Vertigo: emotional and spiritual meaning

What vertigo is

Vertigo is the sensation that you are moving, or that the room is moving, when neither is. It is often a spin or a sway, with nausea, sweating, and trouble walking. The usual causes sit in the inner ear. A few crystals loose in a canal give brief spins when you turn in bed. An inflamed balance nerve can leave you spinning for days. Ménière's disease adds ringing and a change in hearing. Migraine can do it too. Less often, a stroke or another brain event is the cause, which is why a sudden attack with other nerve signs is an emergency. Brief spins with a change of position are often helped by a repositioning manoeuvre a clinician can show you. A blood test for low blood sugar is sometimes part of the check. It is not the usual explanation of a spinning room.

The emotional meaning of vertigo

Vertigo and dizziness are read as a way of stepping away from an event or a person you refuse to see or to hear. You may be unsatisfied, and you stay in the pattern anyway. You refuse to obey, whether the authority is outside you or is your own inner voice.

A situation may be evolving too fast. You fear the changes it will bring. Can you always be up to it? A new task, or a position you feel is far more demanding, can bring a psychological vertigo that shows up as a physical one. You are afraid you will not be able to follow. Everything is in motion. "This is going too fast." You are losing your living space. You feel compressed. It is as if you had no landmark to steer by, and so "my father", or whoever stands for authority, seems absent, or should be helping more with the direction to take. Fear of the future follows. You do not know which way to go, and in relation to yourself you find yourself in a void. That, in French, donne le vertige. It makes the head spin. The phrase and the symptom share a word.

Positioning yourself is hard. You would rather close off. You flee. You would like to control everything, inside and outside, and because that is impossible you become unstable and anxious. There are forces you have no control over, and that disturbs you. You search constantly for the truth. You are affected by a lie that concerns your family line. Something feels off, and you do not know what. You are not in contact with the ground. You do not "touch earth". You go round in circles and see no way out. There are also things you cannot bear to hear. You live in your thoughts, in reverie.

A deep unease, or a deep question, concerns the position you occupy in your family or in society. What is my place, and am I at ease in it? The spins are read as throwing light on an inner imbalance, often between a feminine part and a masculine part. They may have appeared after an emotional shock. The departure of someone you love is the example. You minimised the impact, preferring to turn a deaf ear. Faire la sourde oreille is to refuse to hear. The ear is in the phrase. You have the impression you can control your life this way, and what you keep is only an outer balance, illusory and very fragile.

The reading also points toward low blood sugar as a place to look when the spins and the light head come together. A clinician is the one who sorts that from the inner ear.

A gentler way to hold it

• Let yourself discover a joy in living.
• Offer yourself small softnesses.
• Trust what is ahead. The reading pictures an inner balance returning as you do.
• Keep the medical plan. A sudden attack with other nerve signs is an emergency. A repositioning exercise, and any medicine you were given, stay with your clinician.