Managing intense emotion

by Susun Weed | Jan 27, 2007 | Columns, Magazine, Wise Woman Ways | 0 comments

Hi Susun,

Between life’s ups and downs, the stress of chronic illness, monthly hormonal shifts, and the symptoms of MCS, sometimes I just feel the need to rage against the world. What am I to do with these intense negative emotions? I’m not sure if this is a physical symptom (ie biochemical imbalance), but I would love to be able to manage this like I would any other symptom – whether a headache, menstrual cramps, whatever. What would a Wise Woman do? Deep thanks…

Susun’s response:

A Wise Woman would:

Step 1. Collect information
Premenstrual, pregnant, premenopausal, and menopausal women rage and weep. Like it or not, you’ll probably find your emotions harder to control as you enter your menopausal years. Men given hormone therapy (against prostate cancer) weep and rage too!

Step 2. Engage the energy
Take time for yourself when you find yourself crying, yelling, raging, depressed, out of control. Create your own sacred space, even in a closet, where you can be alone, without responsibilities, where you can be safe to have every one of your feelings.

Begin (or deepen your commitment to working with) a journal as a way to care for yourself and your emotions. The Change is an opportunity to value your emotional self and to nourish all of your feelings, from grief to bliss, rage to outrageous.
Universal healing energy can help when your emotions are roaring. Channel it through your hands to your heart or womb; hold yourself.

Step 3. Nourish and tonify
• My remedy of choice for women dealing with premenstrual emotional uproar is motherwort—the calm, fierce-hearted mother who helps you find your center in the wildest of emotional storms. A dose of 5-15 drops taken several times when you’re upset will bring calmer feelings quickly. A dose of 10-30 drops taken twice a day for a month can help prevent mood swings.

• Let a cup of garden sage tea with honey restore your emotional center and soothe your irritated nerves. It is even said to cure insanity and relieve hysteria. In Chinese herbal practice, honey is used (in tea, not cooked) to soften the energy of the liver when it is hardened by rage, frustration, and anger.

• Pamper yourself. Get a massage. Cuddle with someone you love.

• Moods don’t swing so much in women who nourish their nerves and even out their blood sugar levels with lots of calcium.

Slow-acting liferoot flower tincture (5 drops) or slower-acting vitex berry tincture (25-40 drops), taken daily for a week or two premenstrually for several months will help you unravel your emotional snarls.
Black cohosh root tincture eases menopausal flashes and is said to cure hysteria, too. Try 10-20 drops once or twice a day for a month.
Keep a piece of licorice or ginseng root handy to chew on when you feel like chewing someone’s head off.

Step 4. Stimulate/Sedate

Valerian root, as a bath or tincture (15-20 drops as needed) is a powerful sleep-inducing sedative that also eases uterine cramps. Avoid long-term use.

Step 5b. Use drugs

Feeling moody? Mood-altering drugs, legal (tranquilizers, anti-depressants, alcohol, coffee, cigarettes) or illegal (cocaine, opium), create dependence.

Step 6. Break and enter

Psychoactive plants (such as marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, and mescaline), when taken in a safe setting, offer radically different results than mood-altering drugs. Instead of dependence, they foster self-worth, helping the individual to break open new neural pathways and establish easier flows of emotions and energy through both the physical and subtle bodies.

Green blessings, Susun Weed

Author

Susun Weed

Susun S. Weed has no official diplomas of any kind; she left high school in her junior year to pursue studies in mathematics and artificial intelligence at UCLA and she left college in her junior year to pursue life.

Susun began studying herbal medicine in 1965 when she was living in Manhattan while pregnant with her daughter, Justine Adelaide Swede.

She wrote her first book -- Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year (now in its 30th printing) -- in 1985 and published it as the first title of Ash Tree Publishing in 1986.

It was followed by Healing Wise (1989), New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way (1992 and revised in 2002), Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way (1996), Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way (2011), Abundantly Well - Seven Medicines (2019).

In addition to her writing, Ms Weed trains apprentices, oversees the work of more than 300 correspondence course students, coordinates the activities of the Wise Woman Center, and is a High Priestess of Dianic Wicca, a member of the Sisterhood of the Shields, and a Peace Elder.

Susun Weed is a contributor to the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women's Studies, peer- reviewed journals, and popular magazines, including a regular column in Sagewoman.

Her worldwide teaching schedule encompasses herbal medicine, ethnobotany, pharmacognosy, psychology of healing, ecoherbalism, nutrition, and women's health issues and her venues include medical schools, hospital wellness centers, breast cancer centers, midwifery schools, naturopathic colleges, and shamanic training centers, as well as many conferences.

Susun appears on many television and radio shows, including National Public Radio and NBC News.
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