Julia, a 34-year old marketing consultant and married mother of two children (ages 6 and 9), was diagnosed with GERD, a hiatal hernia and gastritis following an endoscopy four years prior to our meeting. Despite ongoing medication, her persistent symptoms included a dry cough, difficulty swallowing, and a burning sensation in her throat, particularly after eating.
Julia led a busy life, balancing work and family pressures. She had limited opportunities for
self-care, other than taking time for her regular coffee, which she refused to “give up” despite
recognizing it as one of her GERD triggers. When I asked her what was going on in her life around the time her symptoms began, Julia responded that things had been bad at work due to a particularly demanding client and that she hadn’t felt supported during this time. “I tried
complaining, but it wasn’t enough,” she said.
I asked her what had now prompted her to seek out additional support for her GERD and she replied that her GERD had been “quiet” for a while, but then “it happened again.” Her symptoms had recently worsened. “I can’t take much more,” she said. “I’ve had enough.”
When I asked Julia what else other than her GERD “it” might refer to, she started weeping. As our conversation moved to Julia’s childhood, Julia recalled a pivotal event at age 9 when her parents were going through a divorce.
At this point Julia started coughing and had trouble speaking at all for a time. When she was able to collect herself, she explained that there was a lot she needed reassurance over during this difficult time, but there was no one to talk to. They were “too busy with their own complaints.” When I asked her how she had coped, she said she sought comfort from a close school friend, but when her parents’ divorce required her to shift locations, this relationship was something else that she had to “give up.”
I helped Julia to start making connections between her current GERD symptoms and her early
childhood wounding around her parents’ divorce. We looked at the timing of our meeting, which
was shortly after her son’s ninth birthday, an age that she had associated with her parents’ divorce.
We reflected on her attachment to her school friend and how this deep emotional connection had been substituted in her present-day habits with coffee, which she considered as something she would never “give up.” And we discussed the sorts of things she might have said to her parents if they had made time for her during their dramas.
We then looked at other areas of her life where she might benefit from being able to speak up. At this time, Julia had a breakthrough, realizing that she often contributed her silence at work and in key relationships when it might be more appropriate to “speak my truth.” When I asked what stopped her from doing so, she understood that her “self-worth” was sometimes a problem for her.
She agreed that “self-worth” and the “it” as in “it happened again” were indeed the same.
Through our work together, Julia processed her feelings of reduced self-worth and we identified
the importance of vocalizing her concerns and needs when appropriate. By recognizing her
deep-seated patterns of silence and suppression that stemmed from her childhood experience,
Julia experienced a significant transformation. Her newfound ability to articulate her feelings and
assert her needs in a healthy way led to the complete cessation of her GERD symptoms.