Avoiding Grief

Avoidance.

You know what I'm talking about if you've been bereaved for any length of time. In our anxiety as a new widow/er, we often use avoidance as a common coping mechanism. We would rather avoid our anxiety than deal with it. And don't get me wrong — in the early months of grieving, grief avoidance is probably a good thing. In fact, it can often make the difference between getting through the next five minutes and totally losing it. But eventually, we need to stare our anxiety in the face if we ever want to heal. By avoiding grief, we passively let our anxiety run our body. Whatever direction it takes us, it isn't a healing one.

In my "rollercoaster" series, I quote from a great book called MindOS™ - "The Operating System of the Human Mind" by Dr Paul Dobransky. He does a fantastic job of making sense of our bewildering emotions. If you've ever wondered how to deal with anxiety, this is one post you'll want to pay close attention to.

To recap from The Rollercoaster III: anxiety is a signal to which there are only three possible responses — courage, worrying/complaining/victim thinking, or impulsiveness. Avoidance fits in to the impulsiveness response.


I'll let Dr Paul take it from here [pages 183-187]:

Anxiety is not good or bad. Just like anger, it is a SIGNAL. It tells you something is wrong and needs to be done. If you recall, anger signals you that you have unmet needs. Well anxiety signals you that you have fears, challenges, change or risk to face and rise to...

When we are passive with our anxiety and don’t like to make decisions, it likes to “go on autopilot” and is run by the “fight-or-flight” reflex. This reflex makes us either impulsive or avoidant of things we need to face. When there is an anxiety or fear to be faced, our “gut” tendency is to either want to RUN from it to avoid it, or else to attack it impulsively without thinking first.


We need this “fight-or-flight” reflex though for one situation, and one only: SURVIVAL! Yet most of the time, we are NOT under a real threat to our lives. So what happens when we are passive with anxiety? The reflex STILL drives us to be impulsive — to act without thinking — and we overeat, overspend, get addicted, and a host of other behaviors that ironically ARE a threat on our life if we do them enough!

...We overeat, overspend, get overworked, get addicted to drugs, alcohol, or medicines of abuse as unconscious ways of lowering our anxiety through spending it on these physical activities. They are all temporary fixes that lower our anxiety, but if the original sources of that anxiety are still present — loss or fear of loss, or lack of confidence about a particular aspect of life, then we see a rise of anxiety again soon after indulging our addiction....

Allow ourselves to feel the anxiety and then THINK about it. Feelings CAN’T hurt us or cause us more loss, only real threats can...

If I STOP to THINK BEFORE ACTING, I can get in touch with this valuable signal called anxiety — turn the arrow UP. Notice how the Anger Map and Anxiety Map have some opposite properties — anger turned inward causes depression, but anxiety turned inward instead of into immediate action leads to personal growth!

Actively dealing with our anxiety leaves us with two options: courage or worrying and complaining. In my next post, I'll explain what's really going on when we worry and/or complain.

Feeling, Not Thinking II

In my last post, I wrote about how grieving is more of a feeling process than a thinking process. In fact, intellectualizing grief can prove to be counter-productive because our thoughts produce feelings, and we already have more feelings than we know what to do with. We need some way to deal with the feeling we already have.

What worked for me was managing my sensory environment as much as possible. This tied in with my major goal in grieving, namely, how to be at peace with Deb's death. I found that I could shorten this goal to simply asking, "How can I be at peace?"

So, in managing my sensory environment, peacefulness has been my goal. I'll go through all five senses with some examples that I found to be helpful:

• Sight
  I put some classical art on my walls. Each scene is very peaceful. Looking at each painting helps me imagine being at peace. I've also reduced or eliminated clutter everywhere in my house. Where clutter persists, peace is absent.


• Hearing
  I listen to the Smooth Jazz channel from satellite TV every day at home, and I listen to a selection of classical music at work. I remind my son to use his indoor voice ;-) I wake up to peaceful music.


• Taste
  I eat wholesome, savory food every day. I don't go overboard with snacks, but I certainly indulge myself a lot more than I used to with tasty treats and desserts. When I was deeply grieving, I often didn't feel at all hungry, and food tasted bland, if I could taste it at all. I ate good, healthy, tasty food anyway.


• Smell
  I have learned a bit about essential oils, and I make sure my house always smells nice and pleasant. I also burn incense from time to time. The tasty food I eat often smells delicious as well. And for a real pick-me-up, I take a good whiff of certain essential oils right out of the bottle, like lavender, peppermint, or eucalyptus.


• Feel
  Even days when I spend the whole day inside my home, I still wear clothes that fit well and make me feel good about myself. I don't dress like a slob, ever. And I smile whenever I feel a little bit out of sorts -- yes, forcing a smile still releases endorphins. Five or six rapid smiles will give an even bigger "hit." Exercising helps me feel better, and it releases endorphins also. And lastly, I can force myself to breathe in a more peaceful, relaxed manner.

By providing my body with the most peaceful environment I could create, I found that I could facilitate grieving using feeling techniques like Focusing a lot easier.

By far the easiest way to peacefully affect all five senses is to get outside in a beautiful nature setting. I found a wonderful walking trail 10 minutes from my house, and I walked it with my son as often as I could. If you are only looking for one thing to do to help you in your grief, get out there and take a walk in the Great Outdoors. You'll be glad you did.

Your Body Knows How To Grieve

Early on in the grieving process, we often find the very prospect of grieving overwhelming. It is true that we are goal-seeking machines, but somehow verbalizing "grieve well" or "heal from this pain" seems to bung up the gears. In my case, it took a number of months before I was even able to verbalize my first main goal: to be at peace with Deb's death.

Yet what a prospect! I had no idea where to begin. Reading books on grieving didn't seem to help much as they all seemed to say that grief was different for everyone and that we all grieve in our own way. I was looking for a book by someone who had fully healed within a year who laid it all out, step by step. Then all I needed to do was follow the steps and I would be cured. But I couldn't find such a book. I would have to figure this thing out on my own.

I have written a few articles (learning from grief, focusing to heal) about a technique called Focusing. It essentially teaches one how to listen to one's body, to make use of the wisdom of the entire body, not just the mind. I was glad that I had learned a bit about focusing in the years prior to Deb's death. Once the widower fog cleared up a bit and I started serious grieving, I was glad to know that I was feeling all this pain and disorientation for a reason, and that my body knew what that reason was, even if I didn't.

I was reminded of the importance of Focusing on grief recovery when I was reading an article called Pre-verbal Knowing. Instead of using the word "body," the article uses the word "somatic," but the essence of the article highlights the fact that our bodies know how to make sense of overwhelming data, if we will only learn to listen to its knowledge. The idea in this article is that we used to naturally rely on the wisdom of the body, but we have forgotten how to do this. Re-learning this skill proved to be an important part of my grief recovery. As you read the article, imagine how much easier it will be to grieve successfully without having to figure it all out. For me, it was a weird kind of faith. I knew I would grieve successfully, even if I didn't understand how to grieve or how long it would take. Listening to my body was an important skill, and I think the benefits are there for any bereaved person. Enjoy the article:

Pre-verbal Knowing

As we move from a pre-verbal somatic experience in very early childhood to a verbal rational experience as we grow older, we often tend to disassociate from our earlier and more intuitive form of "pre-verbal knowing". As we grow up in an industrialized world, we get taught to disconnect from the animal/intuitive/somatic world as well as the world of nature, and in the process our bodies, feelings, and connections to self and other suffer immeasurably.

When you experience something directly, then you can sense there is a way of knowing that precedes language and cognition. Usually, this form of "knowing" cannot be fully articulated, understood, or sensed, by the cognitive self, but is "valid" nonetheless. This pre-verbal somatic knowing is what we strive to learn more about in the study of Seishindo.

One of the main ideas in Seishindo is to melt the thinking mind, so that one can reenter into a relationship with the pre-verbal somatic part of our self, which is indeed intelligent. The purpose of our study in Seishindo is not to change a behavior or to change one's self via one's practice, but rather to come to a deeper understanding of one's true self. The "truth" of what you want to understand is found in the realization of who you truly are. This is a knowledge that comes prior to the need for verbal language. This is a knowledge that comes prior to the need to think.

The world is much too complex and fertile to be fully understood and adapted to by use of the rational mind alone. The more time you spend focusing on trying to find the “correct” answer or method, the less open you will be to sensing the wisdom of your pre-verbal somatic self. When you don't know the answer, focus on the fact that currently indeed you do not know, and rest easy with this knowledge, rather than attempting to grasp a solution. Give your thinking mind a rest, so that the intuitive somatic mind can come to the forefront and more fully assist you in the creation of solutions. When the somatic mind is used more fully, our fundamental perception of self and the world changes, and our awareness and our ability to be solution oriented increases. When we enter into such a state, the intelligence of the entire system will create the changes that are necessary for our health and well being, as well as for our business success. Easier said than done perhaps, but well worth the effort.

In reading about world renowned stock traders, venture capital business people and futurists, I have found that they consistently make the same basic statement in regard to how they work: "With a good deal of background and experience one can predict long term trends of the future, but it is impossible to predict what will occur tomorrow. When it is all said and done, there is way too much information to sort through prior to making a decision, and much of the information that you do receive is contradictory in nature. In the long run you are only left with your intuitive sense of what to do and not do. Correct action or theory is not based on an absolute. My decisions come from a hunch. An intuitive sense of what has been, what is, and what will be." This intuitive pre-verbal form of knowing is what we will be exploring in the articles available on this site. Which is not to suggest that we will help you to better play the stock market!

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.

Focusing to Heal

If you read my last post, you may have wondered what I meant when I described how I let my body grieve without getting mentally involved. There's a good story here.

Many years ago, I had started reading a book called Focusing, a book about how to listen to your body and the wisdom it contains. This was my first exposure to the idea that intelligence existed in my entire body, not just in my brain. However, I found the book to be difficult to read, so I abandoned it about half-way through. At the time, I didn't feel I needed the skills it would teach me bad enough to justify the slog through it.

Fast-forward several years, and Deb and I were full-bore into our battle against cancer. I remembered the book but didn't have time to get into it again. Once Deb died, I felt that now was the time to delve back in and learn the skills. Besides, now I was motivated — my body felt terrible, and I liked the idea that it was trying to tell me something, if I would only learn to listen.

I read through Focusing quickly enough, pushing through the difficult parts. I didn't find it terribly accessible as it seemed to be written for a professional audience as opposed to a layman. Still, I liked the simple exercises and felt they were helpful. I also started to do more research into the focusing technique, and I stumbled upon Ann Weiser Cornell's The Power of Focusing: A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing. Unlike the first Focusing book, I found this one to be highly accessible and much more helpful. Here's an example from the first chapter:

Whenever Jenny needed to speak up about herself, she got a choking sensation in her throat. The more important the situation was to her, the stronger she felt the choking. Job interviews and class presentations were painful, nearly impossible. She had been to many therapists and tried many techniques to try to get rid of this choking sensation, without results. She diagnosed herself as "self-defeating, masochistic, always sabotaging myself."

Then Jenny heard about Focusing. She heard that Focusing is a way of listening to your body with compassion, without assumptions. She heard that many people experience profound and lasting change from this kind of inner listening. She was doubtful. It sounded too simple! But she was willing to give it a try, because she was desperate for something to work.

One thing that intrigued Jenny was that Focusing is a skill, not a therapeutic technique. Although many therapists incorporate Focusing in their work, Jenny would be able to learn Focusing without going to a therapist. She liked the idea of learning a skill that she would be able to use, not only for the choking sensation but for any issue in her life, on her own, without needing to pay someone.

When Jenny came in for her Focusing lesson and told me her situation, I had a strong feeling that Focusing could help her. I've taught Focusing to many hundreds of people over the years, and Jenny's circumstance was classic. Her body was already speaking to her. She just needed to learn how to hear its message.

I asked Jenny if she was feeling the choking at that very moment. "Yes. I can feel it. It's here now because I'm learning a new technique with you, and I feel I have to do well."

I asked her to describe what it felt like. She looked a little surprised, and said, "Choking, of course!" I asked her to go back to the sensation and check the word "choking" to make sure that word was the right word for how it felt.

She looked thoughtful. "Actually," she said slowly, "it's more like a hand squeezing."

Now Jenny's eyes were closed and she was concentrating inwardly. I asked her to gently say hello to the hand squeezing sensation. "Just say to it, 'Yes, I know you're there.' "

This was a completely new attitude for her. "I've never sort of looked it in the eye before; I've just tried to get rid of it." So this new attitude took a while to find, but when she did, there was a definite sense of bodily relief: "It's still there, but it's not painful anymore. It's almost like, now that it has my attention, it doesn't need to hurt me."

Then I asked Jenny to imagine that she was sitting down with the sensation as she would sit with a friend, compassionate and curious about how the friend was feeling.

Jenny was silent for several minutes, eyes closed, sensing. Then her eyes opened in astonishment. "Wow. I never dreamed it would say something like that. That's really amazing."

I waited, knowing that she would tell me the rest in her own time.

In a moment she spoke again. "It says ... it says it cares about me! It says it's just trying to keep me from making mistakes!"

"And how does it feel now?" I asked.

"The choking or squeezing is completely gone. My throat feels open and relaxed. There's a good warm feeling spreading all through my body. This is really amazing. I never thought it would change like this!"

I hope you find this intriguing enough to source yourself a copy. It has helped me immensely.