Others may walk with you for a few steps and listen as you express your pain.
But you will walk that path alone.
This path belongs to you alone and you walk it at your own pace.
Your pain feels like exposed nerve endings.
The wound is raw.
Your heart broken.
You don’t want to believe this is true.
Your anger is palpable. So raw it is overwhelming.
The loss you feel is the bitterest pill to swallow.
You will most likely come eventually to a place of peace.
But you will do it because you journeyed alone.
It will come in your own time.
And you will find it by travelling your own way.
Shock
Disbelief
How can they be gone?
How can this be over?
I am angry that they are gone.
I am angry that this is over.
What if I had done this?
I regret not doing that.
What if
What if
Sadness
Deep deep sadness
This is real, it is really over.
They are really gone.
Grief will never end.
The pain may fade but it will always be here.
Sometimes it will be a fresh as though it happened only yesterday.
Other times there will be the mercy of years.
What does it all mean?
What is the meaning in the loss?
Loss wounds and paralyses.
Meaning in the loss empowers me to find a path forward.
It helps me make sense of my grief.
What is meaning?
What does it look like?
It is many shapes, colours and sizes.
It may be gratitude for the time spent with the one you love.
It may be commemorating and honouring the one who is gone.
It may be realising how short our lives are and of the need to live each moment fully.
It may be campaigning to find a cure for what killed them, or to prevent the cause of their death such as campaigning on drink driving, or speed.
When there is meaning the grieving is easier.
When meaning is absent there can be such an overwhelming focus on life with the loved one that all purpose and direction is gone.
Meaning comes through finding a way to sustain your love for the person after they are gone while continuing to live. In many ways, you will have a greater sense of the preciousness of life because of the one you lost. Living life to the fullest is how we honour the dead.
You have a choice to grieve or to detach from life, including the opportunity to experience joy.
Remember:
Meaning is relative and personal.
It takes time, and by this I mean it may take years
It doesn’t require understanding of why that person died.
When you find meaning you will still not feel that meaning was worth the cost of what you lost.
Loss is not a test, lesson, something to handle, a gift or a blessing. It is simply what happens in life. Meaning is what you make happen.
You are the only one who can find your own meaning.
Meaningful connections will heal painful memories.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief journey and search for meaning, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
“Being a friend to yourself is no mere metaphor or purely sentimental idea. It is the basis of all relationship, because it is a fundamental recognition of soul.” Thomas Moore
Would you take better care of yourself Would you be kinder to yourself Would you be more forgiving of your Human imperfections if you realized your Best friend was yourself Who is always with you everywhere Who is on your side when others are unfair And tell me who will never let you down in Any situation Who will always see you get your share And that’s why I am a best friend to myself And I take me out whenever I feel low And I make my life as happy as a best Friend would I’m as nice to me as anyone I know
(lyrics to Best Friend by Helen Reddy)
Sooner or late in life you will hear someone say you cannot be a friend to others until you are a friend to yourself.
Or you need to be a friend to yourself.
That is true. But how do you do it?
Do you act like a friend to yourself?
When you make mistakes are you compassionate or judgemental with yourself?
One of the biggest barriers to good mental health in the aftermath of childhood trauma is learning to like yourself.
When your abuser has spent your childhood putting you down. Telling you that you are useless, or unloveable, or a disaster, or always wrong, difficult, trying … you name it, it has been said. When that has happened you tend to not have a high opinion of yourself.
Do you remember as a child trying to be good? Really good. Because you were always told you were bad. So this day you were going to be good so your Mum and Dad did not have to get angry with you.
And you worked really hard to do all the rights things. You did what you were asked without pause. You spoke politely when spoken to. You kept alert. You asked if there were things you could do.
Your measure of success was not being abused.
You worked hard, but you failed.
Your father or mother or both abused you and you were crushed because you were such a bad person.
Small wonder you feel like a bad person when someone is rude or aggressive towards you.
As a child you were not aware that you were not being bad. It was your abusers who were bad.
As an adult, you have taken that belief so tightly into yourself that you aren’t even aware that you always judge yourself harshly when people are rude or aggressive towards you.
You also wonder why you feel so crushed and bad.
It is time for self compassion and awareness.
Maybe you can remember a time you tried to be good. Maybe you have forgotten such a time. Maybe you can remember feeling you were a bad person and maybe you can’t.
The important thing is to acknowledge the hurt and pain.
Place your hands on your heart and take a releasing breath in and out. Let all the hurt and pain flow out with your breath. Breathe in cleansing and breathe out the hurt and pain.
When you are ready, carefully examine what your inner voice is telling you about the hurt and pain you are currently feeling.
Are there any statements that come up for you? These can be clues to the underlying emotions and beliefs.
Comfort yourself, just as you would comfort a child.
Send love and warmth through your hands into your heart.
Talk to that hurt part.
“It’s okay darling. I am here. I love you. I am here to protect you. You are safe with me.” And so on.
Allow that part to feel the love and compassion of a friend.
Always remember, you are kind to your friends, so be kind to yourself.
Being your best friend. Treating yourself with compassion and love is vital.
Do this instead of judging and berating yourself.
Making mistakes is human. It is okay to sometimes get things wrong.
Being treated unfairly by others is unfair, and it doesn’t make you are bad person. It is actually the other person who is being bad. So give yourself some slack. Give yourself comfort and love and compassion.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with healing from the hurts of today or of your past, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
Most people who see me are seeing me because they are struggling with the death of a loved one.
But there are also people who see me about the end of their marriage/relationship.
Ending a marriage is a really big thing.
Josie came to see me after she and her husband of 40 years decided to separate.
They were married a long time and had spent their adult years together.
Now they were having to work through the pain.
For Josie that was multi-layered.
She couldn’t blame anyone for the end of the marriage. They had both drifted apart. They had both agreed they were not happy anymore and wanted out.
Despite this amicable end to the marriage, they both experienced a time of anger and blame at each other.
She spent too much time running around after their now adult children.
He spent too much time looking after his mother.
That was just the tip of the iceberg!
Josie was acutely ashamed of her marriage ending and of the need to seek counselling. She would come to see me wearing a scarf, big coat and dark glasses to disguise herself. She was terrified someone would recognise her and judge her for needing help.
She had moved away from her home town because of her shame.
She believed marriages shouldn’t end.
She was worried she looked terrible and her friends would pity her and talk about how bad a state she was in.
She was worried about her future. The future she had planned was gone and she had visions of being some lonely old lady no one ever visited. She was terrified she would die and no one would notice.
She was frightened of going out and having men want to talk to her.
She was anxious that her children would get married and want her to sit on the same table at the reception as her father. By this time she was so angry with him she hated him. She blamed him for everything that had happened. And he blamed her back.
She didn’t recognise the fact that she was grieving and needed time and space to allow that to unfold. She needed to let go of her belief that ending a marriage was wrong. She needed to be able to grieve for the lost future and learn to have a new one.
She needed to stop running.
Brad had been with his partner ten years. He was happy and settled and envisaged a future where he and his partner planned to have children and grow old together. He was blindsided by his partner’s announcement she was leaving him. He had seen no evidence of trouble in the relationship.
He was unable to understand what had happened.
Life was so difficult to manage. He was lonely and lost. He cried a lot or went out with some mates and drank too much.
He could not cope with the loneliness.
He felt totally useless and unloveable.
He contemplated ending it all.
Like Josie he needed time to grieve and the space to allow that to unfold.
He needed to learn how to sit with the not knowing around the end of the relationship.
He needed to know it was okay to hurt and that it would get better.
He also needed to come to the realisation that his relationship ending did not make him less of a person.
So often when relationships end, people are encouraged to just get on with life. There is little recognition of the devastating losses associated with the end of a relationship.
These losses are real. They need to be acknowledged and honoured. The person in this situation must be allowed to feel their grief and work with it.
If you are struggling with the end of your relationship and would like to seek my help, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
I have observed many clients with childhood trauma who struggle to ask for help.
They will report struggling to get work done at home without help and feeling resentful that no one notices they need help.
Do you experience that?
Other people may ask you why you don’t just ask for help.
There is a very good reason for that.
The abused child is a child who is often alone.
The child is without help.
Requests for help are often met with either anger or shaming.
The child learns they cannot ask for help.
The child grows up and still believes it is not possible to ask for help.
I could tell you to just ask for help.
Maybe you could do that.
Maybe you would struggle.
You would feel your heart racing.
You would feel panic.
You would have a sense of being in danger.
Your childhood when these neural pathways were laid down has taught you that.
It takes a lot of exploring feelings and healing before you can learn that you can ask for help and receive it.
As you heal you can learn that you have the right to ask for help.
You can learn that you deserve help when you ask for it.
You can learn that healthy people are more than happy to help when asked.
Think about the wonderful day when you find yourself in need of help and ask.
And when you ask, you receive the help you needed.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with learning it is okay to ask for help, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
In my work I have noticed that most people who come to me for help after the death of a loved one struggle to make sense of what has happened. This is referred to as making meaning. This may sound strange but making sense of what has happened in any life event is actually about finding what that event means for you.
If you find yourself in that situation, you will notice how hard it is to move on into the rest of your life.
So many people struggle with the issue and arrive in my counselling room exhausted from trying to manage life and fed up with being stuck in the same place in their lives.
When you see me, you find an objective listener who can see things you might have missed.
Learning there is a way out of the tangle of grief is a great source of relief.
John in the jungle
John likened the space he was in after his wife’s death as being trapped in an impenetrable jungle without a machete to hack his way through.
He was so caught up in how to get out of the jungle, that he was unaware of feelings he had not addressed.
Once he was able to explore those feelings with me, he realised there was an underlying question. That question was overwhelming all his efforts to remember the happy times with his wife.
John came to realise that he had struggled to make sense of how this strong, capable woman had succumbed to cancer.
Once he was aware of this question, he was able to explore it.
In that massive question were so many feelings he had never explored.
He was angry at the cancer that took her life.
He was confused at how quickly it had taken over their lives and turned them upside down.
He was full of remorse at the times in the past he had felt he had not given his wife enough attention. At the missed opportunities to connect. He always imagined they could do things together in retirement. But that never happened.
He felt responsible for her cancer not being picked up earlier. He knew that they had acted on the signs they saw, but he still felt he should have noticed.
He was mourning the loss of the future they had anticipated.
He had lost trust in the certainty of life.
He didn’t know how he would keep living, alone.
These are just some of the feelings he had not experienced until he came to see me.
Once he was able to experience and work through these feelings, he found there was a way out of the jungle.
He could see a path emerging from the tangle of vines that had formerly blocked his way out.
Then one day he was able to walk down the path and emerge into the sunlight.
Jacky and the big question about death.
When Jacky lost her daughter, she struggled with accepting that this teen who had barely lived could be consigned to the nothingness of death.
Her friends would tell her to not think about it, but she needed to know what happened after death. A lot of people never think about that. It is a very confronting thing for many people. It is easy, when faced with such an uncomfortable subject, to move away from it. Hence Jacky’s friends not wanting to discuss it.
I was prepared to let her explore that question.
Jacky spent a lot of time at home reading and exploring attitudes and beliefs around death.
She came and discussed these ideas that she had formed. It is always helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off. It is also helpful to talk with someone who encourages you to reflect on those ideas.
Jacky found comfort in reading about near death experiences and decided her daughter’s spirit went somewhere into another existence after death.
Finding meaning
Two different people. two different stories. Yet both were struggling to find meaning in the death of their loved one.
It is said by those who research grieving that finding meaning in that person’s death is the most overlooked part of grieving.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with finding meaning in the death of a loved one, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
One of the biggest casualties of trauma is the sense of self.
When you come to see me, we can work through healing the trauma, but we must also work on helping you to restore a sense of who you are.
There are a number of body centred exercises that I can teach you that will help you regulate what you are feeling inside and how you are responding to those feelings. These exercises will also help restore and repair the connections between your mind and body that are disrupted in trauma.
One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through breathing exercises. Mindfulness is on of the most effective of these ways and I will teach you this as part of your therapy. Mindfulness combines breathing, awareness and meditation.
The part of the brain that gives you a sense of self awareness is sometimes referred to as the “Mohawk of Self Awareness”. It is a good illustration of where those parts of the brain are. I will mention the names of those parts because often you will hear them referred to, and it is nice to have some idea where they are.
Starting from the front of the brain, there is the orbital prefrontal cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, the posterior cingulate and the insula. Now I have mentioned them you can forget them if you like.
The main point with these brain areas is that these areas of the brain are shown to have less activity in traumatised people. This is actually because a traumatised person’s brain is constantly on alert and these parts of the brain go offline when the defensive parts of the brain are on high alert.
You may have heard the term hyperarousal. That is what happens when the defensive parts of the brain are on high alert.
One of the ways your brain protects itself from the busyness in the brain of hyperarousal is to block the connection between your body and your brain. This reduces the messages your body sends your brain. Those messages would overload your brain if they were allowed through. The trouble with that is you are then disconnected from your feelings, which are felt in your body. If you don’t know what you are feeling, it is hard to respond well to things that happen.
Another casualty of the blocking of the body sensations by the brain is that you cannot engage in self reflection and experience and understand all the feelings you are experiencing. The only ones that will get through will be those associated with the trauma.
Those feelings will send your brain into high alert without you being aware of it. It reacts where you would prefer to have some control and respond.
Breathing exercises, and mindfulness in particular, is a very important way of reconnecting your body and brain and allowing you to be aware of your feelings and respond to them.
The stronger the connection between the body and brain, the lower your reactivity is to what is happening in the world around you.
Wouldn’t it be great to feel in control of your brain again?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with healing from your trauma, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
There is a welsh word “Hiraeth” which means homesickness for a home you can no longer return to, or maybe never was. It is a yearning and grief for the lost places of your past.
Many people will report that feeling every now and then as they think about those they have loved who are no longer with them.
Grief does that.
Years after the event there are still days or moments of sadness. Something will happen to trigger the memories and you are back, feeling sad and longing for one more moment to spent with that person, or people, you loved.
Grief never ends.
You eventually learn how to live with the loss of your loved one. But you never stop grieving.
In reality, would you want to stop hurting? Would you want the love you had for that person to end? Because that is the only way to stop the hurt.
Love inevitably leaves the pain of grief when you lose the one you love.
Yes you miss that person.
Yes, you wish they could be here.
Yes, you know they can’t come back, but that doesn’t stop you wanting it all the same.
Sometimes you can get stuck on the journey to the place of Hiraeth and never reach it.
Life goes around and around in circles and you find yourself trapped in this limbo, unable to go back and not knowing how to move forward.
That longing you feel then is not Hiraeth. It is like being trapped in a nightmare with no end. In pain, but unable to move forward and learn how to live with that pain.
Sometimes it helps to seek the help of a counsellor who is experienced in grief counselling.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with finding your way out of the cycle of stuckness to the place of Hiraeth, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
Self-compassion is very important when life is painful.
Psychologist Kristen Neff says, “all pain deserves to be held in the warm embrace of compassion, so that healing can occur.”
Such beautiful words.
I have spoken about this before when I have talked about mindfulness. One of the most powerful mindfulness practices is the RAIN meditation, where you apply self compassion, using mindfulness, to pain in your life.
Self compassion applies to everything you encounter in life. It is particularly important in grief.
It is as simple as giving yourself love and compassion. Of being patient. Of allowing yourself to feel pain and of comforting yourself.
It is a matter of being as caring to yourself as you would be to a friend in the same situation.
It is a process that takes a long time. You work through this pain slowly, over time.
Self-compassion has been important for me in healing from the pain of grief.
I have learned to give compassion to my pain. And through that learning I have been able to heal.
Dostoevsky wrote “it is the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”
That sounds quite radical.
When I first heard these words I was outraged at the idea that grief can become “quiet tender joy”.
But I now realise that it can happen.
I am not saying that it doesn’t hurt anymore. But it is possible to feel the gentle joy of precious memories.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief journey and learning how to give yourself self compassion, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
Some years ago, there was a young woman I would regularly see socially. We often chatted about how her family were going. We particularly chatted about her nephew. He was 3 and she was so proud of him. One time we met she mentioned he was getting bullied at day care. As someone who was abused and bullied as a child I was horrified that a 3 year old was getting bullied. Surely someone was doing something about that. Her response? Oh yes, he was being taught how to change his behaviour and fit in better so he wouldn’t be bullied! I was appalled. People are bullied/abused because of the other person’s issues, not because of anything they have done. To place the blame on the victim is like saying a murder victim was to blame for their murder. Or a rape victim was to blame for being raped. Or a child was to blame for an adult sexually abusing them.
For some reason, people cannot deal effectively with bullies. The thing that needed to be done in this situation was for the bully to be taken aside and treated. There were two things that bully needed.
The first, was to have good healthy boundaries set. The bully needed to know that behaviour was not acceptable behaviour. If you stop the behaviour when it first starts it is easier to stop. Once the behaviour has become full on bullying, it is harder to stop and harm has been caused to the victim.
The second thing that needed to be done was to find out why the bully was behaving this way. Bullies are often hurting. Listening to the bully, while setting firm boundaries, is the most effective way to understand and treat the underlying causes of the behaviour before it cases the bully serious damage. How much easier it is to identify problems and treat them at age 3 than at age 13, or 43.
I suspect people are frightened of dealing with bullies because of fears around their own childhood and their dealings with bullies. But adults are grown up now and can defend themselves. They have a duty to protect children from this behaviour.
A video that circulated a few years ago had adults acting child bullying in an adult setting. This behaviour in a child setting is dismissed as “just kids fooling around”. But the reaction to this video was one of horror that someone was subjected to this obvious assault. So why is it okay for children to be assaulted but not adults?
As adults we need to take a stand and be firm in how we deal with bullies. I am sure many of you had your bullying dismissed by adults as being nothing and something you were overreacting about and needed to get over. You may feel you do not have the power to deal with bullies. But you do.
I also know, because for a long time I suffered this too, that you are most likely ashamed of being bullied. Shame is a big issue for those who were bullied/abused as children. A child believes something is wrong with them for this to happen to them. Often that is reinforced by adults who tell you it is your fault.
So what are the 8 reasons you were bullied and or abused?
Those reasons are all about the bully/abuser and their issues. You were not/are not weak, a loser, stupid or not enough in any way.
Reason No. 1: The bully is a narcissist. This is a personality disorder that develops in childhood. The narcissist is self-absorbed, entitled, and needs admiration and attention. If you don’t do what they want then you are bullied.
Reason No. 2: the bully has poor emotional regulation. This bully does not know how to control their emotions. So when they are angry, or hurt, or embarrassed, or frightened (and so on) they use bullying/abuse to try to calm themselves down.
Reason No. 3: The bully has low self esteem. They don’t feel good about themselves. They feel shamed, inadequate, weak and powerless. They think that what they need to do to feel better is to “tear you down”. Of course you can never get power from other people. The only way to increase your power is to build it up yourself. But the bully doesn’t know how to do that.
Reason No. 4: The bully has a need for social approval. They think the way to get approval is to impress others with their dominance. Maybe they learned that from their family or observing other people. This is what they believe they need.
Reason No. 5: Modelling. The bully has copied the negative behaviour of a parent/sibling/peer group.
Reason No. 6: Lack of empathy. The bully has enough trouble understanding and processing their own emotions, let alone understanding and caring about yours. So they hurt you and don’t have the empathy to care that you are hurting.
Reason No. 7: Poor Impulse Control. The bully has trouble regulating their emotions. A person who can regulate their emotions will stop and think before responding to something. A bully will just react. There is no stopping and no thinking the bully just acts impulsively. Usually that acting is outwards to other people.
Reason No. 8: The bully is Selfish. This bully wants their own needs met. The cost of meeting their needs at the expense of others is not a consideration.
Many bullies may have more than one reason they bully.
The reason they picked on you? Because they could. Because you were the first person they encountered they thought they could safely pick on. No reason for that. You were just the person there when they wanted someone to bully.
If you still believe you were somehow to blame it is time to think about what you would say to someone you love, say your own child, if they were the victim of bullying. Would you say they were to blame? Would you tell them to “get over it”? Would you tell them they had to behave differently because their behaviour was why they were being bullied? Or would you show them compassion? Would you care? Would you hug them? Would you do something to help them?
Give yourself the same compassion you would give someone you love.
Bullying/abuse in childhood leaves wounds that need healing.
Many victims of childhood bullying/abuse lose trust in the world and in other people. And there are good reasons for that. After all, who supported you when you were suffering that way? It is quite likely the world seemed to turn their back on you.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your bullying/abuse related difficulties, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
There are many articles written about grief, and how to live with it. The views they express, and the ways to live with that grief are many and varied.
Recently I read an article about a different way of managing grief. The woman who wrote the article, Kathryn Lane Rossi, is a clinical psychologist who developed the field of psychosocial genomics with her husband Ernest Rossi. Psychosocial genomics holds that our personal and subjective states of consciousness affect the ways our genes express themselves in the brain and body. That may sound complicated, but I mentioned it because it had a profound impact on the way Kathryn grieved after the death of her husband.
It is well accepted the way we grieve is impacted by our beliefs about life and living.
A friend once told Kathryn “Even on the worst day of your life 95% of it is great. The Sun comes out offering nourishing, rejuvenating light. You have clean water to drink, good food to eat and someone(s) who loves you deeply” (Lee Lawson).
After the death of her husband after a short illness, Kathryn realised grief had become her closest companion. Because of her beliefs about life, she invited grief to be a spiritual experience. In describing this, she used the word ‘numinous’ which was described by Rudolf Otto many years ago as meaning ‘fascinating, tremendous and mysterious’.
Kathryn found that tremendous and mysterious definitely fitted with her grief, but fascinating? How was she going to welcome that to a world that didn’t feel fascinating?
So she researched the meaning of the word. The research showed fascination was a suggestion of something new and different to what came before it. She concluded that therefore fascination was describing something new and original.
The death of her husband was a new and original experience for her.
As a neuroscientist she was interested to understand the neuroscience of her grief.
According to the theory she and her husband developed we have a creative cycle that enables us to change and adapt through our consciousness influencing our mirror neurons. This influence on our mirror neurons then impacts on how our genes express themselves in our bodies and changes our brains.
Mirror neurons are part of our brains that allow us to connect to other people’s feelings. They are what causes us to wince when we see someone else hurt themselves. We can relate to the pain they are experiencing through the activation of our mirror neurons.
We can connect with anyone, but we form stronger attachments with people we are in close relationships with, such as our life partners.
When that person dies, or is no longer with us, our mirror neurons that connect to them have to change. In order to do that, the old neurons have to be removed and new ones have to form.
As a neuroscientist, Kathryn knew that neurons take about a month to come to maturity and a further two to three to make new connections in the brain and body. So she decided that she was not in a good place to make any decisions until these new pathways were developed.
So the first thing she did was resolve to make no important decisions for at least three months.
Instead, she decided to observe her body, mind and emotions.
Every one to two hours she tuned in to what was happening physically and emotionally to her. This gave her structure that she found personally comforting.
She found that just before falling asleep she noticed memories flipping through her mind, like a deck of cards that was being shuffled a card a second.
Many people report being flooded with memories during the day as well.
Kathryn’s research into memory found that the purpose of memory was to help us in the present moment. We constantly adapt memories to help us in our daily life.
Her brain was sorting through her memories to sort those that were more important.
She also noticed that her memory was made foggy by her grief.
Many people experience that in grief.
She observed she was getting brief headaches and pain around her heart. Again, this is not uncommon for people to experience.
She concluded these things were occurring for several reasons.
One was that the growth of new neurons caused pain.
Another reason was that her logic and her emotions were not in agreement. Her brain was saying “accept he is gone” and her heart was saying “I don’t want to”.
She also noticed digestive issues and found she could not eat and do other things at the same time. Her brain was so busy creating new neuronal pathways it did not allow multiple tasks to occur at the same time.
She also found that in common with most people, she often cried or sobbed. Most of these sessions lasted 5 minutes, although she had periods where she cried for about 90 minutes, stopped for 5-20 minutes before resuming crying.
Kathryn was comforted to notice that these difficult times did not continue. Over time she become able to function for longer.
As a scientist she was aware of the impact grief has on inflammation in the body and the depressive effect it has on the immune system. So she set out to exercise in nature every day, usually for 90 minutes.
Many people report that no day is like the rest. One day you can be in the depths of despair, the next you can get things done, the next you may even feel like going out. Kathryn experienced that too. She saw that as positive, because she saw it as evidence she was growing.
Kathryn wrote her article as she approached three months after the deal of her husband. She was aware her immune system was almost completely recovered. She was also aware that the future would hold a lot more pain.
For three months, Kathryn was able to use her own skills as a researcher to cope.
You will use your own skills to cope too. It may not seem like you are coping, and it may not seem that you have any direction or structure in your life, but you do.
You may also notice that some of Kathryn’s observations match your own experience. May that knowledge that you are not alone in what you are experiencing bring you comfort.
You may find it helpful to understand the cause of some of your physical and emotional reactions.
You may also find it helpful to talk to a qualified counsellor.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief journey, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz
