Why You Hate Certain Smells: The Psychology of Scent Aversions, Trauma, and Healing!

Hey, beautiful souls. Welcome to Reclaim Your Inner Rockstar, the space for high-capacity leaders who lead boldly yet often feel overstimulated beneath the surface. I'm Amy Robinson, aromapsychologist and cognitive coach with more than 25 years of helping others find emotional clarity through scent and science. My work began when I realized scent could instantly shift my thoughts and regulate my entire inner world. And I knew women like me needed access to that same power. Each week you will receive grounded tools and conversations that help you steady your nervous system and think more clearly. Are you ready to feel like yourself again? Then you're in the right place. Hey, beautiful souls! Welcome to Reclaim Your Inner Rockstar, the podcast where your healing transformation meets deep empowerment. I am here to show you how to break free from trauma, rediscover your strength, and step boldly into a life you deserve. This is where old stories lose their grip and the real you begins to rise. I am Amy Robinson, a certified transformational coach and aroma psychologist with over 20 years of experience helping hundreds of women reclaim their lives. My expertise is not just on paper. It's lived, it's embodied, and it's soul-tested. I combined powerful certifications with a deeply spiritual, non-traditional approach that gets results most women didn't even know they needed. This is healing that sticks. This is freedom that expands. Each week, we'll dive into the real, The honest truths of healing. The raw, the unfiltered emotions and tender messiness of breaking free. And the radiant, the light that returns when you finally remember who you are. So grab your favorite drink, take a deep breath, and settle in. Your comeback starts now. Are you ready?

Let's rock. Hello. This topic is a good one. This is one I've been wanting to talk about for a while, and I'm not the typical aroma psychologist. I'm not the typical aromatherapist. Therapist, I like to create a little controversy because it's okay to do so. There's so much to learn in the aromatherapy world. This industry is starting to explode. Many of you are probably associated with it in some way or are learning about it in some way. And what makes it so amazing is that aroma has been around since the beginning of time. You're going to learn a little bit about the science today about how amazing aroma plays a part with our brain. Did you even know that we smell with our brain? We do not smell with our nose. Our nose is the carrier of the scent, but our brain is what registers it. The power of smell is profound and aromatherapy and essential oils have been used since the beginning of time to create certain emotional effects in us. It's just now starting to come back, which is really exciting. Have you ever smelled something that instantly made you feel anxious or uncomfortable or really just uneasy? I know I have. I've had several scents in my life like that. Something that you may not understand, but just don't like the scent. Your best friend or spouse or child can love it, but you not so much. There's a reason behind that psychologically. There's actually a deeper psychological reason. Let's talk about how scent and memory are linked. When you think about stepping into someone you love home, like grandmother or your parents or that favorite aunt of yours, and you step into their home and they have a certain scent, what feelings does it create in you? Does it create The feeling of come home or I just feel so good. Scent is so powerful. Did you know that the sense of smell is directly linked to that part of our brain, the limbic system? For trauma survivors, our memories, our emotions, the seat of our emotions, the center of our emotions is in our amygdala. And the amygdala is part of that limbic system. It all interconnects with one another and it's inflamed usually. Trauma survivors who have experienced chronic complex trauma over time have bigger almond-sized amygdala than most. And that's because The emotions are linked to that part. There's inflammation there. For those of you who have experienced that trauma, your brain may associate a certain scent with a memory that you might be uneasy about. This is something that I go in depth with my one-on-one clients. Usually when a client steps into my space, I do a medical and emotional history. Intake form for them because essential oils need to be treated with safety and properly. I have to understand their emotional and medical history to work with them specifically. In each case, I have had clients who dislike a certain scent. As we start to work together, It becomes clear why they hate that scent. They may not fully understand it yet, but I intuitively associate it with something happened. The scent was in the vicinity or an underlying scent of either the abuser or someone in the environment who created uneasiness. There's a cognitive association we have with scent. And scent anchors emotions. Subconsciously, most of us pick up scents and they register in our brain instantaneously. For a trauma survivor who grew up in an environment that felt unsafe, scent had a part to play in that. When I work with a client who has been either molested or raped, her abuser carried a certain scent. That triggered uneasiness in them. There's a psychological reason for all of it, and as we become aware of what those psychological reasons are behind a certain scent, it could be very scary to bring to the surface. And this is why I highly recommend: do not do this alone. I've heard it all working as a coach for the last 4 years, very specifically in this field. I've heard it all. Oh, I can do it myself. But there's a psychological reason behind them, and if you don't understand what that reason is, it could trigger memories that you are not ready to process. It could trigger emotions you're not ready to process and work through. That's why working with a professional like myself is so important. That's why getting support for somebody who understands the science behind an oil and the way that it associates in your body and in your brain, along with the cognitive— I'm a cognitive behavioral coach. Understanding how our emotions and our behaviors respond can create a powerful acceleration in your healing if done properly under the guidance of a professional who understands what those triggers are, what they do for you, how to work you through them. It's so important because the cognitive association can trigger things that we're not ready for. We don't know how to process them. For those of you who are just coming into the space, I want you to create awareness around when you have a certain scent. Try to think, what does that scent mean for me? What is it stirring in me, whether it's good or bad? It's not the scent itself that's the problem. The scent triggers the event. The scent triggers the event. It triggers the emotional baggage you are carrying that you may not be ready to associate with healing and release. Scent aversions can be a sign that your brain is trying to protect you, keeping you safe. As trauma survivors, our brain has established a certain way of thinking to protect us. We are hypersensitive to feelings of being unsafe, to feelings of being uneasy. That's why many say, oh, my intuition is strong. Intuition can also be trained ineffectively. Based on our traumas. So we can— everything can trigger us, including a scent, and then it makes it really challenging for us to move forward. When we have a scent aversion, it could be our brain's way of trying to protect us and keep us safe because of our trauma. It is not uncommon, triggers some women mostly because when they get to the root of that, they recognize, wait a minute, my abuser, maybe it's a cologne or a deodorant, or maybe it was just that person being out working all day and then coming home and having a certain scent. Here's the thing of beauty. Your brain can shift with proper support. Your brain can move forward and heal. You can retrain, rewire your brain to register a scent differently where eventually it becomes neutral or even something that you become comfortable with over time. Of the many women that I've worked with, I'll introduce a scent at a certain point and I work with them very specifically 'When I introduce the scent, we have to create that safety first.' Once that's introduced, they say, 'I actually quite love this scent because of what it does for me.' So over time, they have come to shift. They've been able to release all of those icky emotions that were connected with the past so that they can move forward. It's a win. It is a celebration and boy, do we celebrate. And women in my healing community have been able to practice these things as well. They're getting amazing results from it as well. So the scent that you dislike now doesn't have to be a trigger for you moving forward. It doesn't have to have the same response forever. It is within your capability to to move on from that as long as you step in understanding and knowing that. And that's what's beautiful about it, that we can create awareness, we can bring our unconscious into the subconscious, into the conscious, and then work with what we have. I often think of it as, in Spanish we say something along the lines of una rompecabeza. A rompecabeza is a puzzle. How funny, because the literal translation means breaking the brain, right? Sometimes we have to break the brain to repair it, but it can be done with neuroplasticity. It's a beautiful thing. So the next time you encounter a scent that you maybe don't like or it feels uncomfortable, take a moment to reflect on what it may be connected to. Your brain will only allow you to go as far as you're ready. There's no need to create fear around this because our brain, its whole purpose is to protect us and keep us safe. So even at a surface level, it can create awareness so that you say, huh, that's what this could be. It's really cool. Your brain can give you what you need at that moment to help you. This is another step in your healing journey, a self-awareness, a self-discovery for you so that you can move forward and continue on that path of healing. If this is something that may feel overwhelming to you and you're afraid to do it on your own, I always recommend professional guidance, whether it's through me or someone else who does similar work, I encourage that. The support allows us to feel safe and grow. It's important to feel safe before you step into that. My healing community is a beautiful, intimate community of spiritually strong and devoted women who help each other grow in this way. If that's something you're ready to do, you can reach out to me or comment "heal" in the comment section to join my healing community. Please don't feel afraid to reach out to me. I'm here to support you. It's a win-win. This is self-investment when you take time out to learn and grow in this way. It's intimate, it's safe, it's warm. These are my clients' comments, not my own. And I do have testimonials. I don't share them because the membership is confidential. My clients are at different levels of their journey. My members are at different levels of their journey, and I don't want to expose them in that way unless I've asked them if it's okay. Or the other way is to work with me one-on-one. Either way, you know where to reach me, you know where to find me. If you're looking for some quick and easy digital products, digital guides, my link in bio. You can find all those there, and you can learn to self-coach at home. I actually created a workbook for that very thing, an interactive workbook that actually has different scents that help you through your trauma healing, that help in a different method. I have a 5-step blueprint. I'm going to leave you with that today. Thank you for joining me today. Talk to you soon.

Bye.