Chilblains: spiritual meaning and emotional causes

What chilblains are

Chilblains (also called pernio) are small, itchy and often painful patches that come up on the skin a few hours after exposure to cold, especially damp cold. They mostly affect the fingers and toes, and sometimes the ears, nose, heels, face or legs. The skin may itch or burn and turn red or purple, which can be harder to see on brown and black skin. The patches can feel thick and swollen, and small blisters sometimes form.

Cold makes the small blood vessels in the extremities narrow. When the skin then warms up, the vessels near the surface widen while the deeper ones stay narrow, and that mismatch causes the itching, pain and colour change. Chilblains usually clear by themselves in two to three weeks. Keeping hands and feet warm and dry, warming them slowly rather than on a radiator or under hot water, not smoking, and not scratching all help. People with poor circulation, Raynaud's phenomenon or lupus are more prone to them. If they keep returning, a GP can prescribe a medicine that widens the blood vessels, or look for an underlying cause.

The emotional meaning of chilblains

Spiritually, chilblains bring together two things that should not meet: a life that feels as if it is burning you, and reactions you have frozen in order to get through it. The burning itch and the cold sit in the same small patch of skin.

Frozen reactions

When something hurts and you cannot change it, one way to cope is to stop feeling it. Chilblains are read as a picture of that freeze. Your reactions are held still, and the extremities, the parts of you that reach out and step forward, slow down with them. On the hands and the heels in particular, chilblains can be heard as a way of moving more slowly, of not grasping and not walking on.

There is a second movement inside the freeze. While you refuse to feel, you may also cling to the painful situation, turning it over so often that nothing else is visible. The cold patch takes up the whole view.

A busy front, an empty inside

From the outside you may look like someone who charges ahead and never stops. Inside, you may feel drained and exhausted. The wish to move forward fades, and the pleasure of living seems to stop and set, like water turning to ice. Your thoughts can feel clenched. Symbolically, that inner tightness echoes the narrowing of the small vessels in the cold. The spiritual interpretation invites you to notice the gap between the face you show and the weariness you carry.

A coldness between people

The cold behind chilblains is also heard as a coldness lived with someone, often a member of the family. It may be a lack of love, or a person whose icy manner seems to freeze something in your soul. Disharmony in the family can weigh heavily, even when nobody names it. You may not have said, even to yourself, how much that chill affects you.

Fear and crossed boundaries

English and French share an image here. A chill down the back is fear, and in French avoir froid dans le dos, to have cold in your back, means the same. Chilblains can sit beside a fear you live with every day.

They may also ask about limits. Do you refuse to recognise your own limits, pushing on as if you had none? Or do you refuse to admit that someone has stepped into your personal space without your agreement? Either way, the boundary that should protect you has gone quiet, and the skin, which is your boundary with the world, reacts.

A gentler way to hold it

Chilblains respond best to warmth that comes slowly. The inner step is similar: letting what has been frozen thaw gently, rather than all at once.

• Name the cold. Notice which relationship feels icy, and say to yourself plainly how it affects you.
• Let one reaction move. Choose a feeling you have been holding still and give it a safe outlet: words, writing, a walk, a conversation.
• Look wider than the hard part. When one painful situation fills the whole picture, look for what else is there, including what is going well.
• Mark your limits. Notice where you have been pushing past your own limits, or where someone has come into your space, and decide what you want to change.
• Loosen your grip on the past. You do not have to keep replaying an old coldness to stay safe from it.
• Let warmth in. Look for the people who already care about you, and let yourself receive that care. Opening to life tends to show how much love was around you all along.