Swollen lymph nodes: emotional and spiritual meaning

What swollen lymph nodes are

A lymph node is a rounded cluster of cells along a lymphatic vessel. It filters lymph and takes part in the immune response. Nodes swell when they are busy with an infection, with inflammation, and sometimes with a more serious disease. A sore throat, a scalp infection, mononucleosis and a skin wound are everyday reasons. The node is tender, it comes up quickly, and it goes down. A node that is hard, that grows, or that stays needs a clinician, because a few of them are lymphoma or a spread of cancer, and those are medical diagnoses. Feelings do not sort the harmless from the serious. Examination does.

The emotional reading below is about a discouragement that was not spoken. Lymphatism is the other, quieter picture of this system. The lymph page is the wider flow.

The emotional meaning of swollen lymph nodes

If you have difficulty facing a situation and, instead of speaking about it and asking for help, you keep everything to yourself, you keep your discouragement and your despair secret, and you feel like letting everything go, nostalgia about your life is read as showing up, after a time, as one node or several. Your self-esteem has fallen, and your fear of the future brings anguish. You live on the defensive and in inaction. You live a situation in which you have the impression someone wants to attack you. Your back is to the wall and you can no longer move. You may also have difficulties of communication, and that affects you emotionally or causes fears in your relationships. You would like to be part of a group, to feel you belong to an organisation, to be closer to your friends, instead of living as a solitary. Nostalgia is the feeling this entry names.

Where the nodes appear is taken as a clue. If you worry about something you want to express and you keep it inside, nodes are read as more likely in the throat. You are overwhelmed by emotions you are fleeing. If there are things you do not want to hear, nodes near the ears are read as getting in the way of hearing. Nodes in general show that you are ambivalent about a situation. You worry a great deal. You feel caught, stuck. You feel attacked and you have to defend yourself constantly, protect yourself, and you see no place to shelter. Unconsciously you would like your father to defend you. You feel obliged to keep the family linked and on good terms. You also ask whether you are ready to take entire responsibility for your life, or whether you prefer to be in the clouds. You are afraid of your emotional world. The whole sexual aspect is perceived as a threat. In cutting yourself off from your own emotions and covering yourself with a shell, how can you stay in contact with the people around you?

When the nodes swell, there is a surcharge in the organism, toxins that have to be eliminated. It can be general or local, as in the groin, and it is related to the central nervous system. The load of responsibilities you impose on yourself is probably in excess. You do not speak of it, and you keep that frustration in you. You observe your attitudes toward a person in your intimacy, and you see that you would do well to step out of a role you have taken on, whose weight is too heavy.

A gentler way to hold it

You communicate your needs at every level, so that despair can leave and make room for hope and for the joy of living. You let problems go and you trust. You accept feeling everything that inhabits you. The more you include your physical body and all your inner feelings, the more a balance of body and mind is restored. You learn to love and respect yourself by setting certain limits, to say when you are too full, and so your relationships become more authentic. A node that is not settling still goes to a doctor. Authenticity does not biopsy it.

• Have a node that lasts, hardens or grows examined. Infection is the common reason. It is not the only one.
• Say the discouragement you have been keeping secret. Asking for help is the first move this reading names.
• Use the place as a question, not as a diagnosis. Throat for what is unsaid, ears for what you will not hear, a heavy intimate role for a local load.
• Notice the wish that a father, or that place, would defend you. Keeping the family glued together can be the weight.
• Name one role that is too heavy. Stepping out of it is allowed.
• Do not decide that a gland is "just emotion". Night sweats, weight loss and a node above the collarbone need a clinician.