This 36 year old patient came to me because of her fear of flying, as she had heard Homoeopathy might possibly help. She wanted to take a trip three weeks from the first consultation, and was looking for an option to make it possible.
This is what she told me:
She is nervous before a trip, and when the plane leaves the ground, panic comes up, along with cold sweat and cold hands. What she does then is withdraw into herself, like ‘going through it with eyes closed’. It’s losing control inside, agitated, complete surrender to the circumstances while imprisoned in the plane. She has to trust, feels it is not in her power, nothing she can do about. Worst case – the plane might fall down, turbulences might occur, forces of nature take over. The fear inside gives a paralyzing feeling and she gets feelings of foreboding and danger. She has to hold onto something and clings her arms around herself. “I have to clench myself, to feel myself, give me warmth and protection and cannot go up or let go for the rest of the travel.” When the plane leaves the ground, she starts weeping, “There is no going back then”. Not until the plane lands again, can she relax a little.
Normally she has fear of heights, or jumping. But when the ground is unstable, like there are pebbles, she gets nervous. “As long as there is grip, wandering is no issue, but when it’s getting muddy or slippery, so I could slip or slide away, when grip is lacking, then I get unsecure.” How does this feel? “It’s physically in my stomach, heart and chest. My heart seems to stop and everything gets constricted and there is wild panic inside the intestines and there is fear. I cannot go against it, I have to surrender myself. I would like to grip something. I need to hold myself, feel myself, need protection and warmth…”
She also says, “There is an abyss inside, where I loose control. There is nowhere I belong, no room for myself where I can back into.” There are things in life which happen, which she doesn’t understand. Like in interpersonal relationships, first there is clearly warmth and the feeling of security, continuousness and then, all of a sudden, everything breaks down. Everything gets damaged, and there is violence and pain. She cannot understand, from where those things arise – all of a sudden.
When did this start? As a child, no panic, but then, it came suddenly. It was a shock.
Her parents got divorced and this felt tragic and brutal, like if somebody ripped away the ground under her feet. “I was lost, stumbling in any direction”. Then she had to leave her parents home, although before it was clear to her that “I would stay there, and even get my children in there, and then I had to go out, all of a sudden, jerkily.”
After that she knows these two states, one is loved, cared, feeling secure and protected and the other is pure violence, hate, pictures of final destruction and pain, which scares her very much. “Something got broken and cannot be repaired, this gives sadness. Something is done to you, through natural forces like a catastrophe and people lose their homes, and you cannot do anything against it, you cannot defend yourself. You lose all the grip which you had before. There is no stability anymore, you are shaken. You float in the air and wind can blow you in any direction. It’s like in a carousel, but with senseless effort to get control again, and then it goes down. And nothing you can do, just surrender yourself to these forces.”
She also gets nervous in narrow rooms, when there is no light. She wishes for more stability, care and being near to others, that everything in life will work out fine, that it will ‘function’ to sustain her, even more in periods when she feels physically weak.
The last dream was one with jealousy, seeing her relationship, being together with another woman, herself being more like a side-actor, slipping away from him, loosing the connection.
She got one dose of Boron c200 (and Boron M to take with her)
In retrospect I think even a higher dose like XM might have been good at this point, as she was so clearly in her sensation.
I got a phone call about a week later and she said “I got ground under my feet again.” She then told me about some inner turbulences which came up, grief and also anger about past situations, which troubled a little, but at the same time a feeling of coming more to herself, getting clear about things, which were unclear before. She said, I see myself much better after that, like something I had forgotten showed up again.
The next follow-up was two months later and in between she did her trip. On the first flight there was nervousness before, but no panic as it had been. On her vacation she took Boron M, and again felt inner things being revealed. The flight back home was no issue at all and she felt confident to handle it.
She called again about one month later when she got the flu. On my advice she repeated the remedy again in c200, which helped her right away. “Regeneration of vitality started at that point” she feels, like “knowing I am over the top of this weakness”.
Six months later I saw her again, and she said there are periods where she feels unstable and some anxiety arises, mostly connected to financial situations. When these appear, she can much more easily let them pass. “It will come and also go away soon, doesn’t make so much impact.”
Reasons for selecting Boron as the remedy:
– the Sensation of being in a secure environment, warm and stable – found in interpersonal sphere, relationship or parent’s home,… – and then all of a sudden, something violent and painful comes up and breaks it.
– from seminars with Mike Keszler, who has taught a lot about second row issues, giving rise to expressions like:
- sensation of a fetus – the ‘comfort zone’ and harmony gets disturbed
- ‘ground’ – losing it, lacking it, no ground under feet
- losing control, nothing to do against it, no ability to defend themselves or to fight
- sudden occurrence of things – sudden danger – loss of stability – shock
- panic on sudden, unknown things – noise,
- instinctive reactions – shivering, clinging
- panic – mostly on 2nd column
Her chief complaint is ‘panic’ and anxiety and fear is much known in Borax,
Rubrics known from Borax
– Anxiety: Motion from: agg: airplane, of
– Anxiety: Rocking, during
– Clinging
Further there is nothing else, no issue of a wider range – identity, society, other persons, creativity and self expression, nothing – just the shock about a situation of being secure and protected and then loosing this suddenly. One could also think about Loganiaceae-family with the sensation of shock and the paralyzed feeling, but these two states seems to me more an expression of the process of being born, getting frightened about the first labors which hit the fetus in its comfortable state, than being the two poles of shock and paralysis, as the emphasis did not lie on the shock, but more on the losing of this security.
