I am entering a new chapter of life.
Next month, my daughter graduates from college and begins a new job in a different state. I recently ended an engagement.
And alongside those changes, I have been doing deep work around releasing relationship patterns I can no longer tolerate — people-pleasing, self-abandonment, and any form of verbal or emotional abuse.
That kind of emotional detox is not easy.
It is one thing to see your patterns. It is another to shift the ones that allowed pain to enter and remain in your life. I thought I was navigating that process fairly well.
Until last week.
Out of nowhere, I was hit with an intense wave of headache, nausea, dizziness, and irritability. I tried to push through, but eventually I had to cancel my meetings, crawl into bed, and sleep for the rest of the day.
The next morning, thinking I was improving, I went to yoga. But the dizziness intensified. So I lay down on the mat, closed my eyes, and did a quick body scan.
My hands immediately moved to my gallbladder.
And suddenly, it clicked.
The gallbladder is often associated with courage, forward movement, and decision-making. Physically, it is also connected to symptoms like nausea, dizziness, headaches, and irritability. It stores and concentrates bile — a bitter substance that has long been associated, emotionally, with bitterness, frustration, and anger.
And I realized that as I stopped people-pleasing and began releasing the hurt, rage, and resentment that came from tolerating what deeply hurt my heart, something in me was shifting at a very deep level.
What I had been experiencing as emotional detox was also showing up physically.
Leaning into the courage to move forward — to make difficult decisions, to stop abandoning myself, to thaw old paralysis and stagnant patterns — seemed to trigger an overload in my gallbladder. What had been stored for a long time was finally moving.
I used to joke that when I did not know what to do, I would do nothing. And for a long time, I survived in that frozen, “don’t rock the boat” state.
But survival is not the same as healing.
And sometimes, when we finally begin to move, the body has to process everything that was held in place for far too long.
The gallbladder is correlated with both the courage to move forward in life and symptoms of nausea, dizziness, headaches and irritability. In fact, the gallbladder is where bile – a bitter fluid which is correlated with bitterness or anger – is stored and concentrated.
When I stopped people-pleasing and tolerating abusive behavior, something deeper began to move.
As I started processing and releasing the toxic emotions like the anger, hurt, and sense of being taken advantage of from the gallbladder, that emotional release triggered a physical detoxification which sent my gallbladder into overload – presenting not only as nausea, but also a headache, dizziness and stomach upset.
Leaning into the courage to move forward, make difficult decisions, and create change seemed to stir what had been stuck for a long time.
For years, I joked that if I did not know what to do, I would choose to do nothing. I survived in that stagnant, “don’t rock the boat” state for far too long.
But when that paralysis began to thaw, and the stagnation started to release, my gallbladder took the hit – trying to process everything it had been holding for so long.
What Does the Gallbladder Do?
As you may know, the gallbladder is a small, pear-shaped organ that stores and concentrates bile – a bitter fluid which is correlated with bitterness or anger. When you eat a meal that contains fat, the gall bladder secretes bile into the small intestine, where it helps emulsify the fat for digestion.
Your gall bladder performs many important functions in your body. In addition to supporting digestion, your gallbladder helps support detoxification and your hormonal balance by helping to assimilate fat and fat-soluble vitamins, which are critical building blocks to many hormones.
On an emotional level, the gallbladder represents courage, assertiveness, and the ability to process anger and resentment. Emotional gallbladder imbalances can present as intense frustration, anger, bitterness, and resentment, often resulting from suppressed emotions. Physically and emotionally, this manifests as people pleasing, timidity, indecisiveness, anxiety, frustration, and bottled-up anger.
Healthy bile flow prevents stagnation of both physical and emotional toxins. It helps bind to harmful compounds – including environmental toxins and old hormones – to move them out of the body and prevent them from recirculating. On a physical level, healthy bile flow stimulates peristalsis, moving waste through the intestines quickly, which prevents toxins from lingering in the digestive tract and being reabsorbed.
Bile also serves as an emotional depository to carry toxins out of the body. When you eliminate the bile, you eliminate the toxins along with it. In other words, your ability to move toxins out of the body is COMPLETELY LINKED TO BILE FLOW. If you don’t have adequate bile flow, emotional and physical toxins do not flow out of the body. Unfortunately, stress, hormones, and excess fat consumption can make the bile thick, viscous and stagnant, which impedes its ability to flow – fortunately, essential oils can help!
Gallbladder Symptoms
When the gallbladder is overwhelmed from too many physical or emotional toxins, or your bile is too viscous, it can present as symptoms like:
- Nausea
- Motion Sickness
- Dizziness or lightheadedness
- Bottled-up anger, resentment and bitterness
- Dry skin and brittle hair
- Constipation
- Fatigue
- Bitter taste in the mouth
- Light colored stools
- Inability to digest fatty foods
- Headaches (especially mild headaches above the eyes)
- Sciatica-like pains
- Hormonal imbalances (fat helps synthesize new hormones and eliminate old hormones)
- Low levels of fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K despite ample supplementation
- Gas, belching or bloating after meals
- Greasy, smelly, light-colored and/or floating stools.
- Gallbladder pain (mid to right upper abdomen)
- Pain between the shoulder blades
- Floating stools, diarrhea, and/or greenish stools
- Hormone imbalances including PMS and menopause symptoms
- Gas, heartburn and/or nausea after eating
- Extra weight – when your liver stops processing fat—due to a bile shortage—it begins storing it, often as a persistent roll of fat at your waistline
How I Navigated My Gallbladder Attack
When your gallbladder is overwhelmed – either from physical or emotional toxins – you can’t clear fats or break down hormones or other metabolic waste products either. Just like physical toxins, emotional toxins like unprocessed anger, hurt or resentment can push you over the edge.
My first symptom was a headache that was located primarily near the forehead – where the gallbladder meridian lies.
As the night wore on, I also started to grow more and more nauseas and dizzy.
It was not until I checked in with my body on the yoga mat and I took stock of the compilation of symptoms, and realized that all signs pointed to a gallbladder attack.
The moment I recognized the root cause, I knew what tools I could use to unravel it, including a coffee enema, castor oil pack and essential oils.
Castor oil is a fabulous tool to help reduce liver and gallbladder inflammation and soften the tissue in the liver and gallbladder. It helps to stimulates the liver and unblock stagnant bile and bile ducts, while also opening your bowels to allow for easier elimination of bile sludge and toxins.
Essential Oils to Support a Gallbladder Attack
Essential oils help keep plants healthy by moving vital fluids and energy. They perform similar functions in your body, helping to move energy and prevent stagnation. When your gallbladder becomes stagnant, from physical toxins, stress or anxiety, it impedes detoxification.
Essential oils are a powerful tool to help shift stagnation and improve the flow of energy and toxins through the liver and the gall bladder.
Essential oils can help shift your body into alignment so toxins do not backlog into your bloodstream, but flow out of your body. You can read more about how to detox directionality here. Topically applying essential oils to specific points on your skin can activate energy flow directly and quickly, stimulating your liver and gall bladder to help toxins flow out of the body.
The super small size of essential oil molecules allows them to be easily transdermally assimilated into the organs, to help promote directional flow of bile and toxins. The following essential oil blends are especially beneficial:
Gall Bladder™ blend is designed to improve the viscosity of the bile and the health of the gallbladder, allowing better fat digestion and elimination of toxins and old hormones. To support the optimal flow of bile from the Gall Bladder, apply Vibrant Blue Oils Gall Bladder™ on the right side of the body under the bra under-wire or along and slightly under the right rib cage 2 -3 times daily. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), your gallbladder is most active between 10 p.m. – 11 p.m. in the evening, so topically applying Gall Bladder™ blend before bed and getting to sleep ideally before 10 p.m. helps you take advantage of peak gallbladder detoxification time.
Liver™: Your liver works in tandem with your gallbladder and supporting the liver often helps to support the gallbladder. Your liver is responsibility for neutralizing and altering the chemical structure of toxins such as drugs, nicotine, caffeine and chemicals so that they are water-soluble – and then excreting them through the bile, causing them to be harmlessly ushered from the body. Your liver can be overwhelmed by toxins, causing it to become congested and inflamed.
Liver™ helps support optimal health and vitality of the liver. Formulated with oils that help stimulate, strengthen, and tone the liver, including German Chamomile, which stimulates bile secretions and supports liver detox, Ylang Ylang, which helps detoxify your nervous and digestive systems and Peppermint, which helps you detoxify through your respiratory and digestive systems.
Apply Liver™ directly over the liver (right side beneath the breast) 2-3 times daily. You can also combine Liver™ blend with castor oil – just add 3 drops of Liver™ to 1 tsp of castor oil and rub it over the liver before bed. Castor oil is notoriously messy, so you can either: (1) cover it with a piece of flannel and plastic wrap and apply heat from a hot water bottle (avoid the electricity of heating pads) for 20-30 minutes, (2) wear a ratty t-shirt and let your body eat work its magic (3) climb into an Epsom salt bath with the castor oil and Liver™ oil and benefit from layering 3 healing strategies at the same time.
Liver Support™ helps detoxify emotions. The detoxification process occurs on a physical, spiritual and emotional level and can help uncover and express feelings, especially hidden frustrations, anger, resentments, or fear. Often, the more toxins a person releases, the more stored emotion that is also released. Many practitioners notice emotional traumas trigger the release of physical toxins.
It is important that these emotions are allowed to be processed and released to avoid causing additional stress that would undermine the detoxification process, and essential oils make excellent tools to help gentle release and detoxify emotions. For example, our key organ of detoxification, the Liver, holds onto traumatic experiences and negative emotions, like anger, impatience, resentment and frustration creating emotional blocks that cause the liver to become sluggish. Processing and releasing these negative emotions are an important step in opening the drainage pathways. Learn more about importance of processing unresolved emotions HERE.
To help you move through and release anger and negative emotions from the cells of the liver, apply 2 -3 drops of Liver Support™ over the liver, the heart or around the earlobes. You can also gently inhale Liver Support™ for 3 – 7 breaths, breathing out any negative emotions on the exhale. For more tips on detoxify emotions, read this article.
Lymph™ Your lymphatic system helps remove metabolic waste, toxins, and fluid from the tissue surrounding your gallbladder. When lymph moves properly, it reduces sludge-like buildup around the liver and gallbladder, helping to alleviate symptoms like nausea, bloating, and fatigue.
Lymph™ encourages optimal lymphatic circulation to help open up routes of elimination and alleviate congestion.
Scientific studies have shown that these oils can enhance lymphatic flow, promoting a natural pathway for detoxification and bolstering the immune system. A study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine highlights the effectiveness of essential oils in promoting lymphatic circulation, offering a natural approach to enhance detoxification and immune function.
To enhance lymphatic flow and drainage, generously apply Lymph™ on the “BIG 6” – the clavicles, the neck, armpits, stomach, hip crease and back of the knees to help increase lymphatic drainage and circulation. Explore the full 5-minute lymphatic drainage protocol here.
Fascia Release™ Fascia and the gallbladder are connected structurally, neurologically, and energetically. The gallbladder is literally wrapped in visceral fascia, and when that fascia is released, it gives the gallbladder more space and energy to flow. The gallbladder meridian also runs through the side-body fascia, often holding stress. When the fascia is released, it can help your gallbladder function.
The essential oils in our Fascia Release™ blend are uniquely formulated to simultaneously work on physical and psychological levels, working quickly to break down inflamed, fibrous tissue, removing toxins while unraveling deeply held tensions, constrictions and energetic blockages in your tissues to reduce pain, improve blood and lymphatic circulation and release fear, repressed emotions, and tension held in the body (organs, muscles, tendons, bones and joints) or the mind.
Parasympathetic®: Your body needs to be in the parasympathetic nervous system “rest and digest” state to support healthy liver function. The parasympathetic state turns on the housekeeping wave of digestion, allowing the bowels to move and eliminate toxins. If you are suffering from constipation, toxins from the liver and gallbladder do not leave the body, but instead are reabsorbed. This blend is especially helpful if your gallbladder has been removed, as it supports healthy bile flow.
To ensure optimal digestion in the parasympathetic state, you can apply the Vibrant Blue Parasympathetic® blend to the vagal nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone) before meals to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system “rest and digest” state.
Additional gallbladder supporting strategies include:
- Bitters: Extracts of medicinal plants and herbs that stimulate your liver to produce and secrete more bile and work more efficiently. Many bitter herbs have liver-protecting and bile-boosting properties as well.
- Binders: Solid insoluble particles that pass through the gut unabsorbed by the bloodstream. They line the gut to attract and bind toxins, leaving the liver via the bile as it flows into the intestines, ensuring a continuous flow of toxins out of the body with little to no side effects. Read more about the 7 best binders to support detoxification here.
- Coffee Enemas: Coffee enemas can help stimulate the gallbladder to contract which helps open the bile duct system, flushing stagnant bile from the liver and gallbladder, which is especially helpful for both those with and without a gallbladder. Research found that coffee can improve gallbladder contraction by around 33% or more. This really helps to move out the toxins the liver wants to expel. Read more about essential oils for your gallbladder here.
- Epsom Salt Baths: Epsom salt baths offer an easy, accessible way to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and trigger natural detoxification. Read more about essential oils for healing baths here.
- Castor Oil Packs: Castor oil is a fabulous tool to help reduce liver and gallbladder inflammation and soften the tissue in the liver and gallbladder. It helps to stimulate the liver and unblock stagnant bile and bile ducts, while also opening your bowels to allow for easier elimination of bile sludge and toxins.
Featured Oils:
Ready to get started? Click the links below to order today:
- Gall Bladder™ available here
- Liver Support™ available here
- Liver Support™ available here
- Lymph™ available here
- Fascia Release™ available here
- Parasympathetic® available here
