Grief Healing

What can you do about the grief that never seems to end?

First, let me mention that obviously it will take time to heal. In so many cases, it won't happen overnight. But when the grief just seems to go on and on and you can't step beyond this grief stage, then it's time to look a little deeper.

Emotions are meant to keep moving. You aren't supposed to experience the same feelings continuously. That's when you get stuck. It seems a lot of people are stuck in some way. I know I was. While it could be anger, fear, or shame, for this article, why don't we focus on dealing with the grief that never seems to end.

Within you there exists a pathway of emotion. You have a stream of thoughts, and you have a stream of feelings. These throughts and feelings are always on; always flowing. They flow in the same pathway, actually. When it's a healthy situation, you would be feeling new feelings continuously. A smorgasbord of feelings.

Even when I'm healthy, there will be a symphony - a range - of various feelings. To always feel the same exact thing whenever my memories of some past event were triggered would get a bit boring, to say the least. So what's up here? What's up with all the grief? Why would I experience the same feelings over and over again?

To use the 'stream' analogy, I would say there's a boulder in the stream. Until this boulder is removed, the grief will go on and on and on.

Keep in mind your boulder can be eliminated! This is your life, and your stream, and your boulder. You've got to really let this in.

There's nothing intractable unless I believe it is. Understand? Your boulder will be just as hard to get rid of as you believe it to be.

Changing a belief is easy. The difficulty comes in when we have to process the energy that surrounds the belief. Most people would rather die than do this.

Now in this case, your boulder is a mixture of attitudes and beliefs, thoughts and feelings, and decisions and choices. And perhaps some other things as well. Whatever's there, it all came from you. And that's good news!

And it's also the important first step to dealing with grief. I must own what I'm doing to myself. You need to let it into your heart and into your mind. "This is mine."

And not as a way to blame or shame yourself! That's not what ownership is. And not as a way to feel sorry for yourself. Not as a way to judge yourself. You need to take this past the level of pity if you want to be dealing with grief. Also the shame, blame and judgment stage. A very effective way involves giving yourself several minutes to focus on feeling sorry for yourself for creating this boulder. And then stop the pity!

Next take a few minutes to blame yourself, then drop the blame! Or feel whatever may be stopping you from accepting ownership.

Allow five minutes to feel it - with gusto! Don't inhibit yourself - go for the full effect. Feel all the pity or judgment or whatever is there. Maybe even set the timer. But when the time is up, you need to let it go.

It takes ownership to change. But you can't own it if you're attempting to pick it up with gloves of blame or pity or another limiter.

So that's step one. It's all downhill if you just make it past all this

Because once you own it, you can give it up. Then you're dealing with grief. To find out the rest of the story, just go to this site on emotional healing.