My client had witnessed an explosion in a marketplace while overseas three months earlier. She was physically unharmed but saw the horrific aftermath: dead bodies and people with terrible injuries, including burns and loss of limb.
She recalled walking through blood, feeling shocked and shaken. Later that day she began to shake and, even later, ‘went numb’ and began to ‘intellectualise it’. She noticed she now talked about it coldly. Since then her sleep hadn’t been the same; she relived the scenes and dreams of the explosion. In the mornings she couldn’t wake up and felt flat and depressed. She had a feeling of having two personalities: ‘I pretend I’m OK, but inside I don’t feel like me. I’m not OK. I feel broken in half by what I’ve seen and been through.’
Other symptoms were obsessive cleaning and compulsive biting of her nails till they hurt; fear of being alone; sensitivity to light; anxiety from noise; a need to scream and lash out; and private crying. The client’s doctor diagnosed ‘reactionary depression’.
In the initial analysis we found that the client’s shocked state that began three months prior had not been fully processed, leaving the emotional trauma that sat beneath the shock unhealed and allowing it to worsen into reactionary depression. The first homeopathic script needed to address this ‘shock’ layer as this was a clear cause of the depression that had ensued. Homeopathic medicines well known for treating shock were prescribed.
At two weeks follow-up the client reported she had begun to respond within 40 minutes of the first dose. She had felt ‘woozy’ in the head and had needed to rest all day, her thoughts had been busy and she had felt annoyed. One night she had had a sensation as if something was pressing hard on her chest during her sleep and she awoke with a bellowing moan that came from deep, deep within. ‘It was as if the weight was a block of pain that my chest had wrapped around the explosion, which came up and out,’ she said.
Within days of this reaction she had begun to notice that she felt ‘light, happy and bouncy … normal’. She had lots of productive energy; she had stopped biting her nails; the light and noise sensitivity had abated. She noticed that she was speaking about the explosion without distance: ‘It’s like I’m not dragging a ball and chain around any more.’
The client continued with homeopathic treatment and continued to improve after the shock layer had been addressed.
Susan Blackshaw, professional homeopath, Qld