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.

Can past hurts be sabotaging your current relationships?

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Have you ever behaved in a way that goes against the thing that you want most in a relationship, and that is emotional closeness and intimacy? Do you push away or sabotage the very things that you crave most in relationships? I know I did. I remember my first true love. As a couple we were spending almost every day together and talking on the phone every night. The relationship lasted for almost 5 years, and I thought he was the one I’d marry. Then one day the relationship ended. I was devastated. I couldn’t sleep, didn’t eat and I didn’t know how I would go on without him in my life. I thought the way to heal my pain was to be strong and pretend I was okay. I thought I needed to get back out in the social scene with my girlfriends and find someone else to date. You know the proverbial romantic break-up scenes in the movies where you drown out your pain by eating a gallon of ice cream and staying in bed for days. As if that somehow was supposed to make it feel better. That never works and you’re still left wanting true love. One thing I knew was that I would never allow anyone to hurt me that way again.

As a choice to protect my heart, this became an unconscious habit that I formed, and I didn’t even realize how guarded it kept me from trusting and opening my heart fully to someone else. I did get into other relationships, but each time I was more cautious. I never truly opened up therefore never giving anyone the chance to get to know the real me. Have you ever done this? Sadly, this is the story for many people. In an attempt to shield yourself from normal and natural emotional pain you make decisions to keep your heart protected instead. Sometimes it’s a conscious decision and other times it disguises itself in sarcasm, humor, being too busy, focusing on work or anything else that acts as a shield allowing people the opportunity to connect to your heart.

Unresolved emotional pain robs you of choice. When you carry the baggage from your past losses it limits your ability to be fully present in your new relationships. Sometimes it limits your ability to form new partnerships at all. This can be in romantic relationships, friendships, and parenting. That’s where The Grief Recovery Method comes in. If you do the work you know that you will ultimately be okay no matter what happens in your life. You will get freedom of choice in how you participate in your relationship moving forward.

There is a book I also would like to recommend called: Moving On: Dump Your Relationship Baggage and Make Room for the Love of Your Life by Russell Friedman & John James. These are authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook as well as the book Moving Beyond Loss and I highly recommend this book. You can search for it right in Google or buy it right from Amazon by clicking here.

 

 

 

You say you’re fine, but you’re really not!

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The Award-Winning Academy Act – “I’m Fine”

This is a narrative I often used to tell myself and others: that I was strong, capable and fiercely independent to handle my emotions from painful events that occurred in my life. I’d put on my “Happy Face” and pretend everything was “Fine”.

Have you ever felt that way?

I have often said “I am fine” when I really was anything but fine. I was very sad, hurt and felt alone with my pain and what I needed most was to be able to tell the truth about how I felt but didn’t know how to do that. In fact, everything I learned and practiced convinced me not to show my REAL feelings at any cost. I was taught to bury any feelings that dealt with sadness. You know the sayings like: “Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.” This and hundreds of other clichés about dealing with sad feelings taught me to lie about how I felt.
What is dangerous about doing this is that Every time we tell a lie, like “I’m fine” and it’s not the truth, our subconscious mind hears the lie and will then bury the feelings generated by the event that caused us to pretend everything is ok. Whatever the events were that caused us to hide our true feelings they were resulting in unresolved emotional issues and if we haven’t learned a good skill to allow us to express our emotional pain without analysis, criticism or judgement, those painful feelings are suppressed inside, where they tend to multiply. This not to say I am blaming my parents or society for having passed on ineffective ideas, skills, and tools for dealing with painful emotions and loss, but what I am saying is I learned better tools that actually help me with lasting recovery results through “The Grief Recovery Method”.

When painful feelings and losses remain unresolved, they become cumulative, and they’re always are cumulatively negative. Time does not heal the pain caused by loss and neither does lying about our feelings. This is such a big problem, I couldn’t possibly explain it all in this post but what I can do is practice a little recovery. Allow yourself to believe that the subconscious will take actions based on conscious commands. When we lied and said we were fine, we told it that there was no problem, so it need not search out a solution. The result is to allow the cause of the problem to go unattended and rebury itself. The next time it attacks you may not be able to recognize the cause or source of the attack.

Recovery Hinges on Telling The Truth About How You Feel!
A major key to recovery is to process every feeling in the moment you have it. It does not require any special skills to tell the emotional truth about what you are feeling. For example: “How are you?” … “I’m having a tough day, thanks for asking.” Notice that the answer is truthful but does not invite any help or advice. It also has the ability to tell the truth that you are not on your best game and the other party can respond accordingly. When you say, “I’m fine,” but you’re not, you have sent a very confusing message to yourself and others.
Your ability to communicate is verbal and non-verbal. Non-verbal communication includes tone of voice as well as facial and body signals. When our verbal and nonverbal signals do not match, most people will respond to the nonverbal. So, when you lie, most people can SEE it.

When I started to tell myself and others the truth about my feelings is when I experienced the benefits of recovery and lasting healing from the painful events in my life. It is my wish for everyone to have this experience too! I hope you reach out to me soon to begin.

Broken Hopes and Dreams

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Broken hopes and dreams about a future that will never happen causes grief and can have an effect on your ability for happiness.

Have you ever had big dreams about your future?  All the hopes and dreams of what it would be like when you obtain or get those things! We all create hopes, dreams, and expectations for our futures. Some of our well-intentioned plans may involve the dreams of a big career, wealth, marriage & family, an education, a healthy body and the list continues.   For many of us, those dreams may never come true, leaving a ton of grief that affects our ability to be happy in life.

Some losses are indisputable like death, divorce and pet loss and yet there are other losses that cause emotional pain but aren’t usually recognized as losses. They’re called “intangible losses.”

Intangible losses are things like loss of trust, loss of safety, loss of security, loss of control, loss of fertility.  Loss of hopes, dreams and expectations about the things that may never come to fruition.  If you’ve experienced any of these then you know that just because it’s an intangible loss, doesn’t mean it isn’t painful, real or devastating.

An example of an intangible loss is:  What if you spent your whole life dreaming about having children. Then find out that you can’t. Your hopes, dreams and expectations of being a parent are crushed, even though you never lost a physical child. Your heart is broken and you’re in emotional pain

Or what if you’re a person who suffered from mental, physical, or sexual abuse or assault. You might not feel safe or secure in this world.

Or what if you never knew your birth parents? You may spend your whole life wondering what your parents were like, what it would have been like to have a relationship with them.  No matter what the details of that situation, you too are left with unresolved emotional pain.

Other intangible losses can be the result of your own decisions. What if building your career has been your primary focus and you put marriage and family aside then one day you wake up to realize that although you had an amazing career and a whole lot of fun and freedom in your younger years, you made the conscious decision to put marriage and family on the back burner. That’s an intangible loss.

One thing all of these intangible losses have in common is that they limit the quality of your life and capacity for happiness.  Although most of these things are not discussed much, they need to be addressed rather than be stuffed away in silence. Keeping the pain inside limits your life.

Even if you can’t identify exactly what is causing discontent. Most people come to me thinking they will work on one thing then end up working on something totally different. I will help you decide what is limiting your life the most!

Honoring Memorial Day

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Honoring Memorial Day

This post is in honor of all the brave men and women who died while serving in the United States military.

For many people it’s a long weekend and picnics, but today we honor the true meaning of Memorial Day, it is a day of reflection, remembrance and grief for many veterans and families of service men and women that died.

Many people mistake honoring a memory to mean they have to stay in emotional pain. We at The Grief Recovery Method think it honors their memory to live life without emotional pain.

It’s my wish on this Memorial Day that anyone who is grieving loss find their way to The Grief Recovery Method and begin their own journey of recovery.

Mother’s Day Mixed Emotions

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Mother’s Day is a reason to celebrate for many people, but it can bring up sad or painful feelings for others.

Death isn’t the only reason that people grieve.

Death isn’t the only reason you might be grieving around Mother’s Day.  Maybe your mom was abusive or less than loving.  Maybe she didn’t mother in the way you needed, or she did something that hurt you later in life.  Maybe you simply wish things in your relationship were different, better, or more in some way.  Have you ever thought “What would life be like if I wasn’t carrying these feelings around with me?”

Unresolved grief can have a long term negative impact on your life. Grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative. The more you try to ignore your grief, or push it under the rug, the more it will affect your life. Grief not only affects current and future personal relationships, but it can also impact your work, health, and even things you used to enjoy doing. The intensity of your feelings may lessen over time, but grief doesn’t heal on its own.

The good news is that there’s a solution!

If you’re like most people, you simply never learned how to get complete and recover from a broken heart. There are a lot of things we’ve been taught to change our feelings in the short term, and plenty of articles telling you how to do that, but you must be willing to do the work if you truly want to recover from a loss.

That starts with being honest that you want something more for yourself; that you want freedom from pain, sadness, resentment, or whatever you are feeling. Try talking to someone you trust. Tell the truth about yourself. Ask them not to judge, criticize, or analyze (then don’t judge, criticize, or analyze yourself either).

Imagine what it would feel like not feeling pain, anger, or sadness every single time you think about your mom. Wouldn’t that be freeing? You don’t have to live that way.

Get started with The Grief Recovery Method.

Could you be grieving and not know it?

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How could someone be grieving and not even know it?  It’s easy because our society uses a lot of different words to describe what could simply be grief. We hear words, or terms such as:

  • Stress
  • PTSD
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Feeling “Off”

Grief is the normal and natural emotional reaction to loss of any kind.

  • If you’re sad about a break up then your feelings surrounding it are grief.
  • If you’ve lost a job then your feelings surrounding it are grief.
  • If you’ve experienced a loss of health then your feelings surrounding it are grief.

Another definition of grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.

Have you ever moved or changed jobs? Although you might have been thrilled about the new environment, you might also have felt sad about leaving your friends, co-workers, routines and everything else you were used to. Those conflicting emotions are grief.

Think about your last break up or when someone you know died. Do you remember wishing you could have them back just one more time? When we grieve, we grieve the loss of unmet hopes, dreams and expectations we had about the relationship.

My message to you is please know that grief might be the reason you don’t feel fully present in your relationships, it might be why you have felt “off” since you experienced a change in your life, and it might be why you think there’s something “wrong” with you.

The Grief Recovery Method is a series of actions that lead to recovery from, or completion of loss. I am an Advanced Certified Grief Recovery Specialist I encourage you to reach out to me so we can begin this recovery process.

Time and Grief

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Grief is the normal and natural reaction to any change from what is familiar in life. It is the emotional response to change. It can be defined as a feeling associated with the things we wish might have been different or better in any relationship, whether it is with a person, a pet, a job, an educational experience, or even a place of residence, just to name a few. Grief can be a result of wishing we had spent more time together, or it can be related to unmet hopes and dreams that were never realized due to an unexpected and early end.

Simply stated, grief can be overwhelming! Grief can show up in a variety of ways. Some people find that the confusing feelings that grief generates interfere with sleep, while others find it difficult to get up and function after waking up. Some people find that they feel sad or cry over things that never seemed to bother them before. Many find themselves longing for that lost relationship. Some find themselves easily irritated, while others do not have the energy to feel much of anything. For some, the memories leading up to and including the moment of loss overshadow all their fond memories of that relationship.

The grief each person experiences is influenced by a variety of factors. The intensity of that emotional relationship, the amount of unfinished business in that relationship, and how we try to deal with the pain of the loss are among the primary components.

The reality is that time, in and of itself, is not really a factor in true emotional recovery from loss. With the passage of time, we may become used to living with the pain of loss. As time goes by, most people simply learn to bury their feelings, rather than to take effective action to deal with that pain. If, after an arbitrary amount of time, you have persistent feelings of emotional pain and try to utilize medication to treat the “problem,” you are often just treating the symptoms of grief without actually doing anything to deal with the underlying problem.

Since grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss, doesn’t it make better sense to try to take personal responsibility to take effective recovery action, rather than to allow it to control your happiness? Most grievers really just want to feel better.

The reason that people have a difficult time in recovering from the pain of emotional loss is because they do not have the tools to take action. “The Grief Recovery Handbook” is a step-by-step action plan for recovery. It starts at the beginning with what you learned in your childhood about dealing with loss and why many of these “tools” were ineffective. It then gives you “new” tools to deal with the unfinished business in that lost relationship. It offers you the opportunity to safely deal with those things that make remembering painful. It will allow you to be able to enjoy your memories and share them with others, rather than finding them overwhelming.

Spring Cleaning for Your Heart & Soul

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Take charge of your happiness & gift yourself a Spring Cleaning for your heart, soul, and mind.

Do you find yourself struggling to find happiness or joy in your life? Have you ever thought that if someone would just behave how you wanted them to be that you would be happy? Or if that situation or outside event could have happened differently, then you would be happy? The problem with thinking this way is that it makes you a victim of other people’s behavior and events that you have no control over.

Wouldn’t it be more empowering and freeing to know that you are responsible for your own feelings?

When you focus on other people and events the problem is you miss the point. You can’t change other people or the events that may have happened. No matter how badly you want to. Truth is, the more you work on improving yourself the happier you will be in your life, in your friendships, in your marriage, and your work relationships. Emotional pain and trauma is at the root of all the heartache and negative beliefs in your life. We all start off in this world with a blank slate then accumulate misinformation and losses which hold us back as adults.

I can help you identify what beliefs and relationships hurt you most. There is a solution to bring you emotional freedom. Although this solution does require action. Take action and you will raise up everyone around you!

I am eager and excited to begin to collaborate with you and navigate you through this journey.

Are you experiencing unresolved grief?

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Is your life forever changed after loss? Yes! You don’t need anyone to tell you your heart is broken. You know it!

After significant loss your eating patterns may change drastically, whether that is eating too much, or you completely lose your appetite. You may find it hard to concentrate or focus on simple tasks. You may find it hard to sleep or sleep more than usual. Your chest may feel tight or like your heart sunk into your stomach.

As time goes by, these experiences may lessen and over time you may return to your normal routines, but that doesn’t mean that you have recovered from the loss.

Unresolved grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative. It affects current and future relationships.

Here are some indicators that you are experiencing unresolved grief.

Do you refuse to talk about the loss?
Do you avoid thinking about your loved one who died because the memories are painful?
Do you avoid places or events that remind you of someone who died?
Do you only talk about their positives, refusing to admit they might have had some negative qualities too?
Do you keep the same exact routines you did when they were still alive because you’re afraid you’ll forget them?
Do you avoid getting close to people? Unresolved grief is usually at the root of fear about any new relationships.

There’s nothing wrong with grieving, but you don’t have to live the rest of your life in pain.

Imagine thinking of someone who died or an ex, without feeling brokenhearted. Imagine living and loving to the fullest. What would that be like for you?