(This article is a part of Interview Series with Dr. Mati Fuller about the Core Issues of Different Medicines)

Dr. Singh: Hello Dr. Mati! How are you?
Dr. Mati: Hi! Dr. Singh. I am fine. So how are we continuing this series of studying the Remedy profiles? Which is the next medicine?

Dr. Singh: Well, it is STAPHYSAGRIA- the emotionally hypersensitive medicine and that too especially to insults. The first thing we would like to know is that why Staphysagria is so closely related to Suppression and Sensitivity?
Dr. Mati: We’ll find the answer to this if we look at the core situation that goes with the Staphysagria remedy profile. In this story, Staphysagria came into a family where the mother was feeling somewhat ambivalent about her new child. She had high expectation from the very start. She could have had expectations about whether she wanted a girl or a boy, or whether or not the baby looked the right way, and so on. The bottom line is, she had unrealistic expectations from the very start, and because they were not fulfilled, she developed a perception that the child wasn’t really good enough in some way. If the mother develops a perception like that, the child instantly knows. Even a baby can intuitively know if the mother loves him and wants him, or if she feels some kind of resentment towards him.
Staphysagria is born intuitive, and he feels the mother’s ambivalence very strongly. As a baby, it is scary to have an ambivalent mother, because your survival is threatened. If a baby is going to survive, he must have a mother who loves him. If the mother feels love alternating with resentment, anything can happen. She could leave him on someone’s doorstep, put him up for adoption, give him away, anything is possible, so from the very beginning, Staphysagria becomes aware that if he wants to survive, he must please his mother and make her happy! This is why he is so afraid of any kind of rejection, because it brings up his survival fears.
However, the mother can’t be pleased, because the source of her unhappiness doesn’t have anything to do with what or who Staphysagria is; it has to do with her own distorted perception of reality as well as her unrealistic level of expectations. But Staphysagria doesn’t understand this. He adopts his mother’s perception that he isn’t good enough, and he starts doing whatever he can to please her so she’ll be happy with him. The problem is that she can’t be pleased, no matter how hard Staphysagria tries. Not only will she not appreciate his efforts, she’ll keep focusing on all his shortcomings instead of his good qualities and pointing them out in insulting ways.
Staphysagria feels hurt from all the rejection he is experiencing, and eventually, he becomes so angry that he starts to hate his mother. But even when he is fuming with anger, he tries to keep it inside, because he is still afraid to upset his mother. Deep inside, he is still hoping that she will one day realize what a good person he really is, and love him with all her heart. So he suppresses his anger the best he can.
Another possibility is that he gives up and becomes lazy, because what is the point of doing something when nothing is good enough anyway? The saddest thing about Staphysagria is that he is actually dependent on the person who is insulting him, so he has to put up with it and suppress all his own feelings whether he likes it, or not. He becomes so good at suppressing his feelings that eventually, he doesn’t even know who he is. He is so focused on what everyone else is expecting from him, that he has no clue who he is as an individual.

Dr. Singh: A sad childhood indeed! You talked about effeminate quality of Staphysagria males. Does it have something to do with his childhood?
Dr. Mati: Basically, Staphysagria has to be submissive to his mother. Being submissive is not a male trait. Aggression is male, but Staphysagria cannot allow his male aggressiveness any space in his reality. He has to submit to his mother, if he wants to survive, so his male side is also suppressed in the process. This is why Staphysagria has an effeminate quality. He has suppressed, not just his anger, but his male side, too.
And, even when Staphysagria grows up, he doesn’t really want to leave the mother because there is still an unfulfilled need there. This is what happens whenever someone doesn’t get their needs met — they have to stay in that state longer while they are hoping that things will change. In Staphysagria’s state, it means that basically, he doesn’t want to grow up. He just wants to be a boy, since growing up means that he has to become responsible and independent, and he doesn’t want to be independent. He still wants to be taken care of by his mom, or possibly another mother figure. So therefore, Staphysagria is always attracted to strong women who can play the role of the mother in the relationship.

Dr. Singh: Who are the ideal mates for a Staphysagria person?
Dr. Mati: When it comes to ideal mates for Staphysagria, I don’t think such a thing exists until he is able to resolve his love/hate/dependency relationship with his mother. Any woman he meets will have to play the mother role, whether she likes it or not. Staphysagria is just so irresponsible that someone has to hold things together and keep things going. So Staphysagria ends up playing the rebellious teenager and his wife or girlfriend has to play the mother. And not only that, everything the wife says or does reminds him of his mother, and they will have fight after fight because he doesn’t want to be mothered any longer, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to be on his own, either. We can see how Staphysagria is full of inner conflict, and how his relationships to women always get very complicated. He loves them, but he hates them, too. He wants them and he doesn’t want them at the same time. He has a hard time making up his mind whether he should marry, or not, because he doesn’t even know if he can trust himself to provide for a family, and he is afraid that his wife to be is going to think he is not good enough, just like his mother did. He is even afraid that his mother is going to tell his new girlfriend that he is just a good for nothing bum, and he feels extremely unfortunate just thinking about it!

Dr. Singh: It must be really tough for his partner to manage such a combination of rebellious as well as sensitive person. What happens if his partner gets fed up and leaves him, how does he behave? Does he feel humiliated, grieved or jealous?
Dr. Mati: When Staphysagria feels unfortunate and victimized, he feels humiliated to the core. Inside, he feels that he is "the greatest," only people can’t see it! He is actually expecting people to notice his greatness without doing anything to earn their respect, and when they don’t, he is terribly hurt! When things finally exceed his tolerance level, he eventually explodes. All the anger that has been suppressed from a lifetime of rejection comes out all at once, and the energy is so strong that it can easily scare him. When this much anger comes out, Staphysagria often loses control, and it can be quite an intimidating experience, both for himself as well as for his mate.
I also mentioned earlier how ambivalent Staphysagria feels about women. He wants them, and at the same time, he doesn’t. It is not unusual for Staphysagria to keep threatening to leave the relationships they are in. Because the relationship always represents his relationship to his mother, he has a hard time cutting the connection in a clean way. And if the relationship does end, his anxiety of being on his own hits him hard, and he becomes extremely miserable. He simply can’t get over the rejection, even though he contributed to what happened in more ways than one.
His reactions are many. Because he feels so sorry for himself, he cries a lot, and complains to everyone who is willing to listen. He discovers that attention is food for the soul, and he can easily become addicted to it. However, the only way you can keep getting this kind of attention from people who feel sorry for you, is by always having new misfortunes to tell them about. So, unknowingly, he will start taking pleasure in his misery, simply because of the attention he is getting from it. This masochistic side of Staphysagria that is quite common. Women are often sympathetic beings, and if you tell them a sad story, they listen and feel sorry for you, and Staphysagria loves it. He becomes addicted to this kind of attention, and he can also become addicted to many other things, like alcohol, cigarettes and especially marijuana. Anything that can numb his unresolved pain and help him stay in denial will appeal to him.

Dr. Singh: If these insults affect him so much then why doesn’t he change himself. Why does he have to be so lazy?
Dr. Mati: This is where he resembles Sulphur. They are both lazy, but there are some interesting differences, too. Sulphur and Staphysagria both think they are "the greatest," however, Sulphur doesn’t care one bit whether or not the rest of the world agrees with him. He is solid in his own confidence, while Staphysagria’s confidence is totally dependent on the respect and recognition he gets from others. Unfortunately, he always sabotages everything he does, and when he receives insults instead of honor, he always feels like a victim. But he still doesn’t want to do anything about it. He is naturally lazy, and his perception is that he shouldn’t have to do anything to earn respect from people. They should simply give it to him for no reason whatsoever. This is a very distorted perception of reality, and you’ll find, when encountering Stapysagrias, that they often don’t have a clear perception of what is actually real at all...

Dr. Singh: What exactly happens if we prescribe Staphysagria to a Staphysagria patient? Does he become more tolerant to insults and indignations or he cries his heart out?
Dr. Mati: Absolutely not! His tolerance is simply a result of suppressed anger, and when you give the remedy, everything he has suppressed will come to the surface. I remember one case of a Staphysagria where his wife was a very controlling Arsenicum. She was obsessed with food issues and wouldn’t allow her family to eat anything they felt like eating, like cheese, dairy, wheat, meat and so on. After I gave her husband Staphysagria 1M, he went to the kitchen and ate lunch twice in one day. He was hungry, he ate too much, he ate the wrong kinds of foods, and the wife couldn’t hold herself back. She nagged him, and he immediately told her to shut up! She was shocked!!! He had never spoken to her like that before, and she was in tears! She called me up and wanted a stronger potency for her husband, since whatever I gave him obviously didn’t work! I had to explain to her that it actually was working. It is also common that Staphysagria actually leaves a dysfunctional relationship after he gets a remedy. This is one reason why many homeopaths refrain from giving Staphysagria, which I think is unacceptable. We all have the right to try to free ourselves from our old patterns, and this applies to Staphysagria as well, even if his wife won’t be happy with the outcome in some cases. However, what Staphysagria chooses to do with his freedom, should simply be up to him.

Dr. Singh: What are the bright and dark sides of Staphysagria patient
Dr. Mati: Summary, the bright sides:
Staphysagria is sympathetic and sensitive, with a soft heart. He will always help anyone in need; the night in shining armor could very well be a Staphysagria. He is the type that will bring someone a rose, as a romantic gesture. He is so romantic, that I personally suspect that Staphysagria enjoys the courting phase more than the relationship itself! This is because in the courting phase, he gets to enjoy thinking about what is going to happen, which to him can be more fun than the real thing, since it doesn’t contain any potential for humiliation, like a real relationship does.
The dark sides:
He is naturally lazy, hypersensitive to insults and an expert in avoiding any kind of emotional confrontations. If the insults are becoming too much, his suppressed anger can erupt totally out of control. It is almost impossible for Staphysagria to get over his pain, and he often nurtures it and keeps it alive for years to come. He is too defensive to want to hear anything you have to say, and therefore, he is basically immune to any kind of therapy as well. He is usually irresponsible when it comes to money management, thinking that he deserves more than he can afford and using his credit cards to much. He never seems to be able to get over his mother’s rejection of him, and projects this pain onto every girlfriend he meets, regardless of what remedy she is, and this makes it impossible to have a simple relationship with a Staphysagria. Therefore, he may eventually end up as a loner, feeling very bitter about his past.

Dr. Singh: What changes should be brought in his outlook to make him happy?
Dr. Mati: To change his outlook, Staphysagria has two options — he can either learn to be happy with himself, regardless of what others think of him, or he can start working harder so that he can earn the respect that he wants and craves. Expecting that he can be a lazy bum, and still get respect, is just not realistic. A change in attitude as well as perception is needed if he wants to overcome these patterns.

Dr. Singh: Well! A change in the attitude is what keeps you happy in life. Thanks Dr. Mati for this interesting discussion on the mental picture of Staphysagria.
Dr. Mati: Thanks Dr. Singh. I too enjoyed it.