Today, I invite you to use your sense of smell, the upper parts of your olfactory organ, to deliberately create a healing environment in your body. In a previous Infidelity Healing post, we looked at relaxed breathing as an easy way to calm emotional triggers. Triggers are when the emotions spin out of control and fear, anxiety, and stress take over. Aromatherapy enhances and speeds up the process of relaxation. Support your healing by combining essential oils with breathing slowly. Keep reading
The Infidelity Healing Series
Here, the Betrayed Wife shares her gift of an Infidelity Healing Series. The eight posts in this Series are full of practical and easy-to-use solutions that reduce the anxiety of being cheated on. Take your time reading and applying each technique to begin the difficult recovery after intimate betrayal.
The Infidelity Healing Series is a labor of love from The Betrayed Wife to every betrayed wife. Why? Because she knows first-hand how hard it is to get over infidelity, and is here to support your recovery every step of the way.
After discovering our husband's infidelity, life as a betrayed wife can become unbearable. The anxious thoughts and betrayal trauma take a toll on our emotional and physical well-being. Every day is a repeating nightmare where we experience the most painful losses of our relationship: trust and faith in ourselves. The simple self-healing techniques in this Infidelity Healing Series will help stop our stress response and restore our inner and physical well-being.
Begin your infidelity healing now:
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Using Essential Oils to Heal After Betrayal
Aromatherapy can be an effortless way of bringing healing into our bodies. Each different essential oil has unique properties and gets used for specific purposes. They are instrumental in times of grief, stress, anxiety, trauma, and the overall health of our minds and body.
Essential oils work by releasing chemical signals to our bodies. Some essential oils can be stimulatory, and some can be sedating. It is important to know what we need when we need it and what we can safely use. For healing, we want to stimulate our vagus nerve to bring us out of our stress response. And for sleep, we want to relax.
The natural healing of these powerful oils can have a magnetic pull on our broken hearts. Yet we need to be calm and tuned into our inner wisdom before we can really know what we need or our next best step. Because as you know, being in a state of stress doesn't support us in making good decisions.
Essential Oil Potency
Did you know that it takes about 242,000 rose petals to distill approximately 5 mL of rose oil? Or it requires an acre of lavender plants to produce 2 gallons of lavender oil. That's a lot of nature's energy! So essential oils deserve our respect and careful use because one bottle of essential oil is absolutely loaded with condensed energy.
When I discovered my partner's affair was true and that I wasn't insane, as he said, I knew I needed urgent support. So my first self-care attempt was to turn to lavender. I locked myself in my bedroom after work with my diffuser running all night.
There were times when my partner entered our room and declared the smell was so strong it made his eyes water. I was ignorantly using too much of a good thing in my attempt to reduce the pain I was in. Thankfully it was lavender and not something dangerous! Essential oils are powerful healers. But we need to give them respect, as they are incredibly potent, and misused can cause us harm.
Safety in Use of Essential Oils
Essential oils are derived from plants and have been used by healers for centuries. But not all oils are extracted equally, and not all plants are safe for us. Just because something says plant-based, it doesn’t mean it’s healthy or safe, even if it’s organic. Not all essential oils are created equally or produced ethically, either. So please be sure you are using therapeutic grade, ethically sourced oils for healing.
So when using essential oils, please use caution and follow the advice on the bottle. For instance, citrus oils support our healing by reducing our stress response. But if applied to our skin can be dangerous when we go outside in the sunlight. So wisdom and safety must lead before we dive into using them.
What aromatherapy is good for healing emotional trauma?
Using our sense of smell and transdermal applications of healing essential oils can support us in releasing stress. Then we can relax into healing our infidelity trauma. Our inner wisdom comes forward as we relax. But betrayal trauma can have us living on the edge, which is an exhausting and frightening place to be. We must actively support ourselves out of stress.
An important fact I want to bring to your attention is that our sense of smell does not shut down when we are fearful or stressed. We can use this fact to our advantage when using essential oils and healing our infidelity pain.
Aromatherapy and emotional triggers
First, be aware that what we smell passes through our olfactory bulb to our limbic system. This part of our brain includes our amygdala and hippocampus, which are responsible for our feelings and memories. What we smell and the emotion we experience are stored together as a memory. So this is why we can have powerful triggers when we smell anything that reminds us of the affair/s or affair partner/s.
Research tells us that unpleasant smells cause us to breathe shallowly and fast. And this triggered breathing rapidly takes us down into a cycle of fear or anxiety. Because of this reaction, we must purposely override our triggers with something even more potent. Therefore, we can combine using essential oils while either slowing our breathing or stimulating our vagus nerve to calm our minds.
Where to Get Quality Essential Oils
A fragrance is not an essential oil, so please don’t confuse scented oils or candles with essential oils. I would caution only purchasing essential oils from reputable sources. Our healing is a priority, and we must ensure fake chemical knock-offs do not harm us.
Jodi Cohen, the founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, created an entire line of quality and safe essential oils. These oils are specifically designed to help restore balance for emotional health. Her website has a wealth of information on proper use and safety. Each blend is simple to choose for your specific needs and easy to use.
Best Essential Oils for Healing Trauma
Essential oil for betrayal trauma
Betrayal trauma throws our nervous system into chaos. Vibrant Blue Oils Parasympathetic Blend melts away stress, elevates mood, boosts energy, improves digestion, and regains focus. Use ‘Parasympathetic Blend’ to stimulate your vagus nerve. It is made from clove and lime essential oils in a coconut oil base. Putting this blend behind your ear on your mastoid bone is the simplest way to gear-shift your entire physiology. Not just physically but mentally and emotionally, by intentionally shifting your nervous system – out of fight or flight and into flow.
Essential oil for brainfog
I always keep a vial of rose essential oil in my purse to smell in emergency moments and often enjoy a sniff whenever I see it in my bag. I have clary sage and patchouli oils in my office diffuser that I use to keep me feeling safe and relaxed while I work. When I can’t think because of brain fog, I sniff rosemary, and if my sinuses are clogged I use manuka oil.
Essential oil for relaxation
And I most assuredly have lavender beside my bed. Lavender is the safest essential oil and is supportive of relaxation as well as sleep. If you can only afford one oil, this might be the one to try first.
Essential oils for anxiety
Research is showing that citrus oils like grapefruit, orange, bergamot, lime, lemon, neroli, etc., help us by relieving anxiety.
Essential oils for fear
Research also tells us that smelling rose oil has been proven to calm fear.
Avoiding Negative Associations with Essential Oils
Some essences may remind you of a negative event in the past. Examples are: the fragrance of the affair partner, the smell of the place where someone hurt or scared you, the flowers he brought you every time he felt guilty. An alternative oil for the same purpose would be ideal. So, you could replace lavender with chamomile, or try jasmine, frankincense, or ylang-ylang instead of rose oil.
Where do You Apply Essential Oils for Emotional Healing?
Because the calming effects of essential oils are both cumulative and additive for us, we want to make full use of them by applying them correctly.
Stimulating the vagus nerve
While processing betrayal trauma, we can support our healing by stimulating our vagus nerve with essential oils. This combination can powerfully help our healing state and is one I fully embrace. Our vagus nerve winds around our body and travels up behind our earlobe on our mastoid bone. We can easily access the vagus nerve behind our earlobe near the top of our jawbone. Here is the most accessible place to stimulate our vagus nerve with topical essential oils. I place my healing blend there daily, and even several times a day when needed, by putting a drop on my fingertip and lightly massaging behind each earlobe and the top of my jawbone with circular motions.
Breathing essential oils
At any moment of stress, we can take up to seven slow sniffs through one nostril at a time of a calming essential oil, like lavender or rose, to soothe ourselves. We can also smell or topically apply these healing oils during our daily self-care routine to add support.
Skin application of essential oils
Essential oils which are fat-soluble can also be assimilated topically through our skin. And for this reason, my daily perfume is a healing essential oil blend. Carrier oils like fractionated coconut oil help to transport essential oils into our cells and bloodstream, as well as diluting them.
After a shower when we are nice and hot is the best time to apply our essential oil blends. I put my blend on my pulse points like my wrist and behind my ears etc. And as I place it behind my earlobe on my jawbone, I lightly massage this spot to stimulate my vagus nerve for a few seconds.
Proper application of essential oils
Always follow expert advice on proper use of essential oils. As essential oils are so potent, some can burn our skin and must never be applied directly. One burn from not diluting enough taught me just how powerful these essential oils can be. It took me weeks to heal and was very nasty. Now, I always read instructions carefully and correctly dilute in a carrier oil.
The Betrayed Wife's - Daily Aromatherapy Routine
I use frankincense and jojoba oil as my daily moisturizer and I always giving myself a little neck massage when I apply it. Massaging our neck is another way of stimulating our vagus nerve. Making these little self-care rituals habits helps to bring and keep our bodies into a more relaxed healing state.
Because the faster we change states from fear into calm, the fast we heal and the faster we make better decisions for ourselves. A better decision we can make is to support our healing by doing self-care healing habits daily. Self-care has been my lifeline out of infidelity pain.
Aromatherapy and the sense of smell
All this to say, our sense of smell and our olfactory organ are essential functions to our health. They are extremely powerful and influential to our well-being. Amazingly, our ability to smell strengthens the more we use it. To demonstrate, did you know that the flavor we experience is actually the smell when we eat? Try pinching your nose when eating strawberries; all you will taste is sweet because the flavor will be missing.
Just like weight training builds muscle, so does our smell sense increase, not with lifts, but with sniffs!
Breathe slowly through your nose and mindfully take in the odors when walking, forest bathing, or when buying fresh produce. And please try the healing power of essential oils. The more you use your nose, the more your sense of smell will increase. Take back your ability to heal by mindfully smelling things that will support your healing journey. Create the memories you want with smell, and override the ones you don’t want with essential oils. Following your nose can make sense!
Please book a free call with me if you want to talk more about reducing your infidelity pain. I understand infidelity pain because I have lived it. Or check out my self-care after infidelity course. Your healing is essential; you are worth getting the support you need to heal!
Much love,
P.S. Find quality essential oils online at Vibrant Blue Oils. I use these oils that have specific blends for healing trauma, stress, anxiety, grief and general well-being.
