Whatever can go wrong will go wrong…. Starting with our plumbing!
I called a plumber last month to fix what I thought was a leak in the basement. It turned out to be a blocked sewage pipe, which led to us digging up my driveway to no avail. The next recommended step was to dig up my street at the estimated cost of $45,000 (with a required lien on my home)—all in an attempt to understand what was causing the blockage.
We were not able to see what was blocking the sewer pipe, so I got the city involved in the hopes that they could scope my line from the main line. This turned out to be more of a hindrance than help, as they could not even tell me where the sewer line from my home connected to the main sewer line.
We spent the last month in uncertain limbo, not allowed to shower, flush, or do laundry.
I kept pushing to tear up the street, but my patient plumber and fiancé both suggested that we spend more time understanding the root cause of the sewer pipe blockage before investing in an expensive fishing expedition.
This delay triggered intense frustration, but I decided to trust their advice and work on my patience skills.
I continued to escalate the matter with the city until I was finally connected with Malcolm, who took the time to look at city records to help me.
At one point, my helpful and kind new neighbor—who generously offered up her bathroom, shower, and laundry—mentioned that the contractor who remodeled their home before they purchased it last year lined their sewer pipe to prevent this kind of issue, which I casually mentioned to the city and my plumber.
The city representative checked city records and noted that the sewage work was done without a permit. He also said that the only possible place for my sewage to drain was through a connection to the neighbor’s line. He suggested that we scope the neighbor’s line and see if they blocked mine when they lined their pipe.
More delays!
More frustration!
More propensity to begin digging up the street to restore plumbing.
Again, my patient finance shared his philosophy that “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. He encouraged me to be patient and not rush to a solution without exploring all options.
My sewer line did not seem to follow the city map. In his mind, it made sense to delay excavating the street to rule out the connection to my neighbor. However, my neighbor was hosting out-of-town guests over the holidays and could not make her home available for another week.
Adding insult to injury, my neighbor’s contractor closed the LLC under which they built her house to abdicate responsibility. Still, the subcontractor he used for the plumbing project had a relationship with my plumber. My plumber reached out to the subcontractor and managed to get him to bring in expensive equipment to clean out my sewer line so they could see what was blocking the line—which turned out to be the lining they did
for my neighbor.
The problem is now being solved, and my neighbor’s contractor is paying for it, but much patience is required.
My entire basement is being remediated for sewage cleanup. As my best friend pointed out—I am literally cleaning the sh*t out of my life.
Patience Diffuses Anger
The universe is clearly trying to teach me a lesson.
That my historical pattern of allowing anger to drive my hair-trigger reactions was not serving me. That the more I helped to detoxify and release the anger—which is believed to be stored in your liver—the more space and capacity I opened up for patience and the more positive outcomes I experienced.
Patience and anger are opposite emotions that help to balance each other out. Patience—or the ability to remain calm and understanding, even in difficult situations—can counterbalance Anger, a strong feeling of displeasure or hostility that can help you focus on survival during stressful situations.
Raw anger can manifest as aggression, resentment, bitterness, rage, being critical, abusive, complaining, or passive-aggressive. You may suppress anger or express it through aggressive (or passive-aggressive) behavior—which may feel unpleasant to you or those around you.
When you experience strong feelings of anger that may contribute to negative energy, discomfort pushes you to create some resolution. This is why you may become aggressive or even verbally violent. This hurtful feeling and negative energy are so tough that they can hijack your brain and force you to act. When you act to break away from the pain of aggression, you create escalation, more aggression, and more pain.
Patience means stopping and waiting. It also requires seeing reality as it is yet being nonjudgmental about it. It does not mean denying or suppressing your anger but rather accepting it as a fact. It means accepting your feelings as is, treating them gently with care without feeding your anger with discursive thoughts.
While anger can fuel positive transformation by energizing you with the intensity, focus, and motivation that moves you to act and make positive changes, patience allows you the space for the best possible option to unfold while allowing you to refrain from externally reacting (even if you are internally reacting).
In other words, anger stirs up and reacts in the moment, while patience calms you down and helps hold you back and refrain from harming so you have the time and space to process all of your options.
Patience is the experience of prioritizing regulation over force. A calm, supported parasympathetic nervous system helps you shift out of survival mode, which can fuel fear and desperation that may trigger anger, aggression, frustration, and rage.
READ THIS NEXT: Fueling Transformation Through Anger
Essential Oils for Patience
Essential oils can be powerful tools to help calm your nervous system, make space for patience, and allow the energy of anger to dissipate.
Your sense of smell links directly to the emotional control center of your brain, the amygdala, where emotions and emotional memories are stored. It is the only one of your five senses that is directly linked to this unconscious area of your brain, known as your limbic lobe. Thus, the sense of smell and the tool of essential oils are the most direct paths to healing emotions like anger, frustration, and impatience.
Essential oils inhaled through the nasal passageways enable immediate access to the regions of the brain that house intense emotions like anger and rage, allowing us to integrate and release them and make space for patience and ease.
Essential oils may also help regulate, harmonize, and enhance the flow of energy in your physical, mental, or emotional body. Essential oils can be powerful tools to help you surrender into your “flow” to release stuck energy, control, and stagnation. Connecting to nature can help you connect to your ability to increase
flexibility, reduce rigidity and better surrender to and flow with life.
Essential oils derived from flexible plants may help support physical and emotional flexibility, which allows one to be more patient and flexible and less controlling and rigid in life.
Oils derived from flexible plants help support flow, release stagnation, and enhance flexibility and ease on the physical, mental, and emotional levels. For example, plants with a pungent and warm nature possess a moving capacity, and warmth may activate movement and open space for new potential.
READ THIS NEXT: Supporting Emotional Flexibility with Essential Oils
- Parasympathetic™
Activating your parasympathetic nervous system helps you wait and remain patient in situations that may provoke anger and delay your desire to react—even though inside you might be reacting.
Applying Parasympathetic™ helps you remain calm and regulated when anger strikes. Parasympathetic may help prevent your fight-or-flight response from kicking in. When you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, you can think more clearly, speak more calmly, monitor your tone, and facial expression, and avoid raising your voice. Staying calm and composed also enables you to de-escalate emotion, prevent potential violence and move to a place where solutions can be perceived and acted upon.
Applying Parasympathetic™ on the vagus nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone) activates your parasympathetic nervous system and allows you to feel relaxed and safe, which helps to activate chemical and hormonal reactions that will enable you to connect, empathize, and bond with others.
Activating your parasympathetic nervous system also enhances your perception of being understood, seen, heard, and felt, which in turn enhances your mental and emotional capacity. When you feel safe with others, your social engagement system is activated, enhancing your ability to connect and help others feel safe, which may help to dissipate anger and frustration.
READ MORE ABOUT: Parasympathetic Pause for Mental, Emotional and Physical
Health - Limbic Reset™
Essential oils can be powerful tools for working through emotions and releasing anger and irritability. Your sense of smell links directly to the emotional control center of your brain, the amygdala, where emotions and emotional memories are stored.
Essential oils inhaled through the nasal passageways enable immediate access to the regions of the brain that house these intense emotions like anger and rage so we can integrate and release them. The word “emotion” can be translated as “energy in motion.” Emotion is the experience of energy moving through our bodies. This emotional energy works at a higher speed than thought, and essential oils can help us clear the energy residue of blame so it doesn’t remain in our thought patterns, negatively impacting our energy field or our health.
Limbic Reset™ blend can help rewire neural circuits in your limbic system and calm an over-active stress response that involves mental stagnation. Inhale or topically apply over your temples to send safety queues to help reset your limbic system and support healthy emotional regulation. - Liver Support™
Anger that you don’t process and release can get stored in your liver, according to Chinese medicine.
Energetically, your liver is responsible for maintaining harmony and the smooth movement of energy (known as chi) throughout the body, including the smooth transition between feelings and emotions as situations change around you.
The energy of emotions like anger rises, dwells, transforms, and releases. Unfortunately, when we focus on or aggressively express anger, the negative energy amplifies. When we are able to be patient—to wait and soften, to sit with the restlessness, edginess, and discomfort—the negative energy of anger transforms itself.
Patience helps you move from where you are to where you want to be. It bridges the gap between where you are and what you aspire to be.
Liver Support™ helps support the increase of patience and the gentle release of anger, including frequent irritation, impatience, resentment or frustration, being critical of yourself or others, control issues, an inability to express your feelings, feelings of not feeling heard, not feeling loved, not being recognized or appreciated.
Formulated to help move through and release anger and negative emotions attached to traumatic experiences from the cells of the liver to promote optimal healing. The oils in this blend assist the body in recognizing, working through, and releasing the anger, fear, or frustration caused by traumatic experiences so they don’t overwhelm you.
It lets you gently release negative emotions, including repressed anger, which can create stuck energy and impede an organ’s healing ability.
Place the bottle under your nose and breathe deeply, fully inhaling the oil for 3–7 breaths. It helps you breathe into and work through the emotion. You can also apply it around the ankles, as this is often an area where we resist moving forward and block the ability to receive joy and pleasure. Start at the back of the ankle and apply under the ankle bone around to the front and back under the other ankle bone while allowing yourself to release challenging emotions. For more tips on detoxifying emotions, read this article.
READ THIS NEXT: Essential Oils for Anger Management
Featured Oils:
References:
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/fueling-transformation-through-anger/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/supporting-emotional-flexibility-with-essential-oils/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/parasympathetic-pause-for-mental-emotional-physical-health/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/introducing-emotion-balance-blends/
- https://vibrantblueoils.com/5-essential-oils-for-anger-management/