Emotional Health, The Enneagram and Essential Oils:
How Do They Fit Together?
Each Enneagram Type has a unique emotional processing style. Some Types embrace melancholy, some want “good vibes only,” some repress their negative feelings, and others aren’t in touch with their emotions at all.
No matter your personality, healthy emotional processing is a gift that greatly benefits overall well-being. It enhances our ability to navigate negative emotions and savor the positive ones. Emotions are simply messengers that let us know if our perceived needs are being met or unmet.
In our fast-paced, highly-connected culture, we can get stuck in patterns that keep us in fight, flight, or freeze. Comparison, lack of self-care and compassion, overwhelm caused by a lack of boundaries, life responsibilities, toxic rumination, and unhealthy thought patterns are all contributors.
Essentially You provides tools and resources to help you accelerate your emotional health and balance, giving you guidance and grace every step of the way.
Essential Oils for Emotional Well-Being
Essential oils are a wonderful tool we can add to our emotional wellness toolbox. If you’re not familiar with essential oils, they are the potent essence of a plant retrieved by steam distillation, resin tapping, or cold pressing. The essential oil itself can come from shrubs, bark, seeds, flowers, roots, stems, and other parts of the plant. These oils are powerful and effective, and have many chemical constituents that work synergistically to strengthen, support, and balance our bodies.
Research also shows that essential oils have a profound balancing effect on the limbic system, the emotional center of the brain. The limbic system plays a significant role in pleasure, trauma, memories, and feelings, and plays a key role in managing behavior. When inhaled, the chemical constituents of high quality essential oils and the anatomical location of the sense of smell work in tandem to balance mood and help with emotional processing.
People commonly ask, “How exactly do I use essential oils to minimize stress and balance mood?” A great place to start is deep breathing. This breathing technique for beginners stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system for relaxation. Combine this technique with a drop of your favorite essential oil in your hand for maximum results.
The Aroma Freedom Technique (AFT), developed by Clinical Psychologist Dr. Benjamin Perkus, is another effective way to use essential oils for emotional processing. AFT is a simple process for identifying and releasing negative thoughts, feelings, and memories that interfere with reaching your potential.
AFT helps emotional energy flow in a positive direction toward growth and expansion, rather than retracting in fear, doubt, and paralysis. Combined with high-quality essential oils, this step-by-step process creates a permanent internal shift in how we view ourselves and the world.
You have a unique calling on your life, and you were meant to live it out wholeheartedly! I invite you to bravely begin your journey of self-awareness and personal growth, so you can transform into the person God designed you to be.