Gifts From Grief

Is there a silver lining to grief? Certainly that first year we're not interested in hearing about any so-called benefits of grieving. Pretty much all we're looking for from others is an acknowledgment of the tremendous pain we're experiencing, and hopefully some advice on how to find our way out. But once we have worked through a good deal of our memories and changed many of our habits, the pain lessens and we can begin to see that we have learned a few beneficial things through this whole gut-wrenching process.

Please don't misunderstand — I'm not saying that we should be happy that our spouse is dead, or that, because of what we have learned, the death of our spouse is worth it. That would be absurd. Unless you are reading this from jail, you likely had nothing to do with the death of your loved one, and in fact probably had a hand in caregiving or otherwise trying to keep them alive. So, their death was not a deliberate choice of ours.

But they died nonetheless. So I see nothing wrong with trying to find some benefit to going through such a hellish experience. And when we do find such a benefit, in no way does this diminish the love we shared with them.

Bob Livingstone wrote a very interesting article for Beliefnet that he has given me permission to share with you. He discovered a number of gifts while working through the loss of his mother. I hope you find it as interesting as I did:

The Hidden Benefit of Grief: Why It Doesn't Need to Hurt Forever

One man learns how to work through the pain of his mother's death and discovers six new gifts.

By Bob Livingstone LCSW

I was taught, as most of us were, that facing the death of a loved one is an action that should be avoided at all costs because it would cause too much pain. This hurting could only overwhelm you to the point where you couldn’t function.

I learned that this need to deny and avoid our own mourning causes physical and emotional complications that profoundly affect the quality of our lives.

I recently discovered the hidden benefit of grief: why it doesn’t need to hurt forever and I want to share my story with you now.

My mother died two years ago almost to this date. When I was an adolescent and young adult, my connection with her was rocky. We didn't get along because we had no patience or tolerance for each other. There was also a distinct lack of trust on both our parts that contributed to a chaotic relationship.

But all that dissension faded away as we found ways to repair the broken mother-son bond. When the time I reached my forties, my mother, her sixties, we actively pursued fixing what was broken.

We discovered a way to communicate that resolved wounds suffered in the distant past. We also both grew personally and emotionally. There was a willingness to be accountable for our own stuff.

When she died suddenly from heart failure, I was devastated, heartbroken and raw. I never thought I would recover from such relentless pain, but I did work through this loss and acquired new gifts.

Those gifts were:

1. The deep anguish that her death created led me to understand emotionally, intellectually and spiritually how connected we were. Being in touch with this connection taught me how wonderful this bond was and how it was to be cherished.


2. This connection opened up the door that allowed me to feel closer to my wife, family and friends. I now understood if I could deal with the intense anguish from my mother’s death, I could now face any pain that would arise in a close, meaningful relationship. This allowed me to drop my guard and not allow fear to rule my interactions.


3. During the early stages of grief, I would focus on memories of my mother while I ran five miles while listening to music. I almost always listened to Rosanne Cash's beautiful CD, Black Cadillac. She was singing about the deaths of her mother, father and step mother. The song I was Watching You really resonated because I feel like my mother's always watching over me. I learned that by facing the pain directly, I could not only feel the void, but the beauty that life brings. To experience my body moving with the rhythm of the music and gazing at the bright blue sky while mourning my mom's death was astonishing.


4. Successfully mourning my mother's death gave me a new sense of self confidence. I now believed that I could work through any trauma that life would throw me.


5. I now clearly understood what successfully grieving meant. It means there is no unfinished business, no worrying about what I could have or should have done differently, it meant there was an absence of a dark cloud over my head. It meant that I believed my mother lived a full and complete life. It meant that I was not burdened by her and her spirit was not worried about me.


6. I learned how spiritually healing a gut wrenching cry could be. When I was a young man, I was afraid to allow all the emotion that comes with a loss to be released. When I was crying while exercising or sedentary, I felt the pain erupt from my stomach, up through towards my throat that was aching while a massive stream of tears fell down my face. This made my mother’s death seem real and it defined the term letting go for me.


7. There are experiences that we long to have with our loved ones. Sometimes these experiences don’t ever happen or the timing is off when the opportunity arrives. One of the women from my emotional healing class at the San Francisco County Jail said, “Many have told me that their mothers die while they are in prison. I pray that this doesn’t happen. When I see my mom again, I want to wash her feet and pamper her. She deserves better from me than she has received up to this point.” We all wish for that moment when we can gaze into our loved ones eyes and know that we are connected, cherished and adored forever. It is a time when the giving and taking is mutual and no one is keeping score. When and if this moment does arrive, it is fleeting and will lose its strength soon. Life is always moving forward even if you don’t want it to. I learned that when you do have the opportunity to bond with someone in this manner, don’t hesitate to go for it. I also learned that missed opportunities are a big part of life, but there is also the possibility of having infinite opportunities to experience all kinds of love.

Dedicated to Ida

Psychotherapist Bob Livingstone is a featured contributor to DrLaura.com, Beliefnet.com, Ediets.com, Selfgrowth.com and SheKnows.com. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Body-Mind-Soul Solution: Healing Emotional Pain through Exercise (Pegasus Books, Sept. 2007). For more information visit www.boblivingstone.com.

Complicated Grief Recovery Coaching

I've been reading recently about complicated grief — the kind of grief where bereaved people get stuck in their grieving, swallowed up by their feelings, and overwhelmed by their experience. Years can go by with their grief getting worse, not better. Their lives fall apart. They become like ghosts - mere shells of their former selves. This can happen for a number of reasons, including multiple losses, traumatic loss, or anger and/or fear related to their dead loved one.

Now that I've been bereaved for two years (tomorrow), I've met a number of widow/ers whom I suspect are suffering from complicated grief. I want to help them in their bereavement as well, even if it is just to point them toward a helpful reference.

In researching this topic, I stumbled upon an online grief recovery coach, Paul Roberts. While he has not suffered from the death of a spouse, he has certainly had to come to terms with multiple, tragic losses, all piled on top of each other. Like me, he quickly discovered that there is lots of room for improvement as far as grief recovery goes here in North America. After he found some new paradigms and Grief Recovery Tools, he too was able to quickly heal from his complicated grief, in his case over the course of a single month.

Paul has an online grief recovery website, effectivegriefrecovery.com, where you can sign up for free information about how to heal from complicated grief. The following article is one of a series, and you would probably find it very useful to hear the whole series in order to understand the difference between simple and complicated grief. If you would prefer to listen than read, the audio version of this article is available here:
http://effectivegriefrecovery.com/audio-cva/

If you're going to "solve" a serious human problem like complicated grief, you need truly useful tools.

By useful tools, I mean this:

• First you need a good model (or theory) of what's causing the problem


• Then you need practical strategies based on the model that actually WORK so that people feel better quickly and predictably.

After 9/11, the death of my father, the suicide of my brother, the suicide of my older daughter, the breakup of my relationship and then the death of my mother (all in less than four years) I found that none of the literature, or support groups, or professionals I worked with had a clue about how to fix me so I could be a functional adult again.

That's because most grief advice makes sense for simple grief, but doesn't make sense for complicated grief.

It was only when I looked outside of the grief recovery community that I found both a model, and the tools, that let me take back my life - in about a month of focused inner work.

So... when I share this model of human personality structure with you - and the effect complicated grief has on the human personality - please don't be confused. I'm not saying that this model is TRUE. The map is not the territory.

But I am saying that this model is USEFUL. And because it is useful, I want you to understand the model, and how I have applied the model to create an experience of grief recovery - for myself first, and also for my clients.

The Model I Use

The model I use is derived from the groundbreaking work of a psychologist and consciousness researcher named Victor Vernon Woolf. Woolf has developed a complex theory of consciousness he calls Holodynamics. It's very dense and frankly difficult to understand.

I've created a much simpler model based on his ideas that is easy to understand. When I've shared it with my clients they've understood it right away, so I'm confident you can understand it too. (As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me).

This model says you have a central controlling personality - your normal adult self. And supporting your normal adult self, you have a number of sub-personalities which can come to the forefront of your consciousness during different times in your life, in an appropriate way, to help you live your life.

For example, if you're a parent, one of your sub-personalities is "father" or "mother". When you're in "father" or "mother" mode you're going to think, feel and behave in a certain way in order to parent your child. You have another sub-personality called "worker" or "employee" or "boss", that thinks, feels and behaves in a different way in order to get some sort of job done in the workplace. And you have yet another sub-personality that comes to the forefront when you're engaged in intimacy with a partner.

We actually have many sub-personalities that come to the front of our consciousness, or recede to the back, depending on where we are or what's going on. One way to illustrate this is to consider the rare but very real experience of multiple personality disorder (MPD). (One famous case described a woman known as "Sybil" in both a book and a movie). Someone with MPD doesn't have a central controlling adult self. Instead, many different sub-personalities, some of them very destructive and immature - simply take over the mind in a chaotic way.

The fact is, we ALL have some sub-personalities that are immature and destructive. Said another way, we are ALL capable of childish and immature thoughts, feelings and behavior. When someone feels reasonably healthy and OK in the mind, those childish and immature sub-personalities don't run the person's life, though.

However- when someone is overwhelmed with complicated grief, that's exactly what is going on. One or more childish and immature sub-personalities has taken over the person's life. Those sub-personalities are controlling way too much of the person's consciousness. They are creating an ongoing stream of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that do not reflect a healthy adult perspective, but rather the perspective of a wounded and dysfunctional child.

Despair, overwhelming anxiety, alienation, confusion, mental fog, the feeling totally misunderstood, a loss of identity, rage, guilt, shame, or fear: In the aftermath of a loss, these kinds of thoughts and feelings can come to dominate someones life, making it into a living hell.

That is why complicated grief is so very different from simple grief. That's why people who are suffering from complicated grief don't feel like "themselves". They're not themselves!

My daughter's death was actually the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back in my own life. Coming fast on the heels of these other traumatic events, it was more than I could bear. My adult self receded into the background of my own mind - and instead my mind was dominated by a cluster of sub-personalities that had the characteristics of a child traumatized by some terrible event (like a kid coming out of the Holocaust). I was seeing the world - and life itself - through wounded child's eyes. I felt that the world was simply a terrifying place - and that new terror might emerge at any moment in some unpredictable way.

It was more than post-traumatic stress syndrome - though PSTD was certainly a part of the experience I was having. It was the experiential fact that my mind was being dominated by these wounded, dysfunctional children - these sub-personalities I could not see, much less control.

And because complicated grief doesn't just get better with time - I went through this experience for three years.

How The Model I Use Drives The Work I Do

If you're experiencing complicated grief, something similar is happening in your mind - though of course the specifics will be different than mine. The reason I took the time to describe the model I use (notice it has NOTHING to do with stages of grief) is because this model is what drives my strategy for effective grief recovery work as a grief recovery coach.

In this work, I actually lead my clients so they can get in touch with their wounded sub-personalities directly. We allow each wounded sub-personality to share it's perspectives with us. And once we have found the core need of the wounded sub-personality, we guide it through a rapid, powerful yet gentle process so that it can become transformed into a more mature version of itself.

It's truly amazing to experience. Most importantly, once a person has done this work, he or she can actually LIVE with the honest sadness over their loss, and process that sadness from the adult self, and integrate this loss into the fabric of their life experience.

The fact is, I don't heal the client. Rather, I set up an inner environment so that the client can actually heal themselves by following my coaching and directions. And it all flows out of understanding how complicated grief affects our personality structure.

Does it work? My experience is that it works better than anything else I've ever seen or heard.

In the words of one of my clients, "I was able to do in 4 sessions what may have taken years to do." Another said, "Paul's coaching took me out of the quicksand onto dry land…giving me back my power to act without the weight of my grief and losses." (To read their complete testimonials, click HERE).

Here's the bottom line: If you're suffering from complicated grief, you don't have to suffer forever.

And if you're not sure about your grief experience, but would just like to get some feedback, feel free to CONTACT ME. I'll give you honest feedback on your situation, and will respect your choice to get help or not - from me or anyone else.

My best to you,

Paul Roberts
© 2007-8 Paul Roberts. All Rights Reserved.

Natural And Normal Grief Responses

If you are reading this and your grief is relatively new, I am very sorry for your loss. I remember that for me the first few months had a very unreal quality to them, like I was disconnected from the real world somehow, and I had no idea what I was in for. I wish I had seen this list posted on WidowNet:

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This information has been provided by a hospice to help answer questions people have after losing a loved one.

THESE ARE NATURAL AND NORMAL GRIEF RESPONSES

• Feeling emotionally numb.


• Knowing that the death has occurred, but having difficulty believing that the death has really happened.


• Feeling tightness in the throat or heaviness in the chest or in the pit of the stomach.


• Having a loss of appetite or a desire to eat more than usual.


• Having a desire to smoke, drink, or use drugs (especially tranquilizers) in a greater amount than before.


• Feeling restless and looking for activity and finding it difficult to concentrate and complete tasks.


• Having difficulty sleeping, waking early, and often dreaming of your loved one.


• Being overly concerned with your health and even developing symptoms similar to those of your loved one.


• Feeling exhausted and lacking in energy.


• Feeling low at times of birthdays, holidays, and special occasions.


• Spending money on things usually not purchased.


• Feeling preoccupied with financial concerns.


• Telling and retelling things about your loved one and the experience of his or her death.


• Talking things over with the deceased person.


• Feeling mood changes over the slightest things.


• Feeling guilty for what was said or not said or for not having done enough for your loved one.


• Being angry or irritated at the wrong person or the wrong circumstance or at the world.


• Feeling intensely angry at your loved one for leaving you.


• Having difficulty making decisions on your own.


• Sensing your loved one's presence, believing you hear his/her voice or expecting him/her to come back.


• Assuming mannerisms or traits of your loved ones.


• Feeling as though life doesn't have any meaning.


• Not wanting to be with people or having difficulty initiating contact with others.


• Feeling self-pity and not feeling needed.


• Crying at unexpected times.

These are natural and normal grief responses. Crying and expressing your feelings to others can be helpful. Living through the grief experience and then adjusting to a new life take time. The length of time needed is different for every person.

The Somatic-Emotional State of Grief

somatic

affecting or characteristic of the body as opposed to the mind or spirit

I've written before about why grief hurts, and specifically on why we feel such intense pain when our spouse dies. As I understand things, pain is a powerful way for our body to communicate with us. Of course, in the middle of bereavement, we just want the pain to stop! So we start looking for Grief Recovery Tools to find out how to stop the pain. My theory is that we feel pain until such time as we change all the habits related to our past life as a married person. Easier said than done...

I recently stumbled upon the following article which does a great job of explaining the mind-body connection to our habits, and it also gives some good advice on how to change those habits and our posture so that we can change the habitual patterns of our mind, and therefore reduce our pain:

Your somatic-emotional state at any given time is made up to a large extent, of a specific habitual recipe of biochemical and neuromuscular activities that you tend to perform without conscious awareness. Bringing awareness to and regaining a natural relaxed control over the activity of your entire system affords you the ability to positively affect your emotions, and your overall health and sense of well being - your somatic-emotional state. Your psychological state on the other hand is usually deemed to be mainly dependent on what takes place inside your head.

Many of us, over the course of time, lose the ability to fully communicate with our body, and we lose the ability to be fully aware of the communication of the body. It is the communication patterns of the body that lead to our emotional state, and our verbal communication patterns. When you limit your ability to communicate somatically and be aware of your somatic conversation, you also limit your ability to feel your emotions, communicate verbally, and be aware of your verbal conversation. Of course your overall state of health and well-being will be affected as well.

The greater your ability to be aware of and embody a full potential range of somatic communication, the greater your ability to communicate verbally and "understand" what you are feeling.

One of many possible ways to think about how we experience life is the following:

Body + Language = Emotional Experience

What we mean here is: The overall condition, usage, and awareness of one's body, plus the way in which one uses language to describe one's experience, go together to make up one's CURRENT emotional experience of self, another person, and or an event.

1. Change the condition, usage, and awareness of your body and you will change the way in which you use language to describe what has or is transpiring, which in turn will change your overall emotional experience of the issue being considered. The six somatic "avenues" that we find most accessible in changing the condition, use, and awareness of the body are,

1. Posture,


2. Balance and carriage of the neck and head,


3. Movement and Flexibility. (This includes muscular holding patterns and micro-muscular rocking movements),


4. Breath,


5. Facial Expressions,


6. Eye movements that occur when thinking about what you want to say, and what you feel.

These variables will be of primary importance in determining

1. One's emotional experience.


2. The language used to explain one's experience, and


3. One's ability to be solution oriented.

Each person systematically and habitually, orchestrates these variables depending on how they perceive the events and relationships they are dealing with. Making the "correct" changes to these variables will alter the way one perceives what is taking place, and the changes or solutions one believes they are capable of making.

2. Change the way in which you describe your experience, and you will affect and change the condition of your body, which in turn will change your overall emotional experience. We can describe events differently simply by changing the speed, rhythm, tone, volume, and pauses used in our description.

3. Changing one's emotional experience, will affect and change the condition of one's body, which in turn will affect and change the language one uses to describe one's experience. Emotion consists of language AND body - a system that is coherent at a deeper level. When the emotional state changes there is a concurrent change in the body, and in the use of language (including one's thought processes). If the way we use our body changes and there is no shift in our language usage/thinking, then the bodily changes we experience have not reached our emotions. In such cases long term change is unlikely. If our language usage/thinking changes and there is no matching bodily shift, then our new "ideas" are not having an emotional impact on us. Once again, in such an instance long term change is unlikely. When the emotions truly change, you will notice a change in the body AND in language.

I'd be interested to hear your comments.

Zero Limits Basic Principles

What happens in your life is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
— Joe Vitale

I've written at some length about a Hawaiian healing method called Ho'oponopono, and the more I use it, the more I like it. Especially in the context of Grief Recovery, I like how the simple expression of "I love you; I'm sorry; please forgive me; thank you," encapsulates so much of what I need to heal on a daily basis.

These simple yet profound words are based on some solid principles. Joe Vitale's Zero Limits explain these principles on pages 199-201, and I hope you find them intriguing. When we grieve, so often we don't have the wherewithal to remember new-fangled fancy mantras or breathing exercises or visualization techniques. But we can always remember to say "I love you."

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Zero Limits Basic Principles

1. You don't have a clue what is going on.
It is impossible to be aware of everything happening in and around you, consciously or unconsciously. Your body and mind are regulating themselves right now, without you being aware of it. And numerous invisible signals are in the air, from radio waves to thought forms, which you have no conscious sense of at all. You are indeed co-creating your own reality right now, but it is happening unconsciously, without your conscious knowledge or control. This is why you can think positive thoughts all you like and still be broke. Your conscious mind isn't the creator.

2. You don't have control over everything.
Obviously, if you don't know everything that is happening, you can't control it all. It's an ego trip to think you can make the world do your bidding. Since your ego can't see much of what is going on in the world right now, letting your ego decide what is best for you isn't wise.You have choice, but you don't have control. You can use your conscious mind to begin to choose what you would prefer to experience, but you have to let go of whether you manifest it or not, or how, or when. Surrender is key.

3. You can heal whatever comes your way.
Whatever appears in your life, no matter how it got there, is up for healing simply because it's now on your radar. The assumption here is that if you can feel it, you can heal it. If you can see it in someone else, and it bothers you, then it's up for healing. Or as I'm told Oprah once said, "If you can spot it, you've got it." You may have no idea why it's in your life or how it got there, but you can let it go because you're now aware of it. The more you heal what comes up, the clearer you are to manifest what you prefer, because you will be freeing stuck energy to use for other matters.

4. You are 100 percent responsible for all you experience.
What happens in your life is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. The concept of personal responsibility goes beyond what you say, do, and think. It includes what others say, do, and think that shows up in your life. If you take complete responsibility for all that appears in your life, then when someone surfaces with a problem, then it is your problem, too. This ties in to principle three, which states you can heal whatever comes your way. In short, you can't blame anyone or anything for your current reality. All you can do is take responsibility for it, which means accept it, own it, and love it.The more you heal what comes up, the more you get in tune with the source.

5. Your ticket to zero limits is saying the phrase "I love you."
The pass that gets you peace beyond all understanding, from healing to manifestation, is the simple phrase "I love you." Saying it to the Divine cleans everything in you so you can experience the miracle of this moment: zero limits. The idea is to love everything. Love the extra fat, the addiction, the problem child or neighbor or spouse; love it all. Love transmutes the stuck energy and frees it. Saying "I love you" is the open sesame to experience the Divine.

6. Inspiration is more important than intention.
Intention is a toy of the mind; inspiration is a directive from the Divine. At some point you'll surrender and start listening, rather than begging and waiting. Intention is trying to control life based on the limited view of the ego; inspiration is receiving a message from the Divine and then acting on it. Intention works and brings results; inspiration works and brings miracles.Which do you prefer?

I've heard some misconceptions about grieving from some people who have seen The Secret. Instead of asking, "How did I attract the death of my spouse into my life?" we can now see that it is more helpful to say, "It is not my fault that my spouse is dead, but I am 100 percent responsible for my reaction to his/her death." By taking total responsibility, we are now in a position of power to change our reaction. We can't take complete responsibility and simultaneously remain a victim of tragedy. Responsibility is the path to recovery and healing. And peace.

When a Loved One Dies

I am very conscious of the fact that, because I have fully recovered from Deb's death, the articles I write may not be of much help to someone who is newly bereaved. I am quite far removed from my early grieving experiences, and besides, I've been spending quite a lot of time recently in cleaning my memories ;-)

I'm always on the lookout for articles that speak directly to someone whose partner died recently, and if that is your current circumstance, I hope that you will find the following article to be helpful:

When a Loved One Dies

At some point in time, we will all have the experience of a loved one dying. The death may be abrupt like a car accident or sudden illness. It may take place over a longer period of time when your loved one has a long-term illness such as cancer. There is nothing to prepare ourselves for such a loss. There is nothing you can read, no words that can be said that will reduce your pain immediately after the death.

You will feel hopeless, despondent and numb. You will feel that no one really understands what you are going through and feel isolated from friends and family. You will be amazed that life for others goes on as usual. People go to work, children go to school, and the sun rises in the morning and sets at night. You will go through periods of time where you feel a huge disconnect between yourself and the rest of the planet.

These feelings you experience during the initial stages of grief will devastate you to the point that you don’t want to participate in regular activities that give you pleasure. You will also feel like being sedentary, sitting on the couch, mindlessly watching television, but paying no real attention what show is on.

Eventually you will become tired of sitting around all the time. You will hear a voice inside you that you need to move to the next step of your grieving process.

That next step is moving your body.

There is a ton of research that indicates that physical exercise improves your physical health, decreases feelings of depression and anxiety, improves self-esteem, reduces stress and increases mental and physical strength. Some studies indicate that your endorphins can kick in after only fifteen minutes of exercise and at the point you can experience a sense of well being.

Exercising is certainly a healthy way to deal with the death of a loved one. A short walk, run, bike ride or other aerobic activity will help you face and work through trauma.

What is going to help me get off the couch and into an exercise program?

1. Become aware that it is normal to feel overwhelmed with sadness, confusion, anger, and deep despondency immediately after a loved one dies. This sense of overwhelm and shock will cause you to be sedentary much of the time during the beginning stage of grief, but you don’t have to feel guilty about it because this is a normal part of the morning process.

2. You will eventually reach the point where a voice in your head will inform you that it is time to do something else rather than laying around when you are not at work or actively parenting. Pay attention to this voice, don’t ignore it or push it away. Make an appointment with your physician to determine if it is safe for you to exercise.

3. Repeat these words throughout the day: “Exercise will help me get through this horrible time. It will put me in a better state of mind where I will be able to get through the pain. Moving my body will enable me to feel good about myself and eventually improve the quality of my life.”

4. Choose an activity that you feel that you can do on a regular basis. Some of you may not have exercised for years. Others may never have worked out. If you are not sure what to do, begin walking. You can do this in your neighborhood and it does not require any equipment other than good shoes. Begin short and slow. When you start exercising, create a realistic goal such as walking for fifteen minutes at a slow pace. You can gradually increase your speed and distance as you go along.

5. Become self aware as you are exercising. Ask yourself: How does my body feel? What is my breathing like? What am I thinking and feeling about?

Once you experience positive results, you will be motivated to continue a regular exercise program. Moving your body is a safe, productive means to deal with tragedy. The pain you are experiencing can move out of your head and into your body. You can feel the anguish gradually leave as sweat pours through your skin and mixes in with the tears falling down your face. You can discover this new way of letting go.

Bob Livingstone, LCSW, has been a psychotherapist in private practice for almost twenty years. He works with adults, teenagers and children who have experienced traumas such as family violence, neglect and divorce. He works with men around anger issues and adults in recovery from child abuse. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Redemption of the Shattered: A Teenager’s Healing Journey through Sandtray Therapy and the upcoming The Body-Mind-Soul Solution: Healing Emotional Pain through Exercise (Pegasus Books, Aug. 2007). For more information visit www.boblivingstone.com.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License

Stickies

A major reason I stress meditation as a huge Grief Recovery Tool is because it worked wonders for me. In fact, learning Vipassana meditation was what really turned the road for me. Even though I did lots of grief work prior to that course, I date my "recovery graduation day" from the end of Vipassana. I think it is an experience everyone should try at least once.

Learning about this thought -> feeling -> reaction cycle is interesting in the meantime, and I believe you can still get some benefit from this approach even if you haven't yet learned how to meditate formally. Of course, without formal training, you will need some assistance in being mindful of where you are in the thought -> feeling -> reaction cycle. Elizabeth Bohorquez has written some great material to help get you started:

Getting Back on the Bicycle

Your mind will wander. That is a part of the process. Your work is to stay detached, out of the way. I like to use the image of a parade going by. You are the observer, standing on the curbside. You are not part of the parade. Whenever you find yourself involved in your thought processes ( the parade), return to the position of observer by bringing your attention back to your focus breath or ball. Your mind will continue to show you a thought, you will notice, returning then to the focus.

It's not uncommon to get lost in thoughts. This is because your mind is not well disciplined. In the future, you will begin to notice much earlier, allowing you to return to the focus. The process of breathing, noticing a thought & then returning to the focus is a full release cycle. Releasing is also called "letting go." If someone has ever told you to let something go, this is the actual process of doing just that.

There are three general classifications of what the mind will present to you. First are the thoughts. Some of these are presented in the form of pictures, others as sound bytes or inner mind audio tapes. They can be with or without video. There are many classifications of thoughts. Later on, in your work with your Inner Coach, you will be identifying some of your major thought areas, learning to work with them to profit you and your goals.

Your mind may also show you body communications. These are sensations representing body tension. The more stress, the more body tension. When practicing interactive awareness, place flowers on the body sensation, then open the flowers as you did earlier in your mental biofeedback work.

Next, return to your focus breath. Do not be tempted to stay in the sensation, nor to examine it. That is not the purpose of this practice. This is simply awareness of what is, providing you with an opportunity to observe your mind in action.

The third area includes the emotional states. In our work emotions will be viewed as images of children wearing tee shirts with their names on them. Identifying & separating emotions allows for easier release. If you are working with this image, notice that the children have crayons for coloring your experiences. Later on you will be identifying some of your most frequent emotions and their crayons.

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Moments are very small fragments of time, each holding automatic mind programs in the form of thoughts & emotions. The emotions color the moments with their crayons. The body is also involved as it responds to whatever is passing through the moment.

Keep in mind that every moment is valuable. You already know that you can only catch a small number of them. Later on you will learn how to program your subconscious mind for waking up to genres of thoughts of your choosing. For now the goal is simply to practice waking up & releasing.

It helps to set some triggers to help you wake up, just like little alarm clocks. Sticky notes work well for this. No one else needs to know what you are doing. It's not necessary to write anything on them. You already know what they are for. When I'm working to improve this skill for myself, I place a sticky note just to the right on my telephone, one in the car, one on left wall in my office. At home I like the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator, the head of my bed. Move the notes occasionally so that your automatic pilot doesn't set up a program to ignore them.

Each time you notice a sticky note, check the moment. Pay attention to your thought processes, noticing the type of thought, the emotional states & crayons that are being utilized. Next, scan your body, noticing the stressors present, gently placing flowers on the bigger areas. This entire exercise takes less than thirty seconds, but provides tremendous benefits, immediate & in the future.

You are building awareness about who you are, your automatic program, your emotional terrain & what crayons you allow to color your life without deciding if they work for you or not.

Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht is a Clinical Medical Hypnotherapist, who works in the area of loss & healing. Her websites offer many articles & discussion on the subject, as well as complimentary mp3 downloads.