Renate Weber has been a guest of the buddhist monastery since 2014. In this newsletter she talks about her experience in the psychosomatical clinic and her healing fairytale FULNA.

The “Birth of FULNA“

Who is Fulna? And how does a psychosomatical clinic “help“ its patients?

The answer to these questions is not easy to explain. Probably a stay in a psychosomatical clinic is different for everyone of us “patients“. It depends on what each of us experienced there. I would rather say that it depends on how life went on after the clinic. Because everyone went into the clinic in order to “feel better“ afterwards. I have been two times to the “clinic“. During my first stay I learned to trust people again. During my second stay I learned not to lose this confidence. I learned that I didn’t have to make myself small, if others critisized me. And I learned that I didn’t need to flee from these situations (bodily or mentally), that I also had a right to be there –no matter what. Even though this second stay in the clinic was much harder to endure than the first it was nothing compared to what awaited me back in “reality“. To prepare myself for this reality I stayed for several weeks at a Buddhist monastery. The welcoming atmosphere together with the daily meditations made me believe in my strengths again. When I finally returned to my everydaylife it was as if a thunderstorm of all the conflicts I had left behind rained down on me in one single day. I didn’t know what to do next. The landlord wanted an unreasonably high raise of the rent, my new boss wanted to get rid of me by sending my to a medical test for my early retirement. My place of employment had already been advertised during my absence. My best friend was on holiday in Australia and the only trauma therapist who answered my call was not really keen to accept me as a patient because I was already member of a group therapy and went to see my psychiatrist every other week. I felt powerless and desperate. At that moment, Fulna, my power animal appeared in my mind. I had created the red dragon during my first stay at the clinic. With her saphire blue eyes the dragonlady looked at me angrily and hissed: –I am not putting up with this any longer!“ Small clouds of smoke came through her nostrils. A flame emanated from her mouth. I looked at her astonishedly. –What shall I do now?, I asked my power animal. –This time you won’t give up your space like that.  It belongs to you! – But, I don’t have any more power to go on fighting, I said. –It is useless anymway. –No, it is not! And this time I will come with you!, hollered my dragon and her eyes revealed her bellingerance. I sighed. Unfortunately I got ill one day before the doctor’s examination for my early retirement. –Doesn’t matter, grumbled my dragon when I got on the train the very next day. It was hard for me to endure that one single person would be deciding over my 36-year-old life. The doctor read out a list of my sickleavedays  of the last three years. She asked me if all these dates were correct and I nodded. I imagined that my dragon was standing behind me, keeping a watchful eye on the situation and defending me, if necessary. This image made me keep calm and so I said: –I am on a good path right now. And I need this reintegration into my work.

I got the reintegration into my job. I fought against my bosses‘ low opinion of me. I fought against a head of department who wanted to bully me. And then I did something that kind of proteced me against what other collegues or bosses might think of me: I wrote a healing fairy tale about FULNA. Thereby I found my joy of living and regained my inner strengths. I hope  I could encourage you, to keep following your path, even if it seems impossible at times.

Have a good journey!

Renate Weber