A 28 year- old male contacted me for help with a case of severe Insomnia that had been plaguing him for the previous 2 months. Although he presented with many chronic complaints, the more acute situation of sleeping for only a few hours each night was the primary focus of this particular interview. Inquiring during the interview, as to whether or not there had been any emotional or mental stresses that could have caused this severe insomnia, there was initial hesitation to share with me. He then he stated that it was a very in-depth story. Yet once he began sharing, he was very open and expressive, even shockingly so.
“When I found out that my ex-girlfriend, who I had almost proposed to a year ago, and even bought the ring for is moving to my hometown, I just stopped sleeping, and I started having very vivid dreams, some with her in them.”
Thinking that this seemed simple enough to resolve, I asked him if he could try to avoid seeing her since it troubled him to the extent that he wasn’t sleeping much at all. “Well, I’m just too nice, I guess. She wants to hang out with me a lot when she moves here. I asked if there was any hope at all for them to reconcile their relationship. At this point, the story truly unfolded. He reported that this ex-girlfriend was actually in a serious relationship with a different man. However, she wanted to “hang out” with him as “good friends”, even wanting him to help her to move. “We will be neighbors”, she told him when he expressed that he felt torn and confused by her behavior. He felt angry at himself for not standing up to her to tell her that he couldn’t “hang out” with her. He knew that it was bad for him to be around her since he still had strong feelings for her while she was in love with someone else. This issue was obviously the center, and root cause, of his inability to sleep.
At the time of writing this report, I am a student in the Practitioner Certificate Program at Homeopathy School International, and this case was supervised by my instructor. When I turned the case in to her, she also was impressed with my client’s transparency in all that he told me. She pointed out Ignatia amara 1M, one dry dose, as a possibility to resolve the presenting complaint of insomnia.
At a follow-up appointment with me, one week after he had taken the remedy, my client shared that his initial response to the Ignatia was nausea for a full day. After the initial nausea had worn off he reported that he had been sleeping much better, going from barely 3 hours per night to 7 hours, on average. Regarding the emotional sphere, I was amazed to observe that he seemed very different in this follow-up interview. Whereas he was very perplexed, confused and open in the initial interview, he now seemed fairly nonchalant and much less anxious about the entire issue. It was a direct contrast to his demeanor prior to the remedy. Ignatia amara is one of our best-known and most often used homeopathic remedies for any type of romantic grief or disillusionment. As this case demonstrates, Ignatia Amara definitely worked its wonders for this case of romantic turmoil resulting in severe insomnia.
