Heal Your Grief
Carolyn Flynn
Published by Carolyn Flynn at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Carolyn Flynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, for public or private use -- other than for "fair use" as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission.
All content in this book including the information, exercises, and techniques are not intended as a substitute for consulting with a mental health professional. The publisher and author are not responsible for any adverse effects or consequences resulting from the use of any information, suggestions, exercises, or techniques in this book.
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In Loving Memory Of
My Grandfather
Willard R. Tate
Chapter 7: Prayers And Messages
Chapter 10: Celebrate Their Life
"I am in the process of healing my heart and soul. I release my grief and emotional pain. I accept love, peace, and happiness in my life now."
"I am in the process of feeling comfort and joy again in my life."
The death of a loved one, friend, or special pet can cause immense emotional pain and suffering as you grieve and come to terms with your loss. In this book I will detail twelve therapeutic techniques that have helped my therapy patients release the painful emotions that come with grieving loss and death.
Moving forward after the death of someone close or special to you can be a painful transition. Unexpected or traumatic losses can be especially difficult to comprehend and overcome. But like my therapy patients, you too can heal from your pain and loss. I will guide you through each of these healing techniques to help you heal your grief and move forward in life with peace and happiness.
Everyone responds to death and loss in their own special way. There are many varying factors that affect how the death of another individual will impact your life and emotions. The death of a family member, neighbor, teacher, public figure, or stranger on the news will elicit different levels of emotion, grief, and sadness.
Your answers to the following questions will give you clues as to how long the grieving process might last for you, and how intense your grief emotions might become.
What was the nature of your relationship or connectedness to the individual you are grieving?
Was it a sudden unexpected death, or a passing after a long illness?
Was the loved one a child, a healthy youth, or an elderly individual?
What else was going on in your life at the time of their death?
Have you had a series of losses or deaths, or has life been relatively peaceful and pleasant?
The timing of the loss and what else was concurrently going on in your life will trigger varying intensities of grief and affect your capability to work through your grief reactions and emotions.
If you are dealing with stress or loss in other areas of your life, or if you have had several deaths or losses during your lifetime, you are likely to experience a greater intensity and longer period of grief. You may also experience a greater sense of helplessness and hopelessness. You may feel out of control, and find it difficult to get beyond your loss and painful feelings. If any of these situations are true for you, please seek out a licensed professional counselor to help you heal your heart and mind. You do not need to suffer alone. A therapist will help you to heal and regain peace, joy, and direction in your life.
Your belief in what happens to an individual after they die greatly affects how you cope with the loss of a loved one. In therapy I found that patients who had some type of belief in heaven, the hereafter, or a belief that the soul or spirit of the person lives on after death had the greatest success in releasing their painful emotions and finding peace in their loss. Those who didn't believe in some type of a hereafter or continuation of the spirit had the hardest time releasing the pain of death and finding peace. Keeping the memory of the loved one alive in your heart and mind will help you find peace in your life.
Do not feel bad if you do not experience grief in the same manner or timing as those around you. The grieving process and accompanying emotions will affect people in different ways and in different stages and periods of time. You may experience a flood of overwhelming emotions at any time. You may experience a great sense of grief and crying when told that the loved one has died, seeing them at the funeral, or days, or even years, after the funeral is over and everyone is gone.
For some people there is a delayed sense of grieving and the emotions will not surface until much time has passed, while others will experience deep pain and display of emotions immediately upon receiving the news of the loved one's death. It is not uncommon for patients to come a year or more after a loved one has passed away seeking grief counseling and feeling very confused by the intense grief emotions that have suddenly appeared. Anniversaries and special occasions are also high trigger points for unexpected emotional outbursts and days or weeks of crying episodes.
Often those around you will be sympathetic to your initial grieving, but may not tolerate or be supportive of long-term grieving, or grieving that appears long after the loved one has been buried. It is important to know this and have proven techniques that you can do on your own, or with others who are experiencing similar grief so that you can properly heal and release all of your feelings rather then holding them within or adding feelings of shame or negative thoughts like “something must be wrong with me” if you have not gotten over your loss in the time frame others expect of you.
When my grandfather died I experienced a flood of tears upon seeing him at the viewing. His cold lifeless body was not the warm happy grandpa that I knew. Unstoppable tears streamed down my face. I knew his spirit was no longer in that body. After the funeral, my grandma and I talked about his last great adventures, and I focused on my memories of special times I spent with him. I imagined him alive, happy, and out walking his dogs, the way I remembered him when he was with us. Focusing on the happy memories and imagining him happily continuing on in another time and space has helped me to move forward with my life and overcome my own loss and grief.
In the chapters that follow you will discover twelve healing techniques that I have found to be effective for my patients to heal grief and loss. They will help you heal your heart and emotions throughout the different stages of the grieving and healing process. I recommend practicing and becoming familiar with all of the techniques as each one may be beneficial for you at different times of your grieving process and as you grieve different losses throughout your life.
Knowing a variety of healing techniques will also allow you to help others, including children, cope with their losses and grief. These techniques can be done on your own, with someone you trust, or used in therapy with your church clergy or professional counselor. Use the techniques you will learn in this book to heal your feelings of loss, anger and sadness, and to keep the memory of the person you love alive in your mind and heart.
"Writing helps me to release my grief and painful emotions."
Journaling is a therapeutic technique for clearing your mind, releasing emotions, solving problems, and monitoring your progress. For releasing grief and loss I recommend doing a stream of consciousness feelings journal. Stream of consciousness writing is writing whatever comes to mind. It doesn’t have to make sense or even be in complete sentences. It’s the process of putting your thoughts and feelings on paper without thinking about what you are writing about.
I usually give my patients the assignment to journal as one of their first therapy homework assignments. I have found journaling to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to release intense emotions, confusion, and cloudiness of thought. I spend a little time each day writing down my thoughts, feelings, where I am at and where I want to be. Doing this helps me keep focused on moving forward in my goals, and releases fear, anxiety, and self-doubts, allowing to me to see my progress. In addition, it helps me express gratitude for the good things that are happening in my life. Repeatedly my patients have expressed feeling significantly better in as little as a week's worth of time after adding journaling to their daily routine.
Feelings Journal
To release grief, journal your stream of consciousness feelings, that is, whatever feelings come to mind. You might write the same thoughts and feelings over and over again. That’s okay. Continue writing if those repetitive thoughts are what your mind is dwelling on and needs to be released. Some days you may feel so hurt or numb that you can’t identify any feeling; you feel a blank void, or dark emptiness. This is okay, and being aware of it tells you where you are emotionally. At times like these just draw squiggly lines or rows and rows of circles. Or write about the numbness you are experiencing and the black hole you feel you have fallen into. The important thing is to write something in your Feelings Journal. Moving your hand in motion to the words and feelings your mind is releasing. You might even try writing with your non-dominant left or right hand, as this will switch your mind from tapping into your logical thinking side, to your creative, emotional, and irrational side. Keep in mind that your journal doesn't have to be legible or look pretty.
If you find yourself feeling guarded and afraid to write for fear of someone seeing it, then write with the lid on your pen going through the motion of each word but not allowing the ink to come through. Another trick is to write over your words. Write to the bottom of the page and then begin again at the top adding new words over the old, or turn your page crossing the old words with the new words. Write until you can’t write any more, until your mind feels drained of the emotional subject. Then destroy the writing, symbolically releasing or giving up those painful feelings to God or the Universe. Say out loud, or to yourself, a releasing statement of "I release these thoughts and emotions to God" or "I release these thoughts and emotions to the Universe". Saying a releasing phrase while destroying your stream of consciousness journaling will help you further release those thoughts and emotions from your mind.
It is important to go through the physical motion of writing on paper rather than just thinking about them or typing them on a computer. The goal is to release pent up and subconscious emotions. If you just think about them without writing them down you may feel some peace, but the thoughts are still circulating in your mind and are likely to keep coming up, as they haven’t been fully released from your mind. Typing them can also give some therapeutic release because of the physical motion of typing on the keyboard, but it doesn’t allow for a full release because your brain is moving from one thought to the next faster than if you had written it out on paper. Writing longhand gives your mind plenty of time to feel the whole emotion and let it go. Longhand writing on paper is the best way to release as it gives you a tangible piece of paper to hold, and your hand and mind go over each word as you script it on the paper. Your visual and tactile senses help you to release your emotions. The thoughts and feelings move from your mind and heart, to your hand, and out onto the paper, releasing the emotional energy from you out into the Universe.
When you are doing stream of consciousness journaling to release feelings of grief, loss or other painful emotions it is best not to read what you have written as its sole purpose is to release your thoughts and emotions from your mind. You don’t need to put them back in your mind by reading them. I find most people will write freer and release more if they know that what they are writing will not be read. I recommend destroying stream of consciousness writings and Feelings Journals after they are written, as this will provide the maximum therapeutic healing benefit for you.
Here's an example of what a Feelings Journal entry might look like:
I feel sad. sad angry! I AM ANGRY! blue. What am I going to do without him? My life is over. How will I ever find love again? What am I going to do? When will I stop crying? CRYING! CRYING! tears keep coming when will they ever stop OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO When will my heart stop hurting? yuck! yuck! yuck! God please comfort me. Please take away my pain!
Insight Journal
You can also create a separate journal to use to increase your personal insights and clarify your goals and directions for life. This is a helpful step for moving forward and planning your life after the loved one has passed away. This is especially important for couples or families coping with an unexpected death, as the death of the loved one may have dramatically altered your daily routine, goals, and plans for the future.
Setting some new goals and direction for your life will help you to heal and move your life forward in a healthy manner. Begin by using the same stream of consciousness journaling technique described earlier to clarify your thoughts and feelings about what you would like to do next in life.
Repeating the question “What do I want?” is a good way to get started. Be patient with yourself as you are doing this mental probing. You may not get any answers at first. Like with the Feelings Journal if you feel nothing or your mind comes up blank, draw squiggly lines or rows of circles. You are stretching your mind and pushing it to move beyond your feelings of grief and loss to create a new life of happiness and joy. Rest assured, the answers will come.