Sorrow, Sadness or Depression and Anxiety?

Sorrow is an emotion, a feeling. Sorrow is more intensely felt than sadness and can develop into a chronic / long-term state. Sorrow is a natural response to the loss of someone dear to you. Modern medicine incorrectly classifies it as anxiety and depression. Antidepressants are prescribed and what follows can wreck havoc on the patient e.g. addiction, mood swings, joint pain, nausea etc. More than half of those beginning an antidepressant have one of the more common side effects (Brambilla et al. 2005). 

Conventional doctors classify sadness or sorrow as depression and anxiety and suggest medication in the form of anti depressants. Sadly this is not the case. You are sad and anxious because you have lost someone dear to you. It is a natural response to loss.                                                     

The chronic use of antidepressants to treat grief, sorrow and anxiety promotes dependency on drugs rather than empowering the person to make positive life changes to deal with their loss. Homeopathy offers a gentle way to handle delicate emotions as one of my patients will testify:

“I found it very difficult to deal with my husband’s death. I became lethargic and unable to carry out even the most simple of tasks. I was put on medication which made me feel dull. I was unable to sleep or eat. I went from being a size 18 to a size 10. My daughter had attended Noirin in the past and suggested I pay her a visit. I was very comfortable in her presence and found her very understanding and caring. A year on I am feeling so much better. “
(Susan, Galway City)

Each person, each body reacts to this state of sorrow differently. Some suppress their emotions, some cry.  Some become morose others become anxious. Homeopathy has wonderful remedies that recognise the body’s reaction to grief and sorrow. It is a great way to bounce back to a normal state without the use of sedatives or antidepressants.

Here I will list some remedies that are indicated in grief and sorrow.

Ignatia. Grief and sorrow, with shame; suppressed internal vexation, which continues ; sad indifferent aversion, full of fear; vertigo, headache, pressing pain in stomach, emptiness in pit of the stomach ; amenorrhoea ; attacks like epilepsy or chorea; broods over imaginary troubles.

Staphisagria. With apprehension for the future ; hypochondriacal, apathetic, with weak memory, caused by unmerited insults, or by persistently dwelling on sexual subjects ; great indignation about things done by others or by himself; grieves about the consequences ; nervous weakness ; convulsions, with loss of consciousness ; sleepiness in the daytime.

Arsenicum album. Sad, tearful, anxious mood ; exhaustion from the slightest exertion.Mental derangement; averse to meeting acquaintances ; imagines he formery- offended them, though he knows not
how ;

Causticum. Chronic complaints after long-lasting grief or sorrow ; taciturn and distant; hopeless; thinking of complaints aggravates them, especially haemorrhoids.

Lachesis. Great sadness and anxiety; chronic complaints after long-lasting grief or sorrow.

Mercurius solubilis. Grief, with fear at night; disposition to quarrel; complaining of his relations and surroundings; acrid running coryza ; looseness, with tenesmus; sleep prevented by seeing frightful faces.

Nux moschata. Palpitation from sadness; weeping mood, gloomy, fears to go to sleep; sleepy from overtaxing the mind; gastric ailments; hysteria; staggers in walking, falls often.