Essence
There’s a wonderful system in natural health practices for healing emotions. It’s the essential oils approach.
There’s another specialty that’s related, one that I find particularly useful in those rare times when emotion engulfs me.
The Bach Flower Essences is a discovery by a medical doctor in London who could not ignore the emotional suffering of his patients.
Dr. Edward Bach left London for the countryside in 1930 to study herbal remedies to treat patients’ distresses.
Testing on himself, Dr. Bach discovered that certain flowers had a positive effect on specific negative emotions.
There are 38 Bach flower remedies, each attending to a particular negative emotion.
In the past when I used an essence, it was effective but I didn’t examine the connection further; I just felt on top of things again.
Recently, I turned to the Bach Flower Essence system again to address inexplicable fears affecting me, body and mind.
The website provides a questionnaire that helps you identify negative emotions, specifically, to determine which flower essence would have a positive effect.
As a lifetime writer with published works, I nevertheless found a slight fear that blogging was something different. I would be exposing myself, not just explaining the logic of my theory.
I would be …
Vulnerable
I have been a loner and happy, writing to publish since 2012.
But I discovered that a deeper need lay beneath anxieties I associated with certain social events.
Since my work is seldom understood, much less enjoyed,
I had begun to feel unappreciated —
Slighted.
Hurt.
What surprised me was that the flower essence named for these feelings had more to do with clinging to family – the very opposite of what my reclusive behavior indicated.
But the tag on the flower essence pinned down the cause: “possessive, territorial.”
!
I realized that it’s the work that is my “baby” – something only mine; my inheritance.
And I am about to lay that “baby” naked before an audience that could very well attack it.
Not protected in obscurity where my books reside.
I feel less vulnerable exposing my personal feelings now than in the thought of exposing my science to ridicule!
The Bach flower with the power to neutralize being possessive and territorial?
Chicory. It’s counteractive agent? “Love unconditionally”
Obviously, this is not something the will can do.
It must come from the heart.
Past experience tells me that the flower essence will help me get a grip, providing an unconscious boost to my efforts against the negative emotions.
This is the kind of incredible discovery I am used to finding on my own.
And to have someone else find something that works well for me in such a personal way is amazing!
And yet, from my perspective, we all do experience discovery every day, just without the thrill.
Through research, I have collected stories of the extraordinary happening in the lives of others by mapping their histories on the twelve phases grid.
When I did life cycle mapping in the past, it was to test my observations.
My experience proved to me that Life hands me what I need to fulfill my purpose.
Little of that fulfillment came from my planning and effort.
So, I asked others to allow me to see if, in their experience, Life handed them what they needed to fulfill theirpurpose.
Time and time again, it was the same. The ordinary became extraordinary in one’s remembrance.
The extraordinary is the unexpected that proved to be a pivotal life change.
The proof for me is when it happens.
Sandra is one example.
(Names are changed to protect the person’s privacy.)
Sandra’s brother died unexpectedly shortly before her twenty-third birthday.
Within a few days of his death, Sandra makes a spontaneous decision.
She told me: “I remember now when my brother died, I heard a commercial for a bachelor’s degree. Up to that point I didn’t have any college degree. And so, literally, he had died, I was traveling around, taking care of business around his death, heard this commercial, drove to the school, that I’d never been to before, and walked out with books in hand and signed up for class. That was the big defining moment.”
Sandra spent the following years in school and now has a doctorate degree and is a college instructor.
We tend to focus on the outcome and celebrate the accomplishment.
In the analysis of the timing of Sandra’s decision at the time of mind-numbing tragedy, other facts come to light.
In the premature and unexpected loss of a loved one there is high emotional impact.
My observation is that, when startled, the mind loses its presumption of life’s order; intuition snaps into action, filling the gap.
Although her brother’s death is tragic, and as she is tasked with handling his affairs, Sandra does something spontaneous.
Her impulse shows how intuition – her immediate and unplanned response – provided stability for her mind. Acceptance comes quickly, and she begins a new future as the known past ends.
This significant occasion for Sandra occurred as she came to the end of the twelve-year period I call Life Cycle Phase Two™.
It is “Phase Two” because the first twelve-year period is from birth to age 11.
These are imagined separations of the human life expectancy of 120 years, divided into twelve-year segments.
Sandra had agreed to be a subject for my theory, and more of her life story proved to confirm my personal observations of an essential ability to get back on track.
My recent experience with the Bach flower remedy was a feeling that there was a reason for the emotion that wracked my body.
A memory took me to the questionnaire where I enjoyed the pursuit of its analysis, and then, still curious, found something deeper, an inadvertent answer within the questionnaire.
I bring these things to your attention because I am convinced that there is a mechanism we can follow that produces true Good – consistently, not merely incidentally or randomly.
There is always a down side, however, Life being what it is …
There are ups – surely, and there are downs.
To follow the 12 Phases of the Cycle of Unconscious Response™ is to see how difficulty works toward advancement, how tragedy can produce strength, and how taking a long view can diminish the sharpness of short-term losses.
Not just hopefully, but systematically.
Maybe a more accurate description would be –
“How a series of twelve spontaneous biological and psychological movements recover your autonomous equilibrium after a disruption to that optimal state.”
Let’s break that down:
“Autonomous equilibrium” is that state you enjoy when life responds well to your way of managing change.
- You experience gains toward your privately held goals.
- Your methods are effective when you encounter obstacles.
- There is respect shown you for your particular skills.
- Peace with others, or love in relationships, signify real success.
“Biological and psychological movements” refers to the way your body signals its response to circumstances, moment by moment.
- That ‘gut feeling’ is a valid source of hidden knowledge, relevant to your survival as an individual; it tells you what is good or harmful for you.
- Intuition is an internal compass that guides your response when the unexpected stuns your mind.
- Strategies prior to action assimilate in the subconscious where all information is available to you: past and present experience, conscious and unconscious knowledge.
- The body moves in harmony with intuition when spontaneous, unconscious action is required to ensure your survival.
“Disruption to your optimal state” is that instant when you cannot or will not believe or accept a sudden change in your circumstances.
- Denial of the mind occurs because a situation has occurred outside of your ability to control it.
- It is impossible – rather, unacceptable – that a situational reality could have the power to snuff out the force of life.
- Autonomy is not a physical reality – no one exists without others; autonomy is the sole navigational experience in life as an individual, from the inside out.
- Your ability to succeed in returning to your optimal function as an autonomous being is an innate ability of human nature.
The science of neuro-psychology is new; the seamless physiology of mind and body as one organism is explained in depth by the eminent neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio.
This is only the beginning of the series of blogs on the subject.
In this blog, I will unpack the Theory of Unconscious Response™ in small doses, including as many stories and parallels as I can.
The absence of easy-to-grasp clarity is the primary and repeated complaint from my readers.
I have also let go of my insistence on painting the “big picture,” not wanting the beauty of the forest lost in examination of one or two “trees.” I do believe that, in grasping the truth in one piece of the whole, other pieces will fall into place as needed by each reader.
After all, it took four years of intense observation, testing, and adjusting my description of the phenomenon to even begin to describe the twelve components as a system.
In closing, I would like to say that it would give me immense pleasure to have you with me on this journey. The facts are already in print, so I look forward to introducing the theory in an entirely new way.
- Elizabeth Diane
______ Referenced in this blog:
Antonio Damasio’s research and findings culminate in the extraordinary book, The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures.
The Bach Flower Essences questionnaire: https://form.jotform.com/BachFlower/questionnaire
Dr. Edward Bach’s story: https://www.bachflower.com/dr-edward-bach/