“What helps with grief?”
I have gotten that question A LOT in the past week as friends and members of my community have lost children in both sudden and tragic ways.
It has been almost 8 years since my own child passed away in a car accident, kicking off my own journey with grief.
I’d like to think that I learn a thing or two along the way – including how the sense of smell can be your most powerful tool in navigating grief.
Just this morning, I received the following message:
“Hello Jodi
I woke up this Morning thinking of you and the essential oils I purchased from you, and what an impact they have had on me.
My son passed almost 3 years ago, and I still am experiencing some heavy days.
It feels like I’m carrying a boulder around my heart when it hits. The grief feels so intense in my body that there are times I could hardly walk.
It affected my brain as well.
Your oils have helped me tremendously.
Sometimes just breathing in the uplifting oils helps me to calm down.
All of your products are top notch, and I appreciate all you share with the community.
Blessings and thank you for sharing your grief journey as a Mom who lost her son. I relate, and I appreciated you so much 🙏💙
Regina S.”
It prompted me to FINALLY share the science behind smell and how it can be used to help keep you afloat through the most unbearable of circumstances – like sudden loss and grief.
What is Grief?
Grief is a natural response to the loss of something or someone to which you have formed a bond or an attachment. This may include the death of a loved one or pet, the end of a relationship, a change in your health or social status, the loss of a home, of financial stability important belongings, or a significant life transition.
Even subtle losses can trigger a sense of grief. For example, you might grieve over the loss of a friendship, or a change in location or vocation. You may also mourn the death of a dream or a sense of how your life may unfold.
While everyone’s experience of grief is different, I have found that the sense of smell can be used to help soften the emotions that come with grief
Common Symptoms of Grief
Feelings of grief can impact you on a mental, emotional and physical level. Common symptoms may include:
- Lack of motivation or feeling overwhelmed by small tasks or everyday responsibilities
- Waves of intense emotions that feel overwhelming and unpredictable
- Physical symptoms including exhaustion, sleep disturbances, and appetite changes
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions, even about simple matters
- A sense of denial or disbelief about the death
- Intense longing for the person who died, even when you intellectually accept they’re gone
- Sadness, heaviness, guilt, anger, anxiety, or panic
- Periods of disassociation, numbness or feeling emotionally shut down
- Lack of motivation or difficulty engaging in daily life
- Heaviness in the chest, heart, or lungs
- Difficulty concentrating or forgetfulness
- Trouble making decisions, even simple ones
- Feeling disconnected from your body
- Heightened stress hormone levels that may contribute to feelings of anxiety, panic, or feeling on edge
What Helps with Grief?
While everyone’s experience of grief is different, I have found that utilizing your sense of smell during the grieving process seems to profoundly help lessen the intensity of emotions associated with grief – including feelings of sadness, loss, overwhelm and disempowerment.
Your sense of smell is directly linked to your limbic system — the area of the brain responsible for your memory, emotions and behaviors. Your limbic system is the emotional center of your brain that controls your hormones and influences your emotions and your mood. The limbic system plays a role in controlling several unconscious physiological functions that influence your emotions, like breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure.
On a physical level, only two synapses separate your amygdala from your olfactory nerve. No other sensory system has this kind of direct and intense contact with the neural substrates of your brain’s emotional control center. Your other four senses – including sound, sight, taste, and touch – must travel to other regions of the brain first, before reaching your limbic system.
This direct access allows olfactory signals to bypass logic and language functions of the conscious mind and directly access the subconscious where deep grief lives. This is the reason a familiar scent can instantly provide physical comfort, regulate the nervous system, calm the intensity of some of the emotions that correlate with grief such as fear and anger and evoke fond memories of a loved one.
For those of you who are trying to comfort a friend or loved one through loss or grief, you may find that words often fall short. This is where scent comes in.
Your sense of smell connects you instantly to memory, safety, and emotion. It bypasses language and touches something deeper. In the grieving process, that can make all the difference. Scent can become the calm in the storm of intense and overpowering emotions. It can soothe, ground, and soften the intensity of loss, even just for a moment.
Scent allows you to gently release intense emotions – like sadness or depression – much like you would slowly and carefully unscrew the top of a carbonated beverage to gently release excess carbonation and avoid an explosion.
Inhalation of Bergamot, in particular, was found to “communicate signals to the olfactory system and stimulate the brain to exert neurotransmitters (e.g. serotonin and dopamine), thereby further regulating mood.” Specifically, a 2013 article published by researchers at Xiamen University, China, elaborated, “essential oils, such as bergamot, can help to relieve stress, anxiety, depression and other mood disorders.”
What’s more, research on “Aromatherapy and the Central Nerve System” found that smelling bergamot, lavender, and lemon essential oils help to trigger your brain to release uplifting neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.
Smell may also help you regulate your nervous system. When grief triggers feelings of panic or overwhelm, the part of the brain responsible for logical thought – your prefrontal cortex– often shuts down. Smelling specific essential oil blends can physically signal safety to the nervous system, helping to engage the parasympathetic nervous system to help you feel grounded, comforted, and connected to your emotions without becoming overwhelmed.
The magic of smell is that it helps support emotional regulation without requiring you to engage your conscious mind.
How Grief Impacts You
Early grief – also known as acute grief – typically lasts for the first 6 months to 1 year after a loss. During this period, the emotional and physical pain can feel very intense, often characterized by shock, emotional numbness, disorientation, and unpredictable waves of profound sorrow.
My experience of early grief was intense shock, which is the body’s protective reaction to a devastating loss. Shock acts as an emotional anesthetic, numbing the crushing pain to help your mind and body survive an incomprehensible new reality.
Your brain and body are working hard to accept what may feel like an incomprehensible reality. This can overload the nervous system, resulting in “brain fog,” memory issues, difficulty concentrating and a sudden inability to make basic decisions. This intense shock also contributes to the overwhelming feeling of lethargy and fatigue, which is designed to help you slow down and engage in extra rest and care.
While grief has no timeline, the first year after Max died was by far the hardest because of all the new “firsts” – the first time celebrating the different seasons, holidays and birthdays without him.
The intensity of the grief has definitely subsided, and the moments of peace now outweigh the moments of sadness and overwhelm, but my grief is definitely NOT LINEAR. It continues to surprise me, often striking during happy moments or missed milestones like what would have been his high school graduation or prom.
For me, grief isn’t something that I can fix or eliminate. It is something I have learned to walk through with by leaning into my sense of smell. It is not that essential oils erase my loss. I will miss Max every day for the rest of my life. But I have found that they offer a very gentle, very easy way to help me feel grounded, supported and soften the emotions that come with grief.
How Smell Supports Grief
Any kind of deep loss or intense pain brings the gift of growth. It is far too intense and way too painful to stay stuck in the pain so you have to find a way to move through it. To process, to release and ultimately to recover from the intensity of the loss. Once you realize that the only way out is through, you allow the journey to begin. Everyone’s journey is different and every loss is different. I have sadly had ample opportunity to road test several different grief strategies and would like to share what seems to work best for me.
Rose™ Blend
Grief can have a profoundly negative impact and shut down the heart. Rose™ essential oil is the top oil for grief and the research backs this up. Not only is Rose considered “heart-healing” and comforting during times of crisis, research also indicates that its scent can help act as a heart tonic, helping to lower blood pressure and slow breathing, which can increase your ability to cope with stress and anxiety.
Rose™ essential oil has also been found to override this fear response, according to promising research which notes the ability of rose essential oil to reduce anxiety and help calm the intensity of some of the emotions that correlate with grief such as sadness and overwhelm.
Research suggests that essential oils may help in the treatment of depression, which is one of several emotions that people tend to experience when dealing with grief. In one groundbreaking study, Nobel Prize-winning researcher Linda Buck investigated how different odors elicit distinct responses in the brain. Buck found that rose essential oil can counteract your brain’s fear response to predator odor. Her research found that smelling rose essential oil in the presence of predator odors (or other fear stimuli) can suppress your brain’s stress responses and hormonal signals. More specifically, the research found that “rose oil can block stress hormone responses to a predator odor; it is also conceivable that some transmit signals that suppress rather than activate hormonal responses associated with fear.”
Rose™ – when inhaled or topically applied over the heart – may help unlock a shut-down heart, heal feelings of despair, and allow feelings of love, forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude to flow. As smell is so strongly correlated with memory, you can train your brain to correlate certain scents with safety. I personally use the smell of Rose to help create new associations with comfort and safety that I can breathe into during the darkest moments.
Lung Support™
Grief hits in the heart and the lungs – literally! Feelings of grief, bereavement, regret, loss and remorse are often associated with the lungs. The lungs are sponge-like organs located near the backbone on either side of the heart. They function as a fundamental source of life energy –transporting oxygen from the atmosphere into the capillaries so they can oxygenate blood – as well as an important channel of elimination – releasing carbon dioxide from the bloodstream into the atmosphere.
Grief can obstruct ability of the lungs to accept and relinquish, impeding their function of “taking in” and “letting go”. Grief that remains unresolved can become chronic and create disharmony in the lungs, weakening the lung’s function of circulating oxygen around the body. When lung function is impaired, it leads to shortness of breath, fatigue and feelings of melancholy, like that experienced with grief. Sadly, many chronic respiratory diseases and conditions develop after a major loss or bereavement.
The essential oils in Lung Support™ blend contains a proprietary formulation of organic and/or wild crafted essential oils designed to help overcome grief and let go of negative experiences, including Bergamot which is known as a natural yet potent antidepressant, with relaxing properties that have been shown to reduce stress hormone levels in the body and prohibit the release of adrenaline by the body which helps calm grief. Similarly, Geranium can assist with ‘letting go’ and releasing sad or anxious feelings along with helping to overcome extreme grief. It is known to help soothe anxiety, depression and reduce stress.
What’s more, citrus oils, like Lemon, Orange and Red Mandarin, inject an uplifting and refreshing approach to life and help heal a dark and heavy feeling – the cloud of dread or hopelessness that often is attached to grief. Research on the Effects of citrus fragrance on immune function and depressive states found that “citrus fragrance was more effective than antidepressants.” The research found that smelling citrus allowed depressive subjects to “markedly reduce” the doses of antidepressants necessary for the treatment of depression.
Lung Support™ blend works best when topically applied over the lungs or around the ears. It can also be deeply inhaled and allowing yourself to gently release intense emotions with your exhale as a powerful strategy to allow you to micro-dose emotional release.
A normal and healthy expression of grief can be expressed as sobbing that originates in the depths of the lungs, including deep breathes and the expulsion of air with the sob.
When external temperatures drop, your nervous system detects the change through sensory receptors in your skin. It then signals the blood vessels near your skin, initiating vasoconstriction—the narrowing of blood vessels. This reduces blood flow to the skin, minimizing heat loss and preserving warmth for critical internal organs.
Simultaneously, your nervous system signals muscles to trigger shivering, an involuntary contraction that generates heat. This mechanism, combined with vasoconstriction, helps maintain your core temperature. When you move to a warmer environment, your nervous system detects the increase in temperature. It triggers vasodilation, which widens blood vessels and allows excess heat to be released through the skin.
Best Advice: Eat, Sleep, Move
Rose and Lung Support are definitely the BEST blends for helping to process and release the intense sadness associated with grief. But in the early stages of grief, it is also important to support the shock and trauma of this sudden and unexpected change of circumstance.
This is where I think most well-intentioned friends and family go wrong.
They give advice and suggestions that – while potentially helpful after the shock has integrated – are downright overwhelming and traumatic in those early stages of grief.
In the early stages of grief, EVERYTHING FEELS LIKE TOO MUCH. So that well-intentioned advice, TOO MUCH.
Here’s what to say instead:
The only thing you need to do right now is eat, sleep and move.
So simple, and at the same time, so profound.
Just like a yoga pose where there are infinite deeper levels to each stance, eating, sleeping and moving can correlate to deeper states of recovery, allowing your body to release and reboot.
While there is no one-size-fits-all, and everyone’s pain and suffering is different, I have found that these 3 principals have helped to guide many through the early stages of shock and grief. I share them with you today in the hopes that you may pass them on to anyone who might benefit from this support.
It begins with these 3 simple and easily achievable strategies and some simple options to get you started. Just like any journey, you get to travel at your own speed and try things at your own pace in your own time. Like every journey, there is a hard way and an easy way to travel.
I have personally found essential oils to be the easiest way to help your body:
- Eat in the parasympathetic state
- Sleep through the night, and
- Move to support circulation and lymph flow.
Essential Oils to Eat, Sleep and Move
As you may know, essential oils are the natural, highly concentrated essences extracted from plants. Oils are “essential” components of the plants’ immune systems, helping them grow, thrive, evolve, and adapt to their surroundings. Essential oils are also super small and fat soluble which allows them to cross your blood brain barrier and help your brain recover, reboot and release. By putting your body in a state of balance, essential oils enhance the benefit of all other healing practices. In other words, they make all other supplements, exercise and healing strategies work even better.
EAT in the Parasympathetic State
Your body needs food and water as raw materials for all processes in your body. This means that you not only need to consume nutrients, but you need to digest, absorb and assimilate them. This can only happen in the Parasympathetic state.
If you eat under stress, the nutrients in your food will not be properly digested, absorbed, or assimilated. When you eat in the parasympathetic state, the brain activates all of your digestive functions. Your vagus nerve serves as the on/off switch for the parasympathetic state and Parasympathetic® blend helps stimulate your vagus nerve. Apply a small amount to the vagus nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone) on one or both ears before meals.
Parasympathetic® also helps shift you out of patterns of anxiety and overwhelm. Whenever you feel unsafe, either physically or emotionally, your nervous system kicks into high gear, activating the survival brain, either sending you into “fight or flight” or “freeze” shut down avoidance strategies.
Activating your Parasympathetic® nervous system helps you calm your system. No matter how sad, anxious or overwhelmed I am feeling, dabbing a drop of Parasympathetic® blend behind my earlobe ALWAYS lifts me up. I think of it as my personal reset button.
SLEEP: Restore your energy and your health
It takes a lot of energy to process through early grief and shock. During sleep, your body and brain rest and replenish your energy.
Melatonin is your body’s natural sleep hormone—it puts your body in a state to get ready to sleep. When stress is high, your stress hormone cortisol can suppress the release of melatonin, preventing deep sleep and contributing to insomnia.
Essential oils, like Circadian Rhythm® can be used to trigger the natural release of melatonin, which helps you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling rejuvenated without any morning drowsiness. Enhancing your sleep helps you enhance your capacity to process grief.
MOVE
Limbic Reset™ to move Mental Energy.
Grief intensely activates the limbic system—the brain’s emotional center—causing it to operate in overdrive, which triggers survival mechanisms, high stress (cortisol), and emotional volatility. This heightened state often suppresses the prefrontal cortex, leading to cognitive “grief brain” memory issues, and difficulty with decision-making
Olfactory stimulation with essential oils can be used to reset the volume of threat perception and help calm the over-firing of your limbic system.
Limbic Reset™ contains several powerful essential oils that may help calm threat arousal and send safety queues to help reset your limbic system and support healthy emotional regulation. Limbic Reset™ was specifically formulated with Helichrysum sandalwood and Melissa oils which are touted for brain function and known to cross the blood-brain barrier and assist in carrying oxygen to the limbic system. Topically apply over the forehead or back of the neck to calm grief thought patterns.
Lymph and Fascia Release to Move Physical Energy
Emotions are energy in motion that need to move out of your system to avoid densifying and contributing to physical health issues. Emotions and thought related energy travel through the same physical pathways as physical toxins – your lymphatic system and your fascial network. The more you can support the health of these elimination pathways, the easier it will be to process and release your grief.
Lymph™
Your lymphatic system is the sewer system in the body through which all mental, physical and emotional debris is eliminated.
Emotions are thought to reside in the fluid of your tissues, and your lymphatic system helps support the healthy flow of this fluid throughout your body. Grief can linger in your tissues, energetically impacting the flow of your lymph fluid.
Moving your lymph with Lymph™ can help you gently prompt the emotional release of grief as Lymph helps to stimulate the lymphatic system and break down blockages that prevent emotions from flowing freely.
To enhance lymphatic flow and drainage, apply Lymph™ generously around the sides of the neck, under the armpits, and along the bikini line. Lymph flows more heavily down the left side of the body and can get congested around the left clavicle, so it is good to apply the Lymph™ blend right on the left clavicle bone. If you think about what oils do in plants, they help to move fluid through the plant so that the water gets from the roots up to the leaves, which can be hundreds of feet in the air. That’s what the Lymph™ oil is helping you do. It’s helping you move things.
It can be especially important to apply Lymph™ oil to the clavicles and the sides of the neck, as your neck is the critical intersection where your brain connects with your body. Oxygen, nutrients, and stimuli are carried between the brain and the body through nerves, blood vessels, veins, and the spinal cord, which travel through the spinal canal.
Fascia Release™
Fascia – the connective tissue within your body – stores emotional trauma and grief by tightening, hardening, and restricting mobility. Unresolved grief causes this tissue to shorten and hold tension, leading to curled, protective postures which compromises the ability of your lymphatic system to carry toxins out of the body. Releasing this physical “memory” through the topical application of Fascia Release™ blend can trigger emotional release.
As you may know, fascia lies just below the skin so topically applying essential oils onto the skin allows for easy and immediate access to the fascia. The skin is your largest organ and is relatively permeable to fat-soluble substances like essential oils.
The essential oils in the Fascia Release™ blend are uniquely formulated to unravel deeply held physical and emotional tensions, constrictions and energetic blockages related to grief or other suppressed emotions. To help support the gentle release of grief, topically apply over the front and back of the heart as frequently as is needed.
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