Acromegaly: emotional and spiritual meaning
Updated
What acromegaly is
Acromegaly is an exaggerated growth of the bones of the extremities and of the face. Growth hormone is secreted in a much greater quantity than normal, almost always because of a benign tumour of the pituitary, the gland that conducts the others. Hands, feet and brow enlarge. The jaw changes. Joints ache. The heart, the sugar and the breathing can all be affected, and the tumour can press on the optic nerves. Treatment is surgery, medicine, or radiotherapy, aimed at the tumour and at the hormone. It is an endocrine disease. It is not the body kindly deciding to make you larger so that you will be respected.
The emotional reading below asks where you felt too small. That question can matter in a life. It is not the mechanism of the tumour. Addison's disease is the adrenal gland failing, a different problem. The pituitary is described with the other glands. The head is where this gland sits.
The emotional meaning of acromegaly
If you are in this situation, you ask which situation made you feel too small to reach or realise a project. Where did you feel too small, too slight and too weak to take your place and be respected? The reading hears the body's answer as having grown beyond measure, so that taking your place would be easier, and it thanks the body. You wanted to impress. You wanted to show you were the strongest. You may have felt abandoned by one of your parents, and the anguish of being hurt again makes you distant from the people around you. Although you can have the impression that your body takes up a great deal of space, you try by every means to stay far from the life around you.
You perceive the world as cold, and you need a lifebuoy. Which person, or which institution, could take charge of you and let you stop worrying about the future? You doubt your power, and you search for the truth. You compensate by becoming hooked on a substance, on money, on food, or on something else that fills the doubt.
A gentler way to hold it
You review the structures you gave yourself and the ones society wanted to impose. Your physical growth being great, it is time to grow as much on the emotional and personal level. You trust life, and you decide to invest in it. The new structure of your thoughts now includes respect for yourself, for your emotions, and for your differences. Treatment of the tumour continues alongside that review. One does not cancel the other.
- See an endocrinologist if features are changing. Vision, headache and a changing bite are reasons to go sooner.
- Keep the treatment of the hormone. Inward growth does not shrink a pituitary tumour.
- Ask where you felt too small to be respected. That is the question. It is not a cause.
- Notice the wish to impress. Distance, after an abandonment, is the other half.
- Name the lifebuoy. A person, an institution, a substance, money or food.
- Review one imposed structure. Respect for your own differences is the structure this reading wants in its place.
Questions to ask yourself
Take your time with these. There are no right answers; simply notice what comes up.
- In which situation did I feel too small to reach a project or to be respected?
- Where did I want to impress, and to show I was the strongest?
- Did I feel abandoned by a parent, so that closeness now feels like a risk of being hurt again?
- Whom, or which institution, am I hoping will take charge of my future so I can stop worrying?
- { "What am I using to compensate for a power I doubt": "a substance, money, food, or something else?" }
- Which structure, mine or one imposed on me, is ready to be reviewed?
“I can grow on the inside as well as in the body. I invest in life, and the structure of my thoughts includes respect for myself.”
When to see a doctor
- Hands, feet or facial features that have enlarged, a changed bite, widening gaps between the teeth, or rings and shoes that no longer fit. Acromegaly is caused by excess growth hormone, usually from a pituitary tumour. It needs an endocrinologist.
- Headaches, sweating, joint pain, snoring, or a loss of vision at the edges. A tumour can press on the nerves to the eyes. Report this promptly.
- You already have a diagnosis. Surgery, medicine or radiotherapy are what lower the hormone. Do not stop them because you have decided to "grow inwardly".
- High blood pressure, diabetes or heart strain often travel with the disease and need their own care.
- A child growing far outside the expected range needs a paediatric endocrinologist. That picture is gigantism, and it is urgent in a different way.
- Feeling small in life does not create a pituitary tumour, and gratitude toward the body does not shrink one.
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.