Evocationer- Take over Depression Case?

Ah yes, we talked about bird remedies and your previous homoeopath perhaps being a bit stuck on the idea, didn't we?

I'll have a look at your old thread and see if there is enough there for me to make a prescription with some confidence.

Ok I have had a look at this original questionnaire. It isn't a very good one - lots of leading questions which distorts a case unfortunately. When you ask directly about a specific quality or feeling, you tend to shut down any other possibilities and also shut down discussion. Such a questionnaire is designed to get you to give a certain number of symptoms which lead to well known remedies.

I hate to have to do it, but I think I need to get you to fill in my questionnaire instead. I can't seem to isolate the core issues here, or understand your individual experience of them.

Sorry to get you to do all this work, but I don't want to go in half-cocked, so to speak.

CASE PRESENTATION FOR CLASSICAL HOMOEOPATHIC PRESCRIBING

General Guidelines:

1. Try to be as descriptive as possible. When describing pains or sensations use descriptions along the lines of ‘feels as if someone is squeezing it with their hand’ or ‘it is like an insect crawling around inside’ or ‘it is as if someone is standing over me threatening to kill me’. Long descriptions are always better than short ones. One word answers are difficult to use successfully.

2. Another important part of symptom description for homoeopathy are the ‘modalities’. These are situations, events, activities or conditions which modify the symptom in some way. We usually refer to this as what makes them ‘better’ or ‘worse’ (amelioration/aggravation). The situation may actually provoke the symptom into appearing, make it vanish altogether, or just increase or decrease it in some way. Modalities are vital information for prescribing.

Modalities are typically related to (but not exclusively) the following situations:

A. Temperature, weather
B. Time (day, night, specific times, frequency, periodicity, season)
C. Position, activity
D. Emotions, thoughts
E. Food and drink
F. Drugs, medication

3. How the symptom is perceived is important too – odour, appearance, sound, touch. What colour is it, what is its texture? For gestures, describe what it looks like the patient is doing, or what you feel you are doing while making the movement eg. ‘they look like they are swatting flies’ or ‘I feel like something is pushing my hand upwards’ or ‘it is like I stick a fork in an electrical outlet which throws my body backwards’. Description – it is key to accurate prescriptions.

4. When did the symptom or set of symptoms start? The apparent cause can be useful in determining the remedy, although it is not of the same importance as the previous factors. It may have been a specific event, a disease, an accident or even an emotional experience.

5. Use your own words. Do not copy phrases or descriptions found in our various remedy pictures. Try not to use other people’s ideas or thoughts or words. If you are reporting on behalf of someone else, report their exact words, however you can also report your own observations of them (not opinions).

6. Does the symptom occur alongside another specific symptom? Do particular symptoms only occur together? Does a particular symptom occur with a particular thought or emotion? For example, a headache that always comes with visual disturbances, or stomach pain that appears alongside anger, or anxiety that makes you feel like running down the street screaming.

7. Each complaint should be described fully before going on to describe another complaint. Try not to mix different symptoms or complaints together. Each modifying feature must be clearly attached to a particular symptom/set of symptoms. Any mistake you make here is a mistake the homoeopath will also then make.



BEFORE MOVING ON TO THE NEXT SET OF QUESTIONS, DO THIS NOW FOR EACH PHYSICAL PROBLEM YOU HAVE. LOOK AT ANY POSSIBLE SYMPTOM YOU HAVE, NOT JUST THE ONE YOU ARE ASKING FOR HELP IN RESOLVING.

MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL DESCRIPTION



(Please spend the most time on this section and give DETAILED answers - the homoeopathic remedy is very often decided on the basis of the mental and emotional state of the patient!)


1. What are the issues in your life that bother you the most. Not physical issues but mental or emotional ones. List each one separately and describe why each one bothers you so much and how you cope with them.

2. What emotions are the most troublesome for you? What situations provoke these emotions. How do these emotions make you act? Do you feel any ill effects from expressing or not expressing these emotions.

3. What incidents in your life have had a deep impact on you? Describe each incident in detail and how they made you feel? What did you do in those situations? What effect have they had on your life?

4. What are you afraid of? Especially important are phobias, but it might be objects, situations or events that just produce a high level of anxiety. How do you manage your fears? How do you react when confronted with these fears? What would be the worst situation for you to be put in that would provoke these fears? You may need to talk about each fear/anxiety separately.

5. What hobbies do you have? Why do you like each of these activities?

6. Do you have any persistent thoughts, ideas or beliefs that are difficult to stop or cope with? What are they?

7. Do you have any unusual gestures or movements of the body? Do you feel any unusual sensation or pain throughout your body? What exactly does it feel like is happening in your body?

8. When you experience your fears, persistent thoughts, or difficult emotions, what kind of sensation or reactions do you get in your body?

9. When did you feel at your best in your life? What was that like for you? If you imagine the complete opposite of this feeling or moment, what would that be like?

10. Do you feel like you are stuck in a pattern of behavior, especially when trying to deal with your problems? What is this pattern? THIS IS AN IMPORTANT QUESTION PLEASE CONSIDER CAREFULLY AND GIVE DETAILS.

11. What difficulties or problems do you have in relationships? Talk about your family, your romantic relationships, your spouse or partner, your friends, and your work colleagues. You may need to talk about all of these separately.

12. List 5 positive things about yourself. Are there any situations where this positive attribute becomes negative (is a problem)?

13. List 5 negative things about yourself. Are there any situations where this negative attribute becomes positive (is useful)?

14. Do you have any reoccurring dreams? Describe them in detail, including any feelings that come while dreaming. Dreams are very important in unlocking the deepest truth of a patient’s case, but it is not enough to simply describe them in a sentence. Give as much information as you feel comfortable doing.

15. Did you have any reoccurring dreams as a child, or earlier in your life? Describe those in detail including any feelings that came with them.

16. What were you like as a child, your character, your personality, your fears, your dreams, your problems?

17. What kind of environment did you grow up in? What problems where there at home, with your family, with your parents, with your siblings, with school?

GENERAL SYMPTOMS

(Symptoms that don’t fit anywhere else, but are things that tend to affect all of you as a person, but are not emotions or thoughts)

1. Sleep - what position do you tend to sleep in?
- what position can you not sleep in?
- do you do anything unusual in your sleep?
- any problems with going to sleep, staying asleep, or waking up?

2. Appetite - What foods do you crave/desire strongly?
- What foods do you hate eating (have an aversion to)?
- What foods have a negative effect on you or cause symptoms?
- What foods have a positive effect on you or seem to improve your health or symptoms in some way?

- What is the effect of hunger or fasting on you?
- What did you crave in the past?

3. Thirst - What drinks do you crave/desire strongly?
- What drinks do you hate to take (are averse to)?
- When are you most thirsty?
- When are you least thirsty?

4. Stool - Do you have any problems with your bowels or passing stool?
- What is the shape, color, odor of the stool?

5. Urine - Do you have any trouble passing or retaining urine?
- What is the color, odor of the urine?
- Do you have any sediment or debris in the urine?

6. Sweat - How do you feel about the amount of perspiration you have?
- Where do you have the most sweat?
- What is the odor?
- What color does it stain clothing?
- Does anything in particular cause you to sweat abnormally?

7. Sexuality - Any problems with your sexual desire?
- Any problems with your sexual ability or function?
- Any history of sexually transmitted diseases?

8. Menses (Women)
- How many days is your cycle?
- How many days does the flow go for?
- What is the appearance of the flow?
- What is the odor of the flow?
- What kind of stain does the flow leave?
- Any discharge before, during or after?
- Any pain before, during or after the flow?
- What symptoms come before the flow?
- What symptoms come after the flow?

9. Environment – How does the weather affect you?
- How does the temperature affect you?
- How does the season affect you?
- What physical activities affect you?
- Is there anything else in the environment you are sensitive to?

10. Anything else you feel is important that hasn’t been covered by previous questions?

sorry to be in between but i will be observing the progress,

hope the homeopath and patient do not have any problem.

regards,
antivirus

Hi Antivirus,

Any member of the forum can read or post on
any thread. The only rule is not to attack
anyone.

The forum is Public and not a "clinic" and
was never set up to be a clinic. The owner/
moderator's vision is that the forum is an
exchange of views, whether homeopathy or
anything else that people want to share for
healing.

Much better! Even from glancing over it I can see there is much more individualizing detail here. I will begin work on this right away.

Ok, I am going to show my reasoning/working through of your case here.

This is a huge case. I was able to pull out 49 symptoms I felt were interesting or unusual. No one remedy is going to cover all that. This is a complex case - what needs to be done is to work out where to start and what might lie at the core of all this. It certainly does look like a Sycotic case, of that I am reasonably sure, and sycotic cases often show a plethora of symptoms growing up around the central state.

Sycosis shows these qualities, which you also display:

Dirty, shameful, guilty
Weakness within that must be covered up
Avoid
Mask
Hide

These qualities, however can be found in the Leprous miasm and in the animal kingdom too, so I need to keep that in mind when I stand back to look at the big picture.

Something I found really interesting, is that Geococcyx was in the top 13 remedies when looking at the simple number of those symptoms. Although I did not see much Bird language or issues in your case, I can see how the other homoeopath might have felt justified in trying it. It's an poorly known remedy at this stage, so seeing it sit there with remedies like Lachesis and Kali-carb was surprising.

So of those 49 chosen symptoms, only one remedy hit a high of 24 symptoms - Arsenicum. I believe you felt this remedy had some impact?

Even then, this is just half of the symptoms, so the real problem here is sorting out what bigger picture these symptoms are connected to.

Close to Ars was Lycopodium, which to me (if I was choosing between just those two) would be a much better fit. Next in line was Sulphur, and then Calc carb.

Now this is an interesting thing to see. Calc-Lyc-Sulph form a well known trio in homoeopathy - the most well known complementary group. This would certainly be one way to approach a complex case like this. The important thing in this approach is where to start, and when to change.

As a general rule though, I prefer to try and establish what the core state is, and aim a remedy there. It occurs to me when I look at your history, that the extreme traumas of your childhood might be the place to start. For me, the dreams would probably best outline what this state is.

Snakes
Devil
Witch
Falling from a height
Teeth falling out
Missing planes
Being pursued

This would suggest (through repertory) the following remedies:

Crotalus cascavalla
Ozone
Benzinum petroleum

However, let me look at the themes and feelings of those dreams instead of just the literal images (which can be misleading for prescribing purposes).

Scared and Trying to escape
Horrified
Dark and scary
Evil, Devil, Witch
Unsuccessful efforts

Then I picked through what you wrote before this.

Buried
Alone in the dark (+ denial of)
Terrified of people (+ denial of someone coming into house to hurt)
Violence (haunted by images of)

This seems like the core state of the Solanaceae plant family to me. This is such a powerful group of remedies for trauma, abuse, violence, ongoing fear related to violent events. There is also a very strong theme, both in the provings and in the folklore of the plants themselves, of magic, demons, evil and witchcraft.

I am running out of time to do this today, but I will continue pondering where to go with these ideas tonight or tomorrow.
[message edited by Evocationer on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 04:06:40 GMT]

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. While I could go off on a bit of a tangent, I think we might start safer for the moment.

The remedy this looks like is Stramonium. I would certainly be differentiating it from Belladonna too, but those last 4 statements I mentioned are almost the core of the remedy.

I am unsure around the possible miasmatic image - it leads me to two smaller known remedies. I will keep looking at those should Stramonium not take you far enough.

Can you get Stramonium 200c in liquid form, and take a single dose.

If you have obtained pillules or pellets, you will need a small bottle and a dropper to make your own liquid dose. Mix water and alcohol into this small bottle to the ratio of 5:1. Dissolve 3 pillules/pellets into this bottle. All doses will be made from this bottle.

If you already have a liquid dose just start from step 1.

1. Hit the bottle 5 times firmly against the palm of the hand

2. Place 3 drops into 100mls of clean fresh water

3. Stir very thoroughly

4. Take 2 teaspoons out into the mouth and hold for 20 seconds, then swallow.

This is one dose and the same steps should be taken for any further doses, unless I ask you to change them in some way.

If any old symptoms reappear, or any current symptoms worsen, this is a GOOD sign in most cases. DO NOT SUPPRESS them with other kinds of medication unless you are in real danger (which is a highly unlikely reaction to a remedy).

However, if you are on regular medication it is also important that you do NOT stop taking this unless it is perfectly safe to do so. Once it is determined the medicine has acted beneficially, we can look at reducing such medication. Regular medication in this instance is NOT defined as other homoeopathic medicines which MUST be stopped. Tissue salts are the same as homoeopathic medicines and are in this category, as are Bach Flowers, Flower Essences, and Bush Flower Essences.

Yes, go ahead and take it-you have to have sleep.
He works with people on anti depressants and they
gradually decrease the meds, taper off as they
feel better.

I have not read your thread thru here, but I hope
you have included all the details of the insomnia,
when it began, what was going on at the time,
how it manifests for you, what if anything helps this,
what if anything makes it worse, the sensations of it
and where those sensations show up in the body.

Take care,

Simone

Well, why would you? You probably thought it was solved and
moved on, which is healthy.

So, I guess you should add in the history of everything
you did for this too just so it is all on one thread.

Best,

Simone

There isn't any progress to speak of yet, so taking allopathic medication won't be able to interfere with it.

My understanding with what happened on the Lachesis is that the insomnia got better but the depression became worse didn't it?

Then the Lachesis suppressed the insomnia, and caused the worsening of a more important symptom. This is unfortunate, but it is lucky you didn't continue as such treatments can make you harder to cure.