Perfumes & Emotional Connections - How Certain Fragrances Affect Our Mood

You have been waiting for the intensity of the summer to subside for the last few months. Or you might just be waiting for your next holiday season to begin so that you can finally fly away to a far remote exotic place. In short, you are down in the dumps and looking for a way out. Luckily, you can incorporate certain fragrances to alleviate your stress, and thereby improve your mood. In this article, we will take a look at this fascinating mood-fragrance relationship. Would a few drops of your favorite perfume or an essential oil be enough to say goodbye to the sadness? Let’s find out about it in this guide.

The Power of the Sense of Smell

Unlike other senses of the human body, our sense of smell is directly connected to the emotional center of our brain. With our new scent that we smell for the first time, we attach a particular emotion and experience to it. This is why the smell of freshly baked cookies or the scent of freshly cut grass takes us back to the time in the past when we first experienced it.

According to a study performed by Masahiro et al. in 2011, various fragrances can be used to treat stress and depression in many people. Whether you spray your favorite perfume over your clothes or spruce up your home with fragrance oils, you can avail the therapeutic benefits of scents.

How Perfume Scents Affect Your Emotions

Our memories can trigger certain emotional responses, depending on how we felt about them in the past. For instance, when you think about your childhood visits to your grandma’s house, you instantly experience feelings of warmth and love. This takes place rapidly in our brain on a subconscious level, as our emotions are linked with our memories. 

Therefore, whenever you come across a particular fragrance that is already stored in your brain, your brain instantly triggers the set of emotions associated with that scent memory. For this reason, you would always experience nostalgia when you smell certain scents that you discovered in the past.

What Smells Boost your Mood?

Among the whole scent palette that your nose can detect, there would always be some scents that you would feel drawn to. The marketers of perfumes and cosmetic products are aware of this science, and take advantage of this knowledge while pitching particular products to customers. Whether you are looking for a sense of reassurance or want to experience soothing sensations, there are various fragrance types that you can choose.

  1. Lavender to Relieve Stress

    Lavender has been used for centuries for its medicinal benefits related to aromatherapy and psychotherapy. All thanks to its intrinsic sedative and calming properties, you can use a lavender-based fragrance to feel more calm and relaxed. It helps release stress and eases your mind, making it highly useful to treat insomnia and sleep-related disorders.

    If nothing is against your recent stress build-up, then we recommend you try fragrances with notes of lavender, bergamot, and neroli. Lavender, in particular, contains active compounds that activate stress-relieving and happiness hormones in our bodies and helps regulate a healthier heartbeat. With an improved heartbeat and blood circulation, you would feel a noticeable improvement in your mood. Interestingly, many celebrities and public speakers endorse the use of lavender in reducing anxiety related to stage performance.

  2. Citrus to Stimulate Energy

    Do you feel that you need to cheer up? We recommend that you should try perfumes with notes of cedarwood, citrus, fennel, and pine. These refreshing scents will help improve your overall confidence and self-image. The tangy burst of citric fragrances can instantly make you feel more energized and active. Citrus scents interact with our nervous system in a way that makes us less irritable and cranky throughout the day.

    Typically used in cleaning products, we have an association of citrus scents with cleanliness in our brains. Being a highly dynamic scent, you can use your citrus perfume whether you are dealing with winter blues or just a little gloomy. Look on the bright side now by choosing a lemon-based perfume!

  3. Vanilla to Get in the Mood

    Unlike other fragrances, most fragrance enthusiasts mainly use vanilla perfumes to improve their moods. Known for imparting feelings of calmness and comfort, many people also claim that vanilla acts as an aphrodisiac for them. It can have an exceptional soothing effect on our minds, mainly because most of us have a positive association with vanilla flavor. A sudden waft of vanilla fragrance can instantly take you back to your childhood days, which can elevate your overall mood.

    Often paired with notions of love and belonging, the Vanilla scent encourages a sense of originality and simplicity that can allow you to feel more centered and balanced wherever you are. You would feel a major improvement in your quality of sleep at night if you frequently apply vanilla scents. Interestingly, many people find it sensual because of its velvety and sweet notes.

  4. Gain Serenity With Ylang-Ylang

    The fruity perfume notes of the ylang-ylang flower are known to relieve stress and anxiety, and it acts as an effective natural anti-depressant without having any serious side effects. The people in the Philippines have been using this exotic flower for its medicinal benefits for centuries.

    This tropical flower is also used to treat insomnia in chronic patients, as it comes with mild sedative effects that help regulate healthy blood pressure throughout the body. To avail the full benefits of this scent, you can either diffuse its essential oil in your room using a scent diffuser or apply it to your skin to enjoy its calming properties.

  5. Neroli to Reduce Anxiety

    In our hectic lives, we often find ourselves overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety and stress towards the end of each week. To get a hold of your anxiety and all the unwanted negative emotions that come with it, we recommend trying the neroli fragrance.

    This is an essential oil extracted from the flowers of the bitter Seville orange tree. Its scent directly interacts with the part of our brain that regulates emotions and memories. By adding this essential oil to your daily beauty regimen, you would feel an improvement in your blood pressure and heartbeat.

Final Thoughts

The complexity of the mood-fragrance interconnection is what makes a perfume unique. Choosing the right scent can help you travel to the memories that give you happiness and improve your self-esteem.

Though it might not be possible to write an entire notebook that includes every memorable scent, it would be a good idea to have some particular scents in your mind that provoke positive memories and associations.

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