Throughout history, people have used suppression as a form of defense or protection of the self. Governments and other institutions use various methods of suppression to prevent specific groups from growing in strength and number and usurping their power. Methods used include banning ideas, burning books, using physical violence, drafting unfair laws, incarcerating the opposition, and comitting genocide.
People may be suppressed by the government or by other members of society for their appearance or race, religious or political beliefs, gender or sexual orientation. However, because of the human desire to belong to a group, people also end up suppressing themselves in order to be accepted. People use suppression to protect themselves by masking feelings that show their vulnerability. Sometimes people also have suppress their gender identity or sexual orientation in order to be accepted.
Our tendency to suppress “bad” feelings extends to the suppression of physical pain as well. Many people jump at the opportunity to rid themselves of physical symptoms with a pill. We start suppression from infancy with creams, we grow up taking pills for headaches, for nausea, for fever, for acid reflux, for acne, for contraception, for blood pressure, for cholesterol, for depression, and the list goes on.
In terms of health, Western culture has a tendency to suppress symptoms as they arise. Once a symptom is removed with medication or surgery, the problem is deemed cured. However, in homeopathy, the removal of a symptom without treating the whole pathological picture is considered suppression not cure. Homeopathy regards symptoms as interrelated expressions of a greater imbalance in the whole system. Suppression then would hide the imbalance by forcibly concealing the symptoms the body has chosen to express and prevent a cure. Suppression of the symptoms forces the body to reconsider the disease’s manifestation, either attacking the same part of the body with more strength or attacking a new and more vital area. This means the disease moves deeper; inward and upward. Where once the person was dealing with a skin disorder, they now have to deal with a heart condition or a mental manifestation. The disease is still there, but it is expressed with a more serious set of symptoms after each suppression.
We have a culture of suppression. We use it to help us cope with life and with pain. We push back feelings we are afraid others will see because we want to be loved and accepted. This culture of suppression has led to where we are today in Western medicine; caught up in a big lie that the over-the-counter and prescription pharmaceuticals cure rarther than mask. If people only knew that they were getting sicker they would stop and seek other ways to deal with the pain.
References
Croce, Ann Jerome. The Thought Behind the Action - Understanding Suppression, August 2002. http://www.homeopathycenter.org/homeopathy-today/thought-behind-action-understanding-suppression
Roberts, Herbert A. The Principles and Art of Cure by Homeopathy, third edition. B. Jain Publishers, 2005.
Vithoulkas, George. Science of Homeopathy. Page 216.
Wright, Elizabeth. A Brief Study Course in Homeopathy. B. Jain Publishers, reprint 2009. Pages 70-73.
