Tony* was quite surprised. His difficulties in having sex during the past two years had, over the last eight weeks, “just faded away.”

Two years ago Tony had been diagnosed with HIV. It was a bad shock for him as the guy he caught HIV from was his boyfriend – who’d said he was HIV negative. Tony found out he’d been lied to by someone he trusted completely. They broke up soon after. “I felt betrayed,” said Tony. “I just retreated into my shell. I didn’t go out – I hardly spoke to anyone for weeks. I just went numb.”

Tony came through this and began seeing friends again – but he didn’t think of sex again for quite a long time. After about six months he decided to get on with life and started going out to clubs again but, to his dismay, he found sex was impossible.

“I couldn’t get an erection,” he told me. “There was a lot of shame and guilt but worse was a feeling of being, somehow, contaminated. I felt kind of dirty and unclean. Even though I knew it wasn’t rational I was afraid guys would get HIV from just being in bed with me.”

Tony saw a counsellor for several months which he said helped a lot. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of somehow being dirty and contaminated whenever sex was involved and he virtually gave up on it.

Then a friend told Tony about how using Bach Flowers had helped him get through a similar crisis in his life. The friend was fairly persuasive and encouraged Tony to come into the Positive Living Centre and find out about them.

Bach flower essences were developed 70 years ago by Dr Edward Bach – a medical physician with considerable experience in emergency medicine, bacteriology and immunology. However, in 1930 he abandoned a successful medical career in London and moved to the English countryside to seek out purer and simpler methods of treatment.

Bach’s core insight was that mental, emotional and spiritual disturbances play a key role in the development of physical illness. He believed that if these disturbances were effectively treated then the resulting physical illness could be cured or even prevented. Over the next six years he discovered and prepared 38 different ‘flower essences’ and successfully treated many hundreds of people.

Tony’s treatment began with a combination of flowers of Star of Bethlehem (to address the after-effects of shock, both from his HIV diagnosis and from his feelings of betrayal by his boyfriend), ‘flowers’ of the Pine tree, Pinus sylvestris (to help clear his feelings of guilt), Mimulus flowers for his fear and anxiety about having sex and, the key remedy for Tony, Crab Apple flowers. Crab Apple specifically assists with clearing irrational thoughts of being contaminated, dirty and feeling ‘unclean’. It’s also very useful where these might be accompanied by a compulsive need for strict hygiene, cleanliness and order.

Tony stayed on this basic formula for around eight weeks. There were occasional changes or additions – such as flowers of the Larch tree when Tony felt he’d totally lost confidence in going out to clubs or having sex.

Tony couldn’t really say when he felt back to normal. “Using the flower essences was really subtle, my mind seemed to just slowly shift without me noticing it,” he said. “I was a bit nervous when I first went home with a guy after my time away from the scene, but after a few false starts everything was fine. My ‘dirty’ feeling just faded away.”

Probably the most well known of Bach’s flower essences is ‘Rescue Remedy’, a mix of five flower essences which people use for the aftereffects of shock or trauma, for panic attacks or for more general bouts of severe stress. However, Bach Flower Essences can address a myriad of other emotional issues and personality problems.

A trial tested Bach Flowers on 115 people with a variety of symptoms which, for analysis, were classified as anxiety, depression or stress.

Just like Tony, participants in this trial were given a specific formula that matched their individual symptoms. Treatment was continued until people felt totally cured or they had improved as much as they felt they could.

Analysis examined how many people were cured or felt significantly better after treatment. For stress, the percentage who showed an improvement was 100 percent, for anxiety it was 93 percent and for depression it was 77 percent. The average improvement rate was 89 percent.

Around three-quarters of participants completed treatment within ten weeks, with the remainder continuing treatment for longer. Three people continued taking Bach flowers for more than 30 weeks.

A standard dose of Bach Flowers is four drops under the tongue. Many naturopaths prescribe them and some health food stores have staff who can prescribe and prepare them as well.

There are now a lot of different flower essences being developed but Bach’s essences have the advantage of the accumulated knowledge and experience of 70 years of continual clinical use by many thousands of people in over sixty countries.

• Tony is not his real name but this story has been used with his permission.

_Jim Arachne is the Complementary Therapy Treatment Officer for the Victorian AIDS Council.

Reference

¹ Campanini M., Bach Flower Therapy: Results of a Monitored Study of 115 Patients. La Medicina Biologica 1997; 15(2): 1-13