5 minute read
Staying strong
Elizabeth Ashley explores personal resilience…
STRONG. Now there’s a word with many different interpretations. It could mean, physically, mentally, or emotionally. Perhaps one of the few useful things COVID has done is turned the notion of being emotionally strong on its head. Hopefully, the changing collective consciousness about how it feels to be put under pressure will also burst the festering boil that was mental health. One thing’s for certain, even if the vaccine has put some distance between us and the virus, there is another crisis most certainly now hitting the NHS.
My daughter is a paramedic. After 12 months of living out this nightmare on her own, in Sheffield, finally the doctor has drawn a line. Despite her cries of indignation, she has been signed off on long term sick, completely shattered by trauma.
The problem being, of course that the strain of COVID, the sheer number of cases, the colossal amount of overtime required to plug the gaps because of people self-isolating…all of that was piled onto what was already a terrifyingly traumatic job.
These coming days, I predict, will be extremely hard for my daughter. That she should rest, for her, is cognitive dissonance. It goes against everything she has come to believe. Every synapse in her body is screaming for respite, but through necessity she has trained it that it must not. She will not be the only one in this state. Indeed, I know that she is not. It’s not just keyworkers, either is it?
Everyone you speak to is lonely. Perhaps lonelier after this second lockdown, because in the first whole families were locked together in the sun. Now, after these endless weeks, just looking out of the window at grey skies and rain, I think most people are feeling the strain.
I’ve felt it myself, locked up trying to run a business and home schooling. My research into the ancient Greek Melissae priestesses became incredibly confusing when my son was reading me his English homework. I started to feel like Pegasus, Theseus, and Medusa were narrating my life. I was terrified I was suffering psychosis. It was far from comforting when, on asking hubby if I seemed mad, without a shade of irony he replied: “You seem the same to me…” I’m still not really sure how to take that!
So, where is strong in all this? What does personal resilience look like?
Is it continuing to struggle, way after your body complains, or is it asking for help? Certainly, within the constructs of the NHS, I can’t see any other outcome apart from crisis. How can any of them feel loyal to their service and ask for help?
Thank goodness that the complementary practitioners are well rested. Physically rested, maybe, but the financial stress on us all, the mental and emotional pressure…well. We don’t need to go there, do we?
Despite that, I would suggest every practitioner here has some wonder up their sleeve. Something that might help get someone back on their feet. Massage, obviously, for those weary bodies. Talking therapies, even energy work.
If I might be so bold, I’d love to offer up an aromatherapy perspective. Perhaps this might be something to help people if they are still locked up at home.
Oxytocin is the neurotransmitter the body makes when it senses a feeling of bonding.
It has many functions. It surges through the body when a woman is labour, then triggers the maternal milk to come in. It’s involved, strangely, in osteoporosis, where deficiencies cause the bones to become brittle. It’s triggered when we hold hands, or when we hug someone. Sometimes, it’s referred to as the love chemical.
We don’t need to be scientists to see this country may be experiencing an oxytocin famine.
The effects of enhancing oxytocin are boundless. People report feeling less anxiety, stress, and pain. Mood improves and we feel greater feelings of well-being. We’d expect this from massage and from sex of course, but recent research has shown there is something far more accessible at our finger tips. Oddly, it is fragrance.
Research released in March 2020 showed that spending just five minutes a day smelling essential oils raised levels of oxytocin. Bizarrely, this research came about because it had already been proven that low levels of oxytocin in post-menopausal women played a vital role in osteoporosis and loss of muscle mass.
In the trial, the women were given, what I would consider to be hormonal oils - choices of lavender, neroli, jasmine absolute, roman chamomile, clary sage, and Indian sandalwood to inhale for twenty minutes, after having inhaled a control blank substance for twenty minutes prior.
Levels were assessed in four different readings of saliva, and in each case the essential oils had made the oxytocin higher. Beautiful stress relieving oils, so easy to use, but there is a bigger thing at play here, isn’t there?
The gardens are starting to colour up and you can smell spring in the air. Nature took from us and now she is giving back. Just a walk in the forest or take a few moments to sniff a flower may be that small trigger the body needs to rest and restore. Perhaps the never ending hand washing needs to start integrating rose soap?
As complementary practitioners our job has always been to support the NHS, and whilst we have always been rather good at it, some sectors have one a very good job of ignoring us. I’m not sure they have the potency to do that anymore. Certainly, they have their own sickness epidemic looming.
We will be needed to pick up the slack.
Resilience means stepping up when needed, and your country never needed you more. But more than that, resilience means knowing yourself, always thinking of others but simultaneously always checking in with yourself to make sure you are okay first.
If you need help now, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Please, talk to your doctor or therapist. If you are well, if you genuinely do feel strong, take a deep breath, step outside and start thinking about what small thing you can do to repair our planet, its trees, its animals, but more than anything else right now, your fellow people. Welcome to the Age of Aquarius – now the healers rise. n
Reference
The Effects of Essential Oil on Salivary Oxytocin Concentration in Postmenopausal Women | Wataru Tarumi , Kazuyuki Shinohara 1J Altern Complement Med; 2020 Mar;26(3):226-230.
iELIZABETH ASHLEY is a clinical aromatherapist with nearly thirty years professional experience. She is the best-selling Secret Healer aromatherapy manuals and the Tongue of The Trees Essential Oil Oracle Cards.
From the recipes left over from her family business, she has created a video database of how to make and use safely called The Recipe Hub, which you can find, alongside others of her courses including The Prosperous Therapist Course. You can find these at www.thesecrethealer.co.uk/courses
