My virtual book tour and other writing ventures

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ Leave a comment

This is a busy time in my writing career. Doing a ‘virtual book tour’, using the power of the internet to promote Focus on Healing: Holistic Self-help for Medical Illness to readers outside New Zealand, has been a new and exciting experience.

Virtual book tours have not replaced live talks and book signing events as a way for authors to market their work, but they do enable outreach to a worldwide audience through websites, blogs and media outlets, all from a home computer at reasonable cost. To sample what is involved, please click on the links for my online interview and printed chapter excerpt, recorded chapter excerpt and ezine articles; and to buy the book through my website click here.

I recently edited the wartime memoir of my late uncle, a Spitfire pilot. This book is now at proof-checking stage and will soon be published in the UK. Also this month my next self-help book, about life path and life purpose, is being considered for a local manuscript award and I will probably self-publish this one, so am studying the options. More news on both books will follow in future posts.

These editing and marketing activities have left little time for new writing, but I am keen to try my hand at fiction in the future, and have already made a start on a romantic suspense novel set here in Devonport.

All this activity is very positive, but involves rather too much ‘multitasking’ – even with the best time management skills it’s sometimes impossible to avoid everything happening at once!  So I sometimes feel over-stimulated, stressed by the number of things to deal with, or impatient to get them finished. There are Bach flower remedies to balance all these states of mind: Vervain for over-enthusiasm, Elm for ‘overwhelm’, Impatiens  for impatience.

Self-responsibility for healing?

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ Leave a comment

Many self-help teachers claim that ‘you are 100% responsible for everything in your life’ and that ‘you create your own reality’ through your emotions, thoughts, beliefs and behaviour.  Though not everyone would accept such statements as literally true, there is no doubt that a person’s mental outlook makes a huge difference to the way they perceive and deal with their world.

Research studies show that those who believe they have a large measure of choice and control over their own lives tend to be healthier and happier than those with a more passive approach. This works through a combination of better self-care, with diet and exercise for example, and direct mind-body relationships. Self-responsibility is a key feature in most cases of remarkable recovery from cancer or other serious disease. But there is a fine dividing line between self-responsibility and self-blame, which makes people feel guilty about having become sick or failed to recover. After all an illness may be at least partly due to factors which are beyond personal control, such as genetic makeup or exposure to passive smoking. In many cases the cause is not known.

This said, a sense of self-responsibility can certainly enable improved coping with difficulties, as illustrated by the story of one recent client of mine. In the past few years she had faced huge challenges including the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, divorce, loss of her home and the need to start supporting herself financially in her late 50s. Not surprisingly she often felt low and anxious, and to make things worse had fallen into a pattern of feeling sorry for herself and looking on the negative side of things. For example rather than giving herself credit for having completed a training course and obtained a first job in her chosen field, she continually complained about the irritations at her place of work.

According to the Law of Attraction, if we focus on what is wrong with ourselves and our lives, we are likely to draw even more unwanted things into our experience. Negative feelings are a natural response to adversity and it is helpful to acknowledge and express them. It is not helpful to get stuck in them. Looking for positive aspects to appreciate in the present, and imagining more of these in the future, can be the key to turning them around.

I gave this client a mixture of several Bach flower remedies to deal with different aspects of her case but the one most relevant to today’s post is Willow. Dr Edward Bach recommended this remedy ‘for those who have suffered adversity and misfortune and find these difficult to accept without complaint or resentment … feel that they have not deserved so great a trial, that it was unjust … ‘ The Willow remedy helps such people to move away from the victim role and take control of their own destiny.

When my client came for followup she looked transformed for the better. She had made a shift towards self-responsibility by using both visualisation exercises and practical actions to further her long-term goal of developing her own business. Meanwhile she was being proactive about improving her present work conditions, and balancing her lifestyle with some new leisure activities. She wanted to take an active part in selecting the contents of her next bottle of remedies, which is to be encouraged with this therapy because according to the Bach Foundation’s code of practice, clients ‘remain at all times responsible for their own well-being’.

Hope, healing and Bach flower remedies

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ Leave a comment

Hope is ‘a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen’ (New Oxford Dictionary of English). Living through hard times is easier when there is hope for improvement. And, according to Law of Attraction teachers such as Abraham-Hicks, having positive expectations can actually help to create a better future.

Lack of hope – hopelessness – may be a long-standing attitude or personality trait. It may be a symptom of a clinical depression. Or it may seem a logical response to certain situations, for example a chronic or progressive illness.

Hopelessness is often linked to helplessness – passive submission to a miserable fate.

Whatever its origins, hopelessness is bad for health. Large prospective studies have identified chronic hopelessness as a risk factor for developing serious illness such as cancer and heart disease. Other studies have found that, in people already suffering from such medical conditions, a hopeless/helpless attitude predicts worse ‘quality of life’ and shorter survival time. This can be explained partly by direct mind-body relationships, and partly by poor self-care. Hopelessness is a frequent precursor of suicide.

One of the contributions of the palliative care movement has been to show that, even when hope of a cure seems unrealistic, there are always other things to hope for: better control of symptoms, rewarding relationships and activities, a peaceful death and perhaps belief in an afterlife.

Is there such a thing as ‘false hope’? Should someone who has been diagnosed with a progressive illness, but who seems unable to accept the fact, be discouraged from starting a long-term project? Should someone like me, with a 40-year history of migraine attacks, give up spending time and money on new treatments? No right or wrong answers here, but if it is true that our mental attitude helps to shape our personal future, we need to seek a balance between maintaining hope and accepting unpleasant realities.

A great many of the Bach flower remedies can help to promote hope. I will mention two of them here. Gorse is especially suitable for those with chronic ill-health who have come to feel that nothing will ever be better and there is no point in trying any longer. The remedy helps to lift their spirits and encourage them to consider new approaches which may lead to improvements in medical symptoms and in other aspects of life. Sweet Chestnut is indicated in more acute situations and helps those in deep despair to ‘see light at the end of the tunnel’.

Glaucoma suspect

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 7 Comments

Those in the holistic healthcare field often believe they should enjoy perfect health themselves – that the right lifestyle and mental outlook should prevent any problems developing, but that even if something does go wrong it can be corrected by natural therapies, without recourse to orthodox medicine or surgery. Such beliefs were challenged for me when, as a ‘glaucoma suspect’, I was referred for LPI – laser peripheral iridotomy. However, my experience so far has been positive and maybe my story will be helpful to others considering this operation.

The only reason I went to the optometrist was that my driving license was due for renewal. It was quite a shock to be told that my vision was not so good as I thought it was, and that my intra-ocular pressures had increased to well above the normal range. I was diagnosed as having ‘narrow angles’ between the lens and the iris. This condition, which blocks the free drainage of aqueous fluid, may or may not progress to either acute or chronic glaucoma. I was referred to a specialist who gave me the choice of either having regular repeat observation, or LPI to create a tiny hole in each iris so allowing the fluid to circulate.

The prospect of an operation, however minor, on such an important and sensitive body part as the eyes was daunting. In general, too, I am wary of medical interventions based on screening tests rather than clinical symptoms. I spent some time researching LPI on Google. Most sites described it as a very safe and successful procedure with only a small risk of side-effects, but I found two separate reports from patients who claimed to have suffered devastating visual damage as a result of this operation. These cases were clearly quite atypical, but still alarming.

I also researched natural approaches to preventing glaucoma. I was already doing most of the right things – not smoking, walking several miles daily, eating plenty of fruit and vegetables – and seldom drinking more than one cup of coffee or one glass of wine per day. My homeopath suggested that walking barefoot on green grass would help relax the eyes and I found this a very pleasant exercise, apart for the time an enthusiastic large dog jumped onto my foot.

Eventually, weighing up the pros and cons, I decided that because visual loss from glaucoma is irreversible, I would accept the preventive surgery.

LPI is an outpatient procedure. On the day, a technician prepared my eyes with two kinds of drops: a local anaesthetic, and pilocarpine to constrict the pupils. Then I had to wait about half an hour, during which time my vision was slightly blurred and I felt rather shaky probably due to a mixture of pilocarpine and nervousness. This was the worst part of the whole experience.

The operation itself took only a few minutes, and the technology was impressive. My chin and forehead rested forward against a frame while my surgeon, seated opposite, applied more local anaesthetic to my right eye and inserted a special lens to prevent blinking and to magnify her view of the iris. She asked to to look straight ahead and then applied a series of laser shots in quick succession. I perceived these as starbursts of red light. They were uncomfortable rather than painful.

The same process was repeated on my left eye, then after a short rest in the waiting room I was ready to leave the clinic and have lunch in a nearby cafe with my husband, who had come with me to provide welcome moral support. I would not have been allowed to drive myself home after having both eyes treated on the same day, though driving is permitted for patients who have had only one eye done.

To my surprise I experienced no after-effects whatever, and felt no need to use the anti-inflammatory eye drops I had been given. Having expected to need a longer recovery period, I had planned to cut down on reading, writing, computing or watching movies for a few days. This involved some pleasant alternatives – including a tour of the vineyards of Waiheke Island. However it was quite a challenge to find activities which did not require use of the eyes, and this made me very conscious of the importance of sight.

At my six-week follow-up appointment I received the good news that my eye pressures were down and the intra-ocular appearances improved. While the long-term outcome remains to be seen, so far it seems that orthodox treatment has been worthwhile.

Update: Two-and-a-half years later, optometry checks every six months continue to show pressure readings above the normal range, but they are no worse than before and all other measurements are satisfactory. No further treatment has been recommended and I hope that a ‘healthy lifestyle’ and ‘positive outlook’ will keep my condition under control.

Bach flower remedies: more than placebo?

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 6 Comments

When I started using Bach flower remedies about eight years ago, purely out of curiosity, I did not really expect them to work. I held the widespread, but misguided, belief that if the mode of action of a therapy cannot be explained by current scientific knowledge it cannot be more than a placebo. The ‘placebo effect’ is a good thing, because it stimulates the potential for self-healing, but for a treatment to be accepted as valid it has to do better than placebo.

I was so surprised when I observed how well my friends and relatives responded to the remedies that I went on to qualify as a practitioner. After treating my first 100 clients I carried out a simple audit. Follow-up information was available in 94 cases. Two clients had discontinued treatment due to ‘healing reactions‘. Three said there was no change in their presenting complaints. Three did not take the remedies, but said they had improved after expressing and reframing their problems during the interview. All the other 86 clients reported some improvement in their emotional and/or physical symptoms, and in 33 of them the response was judged (by me) to be very good or excellent. Clients in this group spontaneously said that they felt calmer, more balanced, lighter, more joyful, more peaceful or more in control, usually within the first week of treatment.

While this can no way claim to be a thorough objective evaluation, its results are impressive. Other descriptive reports have also shown positive effects. However, these carry little weight among orthodox healthcare professionals compared with randomised clinical trials, of the kind used to test new drug treatments. A recent review of seven studies which had used this method concluded that ‘the most reliable clinical trials do not show any differences between flower remedies and placebos’.

Do these trials provide a fair test of the remedies? With respect to their authors – for I know from my previous career in academic medicine that carrying out a good research study is not easy – I think the answer is no. Many of them used a standard combination of flowers, usually the Rescue Remedy, instead of an individualised mixture chosen for each subject through discussion with a practitioner. Many of them were carried out on healthy populations, such as students preparing for exams, some of whom probably did not need any remedies and were unmotivated to take them. This is reflected in high drop-out rates, which detract from the validity of the results.

I am convinced from my own experience that wider use of Bach flower remedies could help a great many people, and reduce the over-prescription of pharmaceutical drugs, but they will not be accepted in conventional medical settings until there is more formal evidence that they work. Future research designs need to reflect the way the remedies are used in practice. The participants should have actually requested treatment for the condition under study: anxiety disorder or chronic pain, for example. Personalised remedy mixtures should be given, selected on the basis of the interview discussion which forms an important part of this therapy. Giving placebo alone would not be ethical, but the remedies could be compared with an established treatment such as medication or cognitive behaviour therapy. I would be pleased to hear from any colleagues who are interested to discuss setting up such a study.

Healing reactions with Bach flower remedies

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 6 Comments

A new client  recently called me to say she was feeling worse rather than better since taking her Bach flower remedies. This happens in my practice just a few times per year. The situation calls for sensitive consideration, but in most cases it is cause for optimism rather than concern.

Though most people notice a steady improvement within a week of starting treatment with Bach flowers, a minority complain of worsening of their original complaints, or the emergence of new symptoms. There may be psychological ones such as heightened anxiety, irritabilty or nightmares; physical ones such as skin ‘break-outs’ or looser bowels; or the worsening of a pre-existing medical problem, arthritis for example. Such symptoms suggest a so-called ‘healing reaction’, which shows that the remedy is resonating with the person. Most healing reactions only last a few days and are likely to be followed by a good response in the longer term.

Healing reactions are best explained in terms of cleansing out of suppressed feelings, a kind of detoxification process, for the remedies themselves have no side-effects and cannot introduce anything negative which is not already there. They may also represent a change in perception of the symptoms or a change of attitude towards them, as the flower remedies reveal hidden layers of emotion and personality (‘peeling the onion’). A similar effect can be found with other types of natural therapy too; in homeopathy it is called an ‘aggravation’.

It is always important to consider other diagnostic possibilities. If there are physical symptoms such as a gastric upset, maybe the mixture has become infected – this could happen if it was not prepared hygienically, has been kept longer than the recommended three weeks, not kept cool, or if the dropper has been touched onto the tongue. Or, the symptoms may be due to some other cause unconnected with the remedies, and need medical assessment.

Healing reactions can be seen with any of the 38 flowers, but several times in my own practice I have seen them resulting from mixtures which contain Agrimony. Dr Bach recommended this for ‘ .. people who love peace and are distressed by argument or quarrel … though generally they have troubles and are tormented and restless and worried in mind or in body, they hide their cares behind their humour and jesting … ‘ Such people often conceal their anxieties from themselves as well as others, sometimes with the aid of drink or drugs or comfort eating, but may be restless at night. The remedy enables more open acknowledgement of emotions, and this can be uncomfortable at first.

Some practitioners do not tell their clients about the possibility of a healing reaction to their clients, but I prefer to explain it, because if they develop a reaction without warning they may assume the remedy does not suit them and stop taking it. If a healing reaction does occur I encourage them to persevere with treatment but to reduce the dose for a while, and may suggest using the Rescue Remedy for a few days.

Bach flower remedies in cancer care

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ 3 Comments

At the beginning of my first career as a medical doctor I worked for several years in a radiotherapy department, and later came to specialise in psycho-oncology. Now as a Bach flower practitioner, though I see clients with a whole variety of problems, I still have a special interest in the psychological aspects of cancer. The main role of the Bach flower remedies in cancer care is to ease emotional distress caused by the diagnosis, the symptoms and the treatment. They are not an alternative treatment for the cancer itself.

One client who came to see me recently has a diagnosis of secondary breast cancer, and quite understandably has often felt despondent about her situation. After her first consultation with me she wrote: ‘My own path is one of deteriorating health and ongoing courses of chemo. I accept “where I am” but recently faced starting a new, stronger chemo regime and became rather melancholy. I decided that over and above medical treatment I needed to keep my own energies in balance in order to cope well and enjoy the present.’ I recommended a mixture of flower remedies including Gentian, which helps to restore faith for those who are feeling disheartened by setbacks in life.

My client’s report continues ‘Imagine my delight around five days after starting the remedies to realise that the melancholy feelings had completely lifted. By the first day of my new chemo regime I was able to hold my head high and present at the appointment in comfort and with confidence…I am convinced that the flowers have helped beyond measure’.

Many of the other remedies from the total of 38 may be indicated in cancer care settings, sometimes for relatives and staff as well as patients themselves. Examples would include Mimulus for courage in the face of understandable fears; Red Chestnut to calm anxiety on behalf of others; Star of Bethlehem to provide comfort at times of shock or sorrow.

Some clients want to go to deeper levels; a cancer diagnosis can be the impetus to change a longstanding psychological imbalance such as a chronically pessimistic outlook, or a tendency to suppress feelings and desires in order to please other people. The flowers can help in such cases too.

Although the question of whether having a positive mindset improves the medical prognosis for cancer is still debated, it will certainly improve general well-being and make it easier to cope.

Up to six flowers, selected for each individual according to how they feel at the present time, can be combined in the same mixture. The remedies themselves have no side effects, but they are made up with a small amount of brandy as preservative and although the alcohol concentration is miniscule there is a theoretical risk of interaction with some prescription drugs, so please check with your doctor if they are safe for you to use.

Further Reading: Barraclough, J (ed) 2007. Enhancing Cancer Care: Complementary Therapy and Support. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Three keys to self-healing

~ Jennifer Barraclough ~ Leave a comment

Reports of new treatment advances, whether in orthodox or alternative medicine, come out almost every day. Some will soon be forgotten or discredited, and others will prove to have real benefits, but none will work for all conditions or all cases – as I well know from my long experience of trying ‘cures’ for migraine.

The basic principles of healing are simple and timeless. There is an old saying all healing is self-healing and though external treatments often do achieve excellent results, none can completely replace the body’s own powers of recovery. We are not consciously aware of the wonderfully complex programs of maintenance and repair continually taking place inside us, but we can help them run better with natural therapies and mind-body techniques.

In a recent interview I was asked to sum up my own approach under three headings, and  the ones I chose were Balance, Positive Outlook, and Self-Determination.

Balance: balance is important in all sorts of ways, including a balanced lifestyle and diet, achieving a balanced state of mind, finding the best compromise when faced with a conflict. The Bach flower remedy Scleranthus is indicated for a sense of imbalance, indecision or fluctuating mood. Many of the other Bach remedies relate to achieving balance in one way or another, whether balancing your own needs with those of others, or balancing your focus between past, present and future.

Positive outlook: a genuinely positive outlook helps both in coping with illness and in strengthening the body’s resistance to illness. But negative feelings also have their place at times and demand expression – forcing yourself to ‘be positive’ all the time is unhelpful. Many of the flower remedies are designed to transform negative states of mind into their positive equivalents. Examples are Mimulus to replace fear with courage, and Gorse to restore lost hope.

Self-determination: this involves taking responsibility for those aspects of your life and health which lie within your power to control, for example making informed choices about treatment. One of the flowers which can be helpful here is Cerato, which promotes self-belief and faith in your own judgement. Another is Walnut, to protect from the outside influences which may distract from your chosen path.

I have written more about this in my book Focus on Healing: Holistic Self-Help for Medical Illness (published 2009 by Papawai Press, Auckland).

Dr Edward Bach was a strong advocate of self-healing. He believed that most bodily illnesses originated with some kind of  imbalance of emotion or personality and that his flower remedies, by  ‘flooding our bodies with the beautiful qualities of our higher nature’, would improve both mental and physical well-being. When Bach put forward such ideas in the 1920s and 1930s they were largely rejected by his colleagues, but mainstream research in mind-body medicine is validating many of his intuitive insights today.

A final comment – according to several published trials, the Bach flower remedies work no better than placebo. This contrasts with the excellent results obtained by trained practitioners. Over 80% of the clients treated in my own practice respond well. I have some ideas about the reasons for the discrepancy between research findings and the clinical observations, and will perhaps discuss these in a future post.