I was approached by Angela, mother of a two year old daughter and a pair of 6month old twins. Angela’s husband, Michael, has severe skin allergies, the two year old daughter suffers from an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts, and one of the 6months old twins also has sever skin allergies.

The 6month daughter, Robyn had skin allergies so severe that Angela would put mittens and gloves on her hands so she would not damage her skin and further with violent and incessant scratching. Angela was almost at her wits end. The skin conditions of both her husband and daughter were adding stress into the family situation. I spent some time with each parent, explaining the Time Line Therapy Process, and doing as much pr-framing as humanly and elegantly possible. I explained the necessity of a Detailed Personal History for both parents, and that this would take up to 2 hours each. Personally, I was very interested in the possibility of resolving issues with children so young, and in particular children of an anger where Time Line Therapy was not possible with them.

At my Master Practitioner training with Tad James in May 2000, I had a brief chat bout this upcoming situation, and gained Tads thoughts on some likely scenarios, including the opportunity of working with the child’s condition through the mother. The family decided to work with Angela (and Robyn) first, since the daughter’s skin “allergy: was causing the initial distress.

Angela’s 2 hour Detailed Personal History revealed the underlying issues. I have found that the value of the Detailed Personal History as a tool for gaining insights from the unconscious mind cannot be overstated. The questions led to a continuous ‘boundary issue” between husband and wife. This boundary issue had been in existents for about 6 years, but had been more severe over the past three months, with two particularly distressing (to Angela) incident 4 and 3 months earlier. These dates corresponded to Robyn’s age of 2 months and 3 months. Angela realized that it was between these two times that Robyn’s skin condition began.

By questions 4 and 5 of a Detailed Personal History, it was clear to Angela that the timing o f the events and Robyn’s skin condition was more than coincident. At the end of the Detailed Personal History, Angela was convinced that a clear relationship existed linking the husband/wife boundary issue and the daughters allergies. I asked hr “on a scale of 1 to 10.. where are you with this?” Her answer was 10 – the link was obvious. I asked her whether this thought had occurred to her prior to our session. Her answer was that it had not, except for a vague suspicion that a mother’s stress could exacerbate her daughters existing condition.

I taught Angela how to go into “Hakalau” peripheral vision when was faced with dealing with the boundary issue, and especially when nursing/feeding Robyn. I also spoke about differing processing methods and speeds, since she had significant issues with Michaels method of communicating, in particular that he would not “look at her” when speaking.

In the Time Line Therapy Session, lasting a little over two hours, Angela “cleared”
Anger, sadness, upset (for her a different emotion to anger) and hurt. She also went back and “disconnected” the “link” between her issues with Michael from Robyn’s skin condition. Angela proved to be an able time line traveler, clearing and releasing emotions with a minimum fuss. Upon moving to position #3 with respect to the first event for anger (her first emotion), she immediately commented with surprise, “I feel better, I feel happy.. its that ok?”

I introduced Angela to the pendulum which I had asked Michael to “build”. He responded with a piece of string and a plumb bob. Perfect. Angela had no trouble achieving unconscious responses from the pendulum. We asked her unconscious mind if the “link” between Robyn’s skin and Angela’s boundary issue still existed –no. We asked if Angela’s unconscious process could also feed via her nursing whatever extra nutrients, hormones etc could be beneficial to Robyn’s skin – yes. We asked if the whole boundary issue still existed as a problem – no. Angela’s conscious response to this question was that the issue seemed like a memory, as if it was someone else’s old problem that we were discussing.

We did some future pacing and testing in line with Angela’s convincer, and set some goals for her. Angela’s work with the pendulum suggested a time period between two weeks and a month for Angela’s skin condition to completely disappear. So far, she has been able to let Robyn have periods each day of up to four hours with her gloves/mittens off, already a significant improvement.

This process is not finished, and I hope to report next issue on the finalization of what has been an interesting exercise. This week we begin Michael’s Detailed Personal History. For me this has been a fascinating investigation into using Time Line Therapy to work with children through parents, as well as a reminder of the usefulness of the Detailed Personal History.