Water Violet: Solitude or Loneliness?

Water Violet types can get a bad press for being stand-offish, cold, unwilling to mix socially etc, when in truth, if stressed, all they want is solitude and quiet.

Because they do not tolerate interference in their lives they will never interfere in other people’s, but they are among the first to offer help when there is a need for it.  They don’t bustle in like Vervain or muscle in like Vine but are kindly and generous with their time and effort to help. They have what Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax calls, ‘a strong back and a soft front’ – their soft heart keeps them compassionate, their strong back knows when and where to draw the line.

However these are their actions, not their emotions. It’s how people feel in a negative state, not how they behave, which should determine whether they need the remedy or not.  Those who find Water Violet people distant will mirror that energy back at them, causing a withdrawn Water Violet to find that no-one wants to make contact with them or take an interest in their well-being. Then they feel lonely.  In a negative state, Water Violet’s natural reserve crystallises so that there seems to be a glass wall between them and friends or family. 

Even those who aren’t a Water Violet type can have times when they experience the negative state and – becoming solidified in that energy – find it difficult to break down the wall of separation and reach out into the world again. This is where the flower remedy helps, dissolving the ice of isolation, warming their hearts, gladdening their minds and renewing that longing for connection with others that all of us need and possess in order to thrive.

Photo: Ally Matson

When we smile and put on a brave face

I was sad to read a post on Threads the other day where a woman described how she had visited a therapist after her hysterectomy.  In chatting to him, she ‘was, typically, telling jokes and making light of the hard stuff.’ He heard her out and then asked, What about the pain?  The woman posted that she ‘… shattered. Absolutely fell apart. Because I have never allowed myself to admit that pain is real.’ She hadn’t realised until then how she had been hiding that from herself.  A case right there for Agrimony.

Smiling and putting on a brave face we call it. The word face comes from an old Latin verb facere to make. “To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet,” as TS Eliot phrased it. In a distressing autobiography by Ronnie Archer-Morgan (of BBC’s Antiques Roadshow) he wrote “I came to realise that a smile deflected people from my inner anguish. It became a form of armour, a shield against monstrous memory, a way to counter my conviction that people wouldn’t like looking at me.”  

These are extreme examples of hiding anguish even from ourselves. We think our wound has healed over when in fact – as can happen with deep physical wounds – it only appears to scab and heal on the surface, while continuing to turn septic underneath.

Sometimes we can recognise Agrimony by the persona they project.  They are often chatty, cheerful, sociable people, quick to suggest a drink or an outing.  Persona comes from the Greek meaning the mask that actors wore, and took off after a performance.  Agrimony wears a mask – and it becomes such an engrained habit that they are no longer in touch with their inner selves. That was clear in the instance above, the woman was so used to ‘acting’ – pretending to herself that she had no pain – and joking about her predicament that she automatically did it with her therapist.

The Agrimony chattiness – unlike Heather types where it is all about their own concerns – is designed to deflect attention or interest away from themselves, their problems, their feelings. They can’t bear to recognise or examine their own pain so of course they don’t want others to touch the sore place either. I have a client who, if I ask a pertinent question, will always digress to another topic entirely, deflecting my spotlight away from himself.

Taking Agrimony reconnects us with our innermost being, helping the torment to surface gently and naturally in our consciousness so that it can heal in the pure light of day. With inner peace restored we find we can face problems with courage and optimism.

Burnout and what to do next

Lexicographer Susie Dent tweeted the word ‘dumfungled’. From the 19^th Century it means, she wrote, ‘used up, worn out, and entirely spent.’

Olive is the essence to remember when we have drained all our energy, whether it’s the mental energy demanded of us in a difficult job, the emotional energy used up in a challenging relationship, or the physical energy lost during illness, or excessive activity such as a marathon. In all these situations – and many more – we have become so exhausted we don’t know where to put ourselves, or what to do next, in order to find some relief.

Olive is in the Group: Insufficient Interest in Present Circumstances because we have nothing left to bring to the here and now. We’re too tired to speak, to eat, to listen, to move even.

A friend who has a chronic neurological condition has been advised by his specialist nurse to rest more, to try and nap during the afternoon. Olive is now in the mix for him, to encourage him to do that. For Olive does not stimulate us with a false sense of energy as would coffee or alcohol, but rather prompts us to acknowledge that rest is the essential pre-requisite before anything further is undertaken. Olive is nurturing and safe-guarding, and the rest it encourages will ensure our lost energy ‘catches up with us’ and brings us into the present moment again.

 

Artwork: linesbyloes on Instagram

“Respect your body when it tells you it needs time to rest. If you don’t pick a time, your body will pick one for you.” Dr Will Cole

Decisions, decisions

"And that’s the thing about asking for advice, Red, sometimes you don’t get the answer you want.”  ~ Marian Keyes 

Are you stuck trying to make a decision? At the point where you’re asking others for their opinion yet feeling dissatisfied with the advice?  Cerato is the botanical essence to help with that.

In this foggy state of uncertainty we can’t see that the answer is right in front of us.   Just as flood waters swamp our car engine and prevent us from moving forward, we have no idea what to do for the best. Then, instead of looking inwards – and asking more questions of our heart – we exteriorise the questions and ask other people instead. But our energy has become diffused and dissipated to the extent that we cannot properly evaluate the assorted and contradictory suggestions.

Cerato restores our focus and sense of direction, removes the fuzziness of our thinking, and allows us to see with clarity the solution or option – the one that is right for us.

“These afflictive emotions and thoughts are factors that create unhappiness and turmoil within us [and] destroy one of our most precious qualities, our capacity for discriminate awareness.” 

Dalai Lama

Drifting? Seize those oars with Wild Rose

 “A man must stand erect not be kept erect by others.”  Marcus Aurelius

Wild Rose is one of the quiet remedies, the need for which can be so subtle it may be hard to spot when it would help. To those around us it may appear as though we’re drifting along through life without much difficulty, when in fact ‘drifting’ is the operative word. We aren’t steering or rowing our boat but just letting the current (circumstances, people in our lives) decide our direction.  When we need Wild Rose we let others shape our wishes, our lives, our routines.  There is no personal development in that!  We need to seize the oars of our life.

There may be understandable reasons why sufferers of this inertia have become the way they are: bullying parents, for example, or a partner who is possessive or manipulative.  So it’s perfectly possible that faced with such a passive individual we might start by thinking, ‘Is it Larch they need, for more confidence? Are they plain indecisive (Cerato or Scleranthus)? Are they held stuck by past guilt (Pine)?’ without initially perceiving that this person is ‘dead’ to life and what it can offer.  They are out of touch with themselves, their reality and their true feelings, merely functioning on a vegetative level, almost like someone in a state of shock or concussion. 

As practitioners we may come to learn some of their history but we’re only interested in their current emotions. At this moment all we know is that they are apathetic, resigned to everything ‘because that’s just the way it is – I can’t do anything about that.’ They have given up their agency and power to change things.  They have ground to a halt in their lives, and stagnation always leads to decay.

But when the Wild Rose remedy works its magic we become – like the plant scrambling up through the hedge to bloom in the sun – enthusiastic for life, for action, fulfilment and upward growth.

Photo: Jeff Isaack on Unsplash

Rock Water - letting joy well up in our lives

Dr Bach first made the Rock Water remedy from a well with healing powers. A well is not necessarily a stone or brick-built structure for garnering water, but a place where a natural spring ‘wells up’ through the ground.  It bubbles up, nothing can hold it back, for as the Taoists say, water is the strongest element, it will find its way round any obstacle.

This joyous, unregulated gushing of water! Springs and wells are unstoppable whereas those in need of the remedy have ‘stop’ written large in their daily lives. ‘I must stop thinking about taking a break and get this work done instead.  I must stop watching this film as it’s bedtime and I always go to bed at 10 pm.’  The person who needs Rock Water has a regime, a set of rules by which they live their life.  They are rigid about it – like a rock they are immovable and unable to see any reason to alter, forgetting that there is no growth without change. This fixity of purpose, this regulated existence, means they push themselves too hard and that’s when taking the Bach remedy can help.

“Under heaven, nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better.” Lao Tse 78

The spring water potentised by Dr Bach exerts its influence on the rock-like intransigence of those who need a little more fluidity in their mind-set, a little more kindness to themselves. 

When water springs up from the depths of the earth, its tendency – on the flat – is to spread itself out in all directions, with freely-given abundance.  It’s only if rocks impede its progress (or the confining hand of man) that it is directed into a fixed channel.  If we need Rock Water it’s because we are too harsh on ourselves, channelling our energies in the ‘correct’ manner as we see it.  There’s a spontaneity about a natural well which is missing from those who need this remedy. Taking it (when we recognise we have become inflexible in our self-discipline) helps us to flow like water, celebrating change and relaxation, enjoying life's bubbles. As John O’Donohue writes, “When a well awakens in the mind, new possibilities begin to flow; you find within your self a depth and excitement which you never knew you had.” 

Photo; Ally Matson

“Wells were revered as special apertures through which divinity flowed forth…. "          John O'Donohue, Anam Cara 

Crab Apple for self-love

If we think of ourselves as unattractive or unlovable in ways we cannot overlook, the flower essence to take is Crab Apple, known as the cleansing remedy. If there is something we find unclean or horrible about ourselves, or when we are ‘anxious to be free from the one particular thing which is greatest in [our] mind,’[1] this is the essence which will help.

Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way,[2] suggests a mantra for this kind of mental block: ‘Treating myself as a precious object will make me strong.’ It sounds counter-intuitive but she knows that we are all inclined to regard ourselves harshly.  If we tend to be nit-picking about our perceived flaws, and indulge in (mental) self-flagellation, we have probably never stopped to consider ourselves as a precious object. This raised in my mind the image of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics such as bowls, and embellishing them with gold along the cemented cracks.  When the piece has been restored it glories in its new looks, and is even more beautiful, with the gold enhancing its worth. 

The lacquer used in Kintsugi is made from a tree sap. It has qualities of stability and durability, like the trees in the Bach remedy system.  Crab Apple is one of the seven trees in the Group for Despondency and Despair and gives us resilience and new heart when we take it as a flower remedy.

When we admire a piece of Kintsugi we see a once-beautiful thing made beautiful again in a new way.  When we take flower remedies they restore us, in a way which may be new to us, but is not a re-build, it’s a revival:  we recreate our love – for ourselves and subsequently for others – nearer to how our soul always wanted it to be.

Flower photo by Nicola Hanefeld

 

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[1] Dr Bach

[2] The Artist’s Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity