In my work with grieving people, I find two responses to the pain of grief.
One group of people accept the pain and work with it.
The other group of people run away from the pain.
Many years ago, I read a story about teams installing electricity poles. The most dangerous time in the entire installation is when the pole has been placed in the ground. It is in these moments before the pole is secured that it is most likely to fall over. The instinct should this happen is to run away from the falling pole. But the installers are taught the safest response is to run towards the pole and put their hands on it.
This is a great metaphor for pain. We instinctively run away from pain. We dare not look at a wound for fear of what we might see. We don’t want to be frightened by the reality of what has happened. We don’t want to feel the pain because we are frightened it will be too much for us to handle.
But to heal, we need to know what the wound is. We need to accept the wound. We need to examine the many elements of the wound.
To explain this, I am going to use the metaphor of a physical wound.
I once cut the side of my finger on a mandolin slicer. I immediately wrapped my hand in a tea towel and pressed on it. I didn’t know what I had done, or how bad it was. All I knew is that there was blood everywhere and it hurt but was also numb.
Eventually I decided I needed to look at my finger.
I unwrapped the tea towel, expecting the profuse bleeding to recommence.
Fortunately there was not too much blood coming out of the wound. I was able to see that I had not cut the edge of my finger off, but there was a very deep cut that ran into the edge of my fingernail.
I realised the wound was not as serious as I had imagined.
Because I was able to look at the wound I was able to reassure myself and treat the wound. As a nurse, I knew I needed to examine and treat the wound to allow good healing.
Some years later I sprained my ankle badly and was told not to put weight on it until it was healed. When the time came to put weight on my ankle, I was frightened to do it. I remembered that my foot was excruciatingly painful to put weight on when I had first sprained it. I was afraid of experiencing pain. But I did put weight on it and discovered that it no longer hurt to do that.
In the end, it was my fear of experiencing pain that held me back from walking on my ankle again.
If we take these metaphors and apply them to the terrible wound of grief we can see that there is initially an overwhelming outpouring of pain. The pain is raw and there is some numbness there too.
It is not possible to look at or examine the wound. We are in shock.
But over time the shock eases and we can start to explore the wound.
We can overcome our fear of feeling pain and see exactly what the wound is. We can change our attitude to the wound. Once we do that we can heal it.
Buddhist philosophy says that most suffering is caused by our attitude to a wound, not the wound itself. In fact the more we resist our pain, the more we suffer.
It is human nature to make meaning of everything. But we don’t like the meaning to be too complicated, or too random. We want there to be a cause, someone or something to blame. We want there to be someone who will be punished for the event. If there is no one to blame, then life is random and that is really hard to accept. We prefer certainty not uncertainty.
In order to heal, you need to accept the painful wounds of grief.
You need to accept your responsibility in the wound and in healing it.
You need to accept how life is now.
Yes, when you explore your wounds it is unpleasant and painful.
But for healing to occur it is what you must do.
You need to explore your pain, your attitude to the pain and you need to find how to live with the pain.
When you do this, the pain reduces and you find the strength to continue living and heal.
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If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with being able to run towards the hurt of grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
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