Buddleia Davidii (Buddl)

 

[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:

 

 

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