A-Z of Emotional Resilience - booklet

I'm pleased to be able to announce the launch of my booklet, A-Z of Emotional Resilience. (2022)

When negative emotions become an ingrained part of our lives they can be detrimental to health, especially if we try to ignore or suppress them. But with the right tools it is possible to overcome our tendency to guilt, rage, resentment and other destructive feelings.

This booklet discusses 50 difficult emotions and introduces the concept of relieving them by using nature’s healing plants, five of which may be already known to you as the world-famous Rescue Remedy®. 

By choosing from the complete range of 38 Bach Flower Remedies we can reclaim balance and clarity, restoring our mental well-being. This book advises how and when they can be used to raise our vibrations and provide emotional resilience.

40 pages including a complete descriptive list of the flower remedies for reference. To order contact me by email - see About Me in the the right hand pane - and pay by PayPal.  The price is £4.00 including UK 2nd class postage. Outside the UK, please enquire.  For a downloadable pdf click the link on my website - see under 'My complete profile' in the right hand pane.

For a link for my latest book, Space to Reflect, click here .

For a link to my earlier book, Turning to the Light, click here

Standing on shifting sands

 

If you have you ever stood at the water’s edge, you’ll have felt the receding waves suck the sand out from under your feet.  After a minute or two you move as it’s so uncomfortable standing on the ridge that’s left.   In a new position you look back to where your feet had been: is there a hole, evidence of where the sand was sucked away? No, the sand is as smooth there as everywhere else. Life is like that – you are the whole beach and everything else is just tides, with footprints coming and going.  When a part of our life is sucked from under our feet we just need to change our stance or viewpoint in order to see that our deepest self is not affected.

This is the third consecutive year that feels full of change, full of pervasive feelings of global depression, worry and fear.  The waves are like a constant onrush of emotions. But we can acknowledge them and work out what remedies we need.  Gorse or Sweet Chestnut, Mimulus, Star of Bethlehem or even Wild Oat are just some that spring to mind. With their support our feelings of positivity and optimism return, which will help us to help others in challenging times ahead.

Photo by aquilatin on pixabay

In order to love we have to learn to let go

 

Photo: Ally Matson

A spider’s web makes me think of Chicory – drawing people into his or her web and keeping them close by. However sorry we feel for those needing it (for example when her son never accepts her weekly invitation to lunch) we must not lose sight of the fact that Chicory is in the Group: Over Concern for the Welfare of Others, with its desire to influence others or be the centre of their attention.

“Hers was the unconscious tyranny of inexorable great expectations.”  This comes from an Elizabeth Goudge novel where the matriarch was a manipulative and attention-loving spider-type, always meddling.  Family members loved her for her many excellent qualities but never crossed her because she would be too hurt. Maybe you have someone like that in your life?

Expectations is a key word for understanding Chicory. We all suffer from it at times – whether we’re expecting a visit, a thank-you, a Christmas gift – and then feel let down and disappointed, without acknowledging that we may have been clingy or possessive.

Whereas Vine makes his wishes clear by instructing people what to do, Chicory is much more subtle, and this may stem from the deep need for love which is hidden even from their own awareness, a lack of self-knowledge.  Chicory, Vine and Vervain – we might call them ‘pushy’ remedies where those who need them exert their will openly or covertly, and find it incomprehensible that others should rebel, or perceive the situation differently.

Taking the flower remedies leads to emotional and mental well-being: we acquire wisdom as we learn how to use our time and energies wisely.  In the Overcare Group, we see that wisdom manifesting as love.  Vervain and Rock Water wise up to the need to reduce pressure on themselves and others.  Beech learns the wisdom of giving positive assessment and feedback.  Vine comes to understand how leadership qualities can be used wisely. And Chicory of course learns how to love wisely by letting go.

Photo: Ally Matson

Loneliness and the need to be heard

 

Loneliness can be one of those things that is hard to admit – it can feel like saying ‘I feel sorry for myself.’  Even when surrounded by other people, you can still be lonely if you feel disconnected from a loving heart, or you feel unheard or unwanted.  As Dr Bach made clear, different personality types will respond to stressors in different ways.  And loneliness, although subtle, is a very distinct stressor, and not to be underestimated in the emotional harm it can cause.  Different personality types will need different remedies and the need for Chicory, say, or Agrimony, points to the fact that going straight to one of the 3 remedies in the Loneliness Group may not be appropriate.

That said, Heather types will suffer particularly badly.  Many of us lack the one thing in life we want above all else, without realising that our attitudes and actions, the way we speak to others or treat them, may be the very thing that prevents us from getting our heart’s desire.  Heather types – or anyone who needs Heather temporarily at a difficult time – want more than anything else to feel connected and understood.  Sadly though, it’s their absorption in their own concerns (with no interest in anyone else’s) which prevents them from receiving the compassionate attention they so badly need.  Mechthild Scheffer believes they feel a need to be validated as actually existing.  So there are people needing Heather now – in crisis, living alone, or in unloving, unsupportive families – who may not appear to be talkers and yet feel they have become invisible to the world, unheard, unimportant, a ghost.

Heather has been described as the ‘needy child’ but in times of global breakdown when everyone is struggling to cope and stay calm, we may overlook the emotional needs of those who are dying inside through loneliness and lack of connection to loved ones.  They are suffering deeply, so consider if Heather maybe be relevant when you are trying to support someone with the flower remedies.

#LonelinessAwarenessWeek

 

Following our star

 

During the sunny months of the year we readily spot remedy plants blooming in profusion –Gorse, Red and White Chestnut, Wild Rose and so on.  But also quietly flowering is Wild Oat, flourishing in unobserved places such as roadside verges.  If we are driving, the chances are we won’t notice it.  Our attention is fixed on the road ahead, our mind on our destination or the junctions and places we have to pass.  A metaphor perhaps for the need of Wild Oat in our lives.  We are so busy ‘going places’ that we can overlook the call to follow our true path. It’s rather like being comfortable with street lights at night and not looking beyond them in order to see the stars.

Exploring every avenue and byway in our life can provide lots of useful and enjoyable experience. But all the while we may be wondering if this is our true destiny and failing to see the direction we should be following.  As the ancient saying goes, we are looking at the finger rather than the moon it is pointing to.

When we become aware of this and start to ponder if we’re really following our true pathway, then taking Wild Oat will guide our thoughts and aspirations in the right direction, the one in which we may best fulfil our life’s purpose.

 

Photo: Ally Matson

Indecision?

A frequent reason we become stuck when trying to make a decision is that we believe there are only two options, to act or not to act.  Should I leave this job or stay?  Should I book this holiday or not?  We become so mired in doubt that we forget that there is almost always more than one option or alternative.  Even when we ask our circle for their opinion they may well choose between ‘either’ and ‘or’ rather than point out another way to tackle the dilemma.  And when we are stuck in analysis paralysis we probably can’t even contemplate the idea of an alternative solution anyway.

Whether we need Scleranthus (for being unable to decide) or Cerato (for having such doubt in our choice that we canvas other opinions), with or without additional remedies such as Chestnut Bud to prevent us making the same decision mistakes, taking the flower remedies will encourage us to lift our gaze, remove the blinkers, look around and perceive that yes, there are other ways of resolving the situation. And with clearer vision it becomes so much easier to decide, and then move forward with our lives.

Cartoon by Michael Leunig on Twitter @leunigcartoons

Hope, respair and despair

When we think of hope, we think of the uplifting gold of Gorse.  The sunshine yellow of sunflowers has a similar effect.

Both photos: Ally Matson

Despair is a word that comes from the Latin desperare, where ‘de’ means ‘down from or away’ and ‘sperare’ ‘to hope’.  Thus, the definition of despair is “the complete loss or absence of hope”.  When we need the Gorse flower remedy we have given up hope of solving our problems or recovering from a situation, but usually it’s not despair, more a lack of faith that things can always change for the better.  People who benefit from Gorse are uncertain that life can improve, rather than being at the end of their tether.

When Gorse is the appropriate remedy and works its magic, we feel the opposite of despair which is respair, a 16th Century word that means fresh hope, a recovery from despair.  The prefix ‘re’ in front of the ‘hope’ means ‘to start again’, just as it does in renewal, reconnect, re-emerge, reborn.  All words we associate with Spring and the return of life and hope.