The grief process

To let ourselves wholly grieve our losses is how we surrender to the process of life and recovery. Some experts, like Patrick Carnes, call the Twelve Steps “a program for dealing with our losses, a program for dealing with our grief.”

How do we grieve?

Awkwardly. Imperfectly. Usually with a great deal of resistance. Often with anger and attempts to negotiate. Ultimately, by surrendering to the pain.

The grief process, says Elisabeth Kubler Ross, is a five stage process: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and, finally, acceptance. That’s how we grieve; that’s how we accept; that’s how we forgive; that’s how we respond to the many changes life throws our way.

Although this five-step process looks tidy on paper, it is not tidy in life. We do not move through it in a compartmentalized manner. We usually flounder through, kicking and screaming, with much back and forth movement – until we reach that peaceful state called acceptance.

When we talk about “unfinished business” from our past, we are usually referring to losses about which we have not completed grieving. We’re talking about being stuck somewhere in the grief process. Usually, for adult children and codependents, the place where we become stuck is denial.. Passing through denial is the first and most dangerous stage of grieving, but it is also the first step toward acceptance.

We can learn to understand the grief process and how it applies to recovery. Even good changes in recovery can bring loss and, consequently, grief. We can learn to help others and ourselves by understanding and becoming familiar with this process. We can learn to fully grieve our losses, feel our pain, accept, and forgive, so we can feel joy and love.

Today, God, help me open myself to the process of grieving my losses. Help me allow myself to flow through the grief process, accepting all the stages so I might achieve peace and acceptance in my life. Help me learn to be gentle with others and myself while we go through this very human process of healing.” via Just For Today Meditations – Maintaining A Life.

Whatever your losses, they will hang in there until you work the grieving process. Long ago a priest friend of mine told me that all loss is a death of sorts so applying Ross’ stages is appropriate for just about anything…

This thing called grief (looktwicesavealife.wordpress.com)
Coping With Grief: How to Handle Your Emotions (everydayhealth.com)

November 2, 2012 2

Powerlessness

Melody Beattie writes:

Willpower is not the key to the way of life we are seeking. Surrender is.

“I have spent much of my life trying to make people be, do, or feel something they aren’t, don’t want to do, and choose not to feel. I have made them, and myself, crazy in that process,” said one recovering woman.

“I spent my childhood trying to make an alcoholic father who didn’t love himself be a normal person who loved me. I then married an alcoholic and spent a decade trying to make him stop drinking.

“I have spent years trying to make emotionally unavailable people be emotionally present for me.

“I have spent even more years trying to make family members, who are content feeling miserable, happy. What I’m saying is this: I’ve spent much of my life desperately and vainly trying to do the impossible and feeling like a failure when I couldn’t. It’s been like planting corn and trying to make the seeds grow peas. It won’t work!

“By surrendering to powerlessness, I gain the presence of mind to stop wasting my time and energy trying to change and control that which I cannot change and control. It gives me permission to stop trying to do the impossible and focus on what is possible: being who I am, loving myself, feeling what I feel, and doing what I want to do with my life.”

In recovery, we learn to stop fighting lions, simply because we cannot win. We also learn that the more we are focused on controlling and changing others, the more unmanageable our life becomes. The more we focus on living our own life, the more we have a life to live, and the more manageable our life will become.

Today, I will accept powerlessness where I have no power to change things, and allow my life to become manageable.” via June 20: Powerlessness.

June 20, 2012 0

Letting Go of Being Right

Happy

“How many times have you heard the question, “would you rather be right, or happy?”

It’s always made me a little nuts. Because quite frankly, most times I say, “right, please.” I’ve recently had a change of heart in this matter and hope you will oblige me in exploring the idea of choosing happiness.

Isn’t that funny, I actually have to try to choose happiness.

I used to believe that “right” was an irrefutable fact, thereby making everything and everyone else “wrong.” It seemed to me that “happy” went hand-in-hand with “ignorance is bliss,” and I was not about to wear the dunce cap. So, with my talons firmly embedded in whatever position or idea I was holding, I stood my ground.

In hindsight, I can see that I was simply engaged in black-and-white thinking.

I often encourage my clients in psychotherapy to try to live in the gray. There are a million shades of gray on the spectrum of white to black, and each provides a much richer telling of a story that is hardly ever as clear as this or that. So, when I looked a bit more closely, I saw that “right vs. happy” wasn’t so much about getting crowned the winner or loser, a genius or fool; it was more about my flawed thinking and my desire to feel like I was in control. Yes, that illusion that so many of us want to sink our talons into: Control.

As I reframe the debate of “right vs. happy” to “the illusion of control vs. acceptance / surrender / taking it all a little less seriously,” I can start to see the value in choosing the latter.

Ken Wilber said, “Sometimes you need to allow things to hurt you more, but bother you less.”

Let’s unpack that a little. Why would we want to choose “hurt?” Well, if we are letting go of being right, hurt might mean that we have to grieve. Maybe it’s grieving the idea that we have control and facing our vulnerability. Maybe it’s grieving the dream that never had a chance to be, our attachment to it, and all that we thought it would afford. In this case, we weren’t actually right in the moment, we wanted to eventually be right. It was more of an, “I’ll show you” kind of right.

When we engage in the grieving process—in letting go, the loss no longer has such a tight grip. We can move into the cyclical process of death and rebirth. We can open up to new ideas and experiences. Once this occurs, we are certainly “bothered less.” The unmetabolized grief isn’t gnawing on you like a monkey on your back, and you’re not working so hard to deny its existence. You’ve faced it, taken away its power, and given yourself some choices. And at this point, you are probably a little more “happy.”

Let’s take a moment to define happy in this context. I’m not talking about winning-the-lottery happy, or people-doing-what-you-want-them–to-do happy. Those are external things that we can’t do much about. I’m talking about acceptance happy—where we aren’t in opposition to our own lives. I’m talking about contentment happy. I know, it’s not as flashy as winning the lottery, but trust me, it’s much more attainable and sustainable.

So, the next time your talons are firmly embedded in the position you are holding, see how much grief it is causing you and consider letting it go. Think of it as a social experiment. Perhaps you’ll start with something small, like where to meet your friend for lunch. You may know for certain that the best deli is on the corner of Smith Street, but do you really want to argue that point? I imagine that connecting with a friend about what really matters is much more enjoyable, and far more important.

And when it comes to the bigger stuff, know that you are not alone in having a hard time letting go. We all struggle in this regard. Perhaps you can start with a simple intention to do it differently, knowing that is enough to start the process of moving towards less rigidity, more flow, and ultimately more “happy.” via A Million Shades of Gray: Letting Go of Being Right « Positively Positive.

Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
Happiness (eddietwohawks.wordpress.com)
10 Lottery Winners Who Lost Everything (celebritynetworth.com)
Coping With Grief: How to Handle Your Emotions (everydayhealth.com)
I’m Grieving and I’m Healing (bellableue.com)

June 4, 2012 2

Sadness

Melody Beattie shares this:

“Ultimately, to grieve our losses means to surrender to our feelings.

So many of us have lost so much, have said so many good byes – have been through so many changes. We may want to hold back the tides of change, not because the change isn’t good, but because we have had so much change, so much loss.

Sometimes, when we are in the midst of pain and grief, we become shortsighted, like members of a tribe described in the movie Out of Africa.

“If you put them in prison,” one character said, describing this tribe, “they die.”

“Why?” asked another character.

“Because they can’t grasp the idea that they’ll be let out one day. They think it’s permanent, so they die.”

Many of us have so much grief to get through. Sometimes we begin to believe grief, or pain, is a permanent condition.

The pain will stop. Once felt and released, our feelings will bring us to a better place than where we started. Feeling our feelings, instead of denying or minimizing them, is how we heal from our past and move forward into a better future. Feeling our feelings is how we let go.

It may hurt for a moment, but peace and acceptance are on the other side. So is a new beginning.

God, help me fully embrace and finish my endings, so I may be ready for my new beginnings.” via Language of Letting Go – May 20 – Sadness – SoberRecovery : Alcoholism Drug Addiction Help and Information.

Grief is not an illness; it’s part of being human (miscarriedmom.wordpress.com)
Grief is not a disorder (mysanantonio.com)
Don’t ‘medicalize’ our precious gift of grief (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Reflections on Grief and Loss (majellalaws.com.au)
Grief sauce and the Deep (ahimsamaven.wordpress.com)

May 20, 2012 2

10 Ways to Help Kids Deal with the Loss of a Loved One

Mental Health Awareness Ribbon — Image via Wikipedia

Experiencing loss is a part of life that everyone has. Losing someone is a challenge no matter what age you are. Imagine how much harder it is for a child who has never experienced what it is like to be separated from loved ones. Now that’s a challenge, but here is a list of things to keep in mind when talking with your children about the loss of a loved one.

via allprodad.com

Follow the ‘via’ link if you’d like to get the 10 ways…