Asthma

Asthma constricts the breath, and the emotional pattern is a constricting, over-controlled bond. In one systematic framework it sits one step beyond allergy in a chain: a fear of not being loved joins with anger that is not voiced but swallowed, and that suppressed, smothered feeling tightens the airways. The relational picture is "smother love" - loving or being loved too tightly - with an obsessive need to control those close, often to compel their attention, approval or pity, and an inability to breathe, or stand, for oneself. Suppressed crying frequently sits underneath. The short explanation's controlling obsession and this inability to breathe for oneself describe the same stifling enmeshment from two angles. Relief is described as feeling safe to take charge of one's own life and breathe freely - and as releasing the swallowed feeling rather than holding it in.

Example from the findings: the pattern combines smother-love, suppressed crying and swallowed anger arising from a fear of not being loved.