Bach Flowers for Crisis Care By Mechthild Scheffer

Contents
Introduction: Using Bach Flower Therapy to Resolve Emotional Crises How to Use This Book
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l Part 1 Crisis Situations and Bach Flower Reactions: 50 Sample Cases

Family and Children
1. My baby wants to be breastfed all night long. I cant stand it anymore! 2. My daughter wont eat! 3. My child always wants to be the center of attention. No one wants to invite us over anymore. 4. My daughter (age 4) is in kindergarten. The separation is hard for both of us. 5. Since my divorce, I have made sure my child (age 6) has everything he could possibly need. Am I neglecting myself? 6. Switching schools: Yes or no? 7. As a single mother, I am totally overstrained. 8. My son (age 14) does nothing but sit at the computer. 9. Am I a good enough mother for my blended family? 10. My family is exploiting me. 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

11. Lena (age 14): No one understands me and my world. 12. Judith (age 37): I no longer understand the world my 14-year-old daughter lives in. 13. My son (age 19) doesnt want to live at home anymore. 14. I became unexpectedly pregnant in the middle of college. What am I supposed to do?

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Partnerships and Relationships

15. I always fall in love with the wrong men. 16. It is hard for me to commit myself to a relationship. 17. Does my husband belong to his extended family, or to me? 18. My husband wants more sex than I do. 19. I have too low a priority in our partnership. 20. Should I confess my infidelity? 21. I cant stand being in a long-distance relationship anymore. 22. I found out that my husband cheated on me. 23. My husband always accuses me of wasting money. 24. My husband is like a big kid. 25. Should I take my husband back? 26. My wife has suddenly filed for divorce. Why? 27. We have gotten tired of each other, but I am scared of the separation. 28. 34 and single: When I dont have anything going on during the weekends, I fall into an emotional void. 29. My friend sees me as nothing but a psychic dumping ground. 30. I have moved my bedridden mother in with me. 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Career and Professional Life

31. Help, Im in the wrong job! 32. I am scared of public speaking. 33. I always take on more responsibilities than I can really handle. 34. I suddenly got promoted to management, but Im not equal to the role. 00 00 00 00

35. I feel like Im being attacked. 36. I feel burned out. 37. I have lost my job and I have existential angst.

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Aging
38. I am upset about getting old. 39. Im having trouble adjusting to my husbands retirement. 41. I feel exploited in my role as a grandmother. 42. The idea of having to move into a senior home makes me panic. 00 00 00 00 00

40. Now that Im retired, I feel useless and frustrated.

Other Crises
43. Our son, aged 19, died suddenly. 44. Since my accident, I cant sleep anymore. 45. As a foreigner, I keep going back and forth on whether I should stay in the United States. 46. I am upset that Im so disorganized. 47. HelpI cant control my weight! 49. I have to give away my beloved dog. I cant bear it. 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

48. My horse broke his leg. Do I have to have him put to sleep? 50. My dog rules this house.

l Part 2 The Practical Application of Bach Flower Therapy

The Reaction Clusters according to Mechthild Scheffer
Building Blocks for Individualized Bach Flower Remedies Reaction Cluster Pool Questionnaire 00 00 00

How to Make Bach Flower Remedies

Bach Flower Concentrates Dosage and Application Number of Flowers, and How To Combine Them Basic Principles of Flower Selection Duration of Therapy Initial Reactions The Empowering Statements

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The 38 Individual Bach Flower Remedies plus Rescue Remedy

1. Agrimony: The Honesty Flower 2. Aspen: The Psychic Flower 3. Beech: The Tolerance Flower 4. Centaury: The Service Flower 5. Cerato: The Intuition Flower 6. Cherry Plum: The Openness Flower 7. Chestnut Bud: The Learning Flower 8. Chicory: The Motherliness Flower 9. Clematis: The Reality Flower 10. Crab Apple: The Cleansing Flower 11. Elm: The Responsibility Flower 12. Gentian: The Belief Flower 13. Gorse: The Hope Flower 14. Heather: The Identity Flower 15. Holly: The Heart-Opening Flower 16. Honeysuckle: The Past Flower 17. Hornbeam: The Vitality Flower 18. Impatiens: The Time Flower 19. Larch: The Self-Confidence Flower 21. Mustard: The Light Flower 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

20. Mimulus: The Bravery Flower

22. Oak: The Endurance Flower 23. Olive: The Regeneration Flower 24. Pine: The Self-Acceptance Flower 25. Red Chestnut: The Cutting-Free Flower 26. Rock Rose: The Liberation Flower 27. Rock Water: The Flexibility Flower 28. Scleranthus: The Balance Flower 29. Star of Bethlehem: The Comfort Flower 30. Sweet Chestnut: The Deliverance Flower 31. Vervain: The Enthusiasm Flower 32. Vine: The Authority Flower 33. Walnut: The Midwife Flower 34. Water Violet: The Communication Flower 35. White Chestnut: The Thought Flower 36. Wild Oat: The Vocational Calling Flower 37. Wild Rose: The Zest for Life Flower 38. Willow: The Destiny Flower 39. Rescue RemedyThe Emergency Remedy

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Introduction
Using Bach Flower Therapy to Resolve Emotional Crises

Crises as Catalysts
Life is an eternal process of development. Those who accept this, and go with the flow, will have an easier time traveling the river of life. If one blocks this flowstruggling against it consciously or unconsciouslydevelopmental energy will be blocked and a crisis will occur. This crisis creates the chaos necessary for new movement to take place. Developmental energy comes back into flow, making possible the next step in the journey of life. Thus every crisis is a tool for psychic self-help.

Spiritual Misunderstandings
Spiritual misunderstandings cause our personality to act without the inspiration of our inner guidance. The personality then sees itself not as a part of the Great Whole; instead it lives under the illusion of being entirely independent. Under these conditions, the personality does not turn inward but outward. For example, it relies exclusively upon social norms
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l Introduction

or the advice of other people, thus deviating from its own life plan. This leads to an interruption in the cosmic energy flow and to blockages in the development of character. We experience these blockages as destructive behavior patterns, such as being impatient, apathetic, or domineering. Edward Bach defined thirty-eight negative psychic states or distorted reaction patterns. These thirty-eight states form a repertoire of behavior that can be observed in all people, irrespective of time, race, and culture. Manifesting as symptoms, they show us in what areas we have lost our connection to our inner guidance and have been cut off from the energy flow. In crisis situations it can be observed that a great number of people repeatedly express identical reaction clusters in the form of negative beliefs. For each of these thirty-eight reaction clusters Bach identified a flower essence that would harmonize the negative energies, bringing them back into line with the wisdom of inner guidance. In this book, you will find fifty common crisis situations including the reaction clusters expressed by the affected person and the flower essence necessary to harmonize each reaction. At the beginning of a crisis you can determine your appropriate flower mixture to a great degree from the described cases.

Family and Children

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l Crisis situations and bach flower reactions: 50 Sample Cases

4. My daughter (age 4) is in kindergarten. The separation is hard for both of us.

For 4 weeks now Nicole has been in kindergarten. But each morning she cries a little when I drop her off. The teachers tell me she cheers up quickly, but are they telling me the truth? Nicole is still so little and cant explain to me what happens in kindergarten and what she doesnt like. On the other hand, I cant spend the whole day worrying about her, because I have gone back to my part-time job as an accountant. I have only bad memories of my own kindergarten days; I felt abandoned and unhappy, and I cried a lot. I wonder if I am projecting my feelings from back then onto my daughter. Because Nicole actually enjoys being around other children.

Recommendations
1. Write down your answers to the following question: Which reactions and flowers correspond to me? If too few reactions are found, read the other cases in this chapter. 2. Refer as necessary to the Reaction Clusters section of this book. 3. Read the further steps in the How to Use This Book section.

Family and Children

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How do I react, and what Bach Flower patterns are identifiable? ) It is very hard for me to leave my child at the kindergarten. ) I feel like a bad mother when my child looks sadly back at me after I kiss her good-bye. ) The teachers tell me things are going well for my child in kindergarten, but perhaps they just want to placate me and theyre holding back the truth? ) I cant fully enjoy the things I do while my child is at kindergarten, because I have a guilty conscience. Red Chestnut

Pine

Gentian

Pine

) I often think back on my own unhappy kindergarten days. Honeysuckle ) I am afraid that Im worrying too much about my daughter and projecting my own memories onto her. Cerato, Red Chestnut

Red Chestnut

Pine

Gentian

Honeysuckle

Cerato

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l The Practical Application of Bach Flower Therapy

25. Red Chestnut

The Cutting-Free Flower
Promotes:

l Release from emotional ensnarements and dependencies

l Building the boundaries of

ones own personality

Theme: Empathy and Boundaries

Recognize the spiritual misunderstanding . . .
At the root of this problem, there is the unconscious human yearning to merge with the Great Whole. On the human plane, this can be imagined as follows: As a small child, you only felt at ease when your mother felt at ease. Therefore you unconsciously bound yourself to her feelings, sensing and experiencing them as if they were your own. This patternunconsciously preservedoften leads later to a lack of clear boundaries between yourself and someone elses personality. Therefore you also lack a clear perception of your own inner guidance and life plan. You cannot distinguish whose feelings you are actually feeling, you absorb unconscious feelings of

Red Chestnut

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anxiety from other people, and you do not feel really free and independent internally.

. . . And correct it.

Your decisive task is to build your connection with your inner guidance, and so develop greater self-awareness. Practice intentionally distancing yourself from external emotions and experiencing your own emotions very consciously. By doing this, you will find the right balance between independence and empathy. Empowering statements: l I am myself. l I stay with myself. l I am me and you are you.