Healing
crisis's don't get a whole lot of attention in the flower essence
world. Some books or sites will make enough mention of it to terrify
people so I thought I would share some experiences of mine as well as
some others that I've witnessed. First, let's remember that in the
natural health world the "healing crisis" is always a good thing. It
means the treatment is working, albeit a little too well. Many of you
are familiar with cleansing, and how if you overdo it you get a range of
nasty symptoms and it means you simply need to back off a bit and do a
little less. Essences are exactly the same, except you're cleaning out
old hurts and things you've been hanging onto that aren't serving you
well. It can be painful to see this stuff come to the surface and have
your false fronts stripped away. If it gets too intense, then stop for a
couple days, let things settle and try again with less frequent doses.
The other option is to look at what you're taking and try a different
approach with new essences, then come back to the troubling ones later
when you're a little stronger.
You don't have to have a healing
crisis for essences to do their job. I would say 95% of the time people
don't experience anything negative. It's not really something you need
to be watching out for, you simply need to be aware of the possibility
so you don't get blindsided.
People are most likely to go
through a healing crisis if they have blocked things out or are using
something as a way of coping. Flower essences do tend to get us to face
things that we don't like in ourselves or something that needs our
attention rather than let you continue to suppress or ignore. If
something of that sort is standing in your way of true healing, flower
essences will have you facing it down.
So what
does it feel like? I've documented moodiness, crying, disturbing
dreams, social withdrawal, old memories surfacing, physical symptoms,
especially in the stomach, and inability to focus on day to day work
because you're working through something. Flower essences shine light on
the truth and sometimes the truth hurts. One of the key methods of
working through things and healing is through dreams. I recommend Your Dream State or "Now, Interpret This!"
for interpretation, especially with recurring dreams. "Now Interpret
This!" in particular is affordable and a good place to learn if you're
into that.
A
seventy year old customer was on a blend long term and needed a
refill. She mentioned that she'd just found out she has a half-sister.
Knowing that she hadn't had a good relationship with her dad anyway, and
now this comes along, I decided to add in some Sunflower. The next day
she told me, "I don't think this Sunflower is right, I'm just not
happy at all." Happy all the time is unrealistic, even with flower
essences, The goal is to react appropriately to whatever comes down the
pike. Most of us get it backwards and suppress the big stuff and then
overreact to the small things. We took the Sunflower out of the blend
and she has it separately to take as soon as she feels like confronting
the issue.
Sweet
Cherry for me personally is always a feel good cry. It feels very
"disarming," as in taking away whatever I'm using to defend myself
against those who love me. (Chuckle). I can get a lot of walls up in a
hurry. It's a broad spectrum negative emotions essence including fear
and anger. I took one sip and cried for twenty minutes. I had to wash
away all that hostility, it was covering up the deeper issues.
Afterwards I was shaky, raw and lighter, and dealing with problems as a
family member rather than trying to cut them away and be in it alone.
There
are certain essences known to be potential crisis servers. Anything
that delves into repressed stuff, or is a catalyst for change, means you
may be in for an adventure. One of those is Black-eyed Susan.
Black-eyed
Susan is a deeply cathartic essence with a long history of use in
treating emotional amnesia, or those things you block out. Why put
yourself through the unblocking? Because these events that never get
processed can manifest in other ways like physical problems, or bad
patterns in your life. For example, lots of kids grow up in abusive
homes. The healthy ones deal and say "I'm NEVER going to hit my kids,
and they turn out to be good parents in spite of what they knew. Others
will grow up with that hurt and repeat the pattern with their own
children. They probably they remember how it was, but have blocked out
the feelings, the details of what it truly was like. The hurt never
really went anywhere, they just shut off feeling. Black-eyed Susan is
not one to play with, but when you need to get to the bottom of why you
act the way you do, it's invaluable.
So choose your timing when
you're getting out the big guns. Have friends and family on standby,
if you don't feel stable enough to risk it, then lets use some
stabilizing essences first. If its gets too hard, you can quit.
You'll have made progress, and you can take another run at it later. If
you have some Crisis Care on hand and things get rough, use it. And if you wanna go for it and rip the bandaid off fast, then Godspeed my friends.
