Grief Recovery

Grief is the normal and natural emotional response to loss, but…

Most of the information we’ve learned about dealing with loss is intellectual. We tend to talk about what happened, but skirt around the depth of how we truly feel about the loss (if we even know what that is).

An intellectual comment might sound like, “Don’t feel bad. You are young and can have more children…” or “They lived a long productive life…”

While these statements may be true from an intellectual standpoint, they do not address the needs of a broken heart.

The Grief Recovery Institute defines grief as the conflicting feelings experienced by the change or end of a familiar pattern of behavior.

Wow! Think about all the scenarios where that can apply.

Let me give you a couple of scenarios of what this might look like…

Let’s say someone you love has been dealing with a long-term illness, and you feel relieved that their suffering has ended. That feeling is positive, even though it’s related to death. Also, at the same time, you realize you can no longer touch or talk to that person which is very painful.

These types of conflicting feelings of both relief and pain are a totally natural response to death.

What about divorce? Perhaps there is a sense of freedom from no longer battling with that person, which is a positive feeling. At the same time, you may be concerned about finding someone else who is a good provider or partner.

These feelings of freedom and fear are conflicting and are also a natural response to the loss.

What about putting your loved one in memory care? You are relieved because it was so difficult to work, take care of your kids, and care for your aging parent. On the other hand, you may be fearful of whether you did the right thing and whether they will receive the care you want for them.

The conflicting feelings of relief and fear/pain are a normal and natural response to the loss of health of your loved one.

While death and divorce are the losses we are most familiar with, there are many others that cause conflicting feelings that can produce grief but aren’t often identified as grief. Examples are:

• Graduation
• End of addictions
• Retirement
• Empty nest
• Holidays

We can also experience intangible losses.

These might include loss of trust, loss of safety, loss of control of one’s body (physical or sexual abuse).

Most of our culture and society do not recognize these losses as grief issues so they go unattended. What happens when we don’t take care of these losses?

They don’t usually get better but tend to get worse over time as we stuff them down.

Effective grief recovery must deal with your broken heart.

They tell you that “it’s time to move on,” but they don’t tell you how.

Wouldn’t we move forward if we knew how to do it?

That’s where The Grief Recovery Method® comes into play.

Oftentimes, we move forward by keeping busy, staying strong, and letting time pass. On the surface that sounds like a decent plan. I mean that’s what I learned how to do.

Unfortunately, what it really means is staying overly busy so I can stuff down my feeling and over time try and put it behind me. That formula doesn’t really allow us to deal head-on with the emotional pain. Fast forward and something happens in your life that now triggers all of the unattended emotions that have accumulated.

Sally’s* parents got divorced when she was 6 years old.

She also was teased at school, and her pet died. Her parents were dealing with their own issues because of the divorce, so there was really no one to help Sally with all the different emotions she had – so she did what seemed to be the best thing…

Stuffed down her emotions.

Fast forward and Sally is now an adult. She has experienced more losses over her lifetime with multiple romantic break-ups, a divorce, and even losing a job that she loved.

Sally continues to deal with life and her emotions the best way she knows how… stuff them down. She began drinking to forget the pain. At first it was going out with friends, but she recently lost her best friend to cancer.

Sally begins to isolate and drink alone. She can’t take it anymore. She doesn’t know how to cope but can’t live like this any longer.

Sally reads something about the drinking being a symptom of a deeper issue and decides to get help. Someone recommends grief recovery to her and she makes the call.