We’ve all been there – the busy days of summer sun are over, the kids are finally going back to school, and we breathe that sigh of relief: summer holidays are over! Ahhh. Even if we haven’t got kids, maybe our summer plans are dwindling, as we move towards autumn, and we are feeling it’s time to slow down and tune into the energy of letting go as the leaves begin to turn orange.
But now – whilst we feel a sense of relief from juggling ‘all of the things’ – we’re also finding ourselves feeling utterly drained, and emotionally exhausted. It’s been a lot – we’ve been so busy in life that, at times, summer has felt overwhelming, and we’ve had very little space and time to process anything. We’ve kept our emotions on the backburner – favouring all the summer distractions like TV, or gin and tonics, partying hard, or working hard – and numbing what’s really here.
Perhaps there’s some simmering pain or grief we’ve held off on feeling, shoving it down as lower priority. Or perhaps we’ve been suppressing some of our true desires for spaciousness and alone time – or maybe we’ve just ignored our emotions all together and we’re feeling tight, tense and burned out.
If that’s you, and you’ve not created any space to simply ‘feel’ your feelings this summer, with everything that’s been going on – or perhaps you’ve been just juggling all the things and you’re finally realising that you’re paying the price – it’s likely you’re feeling some emotional exhaustion right now.
So, today, I felt it would be a great time to discuss essential oils we can harness for emotional exhaustion that can help us to combat the fatigue of having suppressed our emotions this summer.
What does ‘suppressing our emotions’ mean – and how does it lead to emotional exhaustion?
Suppressed emotions basically means that we have tried to ignore and shove down our feelings. It commonly happens when we are busy in our lives, and we feel a sense of shame for not being able to continue handling our everyday tasks, so we ignore our feelings instead of feeling them, so that we don’t feel like failures.
Ignoring our feelings this way is actually exhausting. It takes so much energy to ‘manage’ our feelings, rather than being with them – and they kind of build up inside, leaving us feeling stressed, and overwhelmed.
It’s common for us to feel overwhelmed after busy periods, because of this. We’ve perhaps lacked boundaries around tending to our feelings, and not allowed ourselves to process anything that has been coming up for us.
So, when we are noticing any sense of overwhelm, it’s usually a good sign we’ve been ignoring a part of ourselves that wants to be seen, heard and felt. Our emotions don’t go away, when we suppress them – they just sit there in the shadows, somewhere, waiting for us to come back to them, and we go into a state of resistance, which is exhausting. This is really what we describe as feeling “emotionally exhausted” – any time we have been feeling overwhelmed by our emotions but have been resisting them and brushing them under the carpet and is a good sign it’s time to fully face what’s there.
How do we do that? Well, essential oils can help – and I share a process below for you to journey with.
Carve out space and time to be in process
Firstly, if we are really serious about healing our emotional exhaustion, I recommend you choose it wholeheartedly. Unless you are conscious of the true costs of how this impacts you, you’re unlikely to choose the next few steps that follow.
So, the first thing is to consider the costs and benefits of suppressing your emotions, and then – if it’s worth choosing – grab your calendar and intentionally put in a one and a half hour slot to journey with this fully. There’s no essential oils for this part – it’s a deeper choosing to finally cultivate space to be in the process of healing emotional exhaustion!
Connect to your body
When you’ve created your time, now we can sink in!
Firstly, before we go into this part of the work of healing, I invite you to work with some essential oils that can connect you to your body. Our bodies are the holders of all the information about our emotions. We feel our emotions in our bodies – our bodies will literally guide us, via their sensations, into how we truly feel.
Yet, in summer especially, we spend so much time disconnected from our bodies, rushing and pushing onto the ‘next thing’. So, the invitation now is to reconnect to your body.
Body Reconnection Massage Blend: mix 3 drops Patchouli, 2 drops Cedarwood and 1 drop Mandarin into 15ml of Grapeseed oil to create a massage oil.
Take this massage blend and spend some time applying it – softly, tenderly and slowly – to each part of your body, in the direction towards your heart. As you do this, speak out “I connect to my <body part>”. That might feel alien and even ‘weird’ but stay with it and see what it brings up for you.
Once you’ve done that, lie down and make yourself cosy and just become aware of the sensations in your body – listen to it and see what it wants to show you. Name your sensations with describing words (e.g. hot, cold, tense, tight, soft, heavy, light).
Notice – am I feeling tense? What is this showing me? Am I feeling cold? What is this showing me?
Ask yourself: what emotions have I been suppressing and shoving down, rather than feeling?
The more you give yourself permission to hear what’s inside, the more will be shown to you.
Spend 30 minutes in this part of the process, before moving onto the next phase.
Journal on what you noticed about your emotions
When you’ve completed your body connection exercise, it’s time to journal on what was noticed.
Firstly, let’s put on a diffusion blend that can help super-charge this part of the process where we’re required to get honest about our emotions – the following essential oils can help us face our feelings:
Emotional Journaling Diffusion Blend: mix 3 drops Rose, 2 drops Sweet Orange and 1 drop Ylang Ylang in water in a candle burner or electrical diffuser and diffuse into the room for 30 minutes whilst you journal.
I invite you to grab your pen and some paper and capture anything you noticed in the body connection practice.
How ‘alien’ did the process of tuning in feel? Did I have any resistance?
What body sensations did I notice arising? Did they show me anything about my emotions?
Were there any emotions that surfaced to be felt? What were they? Sadness, anger, grief, jealousy, rage, or even indifference? Note them down, allowing them all to be there.
When you’ve done this, spend some time free writing on anything else that wants to be captured – simply allow yourself to put pen to paper without any expectation and write whatever comes into your mind. This might help you see something that otherwise might not have been captured.
After 30 minutes, stop and move into the next phase of our process.
Move your body to process
When we have allowed ourselves to feel our emotions, it’s time to move them through our bodies to help us process them. Often, we refer to emotions as “e-motion” – or ‘energy in motion’ – which means that really, all our feelings are energy that wants to be moved through the body in order to process it.
Movement can help us begin that journey of processing. And that can look like literally just moving our bodies intuitively, in any way that calls us.
I’d recommend putting on a different diffusion blend here:
Movement Processing Diffusion Blend: mix 3 drops Frankincense, 2 drops Geranium and 1 drop Lemongrass in water in a candle burner or electrical diffuser and diffuse into the room for 30 minutes whilst you move your body.
Firstly, choose whether you’d like some music on in the background. You might like to set up your space with blankets to kneel on, or a yoga mat if you have one.
When you’ve set up, get on all fours on your hands and knees, to begin with. Close your eyes.
Just tune into all that you’ve seen in your journaling and choose one emotion to move through your body. Focus here, tuning into the sensations of it in your body.
Slowly, gently and in your own time, just begin to move, intuitively. Again, this might feel really odd to begin with, but it’s a really powerful practice to anchor you in a sense of self-trust and emotional connection.
You might just sway your body with some music, whilst tuning into where you are tense and stretching those areas out, breathing into them.
You might start to move vigorously and shake around – be led by your body.
Do this for 15 minutes, and then land in some spaciousness, come back and lie on your back for another 5 minutes in stillness.
This process is really powerful, so notice how you feel before and after – and repeat as often as necessary. I’d recommend doing a shorter version of it, daily, to see real reconnection to your body and emotions. You could spend 5 minutes in each phase and create a 15-minute ritual each day, if you desired.
The point is – our body and emotions are our guidance system and will reveal to us where we need to slow down and tune in, so that we don’t feel so emotionally exhausted in future!
Happy moving and blending.
Nicole Barton
Consultant Aromatherapist
Disclaimer & Safety Advice