The best mate for Silicea is a leader type who is willing to take charge and provide for her, so she can keep up the standard of living she is used to. She often expects her mate, or parents, to provide for her, since she is a bit of a princess. She likes being dependent on others and prefers not to have to work to support herself. She also likes being “in the shadow” of her mate, where he gets the public attention and she doesn’t, so she avoids being judged by anyone.
Silicea prefers to be alone, rather than attract any attention to herself, so she is more than happy to let her mate get the attention instead. That way she doesn’t risk ruining the image she is trying to uphold. Silicea is usually timid and irresolute in relationships, and doesn’t mind if her mate is in charge and makes most of the decisions, except of course, if she has already made up her mind about something. If that is the case, she can be unbelievably stubborn, and doesn’t let go of the issue, no matter what happens.
One of my Silicea clients presented a strong image of being a spiritual person with a very open mind. He told me he had overcome all his childhood issues and, therefore, refused to talk about anything from his childhood. He suffered from horrible migraines for 30 years after exposure to asbestos (a silica compound), and he wanted to explore what homeopathy could do for his condi-tion. He didn’t mind telling me about his physical symptoms, but any questions about his mental, or emotional state, made him tired and irritable. Once he
even got up in the middle of the consultation and told me he had to leave be-cause he couldn’t handle that much thinking. This is when I started wondering why he actually came for a consultation in the first place, when he didn’t want to answer any personal questions which were relevant to his case, but it all started making sense as the case progressed.
I gave him Silicea for his headaches based mostly on his physical symp-toms, and the fact that the headaches initially appeared after exposure to asbestos. The most peculiar thing about the headaches was that they were always improved by any kind of heat, hot wraps, hot water, hot tea, even heat from the sun! This all pointed towards Silicea.
He took a dose of Silicea 30c and experienced a horrible aggravation for a couple of days. I told him to wait until the aggravation passed and then dose himself on an as needed basis, with a follow up in a month.
After a month he came back and told me he didn’t know if the remedy had been doing anything at all. I asked if he was still doing his allopathic pain and sinus medicines, and he told me he had stopped all that. He still insisted that the remedy didn’t have anything to do with it, and he couldn‘t tell if the headaches were still there or not. I found this statement very strange, since his headaches were often serious enough that he frequently ended up in the emer-gency room, so why was he not able to tell if they were gone or still there?
At this point I was confused and didn’t really know where to go next.
However, I don’t usually give up on a remedy unless I have tried it in at least 2 different potencies, so I decided to try Silicea 200c. On the next follow up he told me that he had taken a dose when his head was hurting. I asked if it had any effect, and he said he couldn’t tell. I asked again if the pain had improved at all during the last month, or if it had remained the same or worse. He still couldn’t answer. I also asked if the frequency of the headaches had changed in any way.
Again he said: “I don’t know, I really can’t tell.” I told him to try a dose of the 200c weekly for a while, and see what would happen, and on the next follow up, I found that he had stopped taking the homeopathic remedy and resumed taking all his old allopathic medicines again. He told me that my remedy didn’t work, and that his headaches were just as bad as they had always been. I told him then that I simply couldn’t help him, and he answered happily with his arms crossed in front of his chest: “No, that’s right! Your remedies don’t work for me!”
At that time a friend of mine confessed that this client hadn’t actually come to me on his own initiative, rather she had convinced him to come and see me. My personal feeling is that he came to see me so his friend wouldn’t judge him or think him closed minded. This was so important to him, that he was willing to pay my fee with his hard earned money, just to prove that
homeopa-thy couldn’t help him. This also explains why he didn’t show any personal interest in homeopathy, or have any motivation to cooperate with me while taking his case, and he didn’t seem to have any interest in actually using the remedy I suggested, either. He had been doing allopathic medicine for his headaches for so long that he felt comfortable with doing what he was familiar with since he was convinced that nothing was going to cure his condition any-way. He was annoyed to have to answer personal questions that could challenge his image of being spiritually advanced and open minded, and he kept telling me not to feel bad if I couldn‘t help him. Finally, I understood! He didn’t actu-ally want my help! He only wanted to be able to say that he had tried homeopa-thy, and that it didn’t work for him, and then go back to what he was doing in the first place! (This case was from my earlier days as a homeopath. If someone like that came to see me now, I would simply tell the person to come back again at a later time when they were more ready to work with me.)
This case shows the quiet stubbornness that goes with Silicea. When Silicea’s mind has been made up, the ideas can be absolutely fixed. No matter how convincing your arguments are, she (or in this case, he) will quietly stick to what she feels, regardless of whether she is right or not. This is one of Silicea’s biggest problems in relationships, too. Once she makes up her mind, you don’t have to bother arguing because you are just going to waste your time. This lack of flexibility can make Silicea a bit of a challenge to live with.
Another challenge for Silicea is the combination of indecision and stub-bornness. A male Silicea client was so depressed that he had almost lost his will to live because his life was so stagnant that he just couldn’t stand it any longer.
He told me that this has been a pattern throughout his life. He “gets into a groove” and when he gets tired of it, he can’t seem to find a way out. He had a history of changing jobs and short lived relationships, and it was always the same story. Once he was familiar with something, and there were no more challenges, the feeling of stagnancy would creep in again and make him feel that life was totally meaningless. In the interview I found that he had a bril-liant mind and could produce fantastic ideas on the spur of the moment, but he always ended up talking himself out of things, or simply postponing them. His critical nature combined with a lack of self confidence and indecision made it impossible for him to move forward. In addition to indecision, we can add stub-bornness, resistance to change and a tendency to postpone, and we end up with total stagnancy. Changing the external circumstances only made him feel better until the newness wore off again, and by the time he came to me for a remedy, he had seen that this was a pattern that wouldn’t go away by a change of scen-ery. I decided to give him Silicea, and after I described the remedy picture to him, he started feeling very cautious. He wanted a very low potency to start with, and at first, he couldn’t even decide if he wanted to take the remedy or not. What if it was going to change him too much? There were many things that
he liked about himself, and he wasn’t sure if it was worth changing, or if he would be better off staying with his old, familiar self. This shows how hard it is for Silicea to embrace anything new, even though they may be miserable with their present situation.
This issue often shows up as a general lack of spontaneity in Silicea’s relationships. Because Silicea’s ideas are fixed, she doesn’t easily adapt to any spontaneous suggestions from the people in her life, and this can easily become a continuous source of conflict, especially if she has chosen a more spontaneous type for a mate. Maybe she will choose a mate who is very different from herself because she instinctively knows that she needs to loosen up a bit and learn how to let go, but that is usually easier said than done for someone who resists change and is naturally stubborn and cautious.