Symptoms of a Healing Crisis and How to Handle it

Healing crises are not the norm with essences, but can definitely happen. If you are having a rough time since you started an essence, hopefully this will shed a little light.

First, let's remember that in the natural health world the "healing crisis" is always a good thing. It means the treatment is working, albeit a little too well. Many of you are familiar with cleansing, and how if you overdo it you get a range of nasty symptoms and it means you simply need to back off a bit and do a little less.

Essences are exactly the same, except you're cleaning out old hurts and things you've been hanging onto that aren't serving you well. It can be painful to see this stuff come to the surface and have your false fronts stripped away. If it gets too intense, then stop for a couple days, let things settle and try again with less frequent doses. The other option is to look at what you're taking and try a different approach with new essences, then come back to the troubling ones later when you're a little stronger.

You don't have to have a healing crisis for essences to do their job. I would say 95% of the time people don't experience anything negative. It's not really something you need to be watching out for, you simply need to be aware of the possibility so you don't get blindsided.

People are most likely to go through a healing crisis if they have blocked things out or have been coping in a detrimental way. Flower essences do tend to get us to face things that we don't like in ourselves or something that needs our attention rather than let you continue to suppress or ignore. If something of that sort is standing in your way of true healing, flower essences will have you facing it down.

So what does it feel like? Moodiness, crying, disturbing dreams, social withdrawal, old memories surfacing, physical symptoms, (especially in the stomach, digestive systems, or headaches) and inability to focus on day to day work because you're working through something.

Because emotions and your body are so closely connected, emotional detoxing can cause a lot of physical shifts. It's important to remember that on a physical level, essences are two ingredients; brandy, and water. If you do not have a problem with either of those ingredients, you are not going to be allergic, intolerant or otherwise harmed by essences.

The dropper tops on our bottles are latex though, so that's the one other physical factor that could be at play. If you have a latex allergy some customers have had mild reactions from the dropper tops. If that's you, you can put an order note at checkout requesting latex-free and we will put a flat cap lid instead of the latex dropper. (We'd love to be able to offer nitrile latex-free droppers but unfortunately they have proven difficult to source)

Flower essences shine light on the truth and sometimes the truth hurts.

A seventy year old customer was on a blend long term and needed a refill. She mentioned that she'd just found out she has a half-sister. Knowing that she hadn't had a good relationship with her dad anyway, and now this comes along, I decided to add in some Sunflower. The next day she told me, "I don't think this Sunflower is right, I'm just not happy at all."

Happy all the time is unrealistic, even with flower essences, The goal is to react appropriately to whatever comes down the pike. Most of us get it backwards and suppress the big stuff and then overreact to the small things. We took the Sunflower out of the blend and she has it separately to take as soon as she feels like confronting the issue.

Sweet Cherry for me personally is always a feel good cry. It feels very "disarming," as in taking away whatever I'm using to defend myself against those who love me. (Chuckle). I can get a lot of walls up in a hurry. It's a broad spectrum negative emotions essence including fear and anger.

There are certain essences known to be potential crisis servers. Anything that delves into repressed stuff, or is a catalyst for change, means you may be in for an adventure. One of those is Black-eyed Susan.

Black-eyed Susan is a deeply cathartic essence with a long history of use in treating emotional amnesia, or those things you block out. Why put yourself through the unblocking? Because these events that never get processed can manifest in other ways like physical problems, or bad patterns in your life. For example, lots of kids grow up in abusive homes. The healthy ones deal and say "I'm NEVER going to hit my kids, and they turn out to be good parents in spite of what they knew. Others will grow up with that hurt and repeat the pattern with their own children. They probably they remember how it was, but have blocked out the feelings, the details of what it truly was like. The hurt never really went anywhere, they just shut off feeling. Black-eyed Susan is not one to play with, but when you need to get to the bottom of why you act the way you do, it's invaluable.

Some Notes on the Bioessences

These are a little different because you have the emotional healing crisis potential of the flowers, but also the potential for more traditional herx reactions as physical cleansing and healing takes place. Generally the sicker you are, the more you need to take things slow. If you are experiencing something really unwarranted and not a typical cleanse reaction, you need to look at the possibility of other medical issues unrelated to essence use.

How to Handle a Suspected Healing Crisis

Stop taking the essence if the suspected healing crisis symptoms do not subside it was not the essence triggering them. You need to consider other causes of your symptoms.

We've had customers that have missed important physical causes of their symptoms because they were convinced it was the essence. Once they stopped taking the essence they realized the other causes and were able to get the medical attention they needed.

It's also important to note that a healing crisis presents as mild discomfort, never intense enough to warrant emergency medical attention. If you are experiencing that level of physical symptoms, seek medical care. It is not the essence causing it and you need to figure out what is.
Drink some water a healing crisis is like an emotional detox, and just like a physical detox, water helps flush it out. So be sure to up your water consumption. (non-essenced dosed water of course in this case, unless switching as we describe in 4)
Start back slowly if the suspected healing crisis symptoms do subside when you stop taking the essence it likely was a healing crisis. If you want to try that same essence again, start back slowly with a single drop of the essence straight in your mouth and then wait and observe any shifts. If that goes well without triggering a healing crisis you can increase your frequency of taking the essence by putting the typical 4 drops in a beverage but only taking a few sips for a limited period of time. If that goes well then you can increase the frequency of taking the essence by sipping on it throughout the day.

Remember, you are in charge of this process. If its gets too hard, you can quit. You'll have made progress, and you can take another run at it later. If you want to go for it and rip the bandaid off fast, then you do you. That's not how we recommend handling a healing crisis but that is how some of our customers prefer to just press on through.
Switch if needed as we discussed above, sometimes an essence is just too much too fast for what you need. You may need to switch to another essence and work on supporting your system to be accepting of the shifts the essence that triggered the healing crisis brings. If you have Crisis Care on hand it's a great essence to switch to for riding out a healing crisis.