Paeonia in nightmares and abdominal complaints

Case

A young woman of 20 comes for severe nightmares. She is very pretty, dark and has beautiful dark eyes.
She is having the nightmares at least 1 or 2 times every night.
“I’m getting mad of it! Since I was 16 it has been happening to me. It’s a kind of chaos at night and I can’t forget the images I see.”
She studies ‘creative therapy’ in another town and she moved to a room there. But waking from the nightmares alone at night was too much for her, so she went back to her parents house.
I ask her for other complaints.
“At least 3 of 4 weeks my abdomen is distended and I have a regular diarrhea. These complaints have come at the same time as my nightmares. It becomes worse from taking oranges, onions, any alcoholic drink, milk products, capsicum and especially fat food. Also I can’t deal with stress.”
I ask her what she means by that.
“I am easily embarrassed and I can be very negative toward myself. I always blame myself for things. I have been forsaken by so many friends and even loved ones. I often tried to help others when they had a difficult time and then when they were better they didn’t need me anymore. When I was 16 or 17 many situations with people in secondary school went wrong because of me.”

The nightmares arose 2 months before she became 17, together with her abdominal complaints. But when questioning her more precisely, these complaints were existing already, but much less.
What are the nightmares about?
“In my dreams I am looking continuously for a place to hide. Somebody was after me and I didn’t know for what and who it was. Later, gradually the dreams became more intense. The people who were after me became witches and men with long dark coats. The scenes became intense like horror. First I had to escape and later I had to fly and hide without being able to really escape. It is a feeling of being powerless. I do everything, but it fails. I can’t! There are scary monsters hurting or wounding or even killing others I don’t know. There is a lot of blood. Lately I had a dream of a mirror in the dark. I saw my own face. Blood was coming from my eyes, nose, mouth and ears. I didn’t understand. I was petrified and felt so vulnerable.
I experience a lot of pain and injustice, everybody lets me down or detests me. Why is that? Why is nobody standing up for me? I even have dreams of war.
During this last year about 7 or 8 people in my environment died. My general practitioner died suddenly and at least the death of 3 others had a great impact on me.
When I had my summer holidays everything was a little better and I could forget the pictures of the dreams easier. I don’t want these pictures anymore. The most anxious thing is that I can’t do anything and at the same time I feel so vulnerable.
When I was almost 17 I had strong apprehension about a girl friend, that something would go wrong. And I was right, she also let me down.”

Other details:
Every day about 5 p.m. she gets tired. Generally it can last until 8 p.m.
Her family consists of both parents and an elder sister. Also, her sister has her own room for study elsewhere, but she is at home with the parents regularly.
“At 14 we went to a family-therapist because I felt very sad that time. I felt already very negative about myself in that period. When I look back I can see these feelings when I was 4 years old and also during the puberty of my sister, because she knew so well to get all the attention of my parents.”
Her desires and aversions have a strong connection to her abdominal complaints.
She likes milk, but she is < for milk products and the other foods (fat, onions,, oranges, alcohol, caffeïne).


Analysis:
This was her case after the first consultation.
During the visit I tried to see whether there was a clear cause connected to the age when the nightmares and abdominal complaints became strong for her. But the many events and feelings of being let down by loved ones and friends brought me to Hura braziliensis.

Hura belongs to the family of the Euphorbiaceae and I thought I recognized the sufficiently clear theme of the Euphorbiaceae in her picture. Some traits of the Euphorbiaceae are:
Suppressed emotions and anger due to loyalty and dependence on stronger people and authorities.
Feeling unloved or not good. Unloved, dominated, belittled. Lack of love, especially mother love.
Delusion others are hard; do not listen to them.
Suppressed emotions especially anger. Aggression. Violent outbursts; diarrhea, vomiting, herpes zoster, emotionally. Alcohol. Outbursts not allowed. Loyalty to the dominating persons. Distrust themselves. Dependence.
Sensitive, religious. Spiritually minded. Follows others.
Dishonest, not loyal to themselves.
Fear own strength. They are not strong, good or beautiful.

So I decided for Hura braziliensis MK.
I gave her one dose every week during one month mainly because of the intensity, the frequency and quality of the nightmares.


Follow up
In the month after, the horror and bloody pictures disappeared. Still she experiences an anxiety and chaos in her nightmares. She wakes up with a nasty feeling and does not understand what just had happened.
Heat after waking with perspiration on the back.
A few times she experienced a headache in the forehead, pressing inward, during and after waking in the morning. From her GP she was advised to take Duspatal retard 200 mg. once daily.

I did not have a content feeling with it all. Apparently the abdominal complaints had not improved because she was taking allopathic drugs for it. The headaches, although not strong, were not a good sign either. But, the nightmares were decreasing...
I advised her to take the Hura as she wished in the coming month.

Although she stopped the Duspatal soon after and the nightmares really decreased, she kept complaining about her abdominal complaints. The distention of her abdomen stayed and she mentions a regular nausea. She sits with her head above the toilet in the morning until exactly 11 a.m.
The headaches are connected to thunderstorms, < before.
I knew that the nightmares and the abdominal complaints must belong to one remedy picture.

Therefore I changed the remedy to Natrium carbonicum 200K, also because of her sensitivity to milk-products.
A week after the Natrium carbonicum she sends me an e-mail that the nightmares have come back as they originally were.
It was a confirmation of my suspicion about the given remedies and of what I supposed and felt before. So I immediately looked for another remedy for her fitting the nightmares plus the abdominal complaints.


I decided for Paeonia officinalis 200K. I had doubted all the remedies that came up when I reperatorized the case, but fortunately I knew the themes of nightmares and the rectal and abdominal complaints of Paeonia.

The result of the Paeonia was striking.
The nightmares improved considerably and also her abdominal complaints disappeared altogether.
She tells me also that her boyfriend likes her much more now because now and then she is much clearer to him in her opinions and feelings. She was less aloof.
Now she does not need a dose of the Paeonia anymore and sometimes has some dreams, but the nightmares have gone.


Pieter Kuiper.
wingerd@euronet.nl