He works with his wife, a herbalist, on a small farm, where they grow berries to make into delicious fruit sorbets, among other things. He has had sleep problems for many years, unable to fall asleep, always thinking of what needs to be done. It is worse around full moon and at the ocean.
He has constant pain in his knee from arthrosis and damage to a cartilege, but he is too young for a knee replacement. He feels pain in his knee before it rains.
He loves to be outside, and feels easily bored in the house. “I’m always moving – I used to cycle a lot but I can’t now. So I ride a motor-cycle.”
He is the oldest of three boys. “I am not treated the same as the younger two, I even wonder if we have the same father. I don’t look like them at all, and not at all like my ‘father’, but my brothers look a lot like him. I’ve asked my parents if I’m my father’s child – they deny that it could be otherwise. Yet they don’t treat me the same. When I come to visit them, they don’t ask me to stay in the house, even though there is space – I am told to sleep in the car. If I need something, like borrowing a car when ours is in for repairs, it is never possible, but everything is possible for my brothers. I’ve tried to create a bond with them ever since we have children (now 12 and 14 years old), but it doesn’t click.
“When I was young I was always sad, but I didn’t cry, I kept everything to myself. At 6 I had a severe depression – my parents sent me to yoga. At 13 I fell into depression again.
“My mother has a history of depression, too. She never got along well with her mother, though I really liked her mother. She was in conflict with her father. She was never really present – there but not there.
“I had a great contact with my maternal grandparents, I went to them every weekend. (He weeps on telling of the death of his grandmother.) I could talk about everything with my grandmother; she, too, noticed that it was not easy with my parents. I get along with my cousins, aunts and uncles, but with nobody from my father’s side of the family. They don’t pay attention to us.
“As a teen-ager I was depressed, I just stayed in my room and listened to music, or went cycling. I was really good, almost professional, I pushed myself to the limits. For a while I lived in squats or in my car with my dog, I did a lot of drugs and alcohol; I didn’t have any friends. These days I play the saxophone in a group. Besides this group and my family, I don’t have friends. If I was alone, I’d live in a caravan, and have goats and a dog.
“I feel like I am an old soul, as though I have been around a long time. I’m an observer more than a participant. I quickly make conclusions about the people I meet, but I have trouble coming into contact with them. Conversation is not my thing. I don’t get irritated easily for nothing, I say in myself “It will turn out OK”.
I see him off and on for a few years, but nothing really changes. He suffered severely from covid: eczema, coughs, swollen/constricted feeling in his larynx. He developed an allergy to meat and was put on anti-histamines, otherwise he has crises of angioedema, where he cannot breathe.
It is his wife who suggests that he come back due to his increasing problems with sleep. Because it is difficult to get much out of him, she describes him for me. “He is autistic. Our son, too. My husband has real problems making contact. He gets confused about things that he is doing, but is too embarrassed to ask for help. I have to repeat things all the time. It is not true that he does not get irritated – he shouts at the kids; or becomes really tactless when he is angry.”
With this information, we look to the ferns.
He tells me things he has not told me before. “I didn’t talk until I was 3 years old. I wet my bed until I was about 6 years old. My motor skills were always fine, though.
“I hate any change. I get very nervous before anything new, I try to avoid it, but if we have to do something, like prepare for a Christmas market, my sleep is much worse.”

AnalysisWe go through the fern book together, and decide on Cystoperis tennesseensis: 3-443.16.13.
3-440.00.00, Polypodianae: autism, reasonably adapted to society.
3-443.00.00: the cause of the problem is relationships, with friends and family.
Subphase 6, 3-443.016.00, Cystoperidaceae: feeling like an outsider – not totally out, but not in, either.
Stage 13, -443.16.13, Cystoperis tennesseensis: His behaviour is like stage 13: observing, making pot-shots at people when he is irritated.
In “Autistic Ferns” the remedy is described as “this person feels unwanted, alone in the world. He may have family, but he feels not really appreciated and loved. He tries his best to become loved, but he has the feeling that it is in vain.”

Follow upI do not have the remedy, so he takes a slip of paper with him with the name of the remedy on it. He receives the remedy some time later.
His wife tells me of the changes in him. “Incredible! He is a changed man! From the first day since that last consultation, he has slept beautifully. He is not only much less tired because of that, he is also much more open and present. He doesn’t lose his concentration when he is doing something difficult, and he doesn’t lose his temper with the children anymore. He only takes the remedy from time to time, he hardly feels like he needs it anymore.”
We give the same remedy to his son now, too.