Mastitis: emotional and spiritual meaning
Updated
What mastitis is
Mastitis is inflammation of the breast. It makes the breast very painful, hot and red, and it often comes with fever. It is most common in breastfeeding, when milk is not emptying well and infection sets in. Pus from the nipple, or a lump that fluctuates, can mean an abscess, which needs drainage as well as antibiotics. People who are not breastfeeding can have mastitis too. Care is prompt, medical, and usually simple when it is not delayed. Whether to pause a feed is a clinical decision. It is not a moral one.
The emotional reading below stays with exhaustion, sacrifice and the need to feel useful. It does not say you produced an infection in order to stop. Breast pain and cysts are the other complaint of this area. The breasts page holds the wider question of care given and care received.
The emotional meaning of mastitis
The reading stays in the neighbourhood of motherhood. You can feel very tired after the birth, or for other reasons, and you come to a malaise that obliges you to cease a feeding you cannot continue, without having to live in guilt about the pause. That is a question about exhaustion and about permission. It is not a claim that you caused the inflammation. It can also be you who have the impression of being over-mothered, by your partner or by someone around you.
Pain in the breasts can also show that you are too hard on yourself. You have the impression you must sacrifice yourself, for your family, your work, or a cause you hold dear. You cannot go on. You are aggressive, and the frustrations accumulate.
A gentler way to hold it
You recognise that the way you are functioning is keeping you from flourishing. You look carefully at the qualities you possess. You ask why you had such a need to feel useful to someone. In accepting your value, you have nothing to prove to anyone. In giving more love to yourself, you can also give it to others, freely, without expectation and without the desire to control them. The gestures are simple, the way a child does them. You are capable of saying yes or no according to what is good for you. You leave other people free in their choices. You learn to love yourself. You recognise that each of us grows by our own experiences.
- Have a hot, red breast seen the same day. Fever and pus are medicine.
- Ask for permission you may already have. A pause, if a clinician agrees to it, does not require a guilty story.
- Notice where you are too hard on yourself. Sacrifice for family, work or a cause is the load.
- Ask why usefulness became the proof. Care given in order to be loved is the question on the breasts page as well.
- Separate frustration from infection. One can be spoken. The other needs treatment.
- Keep feeding advice with your midwife or doctor. This page does not tell you to stop.
Questions to ask yourself
Take your time with these. There are no right answers; simply notice what comes up.
- If I am feeding a child, where am I exhausted beyond what rest would mend?
- Do I need permission to pause a duty without calling myself guilty?
- Where do I feel over-mothered, by a partner or by someone else?
- For whom or what am I sacrificing myself past the point of being able to continue?
- Why did I need so much to feel useful to someone?
- Where could a yes or a no be chosen because it is good for me, not because it proves my worth?
“I recognise my own value. I can give care freely, without a debt attached, and I can say yes or no according to what is good for me.”
When to see a doctor
- A painful, red, hot or swollen breast, especially with fever, chills or feeling flu-like. Mastitis needs same-day care. An abscess needs drainage.
- Pus or blood from the nipple. Stop guessing and be examined.
- You are breastfeeding. Many people are advised to keep feeding or expressing from the affected side, so the breast empties. Follow the midwife or doctor you have, rather than stopping from guilt or from a page.
- A redness that is spreading quickly, or you are drowsy, faint or confused. Seek emergency care.
- Mastitis can also occur when you are not breastfeeding. It still needs a clinician. A lump that remains after the inflammation settles must be checked.
- Do not delay antibiotics or an examination because you are trying to interpret the pain.
Related conditions
Sources and inspiration
- Jacques Martel, Le Grand Dictionnaire des Malaises et des Maladies.
This page is an original interpretation written by Body Hemi-Sync. It is inspired by these sources and does not reproduce them.