Ask a Homeopath: How Do I Know I'm ACTUALLY Healing This Time?

Cailee illustrates different ways healing can look with chronic illness

Dear Cailee,

I’ve been trying to heal from chronic illness for a few years now. Like many people I started by going the conventional medicine route with no results. Then I went natural and saw several functional doctors, acupuncturists, chiropractors, etc. It feels like I’m spinning my wheels and I’m frustrated. Now that I am trying homeopathy I need some glimmer of hope. What does healing look like from your perspective? How do I even know I am healing?

Signed,
Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,

If I could use one word to characterize most of my healing journey “frustrated” would be exactly the word I would use. If I had a few more words they would be scared, confused, broke, and sometimes downright PISSED.

When I started trying to “heal” I was nearly 20. I had an unfortunate incident with a chiropractic adjustment that lead me down a path of discovering everything else that was “wrong” with me (gut stuff, mental health stuff, joint and nervous system stuff…).

No one truthfully knew what exactly was “wrong” with me - I just had a combination of symptoms that felt debilitating. Functional medicine tests had a lot to say about what might be wrong. Maybe it was mold, or low copper, or too much copper, or candida, or aluminum toxicity…

One time I saw my dad comment on a YouTube video asking for help with his daughter who he thought was vaccine injured. He wasn’t one to tell me directly that he was concerned but apparently he was according to this comment.

Most of my 20’s were consumed by following expensive health protocols and diets with little to no forward movement. In fact, most times it felt like I was going backwards.

Enter homeopathy - the happiest accident of my life. Amidst all the health protocols I had a severe “healing reaction” - AKA my body was completely overwhelmed by the hoards of supplements I was taking everyday. I was contemplating going to the ER - I was so weak I could barely stand and was having chronic anxiety attacks because of my symptoms.

A practitioner gave me my first homeopathic remedy amidst this healing crisis and I went from wanting to go to the ER to going to bed a taking a very, very long nap.

This brings me to my first point. There are times where healing will be very, very obvious. And there are times when healing will be almost imperceptible.

If you are in an acute flare of a chronic symptom like I was (anxiety through the roof, weak af) if I give you a remedy I want you to be feeling better very quickly.

What does better look like in this instance?
-You take a nap instead of being stressed the f out unable to sleep
-You go from bed ridden to talking a walk around the block
-You have an appetite again
-You’re in a better mood (people will comment you’re more like “yourself”)
-The symptoms take up less space in the brain

Let’s pause at “the symptoms take up less space in your brain”

If you’re in an acute flare of a chronic symptom or you’re just trying to heal chronic symptoms that have remained at the same baseline for a long time a GREAT indicator that things are moving in the right direction is that you’re not thinking about that symptom quite as much as you did before.

When I was healing from chronic foot pain, for example, every time I walked I was thinking about my foot. I was thinking that it hurt, that the symptom sucked, that I missed wearing cute shoes. I was thinking about if I would be able to walk as much as I wanted to on my honeymoon. I was wondering when I would be going back to the gym.

Then overtime, as I gave myself remedies that were moving things in the right direction, it was like the stress of the symptom dropped outside of my awareness.

I would walk and think huh that feels a little stiff and then I would move on and do whatever I was doing.

When I was at the gym I wasn’t constantly wondering if I was about to “push too far” and get a flare.

I walked 13,000 steps in Italy and didn’t think about it.

See the difference? I had a little bit of discomfort left that just needed time and space to heal but it wasn’t consuming my life.

Sometimes we can go so far as FORGETTING we had the symptom in the first place. I can’t count how many times I’m followed up with a client about a symptom that was a 10/10 and bothering them daily only for them to say “…oh yeah I forgot about that!”

Which brings me to my next point - what I see is there is a point of no return with symptoms. As in - there is a point in which they simply do not return. The tricky thing with this is that sometimes it nags us right up until the very last second and then suddenly it vanishes.

With clients I often talk about incremental change. Imagine you have a high yield savings account that accrues interest overtime. Now, stick with me! Today you put in $400. Overtime that $400 becomes $425 becomes $500 becomes $1,000 etc.

This is often how healing happens.

Let’s say you have super painful periods that begin with a migraine headache. I might prescribe you a remedy like Sepia 200c. When you first take Sepia, you might feel like it chills you out if you’re someone who tends to be stressed and “adrenally.”

You’re like ok cool now what?

Well your next period might have slightly less clotting. And instead of the migraine being a 10/10 it might be an 8/10 and last half as long. Maybe you didn’t have to reach for a painkiller this time.

Then you notice you have more energy during ovulation and before your period - whereas before your energy would dip and you would get grumpy as a result.

OK sweet!

Then your next period is just as painful as before you ever took the Sepia BUT your migraine was a 5/10 and once again lasted half as long.

Now wait what?! So my period is going to go back to being painful?

Hey who said healing was linear?? Your symptoms are going to ebb and flow on their way out. That’s just how this works. NOTHING in life works like a straight line.

Its like when someone is trying to lose weight - they may fluctuate between the same 3 pounds, then drop 5 pounds, gain back 2, lose another 4. It can be super discouraging but the overall TREND is downward.

That’s what matters. Incremental change and a downward trend in severity of symptoms.

With healing, we have to zoom out and look at the big picture.

We want that 10/10 migraine going down, down, down until suddenly it reaches the “point of no return.”

That’s the good news. I often see that there is a point where a 5/10 pain just becomes 0/10 and completely vanishes. Pretty cool, right? It’s not always slow going.

Maybe it returns once or twice because we’ve had a super stressful period of life and we take the Sepia 200c and then it’s gone again.

But it won’t return with the same intensity as it did initially once it’s been addressed with a remedy. That’s because a well-matched homeopathic remedy will give your body the exact instruction manual for how to remove that symptom. It will remove any blocks that have been getting in the way of healing it prior.

Some symptoms go away very quickly because they are less deeply rooted. And other symptoms take longer because they involve organs, nerves, etc that take longer to heal or it’s a symptom that’s been giving you trouble for a longer period of time.

So that’s my spiel on healing. I’m sure we will return to this topic at a later date because there is honestly SO MUCH to say on it. But I hope that gives you some hope. If you stick with it, progress is inevitable.

-Cailee

To work with Cailee and book an appointment for homeopathic care please visit www.theripenedheart.com