We live in stressful times, and all that stress can quickly lead to a build of resentment and anger. These emotions, in turn, create more stress, which creates more resentment and anger, all in a vicious cycle.
All of that stress and anger puts quite the strain on the body. You begin to feel exhausted all the time, your heart rate will stay elevated for extended periods of time.
Basically, it puts more wear and tear on your body than what is healthy, and can cause lots of health problems down the line.
Worse, it often drives people to unhealthy methods of anger and stress management like emotional eating or excessive alcohol consumption.
Clearly, finding a healthy, effective means of reducing anger and resentment is vital to our health. There are countless holistic approaches to this, and you are encouraged to try them all.
Essential oils may be one of the most effective and accessible means of reducing your anger, however, and this should probably be the first thing you try.
How Essential Oils can Help with Anger and Resentment
Scents have a bigger effect on our emotions than many people realize. They can directly alter our mood by triggering different memories, regulating hormones, lowering the heart rate, and more.
Essential oils have the ability to quickly alter your mood, relieve stress, and calm you down. They can do all of this without any major side effects, too.
If you're struggling with anger and resentment, as many people are, essential oils are certainly worth trying.
Best Essential Oils for Anger and Resentment
Lavender Oil
You'll find lavender on just about every "Best Essential Oils for..." list, because it's versatile and powerful. It's used for everything from toothaches to mental health issues to hair loss, but it's most well-known for its use as a potent anti-stress oil.
Lavender has been the subject of extensive research, and it's health benefits are well-known.
It's ability to reduce anxiety and relieve stress are well documented, and believed to be the result of its interactions with the limbic system.
It's one of the best stress relief oils you can use, and that, in turn, makes it very effective as an all-natural anger-management tool. It can alter your mood quickly and safely and promotes a serene, peaceful mindset.
You can use lavender oil for aromatherapy by putting it into a diffuser or even by using a few drops in a hot bath.
This lavender oil is of the highest quality, made from the finest Bulgarian lavender and steam-distilled to preserve the delicate aromatic compounds that make it so effective. It's rich, floral scent is sure to soothe.
If you prefer a more mellow lavender oil, this oil sourced from French lavender meets all the same quality standards as the Bulgarian oil. It's simply a bit milder and sweeter.
Bergamot Oil
Bergamot is most known for providing the distinctive aroma of Earl Grey tea, but the essential oil is a powerful stress reliever.
When used in aromatherapy, bergamot triggers the brain to release dopamine and seratonin, which provides a rapid soothing sensation and quickly relieves stress.
Longtime tea drinkers are likely already aware of this effect- taking a whiff of a hot mug of Early Grey tea calms the nerves like nothing else. It's certainly one of the reasons why that particular tea is so popular, and why Bergamot was used for it in the first place.
You'll find that Bergamot has many other uses, including promoting general health, preventing infections, and improving skin health. It's one of the most versatile oils you can buy.
Bergamot is a citrus fruit, so the oil can be easily extracted from the peel by cold-pressing. You should always avoid Bergamot oil extracted by any other method, as it will be a dramatically inferior product.
This Bergamot oil is cold pressed from the finest fruit in Italy. it's packaged without any additional ingredients, so you know you're getting pure, potent Bergamot oil.
Lemon Oil
Lemon oil is popular to use in homemade cleaning products; it's bright, refreshing scent and antimicrobial properties make it a natural choice to use in cleaning your home.
Lemon oil shouldn't be limited to cleaning products, though, and it's a much more versatile oil than it gets credit for.
Lemon oil is a powerful stress reliever, which can help to both prevent anger and to manage it. The less stress you're feeling, the less angry you'll be, and the easier it will become to avoid getting angry or developing resentment towards others.
In addition to relieving stress, lemon oil is also an effective treatment for insomnia. If you're suffering from insomnia, using lemon oil in a diffuser in the evening or at night as you go to bed may make a big difference in your ability to sleep well at night.
Lack of sleep can make it much more difficult for you to manage your anger, and you'll be more irritable in general. You might find that improving your sleep is the key to managing your anger and releasing your resentments.
Rather than steam distillation, the mark of a quality lemon oil is a cold-pressed oil. Cold pressing is just what it sounds like- the lemon peel, which contains all the oil, is squeezed or pressed to force the oil out of the peel, and no heat or solvents are applied during the process. This leads to a very pure, very potent lemon oil.
This lemon oil is cold pressed from the very best Italian lemons. This gives it a very bright, fresh aroma that smells just like a fresh lemon.
Lemon Essential Oil
Lemon essential oil has several health benefits including: supporting the immune system, alleviating stress and reducing insomnia.
Vivorific’s peppermint essential oil is: 100% Pure and natural, free from fillers, additives and harmful chemicals, vegan and kosher certified and sealed with tamper evident closure and Euro style dropper cap.
Cedarwood Oil
Cedarwood oil is misleadingly named, because it isn't made from the wood of cedar trees. It's actually made from the needles, bark, and berries of cedar trees. It's mainly used as an ingredient in products like insect repellent and shampoo, but it has a number of medicinal uses.
Cedarwood oil can help reduce acne through its anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. It also lowers blood pressure. Since high blood pressure often accompanies anger and resentment, using cedarwood oil regularly can help mitigate some of the health problems that anger and resentment might cause
Like lavender, Cedarwood oil has been shown in research to have a soothing effect that can relieve anxiety. Taking a combination of lavender and Cedarwood could be key to managing your anger in a healthy, sustainable way.
Cedarwood, in fact, can be used as a natural sedative. Much like lemon oil, cedarwood can help you manage your anger and resentment better by improving the quality of your sleep.
This Cedarwood Oil is a favorite because it's sourced from Moroccan cedars, which have a sweeter scent than most. It's steam-distilled to preserve the delicate aromatic compounds in the oil and ensure that you're getting the best-quality oil possible.
Ginger Oil
Ginger is another oil that has been studied thoroughly, and so it's benefits are well-understood and backed up by science. We know that Ginger is a very powerful anti-inflammatory aid, and that means it has a long list of medicinal uses.
It's also well-known for its ability to soothe an upset stomach. It's not always a symptom of chronic anger, but people who frequently struggle with anger and resentment do tend to have more digestive issues, and ginger will be a very useful oil to have on hand for that reason alone.
Anger, stress, and resentment are all quite hard on the heart, and ginger naturally supports heart health, helping to counteract the long-term effects of your anger.
It's also quite good at reducing anxiety and mental stress, both of which can contribute to feelings of anger and angry outbursts.
This ginger oil is made from only the finest Chinese ginger. It's steam-distilled to guarantee purity and quality, and it has no fillers or added chemicals. It's real-deal, premium ginger oil that's sure to make you feel better.
Clove Oil
Clove oil has been used as a natural painkiller for centuries, but that isn't why it helps with anger and resentment. Of course, chronic pain can certainly cause resentment and anger, but clove oil isn't the best choice for dealing with that, either.
It's uses as a painkiller and an antibiotic do make it handy to have around, and it's always nice to know that the essential oils you bought for one purpose can be used for several others.
Clove oil helps with anger and resentment in more or less the same ways that all the other oils on this list do: it relieves stress.
It calms you down, so you're less likely to become angry. In short, it makes you feel better, which helps you deal with your anger.
This oil, made from cloves grown in India, is of the highest quality and is sure to help you manage your anger and resentment more easily.
How to Use Essential Oils
First, a caveat: essential oils won't make your anger go away. They make it easier for you to deal with and control. They clear your mind so that you can think rationally about why you're angry, and how to respond to that anger.
The same is true of resentment. These emotions are the result of situations that you can't entirely control. Essential oils give you the tools you need to control what you can.
Now, to use your essential oils, you'll want to go with aromatherapy. For anger management and stress relief this is a much better method than topical applications. The easiest and most convenient way of using aromatherapy is to buy a diffuser.
These devices have a reservoir which you fill with water and a few drops of your essential oils. They then use ultrasonic sound waves to vibrate the water and create a mist, which carries tiny droplets of your oil out into the air. Diffusers work very well and tend to be affordable.
They have the added advantage of being portable, so you can use one wherever you want to. Many people struggling with anger and resentment find that they really need the aromatherapy at work more than at home, so they bring their diffuser into the office.
Diffusers can also provide aromatherapy for a long time. If you refill it, you can use it all day long. That way you know you're getting maximum benefit from your aromatherapy.
Another great way to use essential oils in aromatherapy is in the bath or the shower. This approach is often favored because the relaxing qualities of a hot bath or shower are already considerable, and combined with the essential oils it can have a powerful effect.
In the shower, you can simply sprinkle some essential oil around the floor of the shower before you turn the hot water on. For a bath, add it to the tub before you turn on the water.
You may find the aroma more intense than what you experience with a diffuser because the heat from the water releases more of the aromatic compounds in the oil. This is a good thing, because those compounds are what give the oil it's health benefits.
If you need to quickly calm yourself down, you can always just crack open a bottle, hold it right under your nose, and breath deep. It might lack the elegance of a diffuser or a hot bath, but it'll definitely get the job done.
If you can't bring a diffuser into the workplace, just bring the bottle of oil. You can also smear a small amount of it on your upper lip, right below your nose. Just be careful- essential oils are very concentrated and this could be overwhelming.
Conclusion
Anger and resentment can easily build up over time and cause numerous health problems. Left unchecked, it can, quite literally, be the death of you.
Your blood pressure spikes, your heart struggles, and your immune system weakens. Finding healthy ways to relieve anger and resentment is of the utmost importance.
Essential oils are perfect for this. They calm you down, improve your sleep, and give you the mental clarity you need in order to identify the causes of your anger and resentment and to manage them better so they don't overwhelm you.
Any of the essential oils on this list would work, but you may find that buying several and using them in combination is the best solution.
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