Hives: emotional and spiritual meaning
Updated
What hives are
Hives, or urticaria, are raised red patches that itch sharply. They can follow a food, a medicine, an infection, heat, cold, or pressure. Stress and tension can make a flare worse. Each welt often fades within a day, while new ones appear. Antihistamines are the usual first care. A trigger is worth finding. The skin is not a verdict on whether you deserve to be loved.
The emotional meaning of hives
Spiritually, this is someone overwhelmed. You do a lot, and what you do is not recognised. You need other people's attention, and you cannot bear their criticism. Hypersensitivity and a long experience of rejection are the portrait. You do not like the person you are. The fear of being wounded is so strong that, in order to be loved, you do what people expect. The rejection you fear then comes from yourself.
The French idiom for being thrown on the scrapheap is to be thrown into the nettles, and hives are the nettle rash. The marked skin makes you feel ugly and unwanted. The harsher image in the pages, a beast branded and dependent on an owner, is a picture of that dependence. It is not who you are. Living according to other people stops you doing things for yourself. New projects are not dared, and the powerlessness grows. You hold it against them. You make them responsible for your unhappiness. You feel separated, even torn, from someone, and your integrity feels damaged. At the same time a part of you wants the separation, because it avoids further complications.
What is offered is to become the person in charge of your own life, and to matter to yourself first. Trust, and a willingness to be in front rather than only in response, are the steps. Other people can be met from there.
A gentler way to hold it
- Name one effort nobody has acknowledged. Acknowledge it yourself, in a sentence.
- Pick one small project that is for you, and start it without a vote.
- If the welts are spreading to the mouth or the breathing changes, get help before you interpret them.
Questions to ask yourself
Take your time with these. There are no right answers; simply notice what comes up.
- Where am I doing a great deal, and not being seen for it?
- What am I refusing myself so that nobody will be disappointed?
- Who have I made responsible for a hurt that I could start to set down?
“I can matter to myself first, and I can meet other people from there.”
When to see a doctor
- Hives with swelling of the lips or tongue, wheeze, or faintness is an allergic emergency.
- Call for help.
- Ordinary welts still deserve a clinician if they keep returning, follow a new drug, or come with fever.
- Do not stop a prescribed medicine on your own.
- Stress can worsen a flare.
- It does not replace the search for an allergy, an infection, or a drug reaction.
Sources and inspiration
- Jacques Martel, .
This page is an original interpretation written by Body Hemi-Sync. It is inspired by these sources and does not reproduce them.