• They want something but they don’t want to go at it straight.
• They always want to go in the back door or crawl through the window, they won’t come through the front door.

SNEAKY AND MANIPULATIVE:

• Thuja patient is SNEAKY AND MANIPULATIVE.
• He or she will purposely withhold information just to test you, to see if you know what you are doing
• For e.g.; a woman has a fainting spell, she says, “I felt my soul leaving me, and I was afraid I was going to die”.
• She gives more information, but she does not tell you that she ate a lot of heavy food the day before.
• She asks, “do u think it could be my stomach?” having no information to suggest this possibility, you say. “NO, it was more likely a drop in blood pressure”
• Only then she volunteers, “but yesterday I ate a lot of heavy food’. In this way they try to catch you out.
• They hide sexual desires and their behavioural patterns. They hide facts about their past, especially sexual things.
• They were RAPED OR MOLESTED.
• It’s something they are deeply ashamed of and would never tell anyone and they have this deep secret.
• Whenever you try to talk with them, they will never talk directly to your face
• e., LOOKED AT – CANNOT BEAR TO BE – TALKED TO – THUJA
• They stop sentence in middle of the conversation because they feel their inner personality will come out.
• There’s a look in their eyes, they can be very sweet and very soft, but there is a look of HIDDEN INTENT.
• You get the feeling that this person is up to something.
• They never let anyone know about their business- that’s the way they protect themselves.
• You may ask them a question and they avoid it and all of a sudden, you’re on another topic.
• They never answer your question.
• They are Ashamed and they feel world will step on them and humiliate them.
• Because of which they become CAUTIOUS AND MISTRUSTFUL.

SEXUAL SPHERE:

• They go out of their way to be one up on the world, it usually comes out with STEALING SEX OR OTHER THINGS.
• THEY WIL GO, BE BEST FRIENDS WITH THEIR NEIGHBOURS AND ALL THE TIME PLAN AND SCHEME HOW TO GET IN BED WITH THE NEIGHBOURS WIFE.
• THEY CAN ALSO BE SECRET DRINKERS AND DRUG USERS.
• It’s like a judge uses cocaine and no one knows.

MISINTERPRETATION:

• So, all these OBSESSIONS, MISTRUSTS AND CONCEALING wil get distorted.
• They get into a state of functioning where PERCEPTIONS GET DISTORTED.
• They start getting spacey, the sexual desires get distorted and they want too much sex too often in places they don’t want anyone to know about.
• Ideas about their body get distorted
• As if secret room in their life is getting too small.
• They start misinterpreting what people think about them, they start becoming SELF CONSCIOUS.
• Anyone who is nice to them they don’t trust.
• They don’t trust the person who is nice and they don’t want to take the chance.
• You will get the feeling that you don’t know this person anymore
• How to survive in life? – HIDE YOURSELF- DON’T TRUST ANYONE- AND BE SECRETIVE.
• Self-doubt and poor confidence
• They start getting lots of self-doubts, their perceptions are becoming off especially their mind.
• Brain becomes foggy they can’t think properly.
• They look at the food and thinks something in the food and they can’t eat because of that thought mistrustful.

FIXED IDEAS:

• The feeling of dissociation in the thuja family is NOT A SEPARATION FROM SOMETHING but the feeling is “I AM BRITTLE; I WILL BREAK OR CRUMBLE AND BE DISSOCIATED FROM MYSELF”
• The glass once broken cannot be made as earlier.
• Internally they are very BRITTLE.
• Strong sensitivity that they are brittle.
• INTERNALLY FRAGILE – ANTICIPATION-AVOIDANCE.
• BRITTLENESS – They feel that the body has to be properly maintained
• They cannot take the idea that their body is cut into 2 parts

DELUSION:

• As if strange person were at his side
• As if soul and body were separated
• As if living animal were in abdomen
• Of being under the influence of superior power
• As if body is made of glass especially the lower limbs and would break easily.
• Insane women will not be touched or approached.
• These may take different forms, most strikingly they describe a feeling that their legs are breakable.
• Kent says that; their legs feel as if they are made of glass. They usually describe a sensation of fragility.
• Another strange idea they describe is that something is alive in abdomen. They may go so far as to give elaborately exact description of this feeling; it is so powerful for them, one patient said he felt a small boy inside kicking with the right foot.
• Still another fixed idea that I have seen quite frequently in thuja is the sensation that someone is walking alongside him.
• THIS NOT FEAR BUT A DELUSION.
• Their ego is fragile that it can break anytime, this is the delusion fragility.

DELICATE:

• Everything is very delicate, they are scared that their hands are very dirty, they will get an infection, they keep washing their hands.
• BATHING- WASHING –WASHING- DESIRE FOR
• MANIACAL about washing hands.
• They develop COMPUSLIVE STATE.

OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER:

• BATHING- WASHING –WASHING- DESIRE FOR
• MANIACAL about washing hands.
• CONSTATNTLY WHO TOUCH THEIR GENITALS AGAIN AND AGAIN.
• WALKS: WALKS IN A CIRCLE – STRAM, THUJ. (It explains inconsistent veering behaviour in repeated trials)
• Patient feels that any food or drink is surely bound to cause him problems.
• He avoids all these factors and attempts to keep himself covered with exposure to the same.
• These avoidances only reinforce the fear, and this vicious cycle goes on making one of the remedies for NEUROSIS WITH SEVERAL OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE.

HARDNESS:

• Very HARD from outside
• Very UNSYMPATHETIC, VERY CRUEL, UNFEELING
• So that they can take care of their inner softness
• SUPPRESSION OF EMOTIONS.
• Thuja patients are hard people, the hardness of their emotional expressions in thuja personality manifest even on the physical level, as hard tumours.

FEAR AND ANXIETY OF THUJA:

• In the emotional sphere, this feeling of fragility is manifest in the fear of losing face in society.
• The person believes that he has a certain image in society of being a religious, morally upright, clean, honest person, free from human failings such as dishonesty, sexual temptations (especially) when forbidden, etc.
• Thus, he presents an elevated picture of himself and is afraid that any little slip on his part might reveal the real him or the bad part of him which he has tried so hard to cover up.
• In this “bad part” lies his dishonesty, sexual desires (which may even be for close relatives), his immoral or irreligious feelings.
• If this is discovered, he is going to fall down from his imagined elevated position and will be finished. Thus, his survival depends on a complete cover up, and there is a tremendous anxiety of being exposed.
• Thuja women can be very afraid of pregnancy, and often have the sensation of being pregnant, with associated feelings of guilt.
• These women can also be jealous, and may have fixed ideas that the husband is faithless
• Fear of approaching others, not only in adults but also in children.
• School aversion.
• Fear of strangers and situations
• Fear of examination – also in adults- anticipating fear before exams – Diarrhoea and vomiting
• Fear: discovered of being.
• Fear as if soul is escaping from the body with utmost terrible uneasiness.
• Fear of being censured or judge.
• Fear of opinion of others.
• Fear of an ordeal (self-protecting)

SCRUPULOUS DECEPTIVE:

• Gives importance to small things.
• They are so deceptive you think they are being honest but they aren’t.

ANGER:

• Always anger will be towards family.
• when they won’t get Appreciation and neglected feeling – anger
• Usually, thuja people are not who takes responsibility but when they do something with so much efforts they need appreciation.
• Contradiction- everything should be according to his wish and will, if not end up in extreme anger.
• Blaming others to deflect attention away from one’s own misdeeds.

CAUSE OF ANGER:

• Domination
• Contradiction
• Sleep

RELIEVED BY:

• Seminal Discharge – Relieves Anger.
• After every intercourse – relaxed feeling.
• After urination: anger gets down.

THUJA WOMEN:

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST:

• The central polarity for understanding thuja is that of beauty and ugliness.
• It is when thuja has been hurt that she begins to feel ugly, either physically or emotionally.
• She has an inbuilt tendency to reject herself when is rejected by others.
• If she was hurt by her parents to any degree, then she carries with her a lifelong tendency to feel bad about herself that she is stupid or ugly.
• Thuja develops self-loathing.
• Due to self-loathing thuja women will speak excessively negatively about themselves. (Kent-reproaches self)
• It’s common for thuja to expect rejection, since she feels she is bad.
• Thuja will often restrict her activities and interaction with people in order to avoid rejection.
• This is true when it comes to ask help
• She will not ask a good friend for small favour for fear that she is imposing and will be rejected as friend.
• Actual rejection is extreme painful for thuja patients.

DARK SECRETS:

• A great many thuja women appear secretive once their initial friendliness flavour to her wildness.
• She will impulsively get drunk and then jump into bed with a loathsome man but next day she will into a rage with anyone who presses her buttons, screaming uncontrollably.
• She is very prone to rage but normally she controls it unless she is drunk.
• She is attracted to the dark side of the life, watching dark and violent films, indulging in SADOMASOCHISTIC SEX, and wearing black clothes.
• They discharge some of the tension associated with it.
• She is one of the most sensitive types especially emotionally very sensitive as she has been abused in childhood.
• She may develop a free-floating anxiety when she is with people (fear of strangers).
• She run away to cope up with this fear.

MANNISH THUJA:

• Fleeing is not only thuja’s only defence against anxiety. She may also adopt a TOUGH, MASCULINE APPEARANCE, DRESS IN MENS CLOTHES, LEARN KARATE, and engage in the kind of tough adolescent.
• Use of sexual swear words is very common in such thuja women, to protect their vulnerability.

BASIC CONFLICT OF THUJA:

• Conflict between the INNERSELF AND THE WORLD
• His main intension is HOW TO BE PROJECTED OUTSIDE
• NEVER PROJECT THE INNERSELF
• I am bad from inside but I should never project bad to outside world.
• BASIC CORE OF THUJA – BASIC CORE OF SYCOSIS
• INFLUENCE – HIMSELF

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Dr. Pavankumar R Kollurkar
PG Scholar, Department Of Materia Medica
Father Muller Homoeopathic Medical College
Deralakatte, Mangalore -575018
Under The Guidance Of Dr. Srinath Rao C
Professor,,Department Of Homoeopathic Materia Medica