Thursday, December 27, 2007

What We Can Learn From Grief

In my last post about grief and depression, I ended by stating that I have made a friend of grief and am engaged in learning from it. But how is this done? In early grief, we spend so much time feeling absolutely terrible inside, how can we have the presence of mind to not just react, but engage as well?

I've posted before about Focusing, a healing technique I learned mostly from Ann Weiser Cornell and her book The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing. When I was shopping around looking for this book, I noticed that she had continued to write about focusing, and that another book was waiting for me once I was finished her first one.

In fact, I was really looking forward to reading her follow-up work, The Radical Acceptance of Everything. You'll recall from my perspective post about Lester Leavenson's book, Happiness Is Free, that I was at first irked (to say the least!), and then fascinated by his comment, "see the perfection where the seeming imperfection seems to be." So much of what I have read seemed incredibly difficult to map onto reality if read in isolation. I mean, come on! How could it be "perfect" that my wife was dead, number one, and then number two, perfect that I felt absolutely horrible inside for weeks and months on end?

Well, here's the beauty of being a voracious reader ;-) No sooner had I read one book on emotional wellness or healing than I was presented with another complementary book that built on and strengthened the skills I had recently learned. No sooner had I finished reading Happiness Is Free than I found myself reading this passage in The Radical Acceptance of Everything:

How do we change? How do we not change? If you are like many of the people who are drawn to Focusing, you probably feel stuck or blocked in one or more areas of your life. There is something about you, or your circumstances, or your feelings and reactions to things, that you would like to change. That is very natural. But let us now contrast two ways of approaching this wish to change.

One way assumes that to have something change, you must make It change. You must do something to it. We can call this the Doing/Fixing way.

The other way, which we can call the Being/Allowing way, assumes that change and flow is the natural course of things, and when something seems not to change, what it needs is attention and awareness, with an attitude of allowing it to be as it is, yet open to its next steps.

Our everyday lives are deeply permeated with the Doing/Fixing assumption. When you tell a friend about a problem, how often is her response to give you advice on fixing the problem? Many of our modern therapy methods carry this assumption as well. Cognitive therapy, for example, asks you to change your self-talk. Hypnotherapy often brings in new images and beliefs to replace the old. So the Being/Allowing philosophy, embodied in Focusing, is a radical philosophy. It turns around our usual expectations and ways of viewing the world. It's as if I were to say to you that this chair you are sitting on would like to become an elephant, and if you will just give it interested attention it will begin to transform. What a wild idea! Yet that is how wild it sounds, to some deeply ingrained part of ourselves, when we are told that a fear that we have might transform into something which is not at all fear, if it is given interested attention.

When people who are involved in Focusing talk about the "wisdom of the body," this is what they mean: that the felt sense "knows" what it needs to become next, as surely as a baby knows it needs warmth and comfort and food. As surely as a radish seed knows it will grow into a radish. We never have to tell the felt sense what to become; we never have to make it change. We just need to provide the conditions which allow it to change, like a good gardener providing light and soil and water, but not telling the radish to become a cucumber.


I strongly believe that a major reason I have adapted to grief as well as I have and as quickly as I have stems from this radical approach to grieving. If an event or conversation or memory triggers grief, I assume that this is a natural, normal response of my body. I also assume that my body knows how to grieve and the way I can best help it is to "get out of the way" mentally and allow my body to deal with it as it knows best how to do. And finally, I assume that there is something new to learn from this, some wonderful opportunity to grow that is presenting itself to me.

Is this easy? No! I have had to catch myself many, many times. But like learning any new skill, persistence and repetition quickly pays off. I'm now at the point where grief hardly slows me down at all. It is always there in the background, but it is no longer a source of dread.

If you haven't yet investigated Focusing, I highly recommend you become acquainted with it. It has helped me immeasurably.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Vic,
This is Daria (Babciaboop) from Widownet. I have begun to read your blog from the beginning and find it very helpful and easy to comprehend. This section, however, leaves me feeling as though I didn't get it:
*If an event or conversation or memory triggers grief, I assume that this is a natural, normal response of my body. I also assume that my body knows how to grieve and the way I can best help it is to "get out of the way" mentally and allow my body to deal with it as it knows best how to do. And finally, I assume that there is something new to learn from this, some wonderful opportunity to grow that is presenting itself to me.*
Could you please elaborate on this for me? When you say grief, are you describing all of the emotions that accommpany grief, such as guilt, anxiety, etc.? Do you mean that you allow your body to express those emotions physically? I'm just having trouble picturing this process.
I'd like to tell you, also, how much I appreciate that you are sharing the fruits of your growth through grieving with us.
Thank you,
Daria

Vic said...

Hi Daria,

Thanks very much for posting a comment on my blog, and I'm glad you appreciate my efforts. Re-reading my post, I can see that indeed I was a bit fuzzy about my meaning. It must have been one of my late-night posts ;-) I'll try to be a bit more clear.

When I wrote "trigger grief," I really should have written "trigger pain" instead. Knowing what I know now, I would also remove references to events and conversations and only mention memories. Memories are the cause of all our problems in life, especially in bereavement. So I'd rewrite that sentence now as follows:

"If a memory triggers pain, I assume that this is a natural, normal response of my body."

I wrote about getting out of the way mentally because it is very very common for men to attempt to intellectualize grief. Men aren't supposed to have feelings, right? We aren't supposed to feel pain? Ya rite. I certainly have feelings, and I needed to learn how to give them priority over my intellect. You are right -- grieving is not so much a mental process, but it certainly is a physical process. I wasn't expecting this. So yes, I had to learn how to let my body express emotions physically and not be anxious, distraught, or embarrassed about that. Too bad for the poor person who sat next to me on the bus when I was crying all the way home :-P

I hope this clarifies things a bit. If not, please let me know, and I'll take another stab at it. Cheers!

Vic