Animals Animal Communication Compassion Fatigue Grief Physical Illness, Injury, Surgery and Trauma Trauma Transcendent Experiences

Please note that these categories and lists are not meant to be exhaustive. They are lists I have created over the years for clients in specific situations and are offered here for your convenience. To learn more about each essence listed, and to do your own research about the best essences for you or your animal, consider reading one of the books listed below. It can also be helpful to have a consultation to help determine the deepest level energy about the root cause of the issue, and to match this with the appropriate essences.

The essences listed have been co-created by and are available as noted from the following companies.
Many of the descriptive phrases are from their books:
FES: The Flower Essence Repertory  www.fesflowers.com
Desert Alchemy: The Alchemy of the Desert www.desert-alchemy.com

To help meditate, become still, to help access and trust intuitive information:

• Angelica:  (FES)  Helps to spiritualize thinking forces, to make thinking activity more meditative and spiritual . May  be helpful for those who tend to have primarily rational and analytical views of the world and wish to open to spiritual perspectives.

• Hound’s Tongue:  (FES)  Enhances holistic thinking for those who may want to believe in animal communication but still may find it hard to believe in anything less than the scientific, or the measurable.                 

Hound’s Tongue restores a sense of wonder and reverence for life, while also helping the soul to think in clear and specific ways about the spiritual dimensions of the physical world. Helps us synthesize left and right brain functions. Enhances spiritual perception of the natural world.

• Star Tulip:  (FES)  Softens resistance to the spiritual realm; ability to feel soul communion  with higher spiritual forces; receptivity to spiritual worlds;  especially listening to one’s inner voice

• Lotus:  (FES)  Enhancing and opening spiritual consciousness; openness to higher spiritual awareness

Deerbrush:  (FES)  Opens the heart to greater attunement and sensitivity to nature

• A Way to the GodSelf: (Desert Alchemy)  This helps us connect with our Higher Self and inner guidance, and to communicate directly with it. This essence also helps heal crises of faith.

• Queen of the Night Cactus:  (Desert Alchemy)  Facilitates an integrated sense of natural, deep intuition, sensing and feeling, and being in touch with deep inner wisdom. Helps create a sense of deep understanding to our connection with all of creation through sensing and feeling. Helps us trust our intuition and to access the intuitive root of our being to ground subtle energies.

To help connect with souls of animal loved ones on other side:

• Forget me Not: (FES)  Deepens our awareness of our spiritual connection with those who have physically died and helps us develop telepathic communication with them. Also facilitates openness to connection with spiritual guides.

To help focus and stay grounded, not get distracted or spacey:

• Madia:  (FES)  Helps brings about disciplined focus and concentration, to focus and direct energy in a clear and direct manner.

• Mugwort:  (FES)  Helps us keep grounded and balanced, versus overwhelmed, overly emotional, or out of touch with the physical world while doing psychic work. Keeps us balanced as intuitive faculties open.

To help in general with telepathy:

• Cosmos:  (FES) Encourages interspecies communication; helps establish psychic bonds in one-on-one relationships. Harmonizes the thinking and speaking (including telepathic) patterns with the high soul functions, so that the true spirit can shine forth from the personality during conversation.

To help prevent or re-balance distortion and projection when receiving messages:

• Queen Anne’s Lace:  (FES)  In any psychic communication, such as with the animals, distortion and projection can get in the way of receiving clear images and messages. Sometimes our own emotional imbalances can inadvertently get in the way. This essence helps us be emotionally clear and objective in the insight and images we perceive telepathically.  

To support having a healthy relationship with our psychic sensitivity:

• Sangre de Drago:  (Desert Alchemy)  Helps heal wounds we have about opening into our psychic abilities by harmonizing any fear about it. Helps us understand this natural part of us without fearing or repressing it, and trusting our own intuitive sense. It helps us use our psychic abilities with appropriate boundaries and ethics in two ways.

One, it helps protect us from being bombarded helplessly by psychic information and impressions about others. It supports the appropriate intention to use psychic abilities only when we choose to do so.  It helps us learn how to decide what to let into our conscious awareness and what to keep out.

Two, it helps us not overstep our bounds in gathering psychic information about others without their request that we do so. An extremely important ethic in animal communication work is to not initiate, gather or even be open to information from domestic animals unless their human asks us to do so. This essence supports this ethic and helps the person  who is having trouble turning their psychic abilities on and off to do so with conscious discrimination.

To deepen empathy:

• Yellow Star Tulip: (FES)

This lovely essence helps us experience deep empathy and receptivity to the feelings and experiences of others. It enable us to make sensitive contact with others and truly learn from them. It helps us intuit the deeper meaning and messages of other beings.            

• Vine:  (FES)  Can help clear blocks to communication for those who may still see animals as hierarchically lower than humans, feel a need to be dominant over them most of the time,  or are more comfortable making command vs. collaborative decisions. These views of our relationship with animals can block receiving clear messages and resolving problems over the long term.

To provide protection from the emotions and energy of others:

• Golden Yarrow:  (FES)  This essence is not as much about taking on others’ energy, as the Pink Yarrow is, but more about helping us not feel drained in the face of so much energy of others. Very sensitive souls at   times may shy away from exposure to and intimacy with others because doing so often makes them feel as if they lose part of themselves in the process. Golden Yarrow helps us know that we can preserve the integrity of the Self, even when involved with others, that we don’t have to isolate and withdraw to feel safely ourselves.

• Pink Yarrow: (FES)  This is a classic essence for emotional protection. For those of us who can be sponges for others’ energy, who are naturally empathic or sensitive, it helps us create appropriate emotional boundaries. It allows us to feel authentic compassion and connection with others (animals and people) without dysfunctional merging with, or taking on their pain or other energy.

To help with overwhelm when witnessing harm to animals, or taking on their pain as one's responsibility:

• Glassy Hyacinth:  (FES)  This essence has been used successfully to help both survivors and relief workers in war zones. For those who witness or hear about abhorrent cruelty, violence, depravity or carnage, it restores strength and hope to the soul. Because of the overwhelming and horrific nature of many  traumas, it’s normal to block our deepest feelings of response. But internalizing the horror of trauma can  only be short term, it is bound to come back later as more complicated post traumatic stress. There is no escaping the need to process the emotional pain of seeing or hearing about terrible things that happen to animals. Glassy Hyacinth helps us process our pain with gentleness. It restores our equilibrium, heals our hearts so we can feel inner peace despite the unfinished work of changing the world for animals.

• Cow Parsnip: (Desert Alchemy)  The cow parsnip personality has a highly caring nature and often takes on the feelings, thoughts and even physical energy of others. They can't bear to see others suffer and often feel a deep inner need to change or fix others and feel responsible for making the world conform to their own sense of rightness. It's hard for them to accept that they cannot and should not attempt to intervene in every situation of suffering they come across.  This essence helps teach sensitive individuals with strong psychic or telepathic skills to learn to use these abilities with appropriate boundaries, rather than imposing their knowledge or help on others. It brings a deep sense of inner strength and trust in the universe to provide help to others when it is not appropriate for us to do so.

• Red Chestnut:  (FES)  Is very helpful when we feel obsessive fear or worry that we have not done enough, that it’s our job to help every animal we hear about and that if we don’t we’ve failed. It is also particularly helpful for those who feel they must “save them all” and feel guilty when they can’t. Red Chestnut helps us let go of an over-exaggerated sense of obligation that goes beyond what any one person can do, or a drive to help others at the cost of ourselves.  It helps us know when we’ve “done enough”--for that day, or for that animal. It helps us remember that it is OK for us to have a life for ourselves, beyond giving to animals or others. Red Chestnut can also deepen and restore our trust in a Divine source of support for the animals we love, helping us remember we are not their only source support.

"Trust in the wisdom of the other's soul"

The essences I most frequently recommend for compassion fatigue are those which address the recurring emotions so common to animal welfare work:

            • PTS Formula for traumatic stress

            • Glassy Hyacinth for anguish and exposure to horror

            • Borage and Bleeding Heart for grief

            • Scarlett Monkeyflower and Date for anger

 • Red Chestnut, Mountain Pennyroyal, Pink Monkeyflower and Scorpion Weed for guilt. 

Acute Stress, Crisis, Trauma:

For help in the moment:

• Rescue Remedy/Five Flower Formula: These two remedies have the exact same ingredients--each is a composite of five different flower essences. Rescue Remedy is made by Bach and Five Flower Formula is made by FES. They bring calmness and stability in any time of physical, emotional, mental or spiritual distress. During moments of fear or panic, they can bring us back to center, to knowing we will be OK. When we wonder how or if we will make it through a critical situation, taking a few drops can be soothing and stabilizing. They are well known for the support they provide in dire emergencies (there are many stories, for instance, of these essences stabilizing severely injured animals, helping them stay alive until medical intervention is available or begins to work (see resource listing of web site stories). These “emergency formulas” are also useful for the less dramatic but still very uncomfortable stressful moments of life. They help bring the body and mind back to calm.  (from Bach and FES)

For help in the moment AND on-going help after a traumatic event:

• Post Traumatic Stress Formula: For most people trauma is an infrequent or rare life event: war, fire, auto accident, assault, etc. For those who work in trauma worker roles (i.e. police, fire fighters, emergency medical technicians, animal control and shelter workers) exposure to the pain associated with traumatic crisis is part of everyday life. For many animal welfare workers trauma is a common, even daily event: sensing the emotional pain of animals who are abandoned by their people, choosing which animals will be euthanized, performing euthanasia, seeing animals go “cage crazy” who’ve been kenneled too long, seeing and caring for animals who have been starved, abused, used in animal fights, wildlife harmed or killed by human impact, etc.

This essence can be taken at the time a traumatic situation occurs to soften the debilitating effects of natural, very strong emotional responses. It can also be taken to help release the effects of past trauma. Sometimes, the pain of a past trauma in our lives (related or unrelated to our animal work) can be re-triggered by another trauma occurring in the present. Symptoms of post traumatic stress can include recurrent nightmares, recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the trauma, flashback episodes, intense psychological distress at exposure to cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event, restricted range of feelings (i.e. blocking feelings), difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, hyper vigilance and exaggerated startle response. This essence helps us cope with and heal the emotional and physical symptoms of exposure to trauma, and can begin to heal the effects of past trauma. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, taken by itself or in conjunction with Glassy Hyacinth. (from FES)

• Glassy Hyacinth: This essence has been used successfully to help both survivors and relief workers in war zones. For those who witness abhorrent cruelty, violence, depravity or carnage it restores strength and hope to the soul. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for shelter workers who euthanize animals, for animal control officers and humane investigators who encounter cruelty and abuse first hand, for any witnessing of or hearing about treatment of animals which breaks out hearts. Because seeing such horror is so unnatural, it’s normal to block our deepest feelings of response. But internalizing the horrific trauma of the job can only be short term, it is bound to come back later as more complicated post traumatic stress. There is no escaping the need to process emotional pain. Glassy Hyacinth helps us do so with gentleness. It restores our equilibrium, heals our hearts so we can continue our important work with inner peace. Effective taken by itself, with PTS Formula, or with Star of Bethlehem. (from FES)

• Star of Bethlehem: One of the essences in Five Flower Formula, it is a deeply restorative remedy, bringing calm, soothing, healing qualities, comfort and reassurance from the spiritual world. Can be especially helpful when we feel in shock, or greatly overwhelmed. (from Bach and FES)

Grief:                                                                                                                               

• Borage: This essence helps us overcome feelings of depression and heavy-heartedness associated with the sadness and grief of separation or death. Borage brings courage and a sense of upliftment and buoyancy. Though depression from grief is a natural state, a natural cycle of emotional life, Borage helps us to not get stuck in the weight of it, but to move through it quickly. (from FES)

• Bleeding Heart: For any of us who know ourselves to feel grief at partings and separation, who feel it deeply, Bleeding Heart is balm to the soul. It helps us move through the pain more softly and quickly. It helps us remember, truly remember in our hearts that the loss is only of the physical connection, not the spiritual, and that the gifts of the spiritual connection with an  animal we’ve loved remain in us, even when their physical form is gone. Especially helpful when an animal we’ve been attached to (fostered, rescued, just plain fell in love with) has died from euthanasia or other causes, or even when they’ve been adopted out (or wildlife released to the wild) and we miss them. Bleeding Heart helps us accept the change in form of a relationship, to let go, and release our attachment to the physical  form. It helps us accept that they have died (or been placed, released, etc.) while still fully feeling the spiritual connection of love. (from FES)

•Forget-Me-Not: Deepens our awareness of our spiritual connection with those who have physically died and helps us develop telepathic communication with them. (from FES)

• Love Lies Bleeding: Helps us with profound feelings of melancholia and anguish, especially when the soul suffers privately and is cut off from others. It also helps us find transpersonal meaning from pain and suffering.  (from FES)

• Sagebrush: When we are having trouble accepting death and tragedy, this essence helps us heal the pain and emptiness from any kind of loss.  (from FES)

• Chrysanthemum: Helps us accept the transitory nature of earthly life and helps us heal any fears and avoidance of physical death. This could be especially helpful for someone who has fears of euthanizing and may soon be in that role.  (from FES)

Guilt:

• Mountain Pennyroyal and Pink Monkeyflower: Deeper, and more profound perhaps, than guilt is shame. Guilt may be what we feel from our own inner questioning of right and wrong. Shame is more likely what we feel as a result of others’ views of us, or concern of others’ views of us. In the heated controversy of euthanasia, there is, tragically, much mud slinging directed toward workers who euthanize animals, and toward agencies that euthanize. Ironically, the harsh criticisms often come from the very people who contribute to overpopulation by buying from breeders or pet stores, by not spaying and neutering, or who’ve surrendered their animals to shelters, yet somehow still hold shelter workers responsible for “finding homes for them all.” I’ve heard horror stories of shelter workers sitting in restaurants, being in line at movie theaters, or walking through a mall and having someone call out “there’s a dog killer!” or other cruel comments. Sadly, moral judgment also sometimes comes from “no-kill” groups, who do not euthanize animals but who do turn them away when their kennels or foster homes are full, often resulting in the animals ending up in a shelter that does euthanize. When “no-kill” literature and other PR pronounces over and over that “we don’t kill animals,” it insinuates that shelters which euthanize do so frivolously, without love or concern for the lives of animals. There is also at times the insinuation (or statement) that “no-kill” groups have solved the overpopulation problem. It’s not solved. Everyone is working hard, and thankfully sometimes more collaboratively despite philosophical differences, but the problem is not yet solved. In the midst of the political debate and the moral dilemma of trying to save lives, (and all groups are working to save lives), it is the workers in shelters that euthanize who receive the blame, often by both the public and other animal groups. This misdirected blame can turn into a horrible sense of internalized shame and dishonor for these workers. 

Mountain Pennyroyal gives us the clarity of mind to expel any guilt and shame directed at us. It gives us the strength to protect ourselves from the criticisms, negative thoughts and harsh judgments of others, to see them as someone else's thoughts and beliefs, rather than internalize them as our own. (from FES)

Pink  Monkeyflower helps us heal the deep pain that shame can bring,, allowing us to recover from such shame, and to restore our own sense of worthiness regardless of others’ opinions. (from FES) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for any workers who have felt a sense of shame associated with their work.

• Scorpion Weed: This essence brings healing to the heart of those who feel they may never be forgiven for things they have done. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for those involved in euthanasia and are haunted by beliefs that they have “sinned” or wonder if they are good enough to “go to heaven.”It’s one thing to believe that peaceful euthanasia for an animal is sometimes better for them than living out life in a cage or in the streets until there are enough homes for them all. It’s an entirely different thing to actually perform euthanasia. To do so takes immeasurable moral courage and emotional fortitude. This essence helps you trust in your own essential goodness while living in the midst of such a moral dilemma, bringing you back to self understanding and self forgiveness. (from Desert Alchemy)

• Red Chestnut: Is very helpful when we feel obsessive fear or worry that we have not done enough, that it’s our job to save the animals and that if we don’t we’ve failed. It is also particularly helpful for those who feel they must “save them all” and feel guilty when they can’t. Red Chestnut helps us let go of an over-exaggerated sense of obligation that goes beyond what any one person can do, or a drive to help others at the cost of ourselves.  It helps us know when we’ve “done enough”--for that day, or for that animal. It helps us remember that it is OK for us to have a life for ourselves, beyond giving to animals or others. Red Chestnut can also deepen and restore our trust in a Divine source of support for the animals we love, helping us remember we are not their only source support. (from FES)

•White Chestnut: Is helpful in releasing anxious, repetitive thoughts such as “Oh my God, why didn’t I. . .”, or “If only I had done such and such.” When you can’t sleep, when you’re so mentally wound up, agitated and worried with repetitive thoughts about an animal or some other issue that you may not have handled perfectly, White Chestnut can help you regain a calm, clear mind and sense of peace. Sometimes, we don’t handle a situation as well as we could have. “Mistakes” are great fodder for learning, but not when we beat us ourselves up so much we feel only guilt. This essence helps us learn from a place of calm and clarity.  (from FES)

• Pine: “Did I do the right thing in a certain situation?”  “If only I would have. . .” If White Chestnut clears the mind from such repetitive thoughts, Pine clears the heart of self-deprecation and the emotional paralysis that guilt can create. It helps us move from being emotionally stuck in self blame, remorse or regret to a state of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance (from FES)

Anger:

• Scarlett Monkeyflower: Helps us express anger in appropriate ways, rather than stuffing it inside or exploding when we can no longer hold it in. There’s so much legitimate anger in animal welfare work that has no appropriate direct avenue of expression to those with whom we’re angry: To represent our organizations responsibly and to attempt to educate the public, we have to be nice to the person who brings in the puppy who’s not house broken in two days and now wants another one, we have to be nice to people who haven’t fed their starving horses, . . .we have to be nice in the face of irresponsible and sometimes harmful treatment of animals. The anger this naturally creates in us can eat us alive if untended. Scarlett Monkeyflower helps us accept the naturalness of our anger and opens us up to express it in healthy ways, releasing the pressure of holding it in and the shame of exploding.   (from FES)

• Date: This essence isn’t so much about expressing anger as it is about softening our hearts when they become hard with anger, resentment or hatred. The average animal welfare worker sees enough harm against animals in a year to fill them with understandable resentment, rage or hatred for a lifetime. It is hard to see animals mistreated over and over and over and over again. Yet the hardness this can create in our hearts can block our capacity for compassion for the very animals we love, for ourselves, and for other people. If you are ever feeling that your heart is more full of anger (rage, hate, etc.) than it is of love, this essence can help bring you back to balance. It opens our hearts to feeling the true compassion that lives there, even as we are aware of atrocities, of wrongs. It does not make us condone wrongs, it simply lifts us to a place where we can still be in touch with love amidst the mountains of wrongs we see around us. (from Master’s Flower Essences)

Hard Time Letting Go of Overworking, Being Overcommitted:

• Red Chestnut: Is very helpful when we feel obsessive fear or worry that we have not done enough, that it’s our job to save the animals and if we don’t we’ve failed. It is also particularly helpful for those who feel they must “save them all” and feel guilty when they can’t. It helps us let go of an over-exaggerated sense of obligation that goes beyond what any one person can do, or a drive to help others at the cost of ourselves. It helps us know when we’ve “done enough”--for that day, or for that animal. It helps us remember that it is OK for us to have a life for ourselves, beyond giving to animals or others. It can also deepen and restore our trust in a Divine source of support for the animals we love, helping us remember we are not the only source of their support. (from FES)

• Elm: Sometimes our desire to help and serve others can result in feeling overwhelmed-- when we end up with too many duties and responsibilities, or feeling unequal at times to completing all the tasks. This can be created by too high a work load, or from our own over-perfectionist or unrealistic goals. Elm helps us integrate our desire to serve with our own equally important need for balance. This essence can help us to shift our identities from hero or rescuer with limitless energy to our true human energy and its natural limitations. (from FES)

• Centaury: Brings inner strength to those who have trouble saying “No.” Also brings a healthy recognition of our own needs even while serving others. Helps balance the ego forces of those who may consciously or unconsciously rely on pleasing others to receive self-validation. (from FES)

• Jumping Cholla Cactus: This essence is a great antidote for when we find ourselves rushing around feelings feeling frenzied, driving ourselves relentlessly to accomplish things, and becoming easily annoyed at people and events which stand in the way of us completing our many tasks. Sometimes keeping ourselves busy rushing about is easier than facing our feelings. This essence helps us slow down and create more harmony and balance in our lives.  (from Desert Alchemy)

Helplessness, Frustration, Loss of Faith & Hope, AlienatioN:                                                

• Gentian: This essence is specifically for when we feel helpless and discouraged after a setback or problem occurs. It helps us shift our mental perspective and see the long view when we start asking ourselves questions such as “does my work really make any difference?,” “will things ever get better for the animals?” Gentian brings us perseverance and faith to continue despite apparent setbacks in circumstances or discouragement in our hearts.  (from FES)

• Penstemon: Sometimes we are dealt unfair blows in life--on the job or personally. Sometimes we are legitimate victims of circumstance and it is a struggle to get beyond feeling sorry for ourselves. In the periods of pain and frustration this can bring, we need perseverance and great inner fortitude. Penstemon has enormous strengthening powers, enabling us to tap into reservoirs of courage and resilience. (from FES)

• Cherry Plum: Called the “let go and let God” essence, helps us surrender to the wisdom of our Higher Power when we feel we can no longer effect change on our own.  (from FES)

• Sweet Chestnut: When we are at the breaking point of endurance, feeling strong despair and anguish, or  suicidal, Sweet Chestnut brings us courage and faith to move through the “dark night of the soul” to trusting again in good and in spiritual guidance and protection.  (from FES)

• Shooting Star: When we are feeling as if we live in a world or culture which doesn’t understand, accept or acknowledge the deep love we have for animals, when we feel like we may not fit here, or have a place: Shooting Star  helps us heal a profound feeling of alienation, especially not feeling at home on earth, nor a part of the human family. It can be especially helpful when we feel more a part of the animal kingdom than part of humanity. (from FES)

Feeling & Taking on the Pain of Others as Our Own; Emotional Vulnerability; Need for Emotional Protection:

• Pink Yarrow: This is a classic essence for emotional protection. For those of us who can be sponges for others’ energy, who are naturally empathic or sensitive, it helps us create appropriate emotional boundaries with others. It allows us to feel authentic compassion and connection with others (animals and people) without dysfunctional merging with, or taking on their pain or other energy. (from FES)

• Golden Yarrow: This essence is not as much about taking on others’ energy, as the Pink Yarrow is, but more about helping us not feel drained in the face of so much energy of others. Very sensitive souls at times may shy away from exposure to and intimacy with others because doing so often makes them feel as if they lose part of themselves in the process. Golden Yarrow helps us know that we can preserve the integrity of the Self, even when involved with others, that we don’t have to isolate and withdraw to feel safely ourselves. If you avoid spending time with others because it leaves you drained and tired, this essence can help you. Likewise, if you can’t avoid being around others on the job, and it drains you, this essence can help you. (from FES)

• Red Chestnut: Is very helpful when we feel obsessive fear or worry that we have not done enough, that it’s our job to save the animals and that if we don’t we’ve failed. It is also particularly helpful for those who feel they must “save them all” and feel guilty when they can’t. Red Chestnut helps us let go of an over-exaggerated sense of obligation that goes beyond what any one person can do, or a drive to help others at the cost of ourselves.  It helps us know when we’ve “done enough”--for that day, or for that animal. It helps us remember that it is OK for us to have a life for ourselves, beyond giving to animals or others. Red Chestnut can also deepen and restore our trust in a Divine source of support for the animals we love, helping us remember we are not the only source of their support. (from FES)

Anxiety, Overwhelm, Emotional Upheaval in General:

(also see Acute Stress, Crisis, Trauma)

• Chamomile: Helps us when we are emotionally upset, nervous or tense, especially when our tension is accompanied by stomach distress such as gas or vomiting. Helps us feel calm, serene and more emotionally balanced. (from FES)

• Lavender: Helps  when we feel mentally or physically “wound up,” keeping us up nights, or feeling we are absorbing more energy than we can process through the body. Helps tension that is accompanied by headaches, vision problems, or neck and shoulder tension. Lavender helps sedate and soothe, and moderates and regulates energy. (from FES)

• Cherry Plum: This essence brings strength and encouragement at times of extreme tension, fear, pressure or stress. It helps stabilize the mind when we’re emotionally overwrought, helping us cope with challenge. Often called the “let go and let God” essence, it helps us re-connect with a Higher Power, or our Higher Self, surrendering to the knowledge that this level of help is always there. (from FES)

Numbing Oneself to Pain: Putting up walls to Avoid it. . . or Holding it in:

• Dandelion: When we are having difficulty expressing or releasing our feelings, Dandelion helps us release feelings of grief or pain that are stuck in the body. Especially helpful when we know our emotions are making us feel tense in the body. (from FES)

• Fuchsia: Helps us get in touch with feelings of pain which may be repressed, perhaps when we long to express our feelings but are afraid of being overwhelmed by them. This essence is especially helpful for those who cry easily or have psychosomatic symptoms, yet do not access their most authentic, deep seated emotional pain. (from FES)  

• Golden Ear Drops: Helps us release tears of grief that may be held back. Can be especially helpful when a current crisis or loss is bringing up pain from past crises or losses. (from FES)

•Yerba Santa: Helps us build our capacity to express a full range of emotion, especially when emotional pain has been internalized or constricted in the heart and chest area. (from FES)

When Passionate Idealism Makes Us Overbearing:                                        

• Vervain: Many of us devote a great deal of our life energy to the cause of helping animals. Sometimes, our great passion and enthusiasm to effect change can seem overbearing to others. Our intensity can turn off family, friends, peers and the very people we’re trying to influence to change. Vervain can help us be more grounded and moderate in the expression of our ideals, resulting not only in greater acceptance of our message on the part of others, but also in less tension within ourselves. (from FES)

• Date: This essence is about softening our expression with others when our hearts have become hard with anger, resentment or hatred. Most animal welfare worker see enough harm against animals in a year to fill them with understandable resentment, rage or hatred for a lifetime. It is hard to see animals mistreated over and over and over and over again. Sometimes, this hardness comes out in ways which defeat our very purpose of helping animals such as: yelling at co-workers, telling off a manager or board member regarding a policy you don’t like, being sarcastic when talking to members of the public whose care of their animals is not ideal, acting bitter in general, etc. If you are ever feeling that your heart is so full of anger (rage, hate, etc.) that it’s effecting your capacity to interact appropriately with others, this essence can help bring you back to balance. It opens our hearts to feeling the true compassion that lives there, even as we are aware of atrocities, of wrongs, or policies which we don’t think are the best. It does not make us condone wrongs, it simply lifts us to a place where we can still be in touch with calmness and even gentleness amidst the mountains of wrongs we see around us. (from Master’s Flower Essences)

Fatigue, Burnout, Need for Rejuvenation:

• Aloe Vera: This essence is helpful for those who overuse their fiery, creative forces, becoming workaholics whose drive is so intense that they neglect their emotional and physical needs, draining themselves of vital energy needed from rest, food, and social contact. While will power can carry such persons quite far, eventually a point of exhaustion or burnout can occur. Aloe Vera brings back the qualities of renewal and rejuvenation.  (from FES)

• Olive: Relieves physical symptoms of utter fatigue, exhaustion and weariness. Heightens awareness that the physical self is profoundly connected with higher states of soul-spiritual consciousness, providing renewal and restoration from within and without. (from FES)

• Woven Spine Pineapple Cactus: Helps when we feel completely overwhelmed, exhausted and burned out, tired at the root of our being, or so overburdened that we feel we can’t go on. This essence revitalizes us at the core of our being, bringing courage, perseverance, self confidence and release of issues that may be blocking our life force. It shows us that we can always take one more breath and receive rejuvenation in this very moment.  (from Desert Alchemy)
 

I believe that the most effective, satisfactory and long lasting approach to healing grief is an integrative one--one that explores and may include traditional psychological support as well as embracing spiritual and other holistic modalities. A stubborn insistence by some that only one of these approaches leads to healing is futile. Each journey of grief is different, each grievers’ needs unique, and the resources most suited to help each of us varies. I think it’s also important to remember that however thorough and integrative our healing efforts, no flower essence, spiritual belief system or the most loving support in the world can take away the emotional pain of grief when our animal or human loved ones die. Loss and its subsequent pain are natural, inevitable experiences of life. Pain, however, does not have to include the quality of suffering. Suffering isn’t necessary. Pain can be surrounded instead with the quality of quiet grace, allowing us the energy to embrace the rich opportunities loss offers us to learn, grow and transform. Flower essences help remove the element of suffering surrounding our painful  grief and invite in the qualities of grace, learning and transformation. Unlike drugs, flower essences don’t mask or suppress pain or other symptoms. They gently yet powerfully help us heal our pain, inviting in the grace and courage we need to do so.  May the essences bring you comfort and peace in your time of grief.

 

All of the essences on this list can be ordered from www.fesflowers.com.

• Five Flower Formula (also called Rescue Remedy), helps us feel stabilized when emotionally traumatized or overwhelmed. It’s an excellent remedy to keep nearby  in your pocket or purse during the most intense time of your grieving. Taking a few drops at those moments of panic, when we wonder how or if we will make it through, is very soothing and calming.

• Bleeding Heart helps us fully feel the spiritual connection of love we will always have with loved ones, even after death. It helps us accept the change in form of a relationship, to let go of and release our attachment to the physical form of our animal loved one.

• Borage helps us overcome feelings of depression and heavy-heartedness from the death or impending death of a loved one. Borage gives us courage to face our grief, a sense of upliftment and buoyant hope to help us not get stuck in the weight of depression.

• Forget-Me-Not  deepens our awareness of our spiritual connection with those who have physically died and helps us develop telepathic communication with them.

• Love Lies Bleeding helps us with profound feelings of melancholia and anguish, especially when the soul suffers privately and is cut off from others. It also helps us find transpersonal meaning from pain and suffering.

• California Wild Rose helps us when our loss is so overwhelming that we may have thoughts of suicide. One of the most beautiful and fundamental of flower remedies, it helps the soul to fully incarnate and really take hold of and accept the challenges of life on Earth, and connect again to enthusiasm for earthly life, stimulating the love forces of the heart for others and for self.

• Madia and Honeysuckle can help us when we are having trouble getting back to functioning in our daily lives while grieving. Madia helps with focus and concentration (i.e. driving a car, carrying out work, home or family responsibilities), while honeysuckle helps us live in the here-and-now, helping us go on after death or loss.

• Mariposa Lily: Sometimes grief makes us feel cut off from love--our ability to ever love or be loved again in the way we have with the one who has died. Sometimes, too, we get stuck in our grief because we don’t believe in our ability to love ourselves in the way our animal loved us. Mariposa Lily helps open our hearts to love, from the spirit of our animal, from others beings, and from ourselves.

• Star of Bethlehem , one of the essences in Five Flower Formula, is a deeply restorative remedy, bringing calm, soothing, healing qualities, comfort and reassurance from the spiritual world. Can be especially helpful when we feel in shock, or greatly overwhelmed. Brand: Bach and FES

When we feel guilty:

• White Chestnut is helpful in releasing anxious, repetitive thoughts such as “Oh my God, why didn’t I. . .”, or “If only I had done such and such.” Pine helps us move from being stuck in self-blame, remorse or shame to a state of self-forgiveness and self- acceptance.

For those who work with rescue and shelter animals:

• Red Chestnut is very helpful when we feel obsessive fear or worry that we have not done enough, that it’s our job to save our animal and if we don’t we’ve failed. It is also particularly helpful with rescue workers, or foster guardians, who feel they must “save them all” and feel guilty when they can’t. Red Chestnut helps us let go of an over-exaggerated sense of obligation, or a drive to help others at the cost of ourselves. It helps us know when we’ve “done enough”--for that day, or for that animal. It helps us remember that it is OK for us to have a life for ourselves, beyond giving to animals or others. Red Chestnut deepens and restores our trust in a Divine source of support for the animals we love, helping us remember we are not the only source of their support.

When we are having trouble accepting death and tragedy:

• Sagebrush  helps us accept pain and emptiness of any kind of loss.

• Wild Rose helps us accept the tragic events of life especially when we feel a resigned, lack of hope.

• Chrysanthemum helps us accept the transitory nature of earthly life and helps us heal any fears and avoidance of physical death.

When we are having difficulty expressing or releasing our feelings:

• Dandelion helps us release feelings of grief or pain that are stuck in the body, often helpful when we know our emotions are making us feel tense in the body.

• Fuchsia helps us contact grief which may be repressed, perhaps when we long to express our feelings but are afraid of being overwhelmed by them.

• Golden Ear Drops helps us release tears of grief that may be held back. Can be especially helpful when our current loss is bringing up pain from past losses.

• Yerba Santa  helps us build our capacity to express a full range of emotion, especially when pain has been internalized or constricted in the heart and chest area.

When we are feeling like we don’t belong here without our animal, when we perhaps feel alienated in a world or culture which doesn’t understand, accept or acknowledge the deep love we have for our animals, when we feel like we may not fit here, or have a place:

• Shooting Star helps us heal a profound feeling of alienation, especially not feeling at home on earth, nor a part of the human family. It can be especially helpful when we feel more a part of the animal kingdom than part of humanity. Sweet Pea: Whether primarily with humans or animals, we all need to feel we “belong” in a community, a family or place. This essence strengthens our deepest knowing that we each have a unique place of belonging on the earth and with other beings. It eases the sense of “homelessness”  or “familyless-ness” often felt when a deeply beloved animal dies.

I highly recommend keeping Arnica and Self Heal on hand in your medicine cabinet at all times for everything from minor injuries to major surgery. I recommend purchasing Magenta Healer for any serious or life threatening illness, and the other essences listed as needed. Of course, the essences Five Flower Formula and Rescue Remedy can help stabilize the body and energy system during any emergency.

• Arnica (FES): facilitates recovery from shock or trauma to the body. The soul often disassociates from the body during surgery or any physical trauma. Arnica guides the re-integration of the soul and body allowing more rapid, full and lasting recovery.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED before and after surgery or any physical illness, injury or trauma. Greatly accelerates physical recovery.

• Self Heal (FES): stimulates inner healing forces inherent in every being, bringing forth the full capabilities of the body to heal itself. Though Arnica and Self Heal should never be used in place of medications, they awaken the vitality and will to live, preparing the body to more fully accept external assistance. Self Heal accelerates the healing process on all levels.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED before and after surgery, and after any physical imbalance through full recovery.  

• Magenta Healer (FES):  This essence is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for acute or serious illness to compliment other traditional or holistic medical treatment.  It is especially helpful for the animal who tells us he or she “wants to live!” but isn’t sure whether they can regain the physical strength and healing to match their will to live.  Described as a “super self heal formula,” Magenta Medicine brings strength, stability, the ability to transcend and transform suffering, the return of vitality and joy, and help for the soul to remember the karmic reasons for current suffering and to remember it’s deepest purpose and destiny. 

• Crab Apple (FES): Helps detoxify and cleanse the body of impurities.

• Wild Rose (FES): Helps animals who seem to have given up the will to live, whose vitality is depleted, and who are apathetic and lacking in hope to restore the vital forces of the soul. For animals with lingering illnesses, it helps them regain interest in earthly life, connection to the physical body, and to embrace the sacred opportunity of physical incarnation.

• Olive (FES): brings relief, restoration and renewal from extreme physical symptoms of exhaustion, fatigue and weariness, connecting us with our inner source of energy. Extremely helpful for periods of recuperation.  *****

• Tomato (Pelelandra): Cleansing. Assists the body in shattering and throwing off that which is causing infection or disease.

• Celery (Perelandra): restores balance of immune system during times when stressed and during long term viral or bacterial infections.

FOR HELP IN THE MOMENT

• Five Flower Formula (FES) also sold as Rescue Remedy (Bach): These two remedies have the exact same ingredients--each is a composite of five different flower essences. Rescue Remedy is made by Bach and Five Flower Formula is made by Heal Herbs in England and distributed by FES. They bring calmness and stability in any time of physical, emotional, mental or spiritual distress. During moments of fear or panic, they can bring us back to center, to knowing we will be OK. When we wonder how or if we will make it through a critical situation, taking a few drops can be soothing and stabilizing. They are well known for the support they provide in dire emergencies (there are many stories, for instance, of these essences stabilizing severely injured animals, helping them stay alive until medical intervention is available or begins to work. These “emergency formulas” are also useful for the less dramatic but still very uncomfortable stressful moments of life. They help bring the body and mind back to calm.

• Star of Bethlehem (FES): One of the essences in Five Flower Formula, it is a deeply restorative remedy, bringing calm, soothing, healing qualities, comfort and reassurance from the spiritual world. Can be especially helpful when we are in shock, or greatly overwhelmed.

FOR HELP IN THE MOMENT AND ON-GOING HELP AFTER A TRAUMATIC EVENT

• Crisis Desert Emergency Formula (Desert Alchemy): This is an extremely powerful and helpful formula to help through periods of great change and transition. During the moments of fear or panic, it brings calm. To support longer term change, it helps cultivate patience with the healing or growth process, helps us gently unfold to a situation so that we do not feel overwhelmed by it, brings courage, brings clarity and focus, and enhances our ability to manifest creative solutions. This wonderful essence helps us use the acute awareness that comes with crisis to further our understanding and acceptance of ourselves as our souls evolve.

• Post Traumatic Stress Formula (FES): This essence softens the debilitating effects of natural, very strong emotional responses to trauma and crisis. It can also be taken to help release the effects of past trauma. Sometimes, the pain of a past trauma in our lives can be re-triggered by another trauma occurring in the present. This essence also helps prevent suffering from the effects of trauma later, after the shock wears off. Symptoms of post traumatic stress can include recurrent nightmares, recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the trauma, flashback episodes, intense psychological distress at exposure to cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event, restricted range of feelings (i.e. blocking feelings), difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, hyper vigilance and exaggerated startle response. This essence helps us cope with and heal the emotional and physical symptoms of exposure to trauma, and can begin to heal the effects of past trauma. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, taken by itself or in conjunction with Glassy Hyacinth.

• Glassy Hyacinth (FES): This essence has been used successfully to help both survivors and relief workers in war zones. For those who witness, directly or indirectly, abhorrent cruelty, violence, depravity or carnage, it restores strength and hope to the soul. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Because of the overwhelming and horrific nature of war and many other traumas, it’s normal to block our deepest feelings of response. But internalizing the horror of trauma can only be short term, it is bound to come back later as more complicated post traumatic stress. There is no escaping the need to process emotional pain. Glassy Hyacinth helps us do so with gentleness. It restores our equilibrium, heals our hearts so we can continue life inner peace. Effective taken by itself, with PTS Formula, or with Star of Bethlehem.

• Borage (FES):  This essence helps us overcome feelings of depression and heavy-heartedness. Borage brings courage and a sense of upliftment and buoyancy. Though depression due to hardship in life is a natural state, a natural cycle of emotional life, Borage helps us to not get stuck in the weight of it, but to move through it more quickly.

• Love Lies Bleeding (FES): Helps us with profound feelings of melancholia and anguish, especially when the soul suffers privately and feels cut off from others. It also helps us find transpersonal meaning from pain and suffering.

• Pink Yarrow (FES): This is a classic essence for caregivers in crisis situation to provide emotional protection. For those of us who can be sponges for others’ energy, who are naturally empathic or sensitive, it helps us create appropriate emotional boundaries with others. It allows us to feel authentic compassion and connection with others (animals and people) without dysfunctional merging with, or taking on their pain or other energy.

INTEGRATION OF PROFOUND