The anxiety blend
Anxiety is one word covering at least four different feelings, and the remedy follows the feeling rather than the word. A fear you can name is not the same as dread that arrives from nowhere, and neither is the same as a mind that will not stop going over it.
The five inside, and why each is there
Each one covers a different face of the same situation, and the blend is all of them together. Read any of them in full to see how much of it is yours, and buy them singly if you would rather mix your own.
MimulusFor fear with a name on it. The appointment on Thursday, the flight, the phone call you keep not making.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
AspenFor dread with nothing attached to it, the uneasy sense that something is about to go wrong.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
White ChestnutFor the loop. The same worry and the same three sentences, round again at two in the morning.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
Rock RoseFor the point where it stops being nerves and becomes panic, when your body gets there before you do.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
Cherry PlumFor the fear of your own reaction, that you might lose your grip on it in front of everyone.Check price on Amazon(opens on Amazon in a new tab)
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When people reach for it
- You can name exactly what you are afraid of, and naming it has not helped
- The feeling arrives first and no reason for it ever shows up
- You go over the same conversation all evening and get nowhere
- Your chest is tight before anything has actually happened
- You are frightened of how frightened you get
How to take it
Two drops of each of the five into a 30ml bottle of spring water, then four drops from that four times a day. That is the blend as it stands, and it is a perfectly good place to start. Give it two weeks before you decide anything.
You can also tailor it, and it is worth going back over the five above to see how many of them are actually yours. Anxiety usually has one lead feeling and one sitting behind it, so a bottle holding the two you recognized is easier to read than five taken to be safe. Using fewer costs you nothing.
For the sharp end of it, the presentation or the takeoff or the waiting room, the ready made crisis formula sits alongside this without any conflict: the blend for the pattern, the formula for the spike. Frequency matters more than quantity either way, so four small doses through the day beat one large one.
The mixing guide walks through the whole method, bottle sizes and all.
Common questions
Which Bach flower remedy is best for anxiety?
It depends which anxiety you mean. If you can point at the thing, Mimulus. If the feeling turns up with nothing attached to it, Aspen. If the trouble is that your mind will not stop circling, White Chestnut. If it goes past nerves into real panic, Rock Rose, and if what scares you is your own reaction, Cherry Plum. Most people recognize two of those at once, which is what a mixing bottle is for.
What is the difference between Mimulus and Aspen?
Whether you can finish the sentence. Mimulus fear ends in a noun: the dentist, the interview, the dog at the end of the road. Aspen dread has no noun at the end of it, which is exactly what makes it hard to explain to anyone. If you have both, and plenty of people do, take both.
Is Rescue Remedy good for anxiety?
It is built for the moment rather than the pattern. The crisis formula is what people reach for in the ten minutes before a scan or on a bad flight, and it does that job well. If the anxiety is a steady feature of your week rather than a spike, the five remedies above describe it more precisely, and there is nothing stopping you keeping both.
What about anxiety that only shows up at night?
That is usually White Chestnut, since the loop gets loud once there is nothing else to listen to. Aspen suits the version where you wake at three feeling uneasy for no reason you can find. If the whole problem is the getting to sleep, the sleep blend covers that pattern in more detail.
Is there a remedy for social anxiety?
Mimulus is the usual starting point, because Bach described the shyness and the fear together and they often travel that way. Add Larch if the real belief is that you will do it badly, Cerato if you leave every conversation checking whether you said the wrong thing, and Agrimony if you get through it all behind a cheerful face and feel wrung out afterwards.
A blend is one answer for everyone
If what you are carrying is a pattern rather than a situation, a remedy chosen for how you actually feel will fit better. The quiz narrows the 38 in about a minute.