When the worry will not switch off

• A background hum of dread that is there before anything has happened.
• Fear attached to something specific: the phone call, the diagnosis, the exam, the drive.
• A body that reacts first, with the racing heart or the tight chest arriving before the thought does.
• Worry that is mostly about other people, and almost never about you.
• The fear that you will lose your grip and do something you would not choose to do.
• Being fine all day and undone the moment there is nothing left to do.

Bach Flower therapy does not treat anxiety. It is worth being exact about that, because a lot of what gets written about these remedies is not.

What a consultation offers is an hour spent working out which anxiety you actually have. Dread with no object and fear of a nameable thing are different states, and Dr. Bach classified different essences for them. Most people arrive able to say only that they are anxious, and leave with something more specific than that, which is useful whatever they decide to do next.

The essences themselves are gentle and physiologically inert. They will not sedate you, will not make you drowsy at work, and are not habit forming.

A selection is personal, so this is not a list to work through yourself. It is here so you can see the distinctions the system actually makes, which are finer than the single word most of us use.

• Mimulus

  Fear

  Fear of a thing you can name: the dark, the exam, the phone call, the illness.

• Aspen

  Fear

  Apprehension with nothing attached to it. A sense that something is coming, with no name for it.

• Rock Rose

  Fear

  Terror. Panic that arrives all at once and takes the body with it.

• White Chestnut

  Insufficient interest in present circumstances

  The same thought going round, unwanted, loudest when the room goes quiet.

• Red Chestnut

  Fear

  Fear on someone else’s behalf. The worry is never for you, it is for them.

• Cherry Plum

  Fear

  The fear of losing control, of snapping, of doing something you would not choose to do.

A consultation is about 60 minutes online, in English, Hindi or Punjabi, for ₹400. You can read what actually happens in one before deciding, and what the research does and does not support.

• BurnoutRunning on empty, and still running
• Children's emotionsWhen your child’s feelings are bigger than they are
• Sleep and overthinkingThe thought that starts when the lights go off