Healing in Reverse: Why Old Symptoms Return During Homeopathic Care
Homeopathy: The Medicine We Thought We Were Getting
Homeopathy is the medicine we all thought we were getting all along. Conventional medicine makes promises of health and healing—but underneath the quick fixes and silenced symptoms, the dis-ease is still there. Suppression doesn’t cure. It buries. And sooner or later, what’s buried resurfaces, often in deeper and more dangerous ways.
Homeopathy works differently. It doesn’t hide or suppress symptoms—it listens to them. And when the body begins to heal, the process often looks surprising: old symptoms may return. But this isn’t regression—it’s the surest sign that true healing is underway.
[This post is part of my series on reclaiming homeopathy. If you’re new here, you may want to start with The Forgotten Legacy of Homeopathy, where I share why homeopathy was suppressed and what our world might look like if it had remained the standard of care.]
Why Symptoms Don’t Just Disappear
Symptoms are the body’s language. A rash, a cough, a fever, or chronic pain—it’s all communication. Conventional medicine’s approach is to silence that communication. Steroid creams erase eczema, inhalers quiet asthma, pills numb pain.
But the problem never truly goes away. It just gets driven deeper. That’s why a child whose eczema “cleared” often develops asthma later. Or an adult whose digestive problems seem “managed” suddenly faces autoimmune disease years down the line.
Homeopathy takes those symptoms seriously. Instead of muting the body’s voice, it honors it, using remedies that gently support the body’s own healing intelligence.
The 180° Turn: Walking the Path Backward
I often describe homeopathic care as a 180° turn. Imagine you’ve been walking forward for years, adding layer upon layer of illness—eczema, then asthma, then digestive issues.
Homeopathy takes you by the shoulders and spins you around. You start walking back the way you came. One by one, those layers begin to peel back.
This is why old symptoms reappear—they’re resurfacing as part of the body’s journey back to balance.
For example: when a child’s asthma improves during care, their eczema often returns. And that’s not a failure—it’s wonderful news. It means the dis-ease has moved out of the lungs (a vital organ) and back onto the skin, where it all began. Now, instead of suppression, we can heal it fully—and in doing so, uproot the deeper imbalance that made the skin “angry” in the first place.
[If the idea of symptoms being “gifts” is new to you, I expand on this in Symptoms Are Gifts: How Homeopathy Heals Suppressed Illness.]
Healing Has a Direction
This isn’t random. Healing follows a law of nature, often described in homeopathy as Hering’s Law of Cure:
From the inside → out (vital organs first, then skin).
From top → down.
In reverse order of appearance.
So when an old rash, pain, or symptom resurfaces during care, it isn’t regression. It’s progress. It’s the body saying, “We’re moving in the right direction.”
Stories That Reassure
These patterns show up often:
A child’s chronic cough fades, only for their long-suppressed eczema to return briefly before resolving.
A mother’s migraines ease, but her old digestive issues reappear for a season before clearing completely.
These moments aren’t setbacks. They’re mile markers on the journey home—proof that the body is cleaning house and setting things right.
Why This Matters for Families
For parents, it can feel unsettling when old symptoms come back. But once you understand healing in reverse, you realize these moments are victories, not failures. They build trust in your child’s body, and confidence in the process of homeopathy.
Knowing what to expect means you can respond with calm, clarity, and curiosity—not fear.
Your Role as the Parent
One of the most powerful tools you can use is a timeline of your child’s health story:
When symptoms first appeared.
What medications or interventions were used.
How things shifted afterward.
Any emotional or physical traumas along the way.
This timeline becomes a map. With it, we can retrace the journey, step by step, and walk it backward toward true healing.
A Different Vision of Healing
Healing isn’t always linear. It isn’t always comfortable. And it isn’t always what we expect. But when old symptoms return during homeopathic care, it’s a gift. It means the body is doing its deep work—restoring, rebalancing, and moving dis-ease outward instead of burying it.
Conventional medicine hides symptoms. Homeopathy redeems them.
[Wondering how to tell the difference between old symptoms returning, a proving, or a temporary aggravation? That’s the next part of this series—read it here.]
if you’re ready to begin your own journey of healing in reverse…
“Healing is a journey back to balance—one layer at a time.”
— Emily Stein
