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Gabriella Mereu was born on May 3rd, 1954, in Quartu S.Elena ,a town near Cagliari, Italy.

After graduating in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Sassari (1983), she attended the courses in Holistic Medicine at Istituto Superiore di Medicina Olistica ed Ecologia directed by Corrado Bornoroni and Graphology at Scuola Superiore di Grafologia where she graduated in 1992.

She has followed courses in Homeopathy held in Rome by Prof. Antonio Negro.

In 2000 she published her first book La Terapia Verbale (*)

At the moment she resides and works in Cagliari.

(*) Download its English edition.

The Verbal Therapy

PATIENTS HEAL THEMSELVES

I believe medicine and physicians are mere vehicles and a physician should be only a guide, so that physical healing can be attained through the patient's awareness and evolution.
A disease is a metaphorical expression of an emotional background that has led to the disease itself.
By using analogy, archetypal symbols and graphology as tools, I translate the patient what his /her unconscious wants to convey and this occurs against every logic of the present Medicine.
My starting point is the very physical and verbal expression used by the patient. Beyond its emotional meaning, I look for a collective meaning as well. This kind of language falls within the concept of the collective unconscious discovered by Jung. 
The terminology used in the official Medicine to express pathologies denies the effectiveness and the validity of the "patientese", which is instead a collective and emotional language. Many doctors stop the patient as s/he starts describing her or his symptoms and pains by using vivid and personal physical and verbal expressions which, for this very reason, are so important to me. I always ask the patient to describe me his/her disease as if s/he were an illiterate.
I believe there are no diseases, but "the disease", being it but the expression of the patient's pain revealing itself both in the verbal and physical expression.
The fact that a certain disease appears to be inexorably chronic, does but confirm its chronicity in the patient's unconscious. Whereas, if the patient did not think of it, I guess s/he could even recover spontaneously.
I wonder if the blood- tests and check-ups patients undergo serve but to confirm in themselves, the chronicity of the disease through their fear - being this latter a feeling from which the disease springs.

Laughter

The most beautiful healing response is the patients' laughter after I translate them their metaphor. 
I almost ever know they will recover. By a laugher they convey me many things: - that they have felt understood and have deeply understood the therapy, that they have kept their distance from the pain which has caused their disease, that they see it as a representation , that they are no more afraid, but above all and at last that there are patients who enjoy themselves while they are being cured.

Examples of Patientese

All patients are different, and so are all stories: the patientese has then no fixed rules. What has led me to define it a language is the collective stamp suggested by the words which are repeated much more frequently than other ones.

Here are some of them:

BALL:

 

it is expressed in phrases such as "I feel as a ball" or "I've got a little nut, a little ball". It can be referred either to a sensation or a neoformation, as a cyst, a tumour, a swollen lymph node, etc. It is often related to a sexual problem.

CROSSING, OVERLAPPING, SQUASHING:

they too have a sexual meaning. I have found it in the expressions "I feel a muscle strained", "I see things overlap", "I feel pain when I cross my legs" and so on.

LEANING:

 

by this word it is expressed the lack of an economic, moral and emotional support that one has for a void caused by an affective loss or a disease on points of support such as buttocks, elbows, heels, nape, knees, etc.

CONSTRAINT:

analogous to this word is the sensation of a vicelike grip, a pressure, a compression: it is related to the feeling of being under the authority of someone.

ITCHING

:

referred to the fact that someone is longing to get rid of somebody or of an unpleasant situation s/he can not stand.

 

 

Clinical Cases

Once there came to me a young man who for many months had been suffering from a burning sensation in his feet. After examining the many analysis he had made, all the medical specialists he had been seeing made a diagnosis of polyneuritis. He came to me as I am the consultant of a neurologist whom he had turned to.
I asked him: "How does this burning sensation get worse?" -"When I wash my feet in the bidet" - he answered. I immediately related the word "bidet" to genitals. The only thing I said to him was : "You have got your sex in your feet". It is not your feet that are burning, actually it is your sex, that's why it gets worse when you wash your feet in the bidet". The pain stopped and he no more suffered from it.

One day there called me a colleague of mine saying she could not smell anything. I asked her:" Who do you not feel?" - "My husband, since he has been unfaithful to me" - " Go to the kitchen and smell some spices". She came back after a while: she could smell again.

A lady came to me as she had been suffering from pruriginous wheals for four years. They had manifested themselves for the first time after a perm. Inquiring about her life I came to know she was Piedmontese and moved to Sardinia after marriage. She was an only child and quite anxious for her parents living in Piedmont. She longed to go back to her native place, but for family reasons she had to stay in Sardinia. I made her notice the coincidence between the word "perm" and her problem of remaining (being permanent) here in Sardinia. She laughed and recovered.

Children`s Therapy

Children very often suffer from diseases which in their expression are the mirror of a conflict, of a sorrow or an emotion coming from their parents.
This happens even for pets towards their owners. Children recover when their parents become aware of the problem.

There came to me a young lady carrying a baby girl who was holding her neck bent right in an antalgic position. She told me her baby had waken up with a stiff aching neck, so that she could not turn it either side. I asked her who was limiting her freedom - her baby's pain in the neck was being actually a response to it. The young lady had a beneficial laughter and said: "My parents-in-law". After ten minutes the baby girl could move her neck freely with no ache.

One day I went to see a friend of mine who had separated from her husband. She told me her elder teenage daughter was suffering from frequent nosebleeding. I said to her- "This happens because she is losing her blood, that is her father". Since that day the girl did not have any manifestation of nosebleeding.

Once there came to me a lady with her four year old boy who had been suffering from a pruriginous eczema for two years. He had not benefited from cortisone-based salves doctors prescribed him. I asked his mother: -"When does the itching get worse?" - " When he touches some earth ". I said to his mother:- " In the collective symbolism earth is the same as mother, thus your child has got a problem with you". The lady wept and said: - " I guess you're right, the eczema has actually manifested itself since I let some relatives of mine look after him as soon as I started working".
I called her after a month: - since the day of our consultation the eczema had began to reduce its size and after two months it had disappeared.