The problem with my ears has been getting worse and worse. As I told the therapist, this was one of the first somatic conditions I ever figured out, and I know it's all about anger.

When I'm angry but can't express it, the eczema I always get in my ear canal becomes acute; the whole area swells up until its completely closed up and I can't hear a thing. Sometimes the whole of that side of my face also swells up like a cricket ball, I can't open or close my jaw, can't chew and am left drinking my meals through a straw.

The therapist suggested the anger was about not wanting to hear something - since I wind up temporarily deaf. I couldn't think of anything. Then she said that somatic conditions can represent something about you, or it can be something about others that affects you. So she asked if I felt someone wasn't listening to me.

That made much more sense; I've been concerned for ages about how I'm ever going to get my mother to understand any of this. How am I ever going to get her to see what it is she's done wrong, when she can't even admit that she favours my middle sister over me and L? I know it's going to be one of those conversations where I feel like I'm talking to a brick walk. She won't hear a word I'm saying, and instead will blame me for being overly dramatic and demanding. She'll turn herself into the victim and once again force me into the role of the 'adult' in this relationship.

My concern over this also explains the terrible sore throat I've had for the past four weeks. When there's something you need to say out loud to someone specific, but for whatever reason you can't, the words get 'stuck' in your throat and cause pain. It's happened before, and I've also read about it in various books on somatic illness.

It's all shaping up to be a very uncomfortable, unsatisfying - and, ultimately fruitless - conversation. Yet if I don't go through with it, I'm likely to be stuck with these symptoms ad infinitum

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