[Wiet van
Helmond]
When I
first read about this remedy I was very skeptic. It sounded like the
homeopathic equivelant of Bach's rescue remedy and therefore it did not appeal to
me. If I already had rescue remedy, which had proven its
worth, why
would I need this new remedy which came from a book called ‘Meditative
Provings’. This speculative title alone gave me reservations.
All in all
it did not appeal to me and though it remained somewhere in the back of my head
I didn't prescribe it (or even order it from a pharmacy) until Alize reminded
me of this remedy again a couple of years ago.
I slowly
started prescribing it now and then in situations that were acute but also
allowed me to ‘experiment’ with a new remedy instead of just prescribing Acon.
Ign. Ph-ac. or another first aid remedy for an emotional
trauma.
Then Madeline Evans herself came to the Hahnemann institute for a lecture in
which she clearly stated all of her remedies were not just meditated on, they
were also proved traditionally. This removed my last
doubts and
I started prescribing it with more confidence and, probably therefore, with
even better results.
Case 1:
Female, 40
years old.
She made an
appointment because of listlessness, irritability, nervousness, sleeplessness,
headaches and recurring colds.
Lately I’ve
been very irritable, especially at home with my family. They (oldest son and
husband) should all hurry up and stop complaining! My husband (married 18
years) and I have a son who is almost 4 and has multiple handicaps which demand
more time and more planning.
She works
part time in a retirement home as an organizer of all sorts of activities. Most
of these people are slightly demented and have physical handicaps. But she
loves the work and has been doing it for about ten years.
I get a lot
of appreciation for my work there, which is very important to me, but lately I
let people take advantage of me and I get nervous quickly. It’s a restless
nervousness.
The thing
is I don’t know why this is all happening now. There have been no real changes
at work and as a person I’m not prone to get nervous. It doesn’t belong to me
and although I still enjoy the work I’m always nervous nowadays.
I also get
headaches which I never had before (occipital, sore).
Since last
april I got one cold after another. They start out as a common cold but then I
get a sore throat. Sometimes I lose my voice which makes it really difficult to
function. When I lose my voice I can no longer express
myself and
I no longer have a say in things.
With our
son we need to have a solid structure and clear boundaries. Normally this isn’t
a problem for me as I myself love to organize things and tend to lead a
structured life. But when I lose my voice this all falls to pieces.
Our son has
a rare neurological condition and can’t walk, has limited vocal abilities, very
weak muscles and is a few years behind in his development for his age.
Normally
I’m more patient. Now I get irritable when people do not cooperate or when
things get in my way.
Until two
years ago I used to ride my motorbike to unwind but since my son was born we
decided the risk is too big so I sold it.
Although
she is talking a lot about structure (which is mineral) she gives me the
impression that her current condition is really the result from some acute
situation. So I ask her what has happened in the period when the
colds and
her irritability first started.
In april
our son had to go to the hospital for some tests. Due to his condition he has
to go to the hospital often so for the routine checks sometimes my husband goes
with him and other times I go. This time, though he had
to stay
overnight, it was only a simple test and a blood sample and I was accompanying
him. The doctors didn’t expect much difficulties but it was horrible. The
procedure was very painful and we had to wait for 2 days
for the
results to come in. It was a terrible experience and I had to try and comfort
him but also had to keep my emotions inside for two days which seemed like an
eternity. My husband wasn’t there and nobody understood!
I was
angry, felt helpless and when I explained to my husband he also didn’t
understand. (she has difficulties controlling her emotions while telling). I
was all alone!
And it was
after this experience that everything started. As she is re-telling (and
reliving) the experience it becomes clear to her too: this experience is at the
root of her current condition.
Based on
this I decided to give her Buddleia 200k.
6 weeks later
I see her again:
It was
amazing! Immediately after the remedy I got so much energy! I barely slept for
three days but I didn’t miss the sleep. I was all hyper as if I had an energy
boost to do spring cleaning. There was work to be done and I wanted to do it!
This surge lasted for about a month and now it’s slightly decreasing and I
start to get a bit weary again.
What else
has changed?
My husband
is always complaining ‚You don’t do anything‛ and then we get into this
vicious circle were I get angry and the whole situation gets blocked. After the
remedy he accused me again but instead of reacting out of indignation it was
possible for me to remain calm. And I asked him why he was always accusing me
of this when he knows it’s not true. I told him it hurts me and I asked him not
to do it anymore. I understand he only says
it out of
his own helplessness und frustration and that he doesn’t mean it, but we have
to stop this pattern! And after I said it I felt better and we haven’t been in
this role play again. There is now room to discuss our
frustrations
without taking it out on each other. So our relationship has started to grow.
My husband
has a nervous restlessness. He tries to do all things at once and can’t sit
still. I feel now that my nervousness is from him and I can leave it with them.
The events
of april seem to have been processed. She now only remembers it as being very
unpleasant but she can let it go.
During this
last period my irritability was much less and the headaches have disappeared.
But as the lack of energy and irritability are now slowly coming back I would
like to have another one please.
Although a
deeper problem with her husband is now arising I want to see how much buddleia
will affect this as it seems it has also touched this problem in a positive
way.
Rx:
buddleia 200k, single dose.
Again six
weeks later:
I still
feel great. All complaints have gone and have not returned. My husband used to
say it’s my job to keep a happy atmosphere in the house. That felt like a
burden cause I was responsible for everybody’s mood. Now I let that go and my
relationship with my husband is deepening and I feel much better.
She and her
husband are working on things in a constructive way so I don’t prescribe and
decide to wait.
DD.:
Staph.: suppression and disappointment. However she will express anger. She can
go into the conflict. She’s mild but her problem lies not in the suppression of
anger: she had to go through two hellish days and nobody understood or was
there to comfort her. She got very angry with her husband for not understanding
this but it didn’t help. So in depth there is a big change. The causation lies
more in the experience than in the suppression element. Then of course
phosphoric acid could also be useful as there is a listlessness after a
grievous event after which her husband didn’t show any understanding (and later
there was even the problem of bad communication). It probably would have helped
her as well to some extend but for
W. van
Helmond 2007 – Hahnemann Instituut Pagina 5
some reason
it didn’t feel right (it didn’t resonate with me as being ph-ac). Normally
she’s probably a very healthy person whose mental emotional state is in a
healthy balance. The incident with her son brought her all kinds of emotions
but the outside reaction didn’t bring any catharsis of these emotions. Instead
she got blocked and as we often see: blocked emotions drain energy. The
buddleia recovered her balance and even allowed for her to distance herself,
healthily, from her emotional conflict with her husband so their relationship
could grow.
Case 2:
Female, 60
years old.
This is a
case I’ve been working on for years. This patient has been treated by many
other therapists and has had many different treatments including: homeopathy,
psychotherapy, acupuncture, herbal treatment, EMDR, Hellinger family
constellation, Reiki, Ayurveda before she came to me.
This is one
of the most traumatized patients I ever treated and until buddleia the progress
was minimal at best. If you came across a book with such a troubled main
character you would have thought that the writer had overdone it. To me it
illustrates the negative sides of living in a small rural area where many
things can go unnoticed.
It has
really taught me the incredible depth of this beautiful remedy.
As there
are many trauma’s I will give a short chronological biography of the patients
life mentioning only some of the bigger trauma’s.
She’s the
oldest of three children and comes from a religious, farming family. Her
mother, a very reserved and dominant woman, did not want to have children. So
when she got pregnant she wasn’t too happy about it. That’s actually an
understatement because when she was born she refused to feed her. After two
days (!) the local doctor, together with a police officer, forced the mother to
feed the child. And although she wouldn’t starve her, her mother never missed
an opportunity to let her know she wasn’t welcome.
Her mother
wanted nothing to do with her and a maid had to come into the house. This maid,
also a very dominant woman who didn’t want the job (in these small local
farming houses young women of poor farmers were forced
to earn a
living by tending to other farmers children) and disliked children. Only this
woman had some violent habits of making her do exactly as she wanted her to.
Often her mother would be in the same room as she was being severely beaten by
this maid and did nothing about it.
When her
mother became pregnant again she didn’t hate the child (a boy) as much as her
first born because now most of the work could be passed on to the maid and the
first born (who was now about 5). So she wouldn’t have
to look too
much towards the children. Even the third and last child was less of a problem.
Of course the
maid was keen enough to see that she only had to punish the oldest for
everything the other two did wrong to make sure that the oldest would do every
one of her biddings and so she would have an easy job.
And so my
patient learned from a very early age to take care of her brother (and later on
a sister) in a way that she would avoid beatings.
As a result
her brother, sister and the maid had a relative easy life. Needless to say that
these conditions learned both her sibblings to manipulate. And her brother
later ‘became’ a classic borderliner personality creating more havoc in later
years.
When she
was of school age (8) she was sent to a local school a couple of kilometers
from the farm. On her way to school one day she was attacked and raped by a
soldier (in the middle of the 2nd world war). Completely overwhelmed and in
shock by the experience she ran home were her mother locked her in her room.
She didn’t know how to handle a child in such distress and, living in such a
small town, didn’t want too much rocks kicked
over about
who did it so she figured she had to deal with it by herself. She remained in
her room for 2 days without contact with anyone. The same thing happened when
she was 15 and again when she was 19!
The 2nd
time her parents eventually believed her she didn’t provoke the attack and the
third time she decided not to tell her parents.
As she was
constantly taking care of her brother and sister there was little space for
personal development and after her parents died she remained to take care of
them. When she moved out they went to live with her:
her brother
for a total period of 45 years (!) and her sister for 28 years.
She is now
living on her own as her sister died a few years ago of cancer and she could no
longer look after her brother (his behavior was impossible to live with). It
took her years to finally muster up the courage and she still
feels
guilty about it (and he loves to manipulate her through her guilt).
She fell in
love with a man when she was about 30 but when she discovered he had diabetes
in his family she broke off the relationship as she had it in her family as
well and she didn’t want to take the risk of passing it on to
her
children. She never saw him again.
She became
a schoolteacher and has worked as such for about thirty years until she finally
admitted to herself that it was too hard and she retired. She was constantly
trying to protect all children from any form of suffering
and also
trying to be the best possible teacher and both tasks exceeded her (and anyone
else’s) capability.
During this
period one of her pupils was the son of the man that raped her when she was 15.
She spoke with him at every parent-teacher meeting and saw him almost daily
when he brought his children to school.
But she
never did anything. He knew, she knew: imagine what that must have felt like!
I will
spare you any further trauma’s as these are the most important ones and they
will give you a good picture on the foundation of her current condition.
She comes
to me because she cannot weep, cannot feel or express anger, feels trembling
everywhere (internally as well as externally), has panic attacks (she’s a
hypochondriac and during the panic attacks she walks quickly through the living
room), is an extreme perfectionist with very low self esteem, has vertigo, is
constantly full of cares about everyone and everything, has nervous tics in
almost every muscle of her body but especially the
facial
muscles (her face is in constant motion), she has all sorts of digestive
problems, recurring colds, painful dryness of the mucous membranes and she has
trouble sleeping.
From me and
previous homeopaths she has had several remedies without any deep or lasting
results. Among them were in alphabetical order: arsenicum, carcinosinum,
carcinosinum-cum-cuprum, gelsemium, ignatia, several magnesiums, several
natriums, staphisagria, stramonium, zincum and many others. All in different
potencies. It’s not that they had no effect at all but she always falls back to
the point she was before the remedy, there has been
no personal
growth or any other log lasting progress. It seemed as if only in acute states
the remedy would work. It took away the edge and it never touched the deeper
levels.
So, a bit
out of desperation and also because I had seen the healing effects in acute
cases, I tried Buddleia MK.
Reaction:
In the days
after taking the remedy the vertigo and her headaches disappeared, the mucous
membranes became ‘wet’ and she was very tired during the daytime and even had
to sleep sometimes during the day.
After 6 weeks
she comes back and all physical complaints are much better. The trembling is as
good as gone and her face which was always tight and full of tension with many
twitching is now so relaxed the skin is literally hanging down from her cheeks.
Although she
cannot remember them yet she is starting to dream. And more importantly her
emotions are coming a bit more to the foreground. She’s getting angry about
several things that are happening now and also about things that have happened
in the past. She’s noticing that she can become almost tearful when someone is
telling something. This is of course the safest way to express your emotions:
projecting them on someone else and weeping for their grief. The panic attacks
are getting less intense and less frequent.
At this
moment I’ve repeated the remedy several times and she’s still improving very
much. Not only can she now feel she’s angry she can react and express it. In
the past something would happen that should have provoked some form of anger
and she would get an anxiety attack instead from completely suppressing the
anger to a point she didn’t even know she was angry.
So her next
step was knowing she was angry, brooding on it for days ‚what should I have
said and how should I have responded‛ and a couple of weeks ago someone
made a jesting remark and she angrily responded ‚If these are the only types of
comment you can make, you should shut up and keep them to yourself!‛ And
during the intervie w she is constantly expressing her anger (‚Damn this…‛
and ‚Damn that…‛) on various subjects, expressing herself directly from
the emotional layer.
She’s been
able to cry on several occasions but still ‘from a safe distance’. If she tells
you about something that has happened to someone else she can cry, but if she
tells about herself it’s not yet possible.
For the
first time she is allowing herself to look at her life and see what has
happened from a emotional point of view. She’s not in a victim role or stuck in
self pity but dealing with the events. During the months that followed she
would tell me how she was remembering past events: feeling this or that way
about them and then she let it go.
There’s
still a long way to go but after buddleia there is a beginning, an opening of
the case. And this is a way of real progress and even if there is a relapse,
she will never fall back completely because now there has been real growth.
Even now, years later, she’s still growing and improving. And the remedies that
failed before are working now.
Summary:
Besides
being a huge trauma remedy I find this is a remedy for this day and age. Most
of my buddleia prescriptions are for people that are just going through too
much at the same time. And it needn’t all be negative. For instance a woman
going through divorce, moving to a new house, her daughter is moving out to
live on her own and at the same time she’s going through several changes in her
work causing an overwhelmed state where she is crowded by emotions and no
longer able to live life from the heart.
Or another
patient (single mother) who’s only child is going to school for the first time
giving her time to start a new job and in the meantime she’s also moving to
another house.
Each event
is a ‚life event‛ and it requires a certain time to cope. But as life is
getting faster and more intense people want to (and are forced to) do several
things at once causing a stagnation in our vital energy flow. This could also
be a great remedy for (ADHD) children who are pushed by their parents to the
maximum of their capacities, or just not allowed to be a child: they have to
grow up too fast.
These
people get caught in the flow of events and lose the ability to bring it back
to their own rhythm.
And it’s
not like Nux-v. who knows what he wants but lacks the time or focus to do it all
at once. These people get overwhelmed and they get blocked. These people often
describe they feel many emotions at the same time (i.e. ‚I feel happy, sad,
angry and relieved at the same time‛). This remedy will bring equanimity.
Often that is all they needed: a breather. Which makes this remedy, in my
opinion, all the more wonderful. Because if we give these people arnica, nux,
ignatia or some other acute remedy it will easily put it’s matrix over the
essence of the patient. Making it easy to suppress certain processes. Buddleia
in it’s way of healing comes before all others. It brings a calmness from which
the patient can decide what needs to be dealt with and in what way. If that
causes problems you can still give nux, ignatia, etc. But I’ve found that
people often work it out without further help.
Madeline
writes ‚Does not want to take on life's task after a shock’. ‚Detachment,
isolation, withdrawing into the self, not connecting with the heart centre;
stuckness and an inability to move forward, a stilling of the emotions so that
nothing is felt directly’.
I think
this is very true. But it’s not so much that they don’t want to, they can’t
seem to get to the point where they can let go of the trauma and go on with
their lives. As with natrium muriaticum: something happens and
it’s as if
from there on, in their entire life development, there is a thread going back
to this event. As you can see in the second case she’s letting go. With each
follow up I notice the past is less and less deciding what is happening in her
life now.
And of
course you should remember this remedy in people suffering from any form of
birth trauma.
I hope this
will give you an idea on the materia medica and possibilities of this remedy
which has earned it’s place in my first aid kit.
In my
opinion Buddleia Davidii should be added to the following rubrics:
Repertory:
Mind: Absentminded
Absorbed
Affectionate
Ailments
after being abused [child/with indignation/in marriage/physically/sexually/from
violence (children)]
Ailments from
– deceived ambition/anger (with anxiety/with fright/with indignation/with
silent grief/suppressed)/anticipation (from prolonged) anxiety/from bad
news/from being betrayed/from cares, worries/from being deceived/from
disappointment/being dominated for a long time/from
emotions/(emotional/suppressed) excitement/from fear/from being forced/deceived
friendship/(old) fright/(silent) grief/hurry/disappointed love/from mental
exertion/from mental shock/from being neglected/prostration of
mind/punishment/quarrelling/responsibility/rudeness of others/unpleasant
surprises/unhappiness]
Ambition
increased
Anger
Anguish
Can not
argue
Aversion to
everything
Behaviour
problems in children
Brooding
Full of
cares
Desires to
be carried
Cautious
Concentration
difficult
Want of
self-confidence
>/<
consolation
Despair (of
recovery/over his work)
Detached
(sensation of being)
Determ
ination
Discouraged
Dullness
Too much
sense of duty (in children)
Dwells on
past disagreeable occurrences
Embittered
Emotions - predominated
by the intellect/suppressed
Estranged
Excitement
– nervous
Fear [of
being alone/of going to dentist/doctors/something will happen/of being hurt/of
being injured/of solitude/sudden]
Forsaken
feeling [feeling of not being beloved by his parents, wife, friends/sensation
of isolation]
Frightened
easily (at trifles)
Too
generous
Grimaces
Feeling
helpless
Unable to
do housekeeping in women
Insecure mental
Irritable
< mental
exertion (fatigues/impossible)/aversed to
Mildness/quiet
disposition/reserved
Orphans
Patience
Perseverance
Postponing
everything to next day
Precocious
children
Prostration
of mind (after anxiety/from cares/from grief/from pain/and sleepless/of working
too hard)
Puberty
Quarreling
aversed to
Reflecting
Reproaching
– oneself/others
Resignation
Takes
responsibility too seriously
Restless
Sadness
(from disappointment/after grief)
Serious
Inclination
to sit - wrapped in deep, sad thoughts and notices nothing; as if
Staring,
thoughtless
Starting
Studying
difficult
Sympathetic
Taciturn
Theorizing
Timidity
“As if
unfortunate”
Weary of
life
Weeping
(>/cannot weep, though sad/in children/desires to weep/involuntary)
Yielding disposition
Vertigo: im Allg.
< mental
exertion
Head: Heaviness (< mental exertion)
After
injuries of the head
Pain - after
anger/from anticipation/after fright/after mechanical injuries/< mental
exertion
Neck: Tension
Eye: Quivering
Twitching
Winking
Nose: Dry inside (painful)
Face: Trembling – Lips/about mouth
Twitching
(around mouth/corners of mouth)
Teeth: after dental operation
Throat: “As if a lump”
Stomach: Anxiety
Nausea
(with anxiety/after excitement)
Abdomen: Anxiety
Chest: Palpitation with anxiety
Limbs: Restless
Sleep: Sleepless – from anxiety/from
cares/from activity of thoughts
Unrefreshing
Generals: Chronic fatigue syndrome
Tendency
taking cold
Ailments
during convalescence
Injuries
(from chronic ailments/from operation)
Jet lag
Pain in
muscles
From loss
of sleep
Weakness (muscular)
Vergleich:
Vergleich. Equisetum arvensis and Buddleia
DD.: Rescue
remedy BB.:
Acon. Arn.
Siehe: Lamiales:
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum