What happens if you take the wrong flower essence?
There are no wrong flower essences, just ones that don’t work! Lol, that’s a flower essence joke. The truth is that if a flower essence is not right for you, it won’t do anything!
But here my mind goes to a customer who said, “how could I choose the wrong flower essence? I know how I feel!”
Well, yes, and no. I’ve been using flower essences for about 20 years and still, once in awhile, I’m tempted to use a flower essence that doesn’t make sense and, therefore, doesn’t work. Why?
Well, let me give you an example. Tonight I can’t sleep and the flower essence I tried to settle myself down did not work. Let me share an inner dialogue about this:
What’s keeping me awake? Is it my emotions?
Yes!
How do I feel?
My mind keeps going to things I am worried about.
Why am I worried?
Tonight? Lots of different things but I got stuck on the idea that I am expecting to receive something in the future, I don’t know what it is at this point, and—based just on what I can currently imagine—I worry about being “gifted” something in exchange for helping with a project that requires a lot more work than I would like to take on.
Why?
I am already being inundated with work on my day job and potential work I think I ought to do because of new policies at Etsy.
And how do I feel about that?
Overwhelmed.
Did I take Elm? (for overwhelm)
No. I tried Mimulus (for fears about known concerns)
Why?
Because I was worried about known issues. And I’ve been using Mimulus during the day to help with my fears about keeping my boss happy and it works for that!
But not for what was keeping you up at night?
No. It didn’t do anything!
Was what was keeping you up tonight really “known” issues?
Potential issues.
Do you know for sure they are going to happen?
No. Not even close. I’m trying to guess and frightening myself with my guesses.
Then it is not a known issue. It is not something you can do anything about because it is a made-up issue based on almost no information. “Ye of little faith.” Your mind is actively going from one potential worrisome scenario to another and creating new things to worry about that might never happen because you don’t trust that you can get the help you need to figure things out at the time you might need it. (But, of course, you can!) That would call for White Chestnut (for relieving unwanted thoughts that get “stuck” and repeat).
And the underlying issue at night is actually feeling like there are too many unknowns—that’s why you’re trying to predict it! Aspen might help with that!
And WHY are you afraid the future? The news, the type of work you do during the day (helping to mitigate climate change), and past trauma you don’t want to relive again. Star of Bethlehem helps with that.
Plus you did say “overwhelm” first. So maybe Elm is the place to begin.
And there you have it! After 20 years, I chose a flower essence that did nothing for me. (Even though it works for something else during the day! Isn’t that interesting? These are NOT drugs. Keep that in mind.) And I did not even think of White Chestnut, Elm, Aspen, or Star of Bethlehem at first because I didn’t go through the process I just described above until I decided to write this blog post. I probably need a combination of all of these!
Picking flower essences correctly takes a certain amount of self-awareness. And we don’t always have clarity about that. And when we pick the wrong one, they don’t do anything. So use that as a clue! There is NO harm in picking the wrong one. It’s just time to do some emotional processing or journal writing and try again.