What’s Grief Got To Do With Moving?

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Riding my horse with a friend this past weekend inspired me to write this post. She is heading off to college in a few days and she is both excited and sad about the move. We talked about her anticipation of this exciting new adventure that awaits her, but she also shared her feelings of sadness about leaving behind her family, friends, her horse, and many other things that have been a daily part of her life as she knew up until now.

What you may never think about is that moving can generate feelings of grief. Grief is the result of any change in familiar behavior patterns. So, wouldn’t it make sense that a move across the country to a new school, a new town, leaving family/friends/horseback riding and everything you’ve done up until now, is a major change to everything familiar?

There are many different reasons people move, sometimes it is motivated by getting a new job.  It might be about moving to a better house, neighborhood, or school district. It can be a move, like my friend, who is going to college. It could also be caused by the loss of a job, relationship, or financial challenges. These are just a handful of the many reasons that people move.

Whenever you move, it involves change which can be exciting and scary! With change there are multiple feelings that may arise from moving. Feelings like excitement, anticipation, concerns of all the work that’s involved in a move, worries about financial issues or the sadness of leaving people and familiar things behind. Also, the fear of the unknown that comes with any relocation. The list of changes can be overwhelming.

We all have a tendency to stuff and downplay the impact of feelings related to change in our lives and especially when it involves a move. From the time we are very young we have been told not to feel bad for loving people for logical reasons, but rarely did anyone ever encourage you to express your feelings related to a change without giving you those logical reasons why it should not bother you. The problem arises as we grow older and deal with more changes in our lives, this behavior pattern becomes implanted and continues. The old feelings will linger inside if you fail to have an opportunity to fully express them and take action to move beyond their power. We all tend to have a stockpile of stuffed feelings that we know, on a logical level, should not bother us, but they tend to surface at the oddest times when new situations trigger old memories. What no one ever told us was that feelings and emotions are anything but logical, which means that logical reasoning rarely makes us truly feel better!

The tools for dealing with the grief that comes with any change in familiar behavior patterns are covered in “The Grief Recovery Handbook”. These tools will help you deal with not only leaving behind the things that were familiar in the place from which you are moving, but with all of those relationships with friends and neighbors that are changing as well. The techniques that are covered in this book will ultimately help you deal with all of the changes you have faced in past relationships that pop up as well.

Why is it so hard to let go?

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Many clients ask me how to let go of painful emotions resulting from loss events in their lives. My clients seek help for a variety of reasons, whether it’s a death of a loved one, a failed relationship, a job loss, or a serious loss of health, or any other major change in their lives resulting in emotional grief. When things end, why do we find it so hard to let go? The reality is that we’re not necessarily clinging on to the actual person, place or thing, but to something else – the past, the future, or what we wished could have been different, better, or more.  These hold the keys to discovering what is needing attention.

Hanging on to the past.
Letting go can be hard because of all the memories we have. We refuse to accept that what once was is no more. We want to resurrect the past, to savor once again what we had.

Our fear is that if we let go, all that meant so much will be no more. The memories that used to bring us so much happiness would now only bring misery. Each memory brings with it the reminder of the ending. We want to hold on to the things that keep this past alive for us.

Holding onto a future that will never be.
We also cling on to the hope we have for the future – our vision of the future as it would be if things were different. We think that our happiness lies with having the thing that has ended. Or perhaps it’s financial, physical or emotional security we seek, and don’t know where else to find it.

Letting go is scary because we are cutting our lifeline to that future we want so much. Once we let go all the dreams disappear as well. The only way we know to keep our dreams alive is to hold on to what would be. We allow that loss to be the only keeper of our dreams.

So, how do we let go? Realize that it is not really the loss you cannot let go of, but something else. What is it that you are clinging on to – your past, your future, the things you wish could have been different, better, or more, or perhaps all the above? It is important to be honest with yourself, even if you don’t want to admit the truth to anyone else.

In theory, we know that the past is the past, but in reality we project the past onto our future. We want things to remain the way they were, or at least to replay themselves in more or less similar variations.

One way of letting go is to take care of the unfinished business from an emotional standpoint involving those things we wish might be, or have been, different, better or more in any relationship or past event. It might be about unmet hopes and dreams that never came to be.

Whatever the reason, that sense of being emotionally incomplete can leave us feeling wanting and holding onto the pain. In a very real sense, it leaves us feeling a sense of grief!

How can you take action to deal with emotional pain?
The Grief Recovery Method is all about taking action to deal with the unfinished business in emotional relationships or to the events that happened to cause you emotional pain. Working together I will help you to discover exactly what it is that is unfinished for you so that you can take the necessary steps to become “emotionally complete.”  It is designed to help you safely sort through all of those feelings of emotional pain that you have stuffed inside and deal with them in a positive way, so that they no longer negatively impact your life.