I often feel sad when everyone else feels happy.
It’s hard to admit, but since losing my son Max in a car accident three years ago, the happy experiences have been the hardest for me, because they are always tinged with the reality that I can’t share them with him.
That he won’t be there to help me ring in my 50th year around the sun, celebrate the launch of my book, toast his sister’s acceptance into college or any of the happy occasions that lie in our future.
He won’t see his sister graduate high school and college and walk down the aisle at her wedding or hold her baby in her arms. And I won’t get to see him turn 16 on March 8, apply to college, attend school dances, grow up, mess up and evolve into the marvelous person I would have loved to see him become.
And it hurts my heart.
Hope for Heartache
I share this today – the day after Valentine ’s Day – because I suspect I am not the only one who suffers through happy occasions.
Not the only one who puts on a brave, happy face on the outside but cries silently in the shower, on her yoga mat or on long walks in the rain.
Because hiding my pain doesn’t lessen the intensity or make it go away, but sharing it might.
And it might help some of you in the process – at least I hope it does.
My Valentine Heartache
Valentine ’s Day used to be filled with cookie decorating parties, family movie night and homemade cards that were both creative and beautiful. On this day when there is such intense focus on the heart and love, I instead find myself intensely aware of the hole in my heart and how much my heart aches with that loss.
I don’t share this to bring you down, or “yuck your yum” as Max liked to say, but rather to share what has helped me through my dark hours on happy days – Heart blend.
How Essential Oils Ease Heartache
Your sense of smell connects directly to the part of your brain that regulates the release of several mood boosting hormones that directly impact how happy or sad you feel in any given moment.
Smell travels through your olfactory system to your hypothalamus – a region of your brain that acts as your hormonal control center – by way of your amygdala in your limbic system. When you smell an essential oil, it stimulates your brain to release hormones that trigger a rapid emotional response.
Your brain’s rapid response to smell based stimuli like essential oils is best explained by research which estimates your sense of smell to be 10,000 times more acute than your other senses. Once registered, scent stimuli travel more quickly to the brain than do either sight or sound.
For example, A report in the Journal of Biological Chemistry examined the impact of hundreds of fragrances on the brain and found jasmine (an ingredient in Heart blend) to be “as good as Valium at calming the nerves with none of the side effects.”
This can help you shift the intensity of deep pain and heartache quickly!
Heart™ Blend for Heartache
Your heart serves as your emotional energy center. It integrates and balances the physical, emotional, and mental body, serving as a complex information processing center that influences your hormones, mood and ability to process through sadness, heartache and despair.
Any kind of emotional imbalance – like my heartache on happy occasions – completely throws the body out of balance and can leave you feeling lonely and sad.
Heart™ blend helps reset and restore the healthy state of your heart, enhancing feelings of open-heartedness, expansiveness, receptivity while mitigating loneliness, sadness and grief.
To calm heartache, apply 2-3 drops of Heart™ over the heart (left side of chest), on wrists and palms and deeply inhale as often as is needed (every 20 -30 minutes). I find that deep inhalation seems to lessen the intensity of my despair and sadness so I might process through the emotions more easily.
Featured Blend:
References:
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/7881819/Smell-of-jasmine-as-calming-as-valium.html
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13751335_Emotion_Experienced_during_Encoding_Enhances_Odor_Retrieval_Cue_Effectiveness
