Mimulus: tuning out the fear rhetoric

Remember the John Lennon song about a new year just begun? ‘Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.’  If that hope seems vain at present, we need to remember that fear is divisive – it makes us mistrust, exclude or despise people around us. ‘Divide and conquer’ is never more effective than when we divide people in their opinions, beliefs or convictions. 

The remedy to overcome anxiety is Mimulus*.  It encourages us to see events and the possibility of events in their true perspective.  We will never eradicate fear entirely, nor should we want to, as it serves a basic need of self-preservation.  But when our fears are being played upon – often deliberately – by those whose job or malign intent is to sell media attention and addiction, we need to become self-aware as never before, and take whatever precautions we can in order to see scare-mongering in its true light.

Bach Flower Remedies help stabilise our reactions or negative emotions and restore tranquillity. They foster our natural ability to raise an energetic shield or shell around our psyche so that we can keep our vibrations high, thereby helping to offset the negativity in the world.  The Beatles’ new year song also contains the refrain, ‘War is over, if we want it.’ That sadly is unlikely to be true, internationally, for the foreseeable future but we can take it to heart individually: if we want to stop our internal war of fear, anxiety or a dozen other negative responses, then we can start by trying a course of flower remedies.

Thinking of Hamlet’s ‘sea of troubles’, I wrote about choosing to float above it all, like a glass bottle, uncontaminated by so much designed merely to deceive, antagonise or frighten us:

On seas of trouble 
my glass bottle floats serene,
its message clear to read:
remain unswamped, hope intact.
Untouched by alarm, we thrive.

 

Image from Canva

 * Remedies for other types of fear are Rock Rose, Red Chestnut, Cherry Plum and Aspen, depending on what type of anxiety is felt. More on my blog – link in bio.

Image: Canva

Red Chestnut protects those we love

Dr Bach tells us in The Twelve Healers that Red Chestnut is for those who have ceased to be concerned about themselves but excessively worry about those they love. Here’s a test to check your understanding of this Fear remedy: does it tally with the fictitious scenario below – or not?

               ‘Hallo love how are you?’

               ‘Mum? It’s 5 am in New York, why are you ringing?’

               ‘Well I wanted to see how you were doing and if you are alright.’

               ‘Mum, I’m 35, I told you I would be in America with my colleagues for a week and wouldn’t be in touch. I live 100 miles away from you, it’s not as though you see me very often anyway.’

               ‘But I worry about you, whether you’re eating enough …. I was wondering: when you get back into Heathrow, are you going to drive over here as it seems ages since we met up?’

               ‘Mum!!! It will be the crack of dawn, I’ll have been awake all night after a long flight and too jetlagged to do anything other than go straight home and flake out.’

               ‘Oh that’s a shame ‘cos I do miss you.  Take care love. Ring me soon, bye …’

If this conversation strikes you as slightly off, slightly disconcerting, that’s because it’s not the selfless Red Chestnut energy of worry about her daughter.  It feels much more like the clingy,  vibration of Chicory trying to meet her needs. Which is a prompt to remind us that just because someone tells us that they are worried about their offspring does not mean we should automatically think of advising Red Chestnut.  We need to understand if there is real anxiety there; as Dr Bach said, “It is always fearing the worst and always anticipating misfortune for others,”[1] as illustrated in this extract:

“When your children are teenagers, you never sleep at night when they’re 
out until they’re home in their beds again.  Sleeping implies an inability
 to leap out of bed and rescue them from the emergency that will surely
 find them.”  Cathy Kelly in Other Women

If we are in the state where we need Red Chestnut, our sense of perspective is distorted to the extent that we worry out of all proportion to the situation.  If our fear only affected ourselves, it would be detrimental enough, but our moods, thoughts and vibrations mentally and physically affect those around us.  Our disproportionate fear for loved ones could cause them harm by sending negative vibrations in their direction. Emotional imbalance (of any kind) shows us a grossly distorted view of our world, our family and friends, colleagues and neighbours. Red Chestnut not only helps us to rebalance but will remove from our loved ones the burden of our unhealthy fear.

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[1] Philip Chancellor, Handbook of the Bach Flower Remedies

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