Life to Death by Richard W. Boerstler

Author:Richard W. Boerstler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2013-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Hilda was a ninety-year-old widow who had focused her anxiety on her poor health all her life. She thought her depression was due to the loss of everyone close to her. She had outlived her family, friends, and everyone of her generation she knew. As she increasingly required more assistance with all aspects of her life, this formerly independent woman was also outliving her money and her security. When we met, her chief complaint was angina, which responded to nitroglycerine placed under her tongue several times a day. While her medication program averted new damage to the heart, the terror that she felt with each acute episode left her exhausted and fearful of engaging in any activity, and it further contributed to her depression. Nevertheless, in order to achieve her will, she challenged and manipulated everyone who came to work with her; then, being upset, she developed the angina—a vicious cycle. Unable to eat, she had lost twenty pounds in less than a year.

We invited her to try a comeditation session so she could see how relaxation would defuse the pain syndrome. Our goal was to help her learn a behavioral modification of her pathological problem: relaxation to offset the heart spasm that resulted from her being upset. She not only learned to reduce the frequency and intensity of her angina episodes but she also began to use our visits to review her past, not as senile reminiscing but as a way of defining who she was and how she wanted to be identified. As she developed these thoughts, her approach to her companions began to mellow, and without realizing that it was her attitude that made the difference, she reduced the incidents of acute pain. Although her appetite was quickly satisfied, she began to enjoy the taste of food again when she could think of mealtime as a way of sharing with her companions.

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