Bromium

Untying a knot of cross-genToughing it out: a case of Millefolium

by Anna Koller-Wilmking
 

A professionally successful fifty-year-old man came to my office for care after undergoing a nephrectomy due to kidney cancer. Apart from the surgical removal of his affected kidney, his doctors had no other treatment to offer. His wife sent him to my clinic to prevent a return of the cancer, as well as to find a remedy for any acute situation which might arise. Her concern was in part catalyzed by her husband’s tendency to ignore and minimize his symptoms. The developing kidney malignancy had been accompanied by recurring blood in the urine and pain. Eventually, he could not tolerate the pain anymore but by that time, the tumor had already grown to the size of eight cm. Seeking care earlier did not fit into his worldview of toughing it out.
Patient (P): “I will explain with an athletic metaphor: if we, as a sports team, had not often toughed it out, we would have often lost the game. Or as an emergency medic you have to ask what is important now, which requires enormous strength. We do this to achieve something in the end and to not give up too early. You have to know that you can achieve this if you put your foot on the gas pedal, without outside help, and with just your own body.“
He described himself as an optimistic tough guy, who never needed pain medication, who would not take novocaine at the dentist. To complain is not manly. To fall down is not shameful but to stay down is.  “I don´t need a safety net. I should have become a firefighter. When things get tough, I put my foot on the gas and then things will work out. That is my way of life. When there is a lot going on, I respond by performing well, hard, and fast.“
When he learned of his diagnosis, he said: “Bring the tools and cut it out.“ During the operation a small vein in his abdominal wall was injured and he almost bled to death. He needed ten pints of blood and had to stay in intensive care for quite a while. About this he said: “When all others lose their nerves, my time will come.“
He always wanted to build a house for his family, with a solid roof, tight windows, and a fence around it. He is a “cave builder“. In this way, he would be safe from the insecurities of life. The family needs a safe place to diminish uncertainty and to be protected from vulnerabilities.
P: “I do things purely out of fear of injury. Friends know how to hurt me; carelessness hurts me psychologically, but I pretend it does not bother me. Only with my wife can I show vulnerability; there my set of tools doesn´t work so well. I make fun of myself first in order to prevent others from making fun of me and thereby hurting me.“
“ Yes", says his wife, "he does have a very vulnerable emotional side to himself, which is incredibly soft and often touched. His father, an extreme athlete, died at the age of forty-eight of a stroke; he was dead within one hour. The patient was ten years old then and never grieved the death of his father. “You have to cope with the new situation and make the best out of it.“
His past medical history includes a massive disc herniation, which had paralysed his entire abdominal wall. “This brought me to the edge of my pain tolerance and I had to take painkillers; I could not cope otherwise.“
Analysis
In this case, the theme was vulnerability, as well as the compensation for this on the physical as well as on the psychological plane. This is the theme of the Asteraceae plant family. I then search for a remedy in that family, which would handle injuries with a “set of tools mentality“, as my patient refered to it, and at the same time show a strong bleeding tendency. It was striking and unusual that the patient almost bled to death with just a small injury to a small vein.
According to Sankaran‘s miasm theory, this fits into the typhoid miasm, where it is crucial to perform at one’s peak in a crisis. Chamomilla as well as Millefolium fit into this miasm. The fitting remedy was “Achillea millefolium“. The name of this remedy stems from Achilles, the hero of the Trojan war, who is said to have used Millefolium to heal his wounds.
Important rubrics
Mind: stupefaction
Mind: fearless
Urethra: discharge-bloody
Generals: hemorrhage-cancer-in
Generals: hemorrhage-injuries-from
Generals: injuries-operation-ailments from
Generals: injuries-rupture-blood vessel-of
Prescription: Millefolium 200C, twice over a large span of time. Later, 1M was given, four times over four years, always to treat an acute infection. He always reacted promptly. He was always healthy again after one day. His creatinine levels, which were initially high after his nephrectomy ( 1.4 mg/dl ), normalised ( 0.9mg/dl ). All subsequent screenings were normal.
Later on, I referred him to family constellation therapy, as I suspected that his disease possibly could have something to do with the absence of grieving the early death of his father. Amazingly enough, this was not at all the case. Instead, there was a strong connection to his maternal grandfather who was seriously injured during the war. My patient returned after the therapy to report the following: “You know, my remedy Millefolium is commonly known as “Soldier‘s herb“. Millefolium was often used in ancient times to stop bleeding of war injuries. My grandfather was a war correspondent who had been a prisoner of war in Russia until 1955, and therefore was one of the last ones to get released. He died a few month later as result of the hardships he had endured. The representative of the grandfather during the family constellation reported that he had only survived that long because of a plant which stopped the bleeding. Could it be that Millefolium was this plant?“
Patients who need a remedy from the Asteraceae family are often “tough guys“ who are unable to react adequately to injury, who will take a lot, not allowing themselves to feel pain. They react to physical as well as emotional pain with a numbing response. The healing process can begin when this blockage dissolves and the patient allows injury and pain to be felt, as it was with this patient. During a follow up, the patient could cry and face the pain that he had supressed for so long. He visited the grave of his grandfather several times and felt at peace with him. He also feels the presence of his grandfather during long walks in nature and finds him a calming presence. “He is there and that is good.“
He has been under homepathic care with Millefolium for six years and is without complaint.
Note: Millefolium was classified as typhoid miasm by Dr. Willi Neuhold of Graz, Austria
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Tough going; weedezign
           
 

Keywords: renal cancer, vulnerability, fearlessness, tough, numbing response to pain, need to protect the family erA history of abuse: a case of Magnesium bromatum
by Dinesh Chauhan
Abuse and trauma are sensitive issues to society and to homeopathy as well, since as the person who has suffered abuse or any mental trauma is so shaken, his or her entire life is so overpowered, that it is difficult to bring him out of the impact of the situation. Given that my approach changes somewhat in non-verbal cases, childrens’ cases or elderly patients, I wondered how I would approach cases which have a strong history of abuse and trauma.
The difficulties I faced when seeing these patients are: 
- Such patients are so much under the influence of this painful situation that their entire life seems to be stuck in this situation; everything they describe during the case revolves around it, as if this situational state is a part of their very being.
- Secondly, in cases where the abuse has happened in the far past or when the patients were children, most victims internalize the trauma. They form strong psychological defenses in order to repress it, rationalizing it, projecting it, denying it or somatizing it.
- Another obstacle is the shame and humiliation associated with cases of abuse; can the patient overcome it to reveal his vulnerable self? Will he or she ever want to go there? Most victims, especially in India, are unwilling to talk about it, at least initially.
                                                                                                       
The following case gives an example of how the treatment of an abusive history. It has been edited for brevity.  
Case
The patient is a forty-year-old woman who came with skin allergies and acne rosacea. We started to slowly discover that the real problem was much deeper.
Passive case witnessing process
Patient (P): “I am not happy. I’ve never had any skin issue before and I don’t like to see my face like this, it’s a little hard to adjust. I am very social; I was a very good student. In my childhood one main issue for me was that my parents were always fighting; even small things would bother my mother and father. In my dreams I don’t want such things in my relationship to happen.
“I think a lot. If my child has a cold, I worry a lot, if I don’t do pooja (prayer) I feel that God will do something wrong to me, that’s why I believe. I am a clinging freak. I don’t work; I look after both my kids and spend all my time with them.
 “I am not really sick as such but have I dust allergies. I like to cook, go out on vacations, shop and watch movies. I still think ‘what am I doing here?’"
“I don’t remember my dreams but I know I am scared, sometimes of animals.
She spontaneously goes to her childhood and her dreams, indicating that she is travelling through different areas of her life naturally.
Dinesh Chauhan (DC): What else?
P: “I believe that if I pray to God when I want something that I can’t get, like asking Him to clear my face, I need to stop eating a certain food for the rest of my life.
“My second child has lot of issues, I am still blaming myself. I did something wrong, that’s why he struggled so much. He wasn’t breathing when he was born, so I prayed to God that if he is fine I will never eat ice cream again; if I sacrifice something I will get something. I used to feel I was not spending enough time with my oldest child.
“I keep asking myself why I have done things in the past. ‘Why didn’t I think before I talked? Why do I get so temperamental?’ I say things to my son then blame myself.  
“My Mom was always sick, she had all the responsibilities at home like cooking and cleaning. She wasn’t loving, she didn’t hug or praise us kids. I do so many things for my children but I never got this love from my Mom, she didn’t love me that way.
“My sister never calls me, this is something that really bothers me. I don’t know what I have done wrong that she doesn’t talk to me. I miss everything in India, my family; I always think about them. Mom has diabetes, she doesn’t take care of herself.
“My maternal grandfather was very sick; when I was in India I planned to go and see him but he passed away last year. I miss him a lot and still think “Why do I live so far I away that I couldn’t even go and see him in his last days.’
“My Dad isn’t polite. I have seen him abusing my Mom, saying that she is not a good lady and that she has an extra-marital affair. I didn’t want to marry, but Raj is good, he allows me to do everything. I am so free, he doesn’t interfere in what I want to buy when I go shopping. My father is very egoistic, he was drinking and smoking. I wanted to go to college but he restricted me.
“Being the oldest, I have seen a lot of fights. My Dad had a fight with my grandfather; my Mom says grandfather passed away because of that. She says Dad was very rude, he said bad things and grandfather passed away. Dad was never nice to me, my sister and my brother. He has a business, got bankrupted and didn’t have money to pay, so now the bank will take the factory.
“My father-in-law is very good, I wish I had known him in my childhood.”  
DC: What else?
P: “My brother started a business but it is not working, I keep wondering why it isn’t working and what we can do about it. I think of my sister, she is divorced and she has a daughter.  The in-laws are not affectionate to her. I do a lot for them, I sleep and wake up at their time, I think about why granddaughter has got glasses. I take care of everything in the house, I think I blame myself too much, that’s my fault.
“If I do good cooking I want my husband to see it, I like to hear praise. He never calls me by my name or holds my hand in front of others. I want a lot of appreciation from him, it’s for him that I stay home and take care of the kids.”
DC: Can you tell me about your dreams?
P: “I suddenly get up as if I am falling from a height, like from a mountain or something. I start shouting and my husband wakes me up; this happens quite often, once or twice a week. I see lots of snakes in my dreams.
“Sometimes, I dream of weddings, especially my brother’s wedding. I am at his wedding and I am doing everything, then something goes wrong. People are not ready on time. I ask them to give me more time but I am not able to manage and everyone is shouting at me. I am running and running.
“In another dream I have to go somewhere at 10am and I see that I am unable to get there. All night I dream that I am really late and my son will not get admission, I was begging them to please take me inside.”
Here, we see that in different areas, in the conscious and subconscious areas, the feeling of doing something wrong, blaming herself comes repeatedly, hence we become active with the focus.
Active case witnessing process
DC: You feel you are doing something wrong, it is your fault, and you blame yourself often?
P: “During childhood my father physically abused me, he physically tortured me. I blame myself for that, I could have stopped him,  I could have slapped him. I was in 7-8th standard, I thought I should tell my Mom, but was afraid that she would fight with my Dad and get upset. When I got pregnant, I prayed I wouldn’t get a girl child, I want my first child to be a boy. I thought that if I had a girl and my husband would be bad with me, I would take him to the police.”
She takes us to another very sensitive issue, which indicates we are on the right track, we will completely explore and understand this feeling of having done something wrong.
DC: What you mean “you have done something wrong?”
P: “If anyone in the family gets sick, I blame myself for that, as if I have done something wrong. I tell my younger son that one day, when he can do everything on his own, I will die and leave him.”
DC: What you mean “take care?”
P: “To handle themselves. Now, he is always saying “Mom, Mom, Mom”; when he no longer needs me I will leave him.”
Active-active case witnessing process
DC: Can you explain to me “doing something wrong” in terms as abstract as possible? What are all the things that can be done wrong, according to you?
P: “I associate it with myself, I can tell you what wrong I have done.  For example, I had a crush on a boy but my father restricted me, he came to know about him and was mad at me. He said ‘I will kill you if I see you again with that boy.’ He scared me so much, he would always check my phone to see who is calling, which boys’ numbers I have got.”
DC: Explain that whole feeling of having done something wrong.
P: “Once, my husband sent me an email saying ‘You have cheated on me, I want a divorce.’ Our son was two years old, I had nothing to do with that guy, but my husband was not ready to listen to me. I was about to cut my vein. He told me ‘You torture me all the time by saying you will kill yourself.’ I have never done anything wrong…”
DC: Do you pray to God if anything goes wrong?
P: “If I pray, I always get what I want. I always wanted to be a gold medallist, I was a topper. When I was with the doctor, I prayed he would tell me that everything is good, then I would walk straight to the temple.”
DC: In the dream you mentioned something you had done wrong…
P: “Everybody is calling me at the wedding, they are asking me “Where are the bangles?” Everybody is shouting, telling me to get ready or they would leave me behind, alone…”
DC: What is “leaving alone?”
P: “I’m all alone, am I not worth much. I want everyone to be with me. I don’t want everyone to leave me. I am very social and my husband is the opposite, I always want to go out and sit with a friend…”
DC: What is this feeling of “not worth much?”
P: “I am not good looking or good in talking, am I harsh to people. Why are they leaving me? I am shouting at them to take me with them but they leave me and go, just closing the door in front of me. Like at the wedding, I am all alone, nobody is there to get me ready and I am all alone.”
DC: Tell me about “Not worth much, alone, not good looking?”
P: “I am good, see how I am taking care of the kids. I love my kids, I am so nice, why are they leaving me behind? Being late is not because I was stuck somewhere, I just didn’t realise the time. I am doing so much for everyone, why are they still leaving me?”
DC: Describe that feeling of being blamed for doing something wrong.
P: “To be blamed for something you haven’t done. For example, people say that my youngest son has done something wrong: he hasn’t done anything yet he is being blamed.”
DC: How does a person feel after being blamed?
P: “If you are blaming someone you are hurting him physically, mentally and emotionally.”
DC: Physically abused?
P: “In general, all girls like sitting close together, but I don’t like it. Still, my father used to do it. He used to watch me changing clothes, opening the closet and seeing my clothes. I have my own identity. Why are you hugging me, kissing me, hurting me? Everything is abuse.”
DC: Showing affection, hugging and kissing is abuse if you don’t like it?
P: “Mother and daughter, mother and son, there is a difference. If you are rubbing your hands on the thigh, this is not parents’ love, you are satisfying yourself at the cost of others. If I don’t want to be kissed and hugged, why are you doing this? If I want to hug my son I can’t do it forcefully.”
DC: What do you feel?
P: “I feel shattered, broken, unwanted. I feel disrespected because I don’t work.”
DC: What you missed from childhood was the love and affection you later got from your in-laws. You give with all your abilities, but you feel “Maybe it’s me, I am doing something wrong”, you blame yourself and you start praying. Can you tell me about the dream of snakes?
P: “There are lots of snakes, they don’t hurt me but I am in the middle of them and I’m scared. I see a temple and I offer Prasad to the goddess and ask her for forgiveness.
Here, we see that she connects the dream to feelings that she has done something wrong and asks God for forgiveness.
DC: So, you want love, care and affection. If you don’t give, you feel you are doing something wrong, so you do something to come out of it. The love, care and affection from your parents was actually abusive. In your dream you feel you have done something wrong, you are late, so you ask people to not leave you. In the snake dream you ask for forgiveness, too. You feel that if you don’t give love or don’t take care, something wrong will happen; taking love more than required is also abuse. So, did this interview help you in anyway?
Active-active case witnessing process with awareness
P: “I feel relaxed, I haven’t spoken to anyone like this. I don’t have respect for my parents and I don’t like my father.”
DC: How does it feel to bring the truth out?
P: “I connect everything to myself and blame myself for everything. But now I realise it’s not me, I haven’t done anything wrong, I am punishing myself. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, my father was wrong. Why should I blame myself? I am a good parent, I shouldn’t blame myself. Until now I was blaming myself and punishing myself and shouting at my child. Now I feel it’s not because of me.”
Analysis
During the passive case witnessing process we saw that in different areas she spoke of how she takes so much care of her family, thinks about them and prays for them. If anything goes wrong she wonders why it has happened and what wrong she has done; she blames herself for everything.
During the active case witnessing process we saw that this feeling of having done something wrong was connected to her childhood situation of being abused by her father, not receiving the appropriate love, nurturing, care and affection of her parents, being tortured and always seeing them fighting. She also connects this feeling to the dream where she is being left alone by her family.
During the active-active case witnessing process until awareness we see how the entire centre of the case comes out with everything from her dream, to the incident in her childhood which connects to this feeling of blaming herself, being left alone, with no care, affection, unwanted, tortured, shattered, no respect, etc. As we see in this case, the patient talks about the abuse on her own and connects the whole incident to her centre. Ultimately, she even becomes aware of the incident and how it is her father to be blamed and not her, which was the centre of the case.
Level of Experience of the case: Emotion
She is in touch with herself, goes spontaneously to other general areas of her life: potency required would be 200C.
Kingdom: Mineral; she finds it a lack in herself that all this is happening to her family.
Row: 3 and 4. The feeling of not being loved,  having no affection and care, being forsaken, left alone, where person starts to express his choice but cannot, brings us to Magnesium. The other part, with the feeling of guilt, issues of conscience, hitting and delusions of a crime he has committed, etc, bring us to the halogen Bromine.
Prescription: Magnesium bromatum 200, single dose
In Jan Scholten’s book “Minerals in Homeopathy”, he gives the following understanding of Magnesium bromatum: the essence of the remedy is the idea that they are guilty of quarrels and they will do anything to avoid them; they feel other people are fighting because of them, especially people they love and who protect them.            
Follow ups: after a month of treatment she says that physically she is very active, mentally she is doing very well; now she doesn’t think much about her father. She’s pretty happy and not blaming herself for each and every thing. Her facial eruptions have reduced by 40%.
After 3 months of treatment: she says that the biggest change is that her relationship with her husband has improved a lot, as well as with her children. “I used to fight and try to avoid mistakes. There was always love, but a lot of blaming – the blaming is much less now.” After asking about how she used to live, she says “Earlier I would think my husband only wanted physical relations with me; now I know it is much beyond that.”
On asking her about her memory of father physically and sexually abusing her she says earlier it would always be on the surface, “I would connect that to everything, it would be on my mind, and I would be rude with my children. Abuse is abuse, but now I don’t connect that to the present moment. It doesn’t affect my mind as much now.” She can now talk about the sexual abuse which she used to keep hidden, and it doesn’t affect her as much.
After a year of treatment, I asked her she felt about blaming herself. “It used to happen a lot in my dreams, not being able to reach a place, but now I don’t dream that. Energy-wise I am really fine and I can do a lot of work. Everything used to be a task for me but now I enjoy doing stuff. I didn’t see that I was alone; I was a very sad person earlier. I felt I was always stuck in my past, my present was governed by my past and I was blaming myself. Now I don’t feel like I am not getting love and affection. My brother’s business is doing well. This past year I have understood things differently, that I was the one blocking myself from love, care and affection because of my past memories.
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Photos: Shutterstock
Dispute; ostill
Father scolding daughter; eladora

Keywords: acne rosacea, parents arguing, sexual abuse, guilt, religious ational trauma: a case of Bromium
by Jason-Aeric Huenecke
In 2005, I began working with a male patient, seventy-four years of age; his wife of fifty-four years had just died. Little did I know that working with him would help me to understand how homeopathy can lift the subtle and not-so-subtle energetic impressions that impact our human families across generations, even in homes in which there is no word uttered of the traumatic history of the family. Over the course of ten years, I ended up seeing the grandfather, “Pops”, four of his daughters, and four of his grandchildren. 
Many homeopathic practitioners treat whole families; this gives us special insight into family systems. Nevertheless, our goal is to treat each individual within a family. In the following synopses, I have pulled together the cases of four different family members with a common thread of the halogen Bromium. The question that I live with to this day is this: would I have been able to see this thread without having seen so many different family members and developing a composite picture?
In homeopathy, we are encouraged by our great masters to remain unprejudiced observers when taking the case, but human beings tend to form whole perceptions from partial images; we have to be careful to see things based on the case as presented by the patient herself or himself, otherwise our prescriptions will fail. Therefore, we have to train ourselves to know what is curative in medicines and what needs to be cured in each patient.
Remember what Aristotle wrote: “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” We must strive for excellence in homeopathy.
The initial consultation for this elderly man started with: “I am full of anger and depression. I tighten up just thinking about my life. I am nothing. I am a zero. I never wanted children and ended up with eight. I was the youngest of thirteen children. My father was a violent alcoholic. I was so fearful and constantly intimidated by life and all situations in life. Now, my wife has left me (she died) and I am left alone to manage the house, take care of the cats, and be there for the children. I become overheated just thinking about these things.”
His chief complaints included prostatitis, frequent urination, recurrent bladder infections, and continuous sore throats. His father was abandoned by his parents. Sent to America from Germany alone to find his own way in the New World, he worked his way from New York to the Iron Range in Minnesota. Remember that terror increases the child’s need to be securely attached to a caretaker. This patient’s feeling that he would be punished if he talked openly about his father meant that he would only slowly reveal the depth of the trauma he experienced.
“I have a black heart. I am completely alone. I have been completely alone since I was a child. My father was a monster, he was a violent alcoholic, to this day, after the sun sets, I have the feeling that he is there behind me, taunting me or about to strike me. Sometimes, I will yell out loud: ‘Return to hell, father!’ Now that my wife is gone, I have no one to keep me stable.
“I live with a dark cloud over my head. I would kill myself but I have no courage. My old age is a punishment; my children are a reminder of my failure as a father. That is also a punishment. My whole life is in ruins; I never touched a drop of alcohol and I have six alcoholic children. I completely failed at everything in life, I failed my parents, my wife and my children.”
The patient worked on the railroads shipping coal. One symptom lingering from this profession was a chronic asthmatic condition with a rattling of mucus in his chest.
“My life hardened me, turned me against joy, and left me in ruins. I used to have empathy when I was young. I lost that empathy and feel only apathy now.”
Prescription: I gave this patient Bromium 200C one dose, followed by Bromium 6C daily for one year based on the symptoms emboldened above, then Bromium 9C for another year, and finally Bromium 12C for a year. Slowly over time, his entire countenance changed, his anger softened, his hatred diminished, and a gentle and loving elder emerged over the course of three years. His prostatitis was healed, as were his urging and frequency for urination, and his bladder infections stopped (when his bladder infections flared over the course of three years, I gave Bromium 200C three times a day for three days). His chest rattling and asthma also stopped. The last symptom to go was the sense of the ghostly presence of his long dead father.
“One evening, as I was preparing for bed, I sensed my father behind me, this time I turned and stared him in the eye, I didn’t yell, I didn’t damn him to hell, or beg him to leave, I had the clear knowing that he did the best he could… I said as much to him: ‘I know you did your best,’ and with that, he seemed to dissolve into light.” (Bromium has the delusion that someone is behind him, and has marked quarrelsome behaviors.)
When his oldest daughter saw the changes that took place in her father, she wondered how homeopathy might help her. In 2007 she was fifty-four years old.
“I live an angry life. I am a secret sipper. A functional alcoholic, I work in an office with a tyrant boss, of whom I live in dread and fear everyday. I am always responsible and tired of being responsible. It’s funny, I left home early to get married and have kids and left one hell to enter another hell. My boss is just like my father. I don’t like conflict, I don’t like fighting, I was the one whipping post for my father; I never let him touch my siblings until they were old enough to fight back. I constantly lived in fear of abuse or, more importantly, of my brothers and sisters being abused.”
The oldest of eight, this daughter took the brunt of her father’s violence and depression. She compensated by overeating; when she was fifteen years old, staying with her grandparents, her father’s parents, she was introduced to hard liquor by her grandfather. This family, like many families, did not talk about the violence or abuse. They just kept on in survival mode.
“I remember Pops handing me a glass of brandy when I was fifteen. I never felt such deep relief for my pain. He drank so much brandy that I could fill my flask whenever I wanted and no one would be the wiser. This is how I became a secret sipper. The funny thing is that drinking brandy made me feel invincible and my increasing weight made me a formidable opponent of my father. He was a skinny little man and I was his war-horse daughter. Once, I said to him: ‘It’s you or me, you’re not touching my brothers or sisters ever again.’ Mother asked him to leave; he was gone several months on the railroads. Then, he came back and the beatings picked up where they left off. He never touched a drop of alcohol but his violence and hatred of life filled any room he entered. Living with him was like living in hell and I was punished for every decision I ever made.”
The eldest daughter’s chief complaints included alcoholism, obesity, irritability, sleeplessness, and a history of childhood physical abuse. She had a terrible time learning to trust anyone except someone who was abusive. The familiarity of the tone and tenor of the abusive boss, while not physical, was reminiscent of her childhood experience.
Based on the family history of alcoholism and the energetic layer of violence, quarrels and abuse, I prescribed Calcarea bromata 200C. Over the following four years, she came in every two months, taking the Calcarea bromata 200C in single doses and then Calcarea bromata 200C every 12 hours for three doses as needed. She gradually stopped drinking; she went to Hazelden for recovery. She came to realize that she no longer needed to remain in abusive relationships and left her job of over twenty years to create her own consulting firm. Her sleeplessness resolved as did her irritability, and after her mother died, she established a healthy relationship with her father. She also began eating healthfully and exercising regularly, losing a considerable amount of weight.
“I feel free of my anger, self-punishment by over-eating and self-hatred and no longer remain in unhealthy relationships, at home or in the office. I realized through homeopathy that my life is my responsibility.”
The fourth daughter in this family also came in for treatment. In 2005, she was forty-eight years old.
“I am the invisible daughter. I was lost since I was little. I remember pushing my little brothers and sisters away to desperately try to have contact with my mother. My mother always told me: ‘Don’t be selfish, honey.’ I just wanted to be loved. The hardest part of growing up in my family was that I was so desperately alone. I lived in constant fear of violence and abuse. I don’t know where my mother was. I was abandoned as soon as my next younger sister was born. I watched as my sister turned into a battle-axe. She was fearless. None of us ever talked about the abuse of our childhood. I was never beaten, but every blow my sister took for us, I felt in my soul. I felt responsible for all of the problems in my family. To this day, I hate fighting.”
She had one recurring dream from her childhood:
“I am on a train. I have no parents, I am all alone, I am lost, cold and afraid and dirty, I remember thinking: ‘What a dirty little girl I am.’ I was fighting for my life in the dream.”
She also had an insatiable desire for whole milk or half and half (heavy cream) throughout her life. I administered Magnesium bromatum 200C because her perspective was that of endless quarrels, self-blame, and guilt for having been born. The dream revealed her inner feeling of being orphaned or totally abandoned by her parents (especially her mother).
Her chief complaint was feeling abandoned and forsaken; everything was a constant battle. Over the last ten years, she has completely changed her life. She began dating for the first time at the age of fifty-five and is in a healthy relationship unlike anything she ever experienced growing up. In 2010, she attended the Hoffman Institute and is thriving with her now husband and in relationship to three grown stepdaughters; “I never knew that you could have a happy and healthy family life.” She also reconnected to her now elderly father, who is markedly free from violence; “I no longer fear that I will be attacked at every disagreement or punished for having views different from those around me.” As a child, like her father and siblings, she had no ability to voice her trauma until she began working homeopathically. Homeopathy attracts individuals who are often leery of talk therapy, as well as of allopathic medicine. It can provide a venue to give voice to those who cannot speak their trauma.
Several other family members also came to me for homeopathic treatment over the last several years; however, one of the younger members, still in homeopathic care, is still struggling with ongoing addiction and criminal behavior. She came to me in 2010, under duress, having just been caught shoplifting for the third time. She was age sixteen at the time.  She said: “I have these impulses to steal things. I don’t know why. I began drinking when I was eleven years old. Vodka, it doesn’t smell. I don’t know why I do it. The whole time I do something wrong, I think: ‘You are going to get busted.’ My mom’s got a wicked temper; she’s mean. This look comes in her eyes, it’s like flames, and I know I am going to get it, but then, when I am in the store, I see something I want, I get so mad at her. She asked me once if I was doing this to punish her for being a bad mom. She said: ‘Do you hate me? Don’t you love me?’ and I thought: ‘It’s not about you, mom!’”
The girl could barely sit still; she was in constant motion, her crossed legs bouncing with an anxious energy that I could feel across the room. She also suffered from asthma, mostly of emotional origin.
“I work in a kitchen store. I have a horrible fear of knives. I am afraid that I will cut off my fingers or stab myself in the eye. Once, my mom told me that Pops was chased around the house by his dad who had a knife! He must’ve been crazy. No one talks about him. When they do, they say really scary things. Sometimes, when I am doing these things, I think: ‘I am just like Pop’s Pop.’ I think of him like a devil, but then I think, ‘I am the great-granddaughter of the devil.’ It’s really creepy. Then, I will start wheezing. Also, when I touch a knife, I get this metallic taste in my mouth. I read in a vampire book that this may mean I am about to be attacked. It’s all creepy and I scare myself. I love vampire movies. Sometimes, at night, I imagine that someone is there behind me, and then, I scare myself thinking that it is a vampire. This fright can trigger an asthma attack for me that lasts until midnight, then I fall asleep exhausted.” (Here again, we see the Bromium delusion that someone is behind her.)
This girl’s chief complaints included alcoholism, asthma, impulse control issues, and the sense of having been abandoned. The remedy that most helped her was Mercurius bromatus 200C, followed by Mercurius bromatus LMs. Because of her age, her restrictions from house arrest, and other encounters with the law, she has had a difficult time following through with treatment. However, her good spells occur when she stays on the remedy. Then, something happens and she loses her way for a time.
As I have treated this family, I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if the great-grandfather had been treated. Would all these lives have been spared? I have pieced together a portrait of violence, alcoholism, and trauma. This family is deeply syphilitic: while they may appear functional, deep within they need to hide their suffering, believing that there is something fundamentally and dangerously wrong within. Children are remarkably dedicated to their parents, even when they are abandoned and abused by them.
The Bromium themes of black or white, all or nothing, and total disconnection are present in each of the cases presented above. There is also a profound sense of punishment and living hell, restlessness, and desire to escape mundane reality. Each of the family members were treated abusively, aggressively, and severely traumatized by the unspoken ghost in the room of the great-grandfather, Pops. Both the grandfather and granddaughter had the delusion of someone behind them.
They all suffered from guilt, remorse, and quarrelsome natures, that is, until their successful homeopathic treatments.
Bromatum: guilt, restlessness, escape, passion, instinct, psychotic, punishments of all sorts
Bromium: all or nothing, anger, asthma, depression, disconnected, easily overheated, prostatitis, frequent urination, recurrent bladder infections, and continuous sore throats
Calcarea bromata: what do others think, sensitive to criticism, insecurity, shyness, fears, obesity, protection, responsibility, withdrawal
Magnesium bromatum: pacifism, aggression, fear of loss, pain; the invisible child, lost, abandoned, fear of quarrels, lost and alone, dirty, and desire for milk and heavy cream
Mercurius bromatus: exaggerating, over-reacting, divided, enemies, thievery, impulses, danger is lurking on all sides, impulsivity, fear of knives
Photos: Shutterstock
Black heart; Ursa Major
Beaten little girl; ambrozinio
Ghost; Africa Studio
 

Untying a knot of cross-generational trauma: a case of Bromium
by Jason-Aeric Huenecke
In 2005, I began working with a male patient, seventy-four years of age; his wife of fifty-four years had just died. Little did I know that working with him would help me to understand how homeopathy can lift the subtle and not-so-subtle energetic impressions that impact our human families across generations, even in homes in which there is no word uttered of the traumatic history of the family. Over the course of ten years, I ended up seeing the grandfather, “Pops”, four of his daughters, and four of his grandchildren. 
Many homeopathic practitioners treat whole families; this gives us special insight into family systems. Nevertheless, our goal is to treat each individual within a family. In the following synopses, I have pulled together the cases of four different family members with a common thread of the halogen Bromium. The question that I live with to this day is this: would I have been able to see this thread without having seen so many different family members and developing a composite picture?
In homeopathy, we are encouraged by our great masters to remain unprejudiced observers when taking the case, but human beings tend to form whole perceptions from partial images; we have to be careful to see things based on the case as presented by the patient herself or himself, otherwise our prescriptions will fail. Therefore, we have to train ourselves to know what is curative in medicines and what needs to be cured in each patient.
Remember what Aristotle wrote: “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” We must strive for excellence in homeopathy.
The initial consultation for this elderly man started with: “I am full of anger and depression. I tighten up just thinking about my life. I am nothing. I am a zero. I never wanted children and ended up with eight. I was the youngest of thirteen children. My father was a violent alcoholic. I was so fearful and constantly intimidated by life and all situations in life. Now, my wife has left me (she died) and I am left alone to manage the house, take care of the cats, and be there for the children. I become overheated just thinking about these things.”
His chief complaints included prostatitis, frequent urination, recurrent bladder infections, and continuous sore throats. His father was abandoned by his parents. Sent to America from Germany alone to find his own way in the New World, he worked his way from New York to the Iron Range in Minnesota. Remember that terror increases the child’s need to be securely attached to a caretaker. This patient’s feeling that he would be punished if he talked openly about his father meant that he would only slowly reveal the depth of the trauma he experienced.
“I have a black heart. I am completely alone. I have been completely alone since I was a child. My father was a monster, he was a violent alcoholic, to this day, after the sun sets, I have the feeling that he is there behind me, taunting me or about to strike me. Sometimes, I will yell out loud: ‘Return to hell, father!’ Now that my wife is gone, I have no one to keep me stable.
“I live with a dark cloud over my head. I would kill myself but I have no courage. My old age is a punishment; my children are a reminder of my failure as a father. That is also a punishment. My whole life is in ruins; I never touched a drop of alcohol and I have six alcoholic children. I completely failed at everything in life, I failed my parents, my wife and my children.”
The patient worked on the railroads shipping coal. One symptom lingering from this profession was a chronic asthmatic condition with a rattling of mucus in his chest.
“My life hardened me, turned me against joy, and left me in ruins. I used to have empathy when I was young. I lost that empathy and feel only apathy now.”
Prescription: I gave this patient Bromium 200C one dose, followed by Bromium 6C daily for one year based on the symptoms emboldened above, then Bromium 9C for another year, and finally Bromium 12C for a year. Slowly over time, his entire countenance changed, his anger softened, his hatred diminished, and a gentle and loving elder emerged over the course of three years. His prostatitis was healed, as were his urging and frequency for urination, and his bladder infections stopped (when his bladder infections flared over the course of three years, I gave Bromium 200C three times a day for three days). His chest rattling and asthma also stopped. The last symptom to go was the sense of the ghostly presence of his long dead father.
“One evening, as I was preparing for bed, I sensed my father behind me, this time I turned and stared him in the eye, I didn’t yell, I didn’t damn him to hell, or beg him to leave, I had the clear knowing that he did the best he could… I said as much to him: ‘I know you did your best,’ and with that, he seemed to dissolve into light.” (Bromium has the delusion that someone is behind him, and has marked quarrelsome behaviors.)
When his oldest daughter saw the changes that took place in her father, she wondered how homeopathy might help her. In 2007 she was fifty-four years old.
“I live an angry life. I am a secret sipper. A functional alcoholic, I work in an office with a tyrant boss, of whom I live in dread and fear everyday. I am always responsible and tired of being responsible. It’s funny, I left home early to get married and have kids and left one hell to enter another hell. My boss is just like my father. I don’t like conflict, I don’t like fighting, I was the one whipping post for my father; I never let him touch my siblings until they were old enough to fight back. I constantly lived in fear of abuse or, more importantly, of my brothers and sisters being abused.”
The oldest of eight, this daughter took the brunt of her father’s violence and depression. She compensated by overeating; when she was fifteen years old, staying with her grandparents, her father’s parents, she was introduced to hard liquor by her grandfather. This family, like many families, did not talk about the violence or abuse. They just kept on in survival mode.
“I remember Pops handing me a glass of brandy when I was fifteen. I never felt such deep relief for my pain. He drank so much brandy that I could fill my flask whenever I wanted and no one would be the wiser. This is how I became a secret sipper. The funny thing is that drinking brandy made me feel invincible and my increasing weight made me a formidable opponent of my father. He was a skinny little man and I was his war-horse daughter. Once, I said to him: ‘It’s you or me, you’re not touching my brothers or sisters ever again.’ Mother asked him to leave; he was gone several months on the railroads. Then, he came back and the beatings picked up where they left off. He never touched a drop of alcohol but his violence and hatred of life filled any room he entered. Living with him was like living in hell and I was punished for every decision I ever made.”
The eldest daughter’s chief complaints included alcoholism, obesity, irritability, sleeplessness, and a history of childhood physical abuse. She had a terrible time learning to trust anyone except someone who was abusive. The familiarity of the tone and tenor of the abusive boss, while not physical, was reminiscent of her childhood experience.
Based on the family history of alcoholism and the energetic layer of violence, quarrels and abuse, I prescribed Calcarea bromata 200C. Over the following four years, she came in every two months, taking the Calcarea bromata 200C in single doses and then Calcarea bromata 200C every 12 hours for three doses as needed. She gradually stopped drinking; she went to Hazelden for recovery. She came to realize that she no longer needed to remain in abusive relationships and left her job of over twenty years to create her own consulting firm. Her sleeplessness resolved as did her irritability, and after her mother died, she established a healthy relationship with her father. She also began eating healthfully and exercising regularly, losing a considerable amount of weight.
“I feel free of my anger, self-punishment by over-eating and self-hatred and no longer remain in unhealthy relationships, at home or in the office. I realized through homeopathy that my life is my responsibility.”
The fourth daughter in this family also came in for treatment. In 2005, she was forty-eight years old.
“I am the invisible daughter. I was lost since I was little. I remember pushing my little brothers and sisters away to desperately try to have contact with my mother. My mother always told me: ‘Don’t be selfish, honey.’ I just wanted to be loved. The hardest part of growing up in my family was that I was so desperately alone. I lived in constant fear of violence and abuse. I don’t know where my mother was. I was abandoned as soon as my next younger sister was born. I watched as my sister turned into a battle-axe. She was fearless. None of us ever talked about the abuse of our childhood. I was never beaten, but every blow my sister took for us, I felt in my soul. I felt responsible for all of the problems in my family. To this day, I hate fighting.”
She had one recurring dream from her childhood:
“I am on a train. I have no parents, I am all alone, I am lost, cold and afraid and dirty, I remember thinking: ‘What a dirty little girl I am.’ I was fighting for my life in the dream.”
She also had an insatiable desire for whole milk or half and half (heavy cream) throughout her life. I administered Magnesium bromatum 200C because her perspective was that of endless quarrels, self-blame, and guilt for having been born. The dream revealed her inner feeling of being orphaned or totally abandoned by her parents (especially her mother).
Her chief complaint was feeling abandoned and forsaken; everything was a constant battle. Over the last ten years, she has completely changed her life. She began dating for the first time at the age of fifty-five and is in a healthy relationship unlike anything she ever experienced growing up. In 2010, she attended the Hoffman Institute and is thriving with her now husband and in relationship to three grown stepdaughters; “I never knew that you could have a happy and healthy family life.” She also reconnected to her now elderly father, who is markedly free from violence; “I no longer fear that I will be attacked at every disagreement or punished for having views different from those around me.” As a child, like her father and siblings, she had no ability to voice her trauma until she began working homeopathically. Homeopathy attracts individuals who are often leery of talk therapy, as well as of allopathic medicine. It can provide a venue to give voice to those who cannot speak their trauma.
Several other family members also came to me for homeopathic treatment over the last several years; however, one of the younger members, still in homeopathic care, is still struggling with ongoing addiction and criminal behavior. She came to me in 2010, under duress, having just been caught shoplifting for the third time. She was age sixteen at the time.  She said: “I have these impulses to steal things. I don’t know why. I began drinking when I was eleven years old. Vodka, it doesn’t smell. I don’t know why I do it. The whole time I do something wrong, I think: ‘You are going to get busted.’ My mom’s got a wicked temper; she’s mean. This look comes in her eyes, it’s like flames, and I know I am going to get it, but then, when I am in the store, I see something I want, I get so mad at her. She asked me once if I was doing this to punish her for being a bad mom. She said: ‘Do you hate me? Don’t you love me?’ and I thought: ‘It’s not about you, mom!’”
The girl could barely sit still; she was in constant motion, her crossed legs bouncing with an anxious energy that I could feel across the room. She also suffered from asthma, mostly of emotional origin.
“I work in a kitchen store. I have a horrible fear of knives. I am afraid that I will cut off my fingers or stab myself in the eye. Once, my mom told me that Pops was chased around the house by his dad who had a knife! He must’ve been crazy. No one talks about him. When they do, they say really scary things. Sometimes, when I am doing these things, I think: ‘I am just like Pop’s Pop.’ I think of him like a devil, but then I think, ‘I am the great-granddaughter of the devil.’ It’s really creepy. Then, I will start wheezing. Also, when I touch a knife, I get this metallic taste in my mouth. I read in a vampire book that this may mean I am about to be attacked. It’s all creepy and I scare myself. I love vampire movies. Sometimes, at night, I imagine that someone is there behind me, and then, I scare myself thinking that it is a vampire. This fright can trigger an asthma attack for me that lasts until midnight, then I fall asleep exhausted.” (Here again, we see the Bromium delusion that someone is behind her.)
This girl’s chief complaints included alcoholism, asthma, impulse control issues, and the sense of having been abandoned. The remedy that most helped her was Mercurius bromatus 200C, followed by Mercurius bromatus LMs. Because of her age, her restrictions from house arrest, and other encounters with the law, she has had a difficult time following through with treatment. However, her good spells occur when she stays on the remedy. Then, something happens and she loses her way for a time.
As I have treated this family, I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if the great-grandfather had been treated. Would all these lives have been spared? I have pieced together a portrait of violence, alcoholism, and trauma. This family is deeply syphilitic: while they may appear functional, deep within they need to hide their suffering, believing that there is something fundamentally and dangerously wrong within. Children are remarkably dedicated to their parents, even when they are abandoned and abused by them.
The Bromium themes of black or white, all or nothing, and total disconnection are present in each of the cases presented above. There is also a profound sense of punishment and living hell, restlessness, and desire to escape mundane reality. Each of the family members were treated abusively, aggressively, and severely traumatized by the unspoken ghost in the room of the great-grandfather, Pops. Both the grandfather and granddaughter had the delusion of someone behind them.
They all suffered from guilt, remorse, and quarrelsome natures, that is, until their successful homeopathic treatments.
Bromatum: guilt, restlessness, escape, passion, instinct, psychotic, punishments of all sorts
Bromium: all or nothing, anger, asthma, depression, disconnected, easily overheated, prostatitis, frequent urination, recurrent bladder infections, and continuous sore throats
Calcarea bromata: what do others think, sensitive to criticism, insecurity, shyness, fears, obesity, protection, responsibility, withdrawal
Magnesium bromatum: pacifism, aggression, fear of loss, pain; the invisible child, lost, abandoned, fear of quarrels, lost and alone, dirty, and desire for milk and heavy cream
Mercurius bromatus: exaggerating, over-reacting, divided, enemies, thievery, impulses, danger is lurking on all sides, impulsivity, fear of knives