Calming Teen Anxiety | Viveka

Homeopath Gabrielle Pinto has been seeing a stream of teenagers recently. A common theme is anxiety - here are some cases showing how effective a listening ear and the right homeopathic remedies can be.

"A sixteen-year-old boy came for help for his acne; he was also having nightmares of being chased by snakes.  I asked if there was anything difficult happening at school and he told me that one of his old friends had turned against him and he felt powerless to deal with the hurt.
                     His prescription was Sulphur, which is indicated both in acne and dreams of snakes. Six weeks later he dreamt of a snake but this time the snake spoke kindly to him.  As for the acne – his skin was not perfect but it had certainly improved and his relationship with this difficult boy had changed. My client confronted his ex-friend and told him how he felt about this betrayal.  The bullying ceased and as he stood up for himself, his dreams changed and became softer. The acne continues to improve.

The second case concerns a thirteen-year-old boy who became so anxious he stopped going out on his own and refused to see his friends at the weekends.  His problems had emerged some months previously, after watching horror movies, but the films merely brought to a head two years of distress that he has experienced since his father had become ill.
                    We have a remedy called Mancinella for children that have become terrified, not just from horror movies, but also of illness and death. Within thirty days he was so much better, that he was planning a school trip away something that had been unthinkable until the treatment.

A third teenager was a young 18-year old woman who had just left school.  She had enjoyed a wonderful summer with her friends and now she was off to University in London.  Yet in the first week at college she became very depressed and teary and announced that she had made a terrible mistake in her choice of degree.
                         After an in-depth talk with her I discovered that she had difficulty adjusting to a new set of friends and she was feeling very vulnerable.  Her experience of anxiety was at its worst as she left the house in the morning to catch the train, and so she was staying in bed all day.
                   I prescribed the remedy Pulsatilla, which addresses this feeling of insecurity and the need to stay at home with Mum. After two weeks she was feeling much more confident, her tears had stopped, and she felt able to reclaim her course, continue with her studies and meet the new demands of university life.