In this article, we like to present an alternative approach to treating anxiety disorder by using homeopathic remedies. Mental health issues involving fear-based depression are rampant in modern society. This emotional imbalance can have various reasons, and the root of this condition must be understood on an unconscious psychological level. Antonie Peppler, the inventor of Creative Homeopathy (learn more about this method here), wrote the following treatise about the subject of anxiety disorder that we translated here.
What is the meaning of Anxiety Disorder?
Our deepest fear is not being insufficient.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that is the most
most fearful. We ask ourselves, who am I – to believe of myself that I am brilliant, great, gifted and unique? But in reality – why shouldn’t you be? You are a child of God. Your being small does not serve the world.
It doesn’t show enlightenment to stand back just so others around you don’t feel insecure. We were born to bring into the world the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone! And by letting our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. When we are liberated from our own fear, our existence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela
The problem of “fear” and anxiety is described extremely aptly in this poem by Nelson Mandela. Here it becomes clear that the people who produce fears are ultimately afraid of their power and their own creativity. The word fear in the German language originally derives from the word constriction. So people constrict themselves, make themselves, or put themselves helpless. Maybe to achieve something?
Fear through personality suppression
There are many reasons in every life to withdraw oneself as a personality: The strict parental home, the weak child who envies the siblings, the worker who must not lose his job under any circumstances to bring home enough money, the clever student who plays dumb in order not to attract negative attention in the class. Conflict-shy personalities prefer to remain silent for their advantage rather than come out (according to the motto: if you had remained silent, you would have remained a philosopher).
All these examples testify to a victim‘s attitude. Making oneself “small and helpless” is fashionable today. In our society, the victim has significant advantages, while the perpetrator is instead condemned unless he is such a strong personality that he is admired and revered.
Fear disorders as a subconscious manipulation tool
Expressing fears has become pretty ordinary in modern society. Having anxiety causes one gets attention or at least remain in the conversation.
In the generations of our grandparents and parents, people were still so busy building up their existence that anxieties were rare – there was simply no time for fears. However, after the war, the motive for such a feeling was undoubtedly more vital than today.
Anxiety disorders are a product of our society today because, as we know, when basic needs are satisfied, material desires are fulfilled, or even luxury is feasible, personality development occurs. This next step is also called individualization.
What matters here is whether the person who commenced the process of individuation sees life as a challenge or whether he remains in the traditional rituals in which he has secured his existence, acquired prosperity, and perhaps also came to enjoy luxury.
These rituals are called adaptation, role–playing, and economic games. “One does one does”— and does not stand out because that might trigger envy of others and might compromise or endanger one’s existence. The personality that sees life as a challenge uses the personal pressure it experiences as an opportunity for insight. Positive friction helps to activate oneself, to develop independently out of oneself with joy. People living with ambition dare to take risks and ultimately relish life.
Anxiety disorders and victim roles
The larger group of personalities who remain in the victim role have to do something with their powers—their life force. Unfortunately, life energy flows always and ceaselessly. The surplus of energy, created when people deny their initiative and individuality, has to go somewhere and takes the form of illness, especially in the form of anxiety disorders that eventually show somatically.
Fears are the brakes in life.
Positively speaking, the nature of fears describes the situation that needs to be resolved. The imprinted life situation, which is conflict-laden, repeats itself until it is released/resolved.
Anxiety disorder case study in homeopathy
For example, an anxious patient came to the practice and tearfully told us that she could not leave the house because of fear. She has three children; two from her first marriage and one from her second marriage. The anxiety disorder occurred after the third child was born.
The history revealed that the cause of these fears was undoubtedly to be sought and found in the termination of her first marriage. She had had a reasonably regular marriage and had been on vacation with her family. They came back, and two days after the holiday, her then-husband got up, told her without any argument that he had had enough, packed his bags, and left without further explanation.
Deeper Homeopathic Analysis of Anxiety
So this marriage must have resulted from the typical man/woman role play. Probably the wedding took place without questioning one’s own personality. The parents’ example was imitated, the union went along the usual way, and boredom was not noticeable at first because the children came soon after.
Then, however, the then-husband, in the context of his personality development, which had awakened, realized that this role-playing was becoming unbearable for him. He could hardly explain the motives for his actions to himself, let alone to his wife, who was horrified and suddenly found herself as an abandoned woman with two children. According to the patient, there had been no friction in the relationship. They hardly had any arguments, and gracelessness and boredom had been taken for granted.
After about three years, the patient married another man. The game started all over again. A child came soon after the marriage, and after the birth of the child, the fears set in.
Anxieties and lack of personality development
In this case, the anxieties represent the woman’s lack of personality development. If she had listened more to her innermost, at least a decision-making process would have been necessary, which would have redetermined her life. So she remained in the role-play and went through with the “marriage game” for the second time.
But fears arose since the shock of the first abandonment was still deeply embedded in her. Fears that controlled her did not let her leave the house and even became so intense that she could no longer adequately care for her children.
From a depth-psychological point of view, the woman no longer wanted to care for her children because she unconsciously saw her children as the cause of her suffering.
Fear and compulsion to control
The desire to stay at home, which she perceived as a compulsion due to her fears, was nothing more than control. Control had become necessary so that something as terrible as abandonment would not happen to her again.
In the anamnesis, it became clear that she felt that her second husband did not love her but that he had married her only to be taken care of. In this statement, she reflects on her situation, which remained unconscious to this point. She appeared so firmly stuck in the role mechanism of the usual family that the question “Is life a challenge or not” has never been asked, perhaps in order not to fall out of the traditional frame.
Whoever falls out of the frame is an outsider, regarded as a suffering victim rather than an outcast of society.
Anxiety disorder and self-consciousness
From a homeopathic point of view, the patient had a severe self-awareness breakdown, which can ultimately, in a positive sense, trigger a developmental thrust if the individual is willing to accept his fate. If not, he remains in the role of victim and thus in the norms of society, is pitied, and does not develop further.
In the following, some homeopathic remedies are presented, which are essential for personality development and are taken from the rubric anxiety disorder in Kent ́s Repertory as trivalent or at least bivalent remedies.
Personality development is the process of a person which leads him from unconscious adaptation to others, at worst from the role of a victim, through a process of individualization.
Homeopathic remedies for anxiety
Remedies and their psychological meaning
Arsenicum album – The trap of existential anxiety
Fear of death by violence. Existential anxiety. Rather die than change. Old, negative experiences are more substantial than the certainty of determining one’s own life, forgetting that the outside was initiated by the inside. They believe that one cannot influence the outside. They are thinking of being in a hopeless situation where the external forces are more potent than one’s inner potential.
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Face life, and recognize the motives that created the situation!”
Message of Arsenicum album
Aurum metallicum – The self-esteem breakdown
Lack of self-esteem. Making oneself dependent on people or goals (success), not trusting the inner voice, wanting to achieve goals without paying attention to inner needs, up to inner emptiness. The individual is sacrificed for the fulfillment of objectives.
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Pay attention to your inner voice and follow it!”
Message of Aurum metallicum
Mezereum – The uncritical role-play in man-woman relationship
I am not worthy of being loved. Therefore the role play man – woman arises. The man goes to war, to work, etc., while the woman stays home at the hearth and takes care of the children. Role-play gives purpose to life. The underlying belief is: “Like everyone else, I am worthy of being loved when I function in a role.”
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
Apart from the role you play, there is still you as an individual!
Mezereum
Acidum fluoricum – The “I don’t understand you.”
“The chemistry is not right.” Not being able to live and let live. The right to individuality is lost early (childhood) and replaced by a compulsion to conform. Power struggles have been lost—as a consequence of manipulations. Often incarnated under thoughts of revenge. The power struggle is more important than inner harmony. Finding oneself in a situation where one does not fit in. The feeling for one’s own needs and sense for people with similar vibrations got lost. Investing in the wrong things. Unfitting is the result. Before the enemies are loved, one should treat his friends better.
Effect impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Feel yourself and go your way!”
Acidum fluoricum
Cannabis indica – The suppressed intuition
Individual feelings are suppressed in favor of statements and valuations of others. The organ of perception, which we call our emotions, or our “own feeling,” is manipulated. The result is little self-esteem and a high sense of entitlement, which is not lived but shows itself in illusions.
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Accept your intuition and your feeling as important!”
Message of Cannabis indica
Kalium carbonicum – Not wanting to perceive one’s own needs
Ignorance of one’s own needs. The role of entertainer for others (e.g., a child as completion of a family) overrides the sense of one’s own needs. Result: “I don’t know what I want; I only know what I don’t want.”
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Understand your needs and fulfill them!”
Message of Kalium carbonicum
Veratrum album – The stand as an alternative for personality
Self-betrayal, not standing by oneself. To chum up. Betraying one’s principles instead of living them. External status is more important than individuality. Going after the stronger in order not to have to suffer violence.
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Stand up for yourself!”
Message of Veratrum album
Carbo vegetabilis – Imitation of others transforms into one’s own life impulse
“Assimilation” of given circumstances is not possible. The transformation process from adaptation to others into healthy egoism (living one’s own needs) is not accomplished. It is acted for the interests of others. Intuition says something different than reason, which seems to be more critical.
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Use your power for yourself, not only for others!”
Message of Carbo vegetabilis
Drosera – Being at the mercy of other personality structures
Wanting to digest foreign species. Thinking that you have to “harmonize” with people of a different wavelength. Manipulating and being manipulated.
Action impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Respect and live yourself!”
Message of Drosera
Secale – The outsider who wants to belong.
The “black sheep” in the community. Attempt to be considered special by not conforming to the community. Outsider theme—does not feel he belongs to society/family. Isolation. Easily resigned.
Effect impulse of the homeopathic remedy:
“Stand by yourself and look for people who appreciate you!”
Message of Secale
Homeopathic Conclusion
All these homeopathic remedies, whereby only a small selection has been made here, are essential aids to transforming a personality’s life force, which is bound in fears, into free, creative energy again.
These homeopathic remedies promote cognitive processes in the personality, making development possible. This procedure of individualization is needed to overcome fear and anxiety disorders.
Further Article Recommendation:
The original article about anxiety disorder was written by Antonie Peppler and translated by Christian Köhlert.
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