Love Matters
'Love' is a word that we use consistently in our language as we say 'I love chocolate, I love these shoes, I love your hair, I’d love to catch up, I love watching this programme, I loved that book'. There is love for others, animals, family, humankind, self, ….. so much LOVE!
Yet many times receiving, giving and nurturing love can be challenging. I believe it’s love, not money, that is the currency of this world, of our lives. And just like handling the money, we can be lousy at handling love and this is entangled with a mix of emotions which is what I explore here.
Our experience of love may fluctuate from loving unconditionally, to becoming guarded, exclusive, conditional, desperate and clingy, loyal, selfish, generous, …… numb, where we don’t/can’t feel love.
Love is often times associated and measured by the amount of attention we receive among other factors. Love helps us connect with people, love makes us feel good about ourselves, love gives us a sense of recognition that we exist, love contributes to our identity, sense of who we are.... Once the attention from the one that loves us disappears, be it for a minute, hours, days, months - depending on the situation and stage of life, we will feel left out, rejected, dejected, surplus, .. … to the point of feeling unloved. Alone. Nobody. Noting.
Different stages and situations scar our hearts and our loving emotions. Here I consider this hand in hand with some of the remedies that I have used in my practice that have help heal and overcome those difficult accompanying feelings:
Mother, Parent love
Ideally we begin to experience love at the time of conception not just when we are born. If we don't we won't feel safe, worthy and this will manifest itself in insecurities. Love is necessary for our emotional development that will give rise to physical health and vice versa. Receiving love at this stage helps us be able to love back.
Yet, many times mothers are incapable of that love. This may be as a result of a difficult relationship that they had with their mothers and/or result from hormonal imbalance and associated with the postnatal depression. Most dramatic account of what happens when a child is deprived of love at those early life stages may be considered in children raised in orphanages.
And whilst a child may be able to seek love and be loving after a period of time they will feel pushed away and will experience rejection, even abandonment. With reinforced sense of these difficult feelings poor perceptions of self may follow including poor image, self loathing even, not good enough, and we see compensations such as
trying hard and becoming a perfect, competitive, person pleaser so to ‘earn’ the desired attention.
will withdraw to a place of safety, away from those they rely on for love and care but often with difficult consequences of self loathing.
combination of the two
So depending on individual’s experience and how this manifests I may consider remedies such as Lac caninum, Lac maternum, Anarcadium, Placenta, Sepia, Hyosciamus etc that have again and again proven transformative in remedying difficult issues around experience of love where rejection or abandonment were an issue.
Sibling love
It seems that no matter how hard we try to treat our children equally due to their different needs, our needs and that of the situation we will treat them differently and without meaning to cause hurt, children are likely to experience our behaviour with a sense of injustice, favouritism, rejection even. Here are some remedy pictures that can be of value in such instances:
Pulsatilla remedy may be helpful where we have the case of a firstborn taking it hard to losing the attention when another child is born, or if one child is unwell and the attention is taken from other children. Child (or adult) needing Pulsatilla may be seeking attention, to the point of being clingy, teary; display jealousy or be manipulative. Hyosciamus, Veratrum and many others should also be considered.
Nat mur is a remedy I give to those who feel the hurt but cannot speak about it and will withdraw into themselves and put up an emotional wall to protect themselves from getting hurt again. This can create a cycle. For example if the grief remains unresolved and the woman has a child who won't take to her breast and/or later on the child shows more affection towards the father, the mother is more likely to experience this with a sense of rejection and will not make self vulnerable by showing as much love to the baby which in turn will affect her child's ability to love. We also note that the mother's experience at any stage can be passed onto the child. Please note that these reactions are often subconscious and as such unintentional.
Couples love
Relationships spin around giving and receiving love and by the time we come to connect with our lovers, we are likely to have an established pattern of beliefs concerning love and how to demonstrate this. These may be helpful or unhelpful. With the right person, we may be able to do some work to heal and undo any hurts, while with others this will be reinforced.
How we feel, give, receive love will of course change over the course of a relationship. Here are some issues that I often hear people speak about in my clinic and I cross reference this to some corresponding remedies that bring about healthy emotional balance, and subsequent improvement in physical symptoms.
Nat mur as mentioned above: not being able to love due to past rejections. The person puts up an emotional wall and protects self, hardens self. This is a good remedy to think when ‘abandonment/rejection’ are experienced through a death of a loved one
Remedies derived from Magnesium salts will help those who are peacemakers. They will go out of their way to avoid conflict; yet can also be very argumentative as they grew up in an environment where there was much arguing and conflict.
Kali remedies are very duty and family orientated and quite rigid in how they present and express their love.
Thuja. Those needing this remedy will get a bit lost in their identity through trying to please and accommodate so as to fit in and not be on their own.
Anacardium is for those who struggle with antagonism - conflict of will and this comes out as very loving or very hard, hateful and aggressive, even violent behaviour.
Lachesis, Hyoscamus: sensual people will benefit from these remedies; their insecurity will, like with Pulsatilla manifest in jealousy. They may be quietly spiteful, sarcastic, and critical as they are very sensitive.
Lycopodium: insecurity may present itself as not being able to commit, whilst highly sexed they may have issues around sexual performance.
Nux vom; is suitalbe for someone who likes to work and play hard; there is intensity to this and to relax they will enjoy sex, booze or/and drugs.
Meddhorinum: feels emotions intensely, there is a deep bond, connection, but not always a healthy one. Power of the other person felt strong for a long time to come.
Heart break
The following remedies are helpful to come to when we suffer heartache, lose our loved ones through death, grieving:
Ignatia is probably Number 1 remedy for grief.
Staphisagria feels betrayed and indignant following a break; mortification even, very touchy feeling, scared about the future, becomes indifferent to everything, short term memory issues, ….
Nat mur: feels the hurt deeply, identified with the person as one, will ruminate, close self in to avoid further pain
Aurum: goes into despair, suicidal depression, we may see heart complaints emerge
Phos ac: deeply struck by loss and disappointments. Homesick, nostalgic, worried about the future, weeping, longing results in flatness, indifference, with heaviness, prostration on mental and physical level ie chronic fatigue syndrome
Tubercullinum: when a strong sense of spiritual connection with the other person, depression, dissatisfaction follow; there is a sensation of weight on the chest and predisposition to respiratory complaints
Causticum: long-standing unresolved grief, may present in a physical presentation as paralysis, be in tendons, vocal cords, bladder…
Many of the above will be considered when a person becomes numbed by grief; where anger, bitterness, resentment and hate take over.
Do you need some gentle healing for your heart? Contact me if you would like my support to heal your heart and break out of the cycle of pain.