A Comedy of Errors?

Following on from my last blog about becoming aware of when we apply emotional pressure to others (laying a burden on them) and doing something about this, there’s nothing like watching television programmes to give us clues as to how to identify who might need which remedy.  If you ever want to observe more about the remedies in the Overcare for the Welfare of Others group, have a look at situation comedies.  In fact most of the humour comes from the fact that one or more of the characters is controlling (over-caring) of others and it’s our reaction to the situation or its outcome which provides the laughs. 

Characters who are in urgent need of Vine appear often.  Think of Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances, Pearl in Last of the Summer Wine, or the wives in Fawlty Towers, Rumpole of the Bailey, and Hallo,Hallo;  the list goes on.  And we can see lots of Vervain In Del Boy (Only Fools and Horses) and Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours. 

Dr Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory

But nowhere do we see all 5 of the Overcare remedies more clearly displayed than in a US comedy series, The Big Bang Theory.  In Dr Sheldon Cooper we have all of them: he is not only dictatorial (Vine) but harshly judgemental, looking down on all of them (Beech).  He’s often intense, trying to pressurise them into doing things the right way – his way (Vervain) – and he is rigid with his standards and self-discipline (Rock water).  (His obsession with cleanliness and germs is of course Crab Apple.)  Amongst all these characteristics, we don’t often see Chicory but we see the need for Chicory clearly in Rajesh.  Rajesh is very easily hurt when he thinks he is not wanted; he’s constantly seeking attention and he needs to be with the others all the time.  He manipulates them, by making them feel guilty for leaving him out, or not meeting his expectations. 

Although we tend to think of Chicory as being particularly a remedy for possessive mothers or clingy children, Rajesh illustrates that any of us can feel hurt when we love people but sometimes expect too much from them because they ‘owe it to us’.  But the wonderfully positive side of Chicory – loving and caring without being possessive – is exemplified by a very different woman in situation comedy: Anne Shakespeare in BBC's Upstart Crow.

You may not know any of the above shows, but do have a look at your own favourite situation comedy and see if you can identify which flower remedies would help the characters involved.

Lifting a burden

In these trying times when the world seems to be on fire, including the humans often on fire with each other, overheated in anger, fired up into aggression, inflamed with power and oppression, divisiveness, greed and so on, what can each of us do individually to help build calm, peace, harmony and goodwill? Many of us already understand that how we live our own lives – in peace or its opposite, chaos and enmity – affects the whole world.

One of the ways we can help peace to grow is by not being a burden on others. I mean the sort of emotional or psychological burden which piles unnecessary weight and suffering on those around us.  At times we can be quite unaware of our how our very presence adversely affects people, whether it’s among our friends, family or even in a crowded space such as public transport or a hospital.  For instance I was thinking of Penelope Wilton’s character in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. She is totally oblivious to how her negativity and constant complaining is a burden on everyone around her, until Bill Nighy’s character points it out.  We can become so entrenched in our opinions, our certainty that our interaction with others is the only way there is, that we become completely unaware of how people suffer because of it.

Social media is full of examples – some real life, some playing on the zeitgeist – of bossy, interfering mothers-in-law, supervisors and others. If our agreement is with the ‘power over’ viewpoint maybe we too would benefit from the Vine flower essence? If we’re constantly depressing others with our misery, Willow would help. If we are always criticising those around us – the youth of today, the other drivers on the road – Beech would remind us “… to see more good and beauty in all that surrounds [us, and] the good growing within.”*

Those in our circle who have to put up with our constant displays of bad temper, venting, tyranny, moaning etc are spending their lives tiptoeing round us, treading on eggshells, in fear of the reaction they may inadvertently provoke.  Are we aware of that?  Jimmy @jimmy_on_relationships (Instagram) says toxic behaviour creates fear, anxiety and emotional punishment.

We see parents buried in their phones, in public, ignoring the fact that their children are either in danger or a menace to others. Clematis would help to ground them in the here and now.  The parent who walks ahead of the family group, ignoring them and their needs, might consider Impatiens for his irritation and impatience.

And then there’s the ‘yappers’, those who talk endlessly about whatever’s going on in their lives, draining all who are subjected to such a relentless barrage.  If we become aware that we do this, we could try the Heather remedy. 

We’ve all had – and will continue to have – bad days where it is only human to offload, to express anger, criticism, jealousy etc.  But chances are, we need to examine our habits when it comes to some of these inconsiderate behaviours because they (secretly) cause friends and family to dread our call, our visit, our get-together.

We’re all human, yes, and times are difficult, frightening, full of extremes and hardships. But if we can lighten the burden on those around us by becoming aware of how we affect them, adjusting our attitude towards a spirit of peace, goodwill, tolerance and compassion, we’ll have made an important start in healing ourselves and, consequently, the world.

By Lucy Fleming from the
FB page Beautiful Illustrations

"Our emotions are forms of energy.

Your thoughts and intentions, your state of being affects everyone around you.

You can pull other people into [heart] coherence." 

Dr Mitchell Abrams in his TED talk on Youtube here.

 
For other afflictive emotions, see my booklet, A-Z of Emotional Resilience, here.

* Dr Bach, The Twelve Healers

Centaury and Chiron

I have just learned* that the centaury flower was named after Chiron, the Greek god known as the wounded healer. He was a centaur – half man, half horse – fathered by Cronus, and the only centaur (a brutish species) to help others, including humankind.  He was a healer and herbalist and his name lived on in chirurgeon, the old English word for surgeon. Chiron was said to have invented surgery.

Chiron comes from the Greek word for hand, and as we know, Centaury types in the Bach flower system are people always willing and happy to ‘lend a hand,’ to help others wherever they can. Even if they do so at the expense of their own health or needs because they never feel able to refuse. That’s when the Centaury flower remedy will help them to recover a better life balance, strengthening their will by learning when to say no to excessive, unreasonable or inconvenient demands on their time or energy.

Chiron was abandoned as a newborn and later was permanently infected by a poisoned arrow.  He used the centaury plant as an antidote to the poison but the pain never left him. So he was wounded in two life-changing ways. His mission in life – as is often the case with Centaury types – was to serve others.  In order to free Promethus from everlasting torment Chiron relinquished his immortality; as a result, Zeus fixed Chiron in the sky as the constellation Sagittarius – also known as Centaurius. 

For more on the flower essence, click on Centaury in the index on the right.

 

Photo: Ally Matson

References:

* Beatrice Groves on X/Twitter

Neel Burton, M.A., M.D. in Psychology Today

Chantal Bourgenje on flowerology.substack.com

Fear: a perspective you may not have considered before.

In Twelve Healers, Dr Bach mentions the word fear five times in the first 300 words for he knew how much fear lives in every one of us. And I suspect he also knew what psychologist Tara Brach currently says: ‘If you have any really difficult emotion and you scratch below the surface, you will find fear.’*

Dr Bach gave us – out of 38 flower remedies – 5 notionally for fear. But when we scratch below the surface we can detect fear in almost all of the others. When we need Gorse, for instance, we can detect the fear that there is no point in trying further as the situation is doomed to failure. With Wild Rose we are numbed into apathy from the fear of being powerless to change our circumstances. (Freeze, flight, fight, the trinity of how fear affects our adrenals.)  All the remedies in the Despair Group are for fear of life never being as good as it was once, not good enough to meet current need, nor improving in any way.

And the remedies in the Overcare Group are all about the fear of losing control – the ‘fight’ element in adrenalin stimulation. While in the Loneliness Group, Impatiens and Water Violet point towards ‘flight’ and Heather shouts of the fear of being excluded from a loving circle, from the warmth of the fire at the heart of the tribe.

Dr Bach of course never wanted us to scratch below the surface when finding a remedy for someone. He made it clear that we should select purely on the basis of what the person is feeling now, whether it’s burn out after a long period of stress, inability to be decisive or to say no when under pressure, and so on.  But for those of us interested in psychology and the development of the human psyche (especially with 100 years of advancing knowledge and understanding available to us), what lies beneath the surface will continue to be of interest and importance.  When we understand someone, our hearts can support them in other ways.

‘Fear is an intelligent emotion.’* We need its primeval drive to protect us from anything that may harm us, but too often the mind goes into overdrive in the anticipation of what might happen. The origin of the word worry in fact comes from the verb strangle – and look how often we can see worry and anxiety strangling our pleasure in daily life and choking our ability to cope or meet challenges. Hornbeam, Walnut, Scleranthus, White Chestnut are just the first to spring to mind for these occasions.

We suffer fear because of feeling a loss of connection with others. In that suffering we are no longer in a position to listen to our heart^, which would tell us that we are not alone, we have never been cut off from connection with the wider human family. The flower remedies help us to remember that. By dissipating fear and worry they restore our sense of community, of belonging, of being One with all that is.

Photo: Ally Matson

* Awakening your Fearless Heart, Parts 1 and 2 by Tara Brach on Youtube

^ More on this in my previous blog. 

Trees and living from the heart

 

In ‘How to read a tree’, the author* writes, “Trees aren’t aware of what the next question will be, but they know the answer. It’s always, ‘Grow more wood.’” In other words, “Trees grow more wood wherever they sense [stress], until it evens out the strain.” This sounds like the essence of Oak, doesn’t it? Responding to ongoing demands without taking a sensible break for rest and recuperation, but adding resilience and determination to the flagging spirit, just as the oak tree adds more timber.

Considered again, this insight into trees is equally true of all 16 trees in the Bach flower range.  As we scan our recollection of them we can see how the essence of each underlies the tree’s own strength and aims.  Walnut gives us the protection and strength to resist outside influence on our plans and dreams. Pine and Larch give us the ‘extra bark’ to resist unnecessary feelings of guilt, or lack of confidence, respectively.  Elm provides the fortitude to overcome our belief that we cannot cope with all our responsibilities.  And similarly with all the other tree remedies.

Trees prioritise the security and well-being of their armour, their bark (not their heartwood) and do whatever is needed to preserve it in prime condition.  Do humans do the same with their heart? Or is it the mind?  Which one does all the thinking, reacting, over-reacting and over-thinking when something appears to threaten us?

The first 8 cells of a human foetus form the heart, such is its importance. But the mind is something that small children start to develop in response to their environment – which includes siblings, parents, daily life, emotional atmosphere etc.  The mind is the one that ‘grows wood’ in self-protection.  I imagine the heart as a loving, caring mother holding the hand of a tired, fretful toddler (the mind), trying to soothe and allay the fears, anxiety, impatience, bad temper and self-centredness that all small  children (and minds) are prey to.  Amidst all the noise which the mind generates on a continual basis, the voice of the heart can go unheard and ignored, yet remain always open to compassion, always ready to love.

The primary role of the mind is to protect the human from danger but it can get over-stimulated.  It may not know the answer to perceived threats but it knows to ‘grow more wood’, so it shields itself with a carapace that onlookers see as aggression, boasting, garrulity, anger, irritation and a hundred other negative emotions.

The flower remedies restore in us a proper balance. They quieten the mind’s hectic voices so that the loving energy of the heart can come to the surface. The fretful child stops growing wood and allows the mother to come to the rescue with the caring, protective energy that restores peace and radiates harmony, compassion and calm – to the benefit of everyone.

*How to read a tree: clues and patterns from roots to leaves, by Tristan Gooley.

 

Self-pity - a distorted version of reality

Willow catkin by Ally Matson

Willow is the flower remedy to help us shift the feelings of self-pity and resentment which we can all experience from time to time.

The word ‘resentment’ means ‘to feel again’. When we are resentful we re-live the emotion which upset us and stoke the embers of self-pity and injustice into a new flame of bitterness and ‘poor me’. Willow is for those times when we are in the ‘me versus them’ mood. ‘They’ always have it so good, everything is easy for them, whereas I am always the one who suffers, I’m always the last one to be considered.  The anger we aim at others can also be a way of avoiding anger at ourselves.

When we feel sorry for ourselves, we have chosen a version of reality to fit our feelings. Paget Kagy (@pagetkagy) says on her Instagram page that life is like Netflix – we can choose any programme to watch and even while we are watching it, all the other programmes still exist, running concurrently in the ether rather than in front of us. When we choose the programme that shows us as the long-suffering martyr, we can take Willow and come to realise that life is whatever reality we wish to enact: we can select the programme for love, laughter, self-fulfilment, hope – or the opposites.

Even quantum physics supports this way of perceiving reality. It finds that past outcomes are only fixed when decisions are made in the present. This echoes what Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been."

When we are suffering from self-pity, we wallow in the story. The initial causative emotion may have passed some time ago but we keep replaying the story of who made us unhappy, what they said, or what they did or didn’t do, that felt unfair and undeserved. That story rumination is unhealthy. Taking Willow helps to ground us so that, having felt the feelings which caused us misery, we rise up from that mire, see the mud for what it was – something to learn from – and grow upwards into a bright, new day.

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More about Willow and the other 37 remedies in my new book Space to Reflect,  here

Drained as a dud battery

Reading^ about the Fair Trade programme to replant the West Bank with olive trees, prompted me to look again at the chapter on Olive in Julian Barnard’s book*. He discusses how olive plants (like vines) are subject to constant coercion, dominion and pruning by human beings.  Olive trees, once their annual fruit harvest starts to fail, are chopped back to the ground, from where they will produce shoots that eventually form a new tree.  Thus an olive tree can essentially be over 900 years old, based in the same soil, faced with the same blazing sun for 9 centuries. No wonder it becomes tired out. “Olive gives, giving until exhausted.”*

Artwork by kind permission of Inga Berkensträter, BFRP

But the resilience which is integral to the olive tree is also echoed in the flower remedy. “…yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a young plant.” Julian Barnard includes this quote from the bible** and we receive this benefit from taking the Olive remedy when we need it: our strength of mind, body and spirit is restored. We partake of the olive’s ability to regenerate, revive, renew.

The 2-3 year old saplings being planted in Palestine will not mature enough to give fruit for another 5 years. Olive trees mature at 15 – and will struggle on with their existence until they are 800-1000 years old.  We can see how exhaustion is a key note in the Olive flower remedy. Exhaustion as in completely depleted. As drained as a dud battery.

Fascinatingly, in Gwenda’s book on the flower remedies^^ she describes how olives contain oleic acid, a compound also released by some insects such as ants when they die. She recounts an experiment where an ant was daubed with oleic acid. It was immediately sensed as being dead by the other ants and was ejected from the nest. Only after the ant managed to clean itself of the smell was it allowed to return. Gwenda calls it the smell of, ‘I’m dead’ – exactly how those in need of Olive might think of themselves!

 

For more information on all the flower remedies, see my new book, details here.

^  Positive News, Jan 2026

*   Bach Flower Remedies Form and Function, Julian Barnard @HealingHerbs

**  Job 14:9

^^ The Plants of Dr Bach, Gwenda Kyd