My daughter is afflicted with some sort of horrible rash.
These rashes are actually fairly regular occurences, she seems to have rather sensitive skin. Not only does she freak out if her shirt is too scratchy, she gets contact dermatitis more often than anyone I'm been familiar with.
Last night, she was just beside herself with near panic about being itchy, literally writhing and crying out for long periods of time. While we could have gone to the ER, it didn't seem like they would have anything quicker acting than the tube of whatever stuff that we had from last time.
So it seemed to me that the best thing to do is to help her master her reaction to the itchiness. For the first time since I've started meditation, she allowed my imprecations to take big belly breaths and to count them to enter into her sphere of potential actions. And she took to the "imagine you are in a forest and it is safe and warm and you are being held up by the ground" visualization/calming thing quite well. She was laying on a cloud that could not itch her skin. A bit later, she even could calm her response to the itchiness, feeling the itchiness just as sensation, not as a cause to panic (thank you Gordon R. Dickson). She did need a gentle hand on her belly to actually slip into sleep, but still, she had a good bit of rehearsal of the "It hurts, but it's ok, I am in charge of my reaction" stuff (though she was un-impressed with my prayer: "Please help her to feel better, or to be able to feel better about not feeling better.").
But then we parents figure out that the laundry this week was washed in a new detergent - extra softening oils and fragrance oils! We've since rewashed a bunch of school clothes and are hoping that the redness, itchiness and swelling will soon be gone.
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