Recovery – Page 2 – Andrea Arthur Owan

How to Grieve Well: Successful Steps to Completing Your Grief Healing—Part 9

FOR THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS we’ve searched, dug, uncovered, remembered and relived, all for the sake of grieving well and achieving what we call grieving completion. But does discovery mean we’ve successfully arrived at completion?

No. Awareness and discovery are not grief completion. We still have some work to do.

Why discovery doesn’t equal grief completion?

Let’s imagine the following scenario: If you learned that you had hurt a friend’s feelings, would just knowing you hurt them rectify the problem? Surely not. You would, hopefully, want to go to that friend and apologize to them, to have the relationship restored, if possible.

If you didn’t apologize, both you—and your friend—would remain incomplete, with that offense likely hanging over both of your heads and hearts for years.

Your realization of your offense does not naturally complete what was left emotionally unfinished.

You need to take action.

Keep sounding (and feeling) like a broken record, or enjoy freedom—

Maybe you know someone who keeps repeating the same story over and over and over again. Or maybe you know you’re guilty of doing that. You know they—or you—sound stuck in the past, and you don’t know how to get them, or you, unstuck.

When you carry the repetitive accounts around inside your heart and head, never able to let them go or bring a satisfactory end to them, you’re actually limiting and restricting your life from possibilities, freedom, peace and joy. And each time the story is repeated the resentments—or regrets—pile up.

You don’t need to relive the pain, frustration or anger the rest of your life; you can put a period on those emotions. You can apologize. You can forgive. You can state what you always wanted to say or what you know you should have said out loud and free your heart and mind from the burdens they’ve been carrying around for far too long.

What about exaggerated memories and embellished stories?

When a person is grieving, they often embellish their stories or create fairytale characters out of their deceased loved ones—both good and evil characters.

Unfortunately, doing this can put a serious barrier on the road to grief completion. The goodness of the deceased person is embellished; the person’s sins get expanded like hot air balloons. We can deify people just as easily as we can demonize them.

Be careful to not create or write a story that’s more untruthful than realistic. Believe it or not, these extremes can be covers for unfinished relationships, words and actions.

Tell the important positive things. Divulge the uglier, more hurtful events. Tell of wonderful promises kept and promises broken. In the end, your story and its ending will be realistic, and it can be a powerful witness to forgiveness, transformation and peace to someone aching to find those things.

For both positive and negative events, the freedom you gain from going through this sometimes difficult relationship review and grief completion allows you to acknowledge and let go of unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations about what transpired in the past and what could or should have occurred in the future. Or what you hoped would have occurred.

What we’re aiming for is freedom.

And exactly what does that mean for the grieving person? This statement from the Grief Recovery Institute drives the point home:

“Freedom does not mean the end of sadness, but it can mean the end of pain. Freedom allows fond memories to stay fond and not turn painful. Freedom allows [you] to remember loved ones the way [you] knew them in life rather than to be fixated on the images of the loved one in death.”

You can also be freed from haunting memories of a not-so-loved one. Terrible things that happened will take up less mental and heart real estate. The pain and hurt of broken promises will fade away and consume you less.

Next step: Completion—

Let’s return to the sample question list I introduced last week. How did you answer those?

Were you able to uncover times where apologies were warranted? Forgiveness needed to be given?

Did you remember significant events, both good and bad? Did you note what you wished could have been better, different, or you would have had more of?

Were you able to uncover events in the four critical areas that help you communicate those undelivered emotional thoughts and feelings?

Apologies
Forgiveness
Significant emotional statements that aren’t apologies or forgiveness. You know, really important stuff.
Fond memories—things you want to thank the person for, things you appreciated about them.

If you really dug deeply and answered them forthrightly, you’re ready to compile the necessary statements into a form where you are delivering, completing and saying goodbye.

Let’s see what that looks like.

Delivering your relationship review statements, completing grief, and saying goodbye—

So what, exactly, does a relationship review letter look like? How long is it? With whom do you share it?

The letter looks like any other letter you might write to someone, about the significant parts of your shared relationship, your joys, your hurts, your apologies, your forgiveness. The length will usually depend upon the relationship and the depth of it, how much life passed between you and the other person.

While you don’t have to include everything you noted on the emotional energy checklist, you’ll want to make sure you include the significant emotional comments.

The important things to remember about this letter are what it’s not, and what it is.

First, it’s not a journal or diary entry, and it’s not really a full story.

It’s a story that communicates the apologies, forgiveness, significant emotions and fond memories contained in a special or significant relationship. It’s a way to un-trap those bottled up emotions and release the energy surrounding a death or loss.

It also gives you a conduit to say a formal goodbye to the physical relationship that no longer exists. The letter makes it possible to say goodbye to the emotional aspects of the relationship when the physical relationship is over.

Let’s take the example of a young man (say, in his early twenties) whose father suffered from mental illness and committed suicide.

The young man might start his letter with stating just how difficult life has been since his father’s death. The pain, the shock, the way his dad was found. How he still feels numb. How much he hurts over what happened.

Then he might talk about all the wonderful things he remembered about his dad when he was younger, and talk about significant trips or events they shared. Say how much he enjoyed those. And he can talk about the significant disappointments.

Then he might move into talking about his dad’s mental illness and how it affected him and how he saw it affecting his dad. How it damaged their relationship. And then make a forgiving statement to his father about how he knows it wasn’t his dad’s fault that he suffered from something he had no control over.

And the young man might feel it was necessary to apologize for his behavior toward his father at certain times, when the mental illness came between them or had a negative effect on their relationship or the family. How he was impatient and treated his father in an unloving or even mean way because of it.

He might talk about how he blamed his mom for the problems, because she was the most available and easiest person to blame.

Toward the end of the letter, the young man might say how upset he was at his dad’s selfishness, for the time and events his dad had and his actions had robbed them of—like college graduation, birthdays, marriage and grandchildren. Maybe the young man is sorry that he’s feeling so angry with his father and needs to make a forgiveness statement about that and the future.

Finally, he could tell his dad just how much he misses him, loves him, and forgives him and is glad he is no longer suffering. How grateful he is for the time they did have together. But how he still doesn’t understand why his father would do something so extreme and unloving as to take himself away from all of them. Maybe he might ask his father in the letter if he didn’t feel loved enough. Maybe he feels as though his dad didn’t fight hard enough to get well, or stay alive for his family.

But at the end of the letter, he can tell him again how much he loves and misses him, and say “goodbye.”

It’s always important to say goodbye.

Then he can read this letter, which is likely to be lengthy, to a friend, a grief group member, or a trust family member. Someone who will just listen to his heart being poured out.

For this kind of tragic event, it’s not unusual for the surviving children (or spouse) to feel deep anger, deep regret, and deep guilt over what they think they could have done or should have done or wished they’d done differently. Or maybe what the doctors could have or should have done. These things need to be expressed.

Let’s look at another letter that might be written by a ten-year child at the events surrounding the death of her father to a terminal illness. Yes, even children should go through this relationship review exercise.

“Dear Dad,

Why did you have to die? The last time I saw you you promised you would see me soon, but you broke your promise. I know you love me and wanted to see me, and you didn’t die on purpose, so I forgive you. But I miss you so much, and I didn’t like it when Aunt Amy came to school to get me instead of Mom. But I forgive Mom, too, because she was with you.

I miss skipping to school with you, and visiting you in the hospital, even though you looked strange. I’m sorry I was rude to you that day when I told you I was fed up with you feeling so poorly and that it wasn’t fair I didn’t get to visit my cousins. I’m sorry you were sick so much. I was sad a lot because you were so sick. And I was worried.

I wish I could have been allowed to visit you that last week in the hospital. And I felt so confused when Aunt Mary came to pick me up at school.

I miss you, Dad. I don’t understand why you had to die. I’m still angry. I wish you were still here to look after me and Jack, and make my meals, and take me to school and pick me up. I just wanted you to know that.

I love you, Dad.

Goodbye,

Ann

This letter is very short, probably because of the writer’s age. But don’t put a specified length on your letter. Just make sure you say what you need to say, and then say goodbye.

Always say goodbye.

And when you’re satisfied that you’re finished, you must read your relationship review letter to someone.

As the experts at the Grief Recovery Institute note:

“The key to completion is that the thoughts, feelings, and ideas must be verbalized and be heard by another living human being to be a ‘completed’ communication.”

Undelivered communications of an emotional nature must always be verbalized.

And if you’re listening to someone deliver this kind of letter, think of yourself as a heart with ears.

So always, always, always listen with your heart!

What about other significant losses?

There are other significant losses besides death.

There is moving and leaving cherished friends, maybe nearby family, a job you enjoy.

There’s divorce.

There’s physical and emotional or psychological trauma.

There are a number of ugly and shocking things that can happen and that may deeply affect you in life.

These tools we’ve covered the last several months can be used for all of them. Hopefully, you’ll be able to put them to good use for yourself and perhaps others.

They’re game and life-changers.

Invitation—

This is your opportunity to put your hard work together. Take the time you need to compose a letter you’re satisfied with and then find a heart with ears to listen to your heart.

NEXT WEEK we’ll do a grief recovery wrap-up by talking a little bit about drugs used in battling grief and telling the truth when you’re grieving.

Until then,

Find a heart with ears, or be one.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

How to Grieve Well: Successful Steps to Completing Your Grief Healing—Part 7

FEW THINGS are more life altering or heart damaging than the death of a spouse, family member, treasured friend or loved one. Even the death of a not-so-loved one can be destabilizing. We need to have the tools to deal with the myriad emotions surrounding these kinds of deaths.

And that’s what we’ll focus on today: the loss and grief that accompanies death, and the emotional energy and relationship reviews involved with it.

The basics of loss and grief—

There are important things we need to keep in mind about grief.

Never, ever compare losses. And never, ever compare how you assimilate a loss/death to how someone else assimilates it.
No losses are comparable.
Grief is all about relationships. Because of that fact, never compare relationships.
The keys to loss and grief recovery are acknowledging the uniqueness of each and every relationship.
Beware that your personal relationship with the person who has died can affect your ability to help someone else with their grief over that same person’s death.
Death almost always triggers a painful awareness of the end of any hopes, dreams, and expectations you had about the future with the person who died. Do not be surprised when those emotions arise, which they sometimes do like a tidal wave.
The death of a relative does not dictate the depth or degree of a person’s grief or emotional energy output over the loss.
People are complex, which makes relationships complex. Because of those truths, you will likely experience very mixed emotions—both negative and positive—about a loved one’s or family member’s death. These mixed emotions can be a source of anxiety, frustration, or joy. It requires discipline and bravery to confront, wrestle with and untangle some of them.

Relationship reviews with people who have died—

Again, I cannot stress it enough that your relationship with the deceased person is your relationship, a unique one that cannot be compared to anyone else’s relationship to that person.

The emotions associated with that unique relationship are the legacy of both the time you’ve spent with that person and the intensity of your relationship with them.

So when you’re making an assessment of the relationship—your relationship review—you’re considering and exploring your emotions wrapped up in that relationship.

Your feelings are driven by special events, memories, words spoken and unspoken, negative and positive interactions that occurred between you and the deceased. In short, your history together.

What drives the emotional energy in the grieving survivor—

Many issues, events and experiences drive the emotional energy displayed in your grief.

One significant issue is just how close and invested you were in the relationship with the deceased. The intensity of your relationship will drive the emotional energy you experience at their death.

The closer and deeper your relationship, the more likely you’ll experience some pretty extreme nervous, emotional energy.

Conversely, if the relationship wasn’t close, emotionally or physically, (as in intimacy or proximity), the emotional energy output won’t be as extreme.

This is often the case with siblings who may have far different experiences and emotional relationships with a parent that has died. One sibling may have felt and been extremely close to a parent, while another had a strained or distant relationship with them. Because of these significant differences, each sibling’s emotional energy responses will look entirely different. And the one with the closer relationship will likely grieve more deeply.

However, if the child with the distant, strained relationship feels as though there is a lot of unfinished business between him and his deceased parent, there may be a lot of complex and difficult energy experienced.

Whatever the response is, though, it will be accurate and valid for each sibling.

Remember, their incomparable experience is their incomparable experience. Big or little, each experience is unique, and valid.

So do not feel guilty if your emotional energy output is less than someone else’s over a familiar or family member death. Do not be afraid to feel or express your emotional truth, and let someone else express theirs. Encourage everyone to express their unique, distinct relationship reviews and feelings.

What if the family member who died was “less than a loved one?”

I think we can all attest to the fact that not all family relationships are warm, loving, and good. Some are really horrible. Others are mixed, at best. And our responses to death will reflect that.

Please be willing to accept that not all parents and children have perfect, storybook ending relationships. Because of this reality, don’t try to make something of the relationship that wasn’t real or true when going through the relationship review process. Don’t kid yourself.

While you can, and should, take actions of forgiveness, and stand back and see and assess events more clearly as an adult, you should not whitewash the relationship or re-write it.

Remember and note the good times, if there were any; and be honest about the bad times. Don’t inflate or deflate them; just be honest about them.

Rejoice. Or forgive.

Write your story with the person you’re saying goodbye to, not someone else’s version. And don’t let them write yours.

If you don’t feel comfortable sharing your review and sentiments, regrets and heartfelt statements with a close family member, because you know it will be met with unfair criticism or correction (based on their relationship point of view) don’t. Relay your story to someone else—a trusted friend, therapist, trained chaplain or Stephen Minister, or sympathetic listening ear.

Overall goal of a relationship review—

You had a unique relationship with the one who died. Your goal or task is to uncover what has been left unfinished or incomplete in your unique relationship with that person.

So be forthright. Be proactive. Be diligent in digging for those grief recovery treasures.

In the end, it will make all the difference in the world for you—physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Invitation—

Can you identify any unfinished emotions or emotions you tried to tamp down or ignore after the death of a loved one or family member? Write them down.
What relationships have you, or did you try to whitewash with excuses or condoning?
Which family members have you still not forgiven and need to forgive, even if they are deceased?
Start thinking about how you would write your story with the deceased person—from beginning to end—with all the plot twists, harrowing experiences, tensions, joys and triumphs worked into it. (Don’t worry. We’re writing a short story.)

NEXT WEEK: We’ll look at some specifics in an emotional energy checklist in preparation for writing our relationship review story.

Until then, think about how you want your family to write their story of their relationship with you. Anything you’d like to change? Any forgiving or apologies that need to happen to make their story with you happier?

Blessings,

Andrea.

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She mentors people in how to thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

How to Grieve Well: Successful Steps to Complete Your Grief Healing—Part 4

APOLOGY. Defined by Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary as “an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret.”

Something some people wait a lifetime for and never receive.

But it’s a critical component of a grief recovery relationship review. Without it, your recovery won’t ever be truly complete.

And it comes first on the relationship review to-do list.

Apologies—

Heartfelt apologies need to be extended whether you’re apologizing for a sin of commission or omission, or just a plain discourtesy. I’m sure you can think of things you’ve said or done, or not said or done, that you know have been hurtful to others.

You need to apologize for what you wish you’d done or said differently.

The basics of apologies in grief or loss—

If the person you’ve wronged is still living, the apology may be done face-to-face. Sometimes that’s best. But sometimes it’s not possible, and a letter or phone call will suffice. Or an email, or text. But a call or letter is still a preferred method.

Some apologies can’t, or shouldn’t, be given directly, though. Here’s an example of an apology that shouldn’t be given directly.

Suppose you were gathering with friends and, in a fit of meanness, said some nasty things about a family member of yours. While your conscience about that infraction may suffer, it’s not recommended that you get your acquaintance on the phone and tell her what you’ve done, unless she finds out about your transgression through the gossip chain, of course. Then you’d want to seek her out and apologize.

However, it is important that you take that transgression to the Lord and ask His forgiveness for your mean spirit. And you can always confide in someone close that you’ve said those things. Whichever way you choose to do it, it needs to be said to someone, out loud. Write it down and read it, or just speak it out during your prayer or meditation time.

You can think of an apology’s place in grief completion by remembering that:

“Completion is the result of the action of issuing an apology as a verbal statement, heard by at least one other person.” (Grief Recovery Institute)

Apologizing to someone who has died—

We tend to think and believe that death completes what’s left emotionally unfinished about the relationship. The person is gone, so the emotions about past events should end. Let bygones be bygones, right?

Not so. If anything, some of these left-undone emotions become stronger and more life disabling, especially if they’re not addressed and dealt with. Completed.

“We are unfinished in exactly those things that we realize never got said or heard.”

In the course of your grieving, you would likely uncover things that still need to be said, even if that person is gone or out of your life.

Death does not obliterate the need to put an end to what was left unfinished.

So if you’re grieving a death, all unfinished or unsaid emotional statements—think apologies, here—need to be spoken indirectly.

And in order for this relationship review completion to be effective, the apology needs to be spoken to another, trusted confidant.

**What an apology is not—**

I once had a loved one call me with an emotional plea of forgiveness, begging for reconciliation, after weeks (actually months) of leaving nasty phone messages on my phone about how horrible I was, didn’t do what I should be doing as far as she was concerned, and fell woefully short of her expectations.

You would have thought I was thrilled that she apologized without prompting.

Well, yes, and no.

While I was happy she was trying to reconcile, her “apology” wasn’t really an apology. Why?

She didn’t elaborate about what, exactly, she was apologizing for. She simply said, “I’m sorry.” And then added: “You’re all I have. I love you and want you back in my life.”

I should have known better, but without a lot of deep thought or enough prayer, I called her and told her I accepted her apology.

Bad move. And it has continued to cost me in the relationship.

What she was giving me was a desperate “I’m sorry” in order to try to patch up a relationship she felt she needed to patch up—so she wouldn’t be alone.

And I foolishly accepted it, without asking her what, specifically, she was apologizing for. And waiting for her to acknowledge and state it.

And that’s what a bona fide apology is: a statement stating specifically what you are sorry for—an honest and forthright elaboration of what you did wrong, didn’t do that you should have done, or wished you had done. It’s taking responsibility for your actions or inaction and speaking it out loud.

She manipulated me, and by my not pressing her for the details, I didn’t protect myself from future negative interactions. I should have told her how her behavior hurt me or set appropriate boundaries. But that’s another discussion.

An apology is not given to manipulate someone. It’s not a way to extract something you want from someone else.

If you’ve harmed someone, be honest about it. Acknowledging and stating what you’ve done or not done will help you be a more complete, at peace person. It’s a sign of character and maturity.

And remember, no one is obliged to accept an apology. The receiving person’s actions are up to them. It’s out of your control.

The objection is to complete the grief or loss, not manipulate.

Benefits of an apology to a living person—

A heartfelt apology can enhance and deepen a relationship, or expand one. And it clears the giver’s heart and brain of cobwebs.

Sometimes the relationship isn’t repaired or reconciled, but at least you know you’ve done your part and owned up to your shortcomings.

Benefits of an apology to a deceased person—

Plain and simply, the benefit is a clear heart.

Interestingly, one of the first things that floods your heart and mind following a loved one’s death is all the things you didn’t do that you know you should have or wished you had done, and all the things you know you did wrong in the relationship that you wished you’d apologized for.

It seems to hold true for any death, including pets.

For your parent, maybe you didn’t tell them you loved them enough. Didn’t visit enough; call enough. Didn’t tell them how much you appreciated their sacrifices for you.

For a pet, you’re sorry about not spending enough play time with them, not feeding them on time, not cleaning their cat box as often as you should have.

On August 22, when we had to help our younger son’s dog pass over the Rainbow Bridge, I warned my son about the myriad emotions he was likely to be slammed with as soon as the vet pronounced his dog, Hami, gone. “Don’t be surprised if you feel guilty for not having been here enough after leaving for college, for not walking him enough, for ignoring him.”

My 25-year old son nodded, as though he understood.

He didn’t.

One of his first comments to his dad right after Hami passed was: “I didn’t know I’d get swamped with so many emotions and feel so bad.”

He spent a good 15 minutes alone with his beloved dog, weeping, talking to him through his tears, apologizing, stroking and loving him some more. And then he wept again graveside as we prayed and talked about Hami’s wonderful qualities.

And he stood by Hami’s grave several more times, weeping and talking to Hami before leaving the next day to return to college.

And the four of us (his girlfriend included) sat around doing a relationship review of Hami and his life and the impact he had on all of us. Even our older son shared his thoughts and love via a text and phone call, to his brother and to me.

It helped us heal. We’re still healing, but the apologies have been said. And that’s helped our grief completion move forward, to completion.

Actions create completion—

Don’t be fooled. Time doesn’t create completion.

Actions do.

And you can tell whether or not a person has really completed a grief by the stories they tell.

If you hear them tell the same negative stories over and over and over about a deceased person or a severed friendship, or if they are constantly reviewing the relationship, you know their grief has not been completed.

They’re stuck.

Lack of completion compels them to repeat the story over and over.

Does life go on after death or loss?

Yes, life goes on.

There is some truth to believing that we shouldn’t dwell on a negative past.

The problem lies in that we are not usually taught how to move on in life, the constructive steps we need to take to move forward, to regain our footing and live full, productive and completely happy lives.

Apologizing is a critical action step. One we would all do well to learn and practice.

Invitation—

Is there someone you know you need to reach out to with an apology, in order to mend a relationship or clear your damaged heart?
Is there a deceased loved one you harmed that you owe an apology to? I invite you to note that harm or misdeed to use later in a full relationship review letter.
If you’re like me and were raised in a home where apologies were rarely uttered, then you might have difficulty apologizing or recognizing your need to do so. Ask a trusted friend if they notice that tendency in you. And then learn why it’s so important to offer an apology—what it does for you and the receiving person. I encourage you to start practicing it. In time, with practice, it gets easier. J

NEXT WEEK: Forgiveness as part of the complete relationship review.

See you next week!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people to thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

Grief Struggles: Short-Term Energy-Relieving Behaviors (STERBs)

Many things cause us to struggle or stumble in our grief recovery. Things like well meaning but misguided friends, and our attempts to hurry up our grief recovery. And our grief recovery struggles can be worsened by our own behavior errors, like using short-term energy-relieving behavior, or STERBs.

Knowing, understanding and recognizing STERBs can help us short circuit them, or avoid lapsing into them in the first place.

But just what is a STERB?

STERB: a short-term energy relieving behavior—

When we’re grieving, we often look for outlets for our pain. Many of these outlets we learned when we were children, when our mother gave us a cookie or treat to help us “feel better.”

When we get older, our well-meaning friends might take us out on the town to drink our sorrows away.

We might sit in front of the television, mindlessly binge-watching programs we’ve already seen countless times. Or read fantasy or romance books that whisk our imaginations away to places we wish we were living.

Away from our pain-ridden reality.

We may have been taught to try to substitute something for the loss, like going shopping.

These are all examples of short-term energy relieving behaviors.

Why do we use STERBs in grief?

Grief brings with it sad, painful or negative feelings. And those sad emotions produce tangible energy. Energy we want, and need, to relieve.

So we find ourselves searching for ways to distract ourselves.

Enter the handy STERB.

The dangers of STERBs—

If we substitute, try to take the easy way out, and don’t complete our grieving process well, we can carry around negative attachments to life events for years.

Have you ever met someone who relays a sad, personal life event to you in such a way that makes you feel as though the event happened yesterday, when in reality it’s been decades since the event happened? And they vividly relay the story over and over and over.

It takes a lot of energy to hang onto a painful story, to re-tell it as though you’re reliving it.

The energy it takes to hang onto that pain doesn’t just go underground and stay buried. It manifests itself in other ways, like physical ailments, diseases, and emotional and mental health issues.

There are physical consequences to holding onto the sadness or anger surrounding grief. Or trying to substitute a distraction for concrete, effective healing.

Some permanent habits and problems that might have started out as a STERB:

Smoking
Overeating
Drinking/Alcoholism
Over the Counter (OTC) drug overuse and abuse
Illegal drug abuse
Addictive exercise
Eating disorders—bulimia, anorexia nervosa, binge eating
Workaholism
Anger issues/Tantrums/Acting out
Fantasy (video games, computers, books, television, movies)
Isolation and Avoidance
Sex
Shopping (sometimes jokingly called “retail therapy”)

More often than not we use a STERB to self-medicate—numb our way out of the pain and sadness.

The Grief Recovery Institute points out that:

“Depending on age and other circumstances, the vast majority of young people begin their involvement with drugs and alcohol soon after a major loss experience.” (James, Friedman, and Matthews, When Children Grieve, 86)

Aside from this depressing and alarming statistic, there are— according to The Grief Recovery Institute—three major problems with STERBs.

They appear to work.

Notice the word “appear.” What might be mistaken for an effective, positive result is actually a created illusion. And that illusion causes you to bypass or bury the emotion.

But emotions don’t automatically die when you try to bury them alive. They find some other way to fight their way out, and often that means negatively affecting other body systems.

Short-term energy relievers are just that—short term.

STERBs don’t last, and they don’t address the emotional issue. And, like any drug, they often require higher and higher doses over time to be effective. Pretty soon you’ve got a habit or addiction you can’t stop.

In the long run, STERBs do nothing to relieve the pressure building up from the pent-up or ignored grief emotion.

In short, STERBs can cause more problems than they solve.

And they can add to the problem of unresolved grief.

If not STERBs for grief relief, then what?

We don’t want to just mow down the weeds in our lawn, we want to root them out so healthy grass can grow and we can enjoy all the benefits of a beautiful lawn.

We don’t want to just stuff the emotions, we want to address them, deal with them, so our lives can get fully back on track. And we can once again prosper and be happy.

In order to make a full recovery from grief, we need to achieve what is known as grief completion.

And that’s what we’ll explore more of next week.

Invitation:

Can you identify any STERBs in your life you can trace back to a specific loss or grief?
Can you identify any STERBs that seemed to work for you during a time of loss or grief but you now recognize as a problem?
How have STERBs worsened your grief or made it more difficult to recover from it?

NEXT WEEK we’ll delve into what grief completion is and embark on our journey to achieve it.

Until then, explore what STERBs you started in your life that have become pesky, nervous or avoidant habits.

Get ready to be set free!

And I’ll see you back here next week!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people recover from grief, loss and trauma, and to thrive in life — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Difficulties with Grief

THERE IS OFTEN A SPECIFIC DIFFICULTY to combat in grieving, and that difficulty is our attitude.

Changing our attitudes about grief and the grieving process is hard. Even if you want to change your attitude, behavior and grief language (see last week’s post), your family members and friends may resist.

It’s important to examine our beliefs about grief—what good grieving looks like, how you talk about it and address it. I’ve had to examine and reshape my grief attitudes.

Change is often difficult.

But it can be critical to your grief recovery.

Having a safe space to grieve and express yourself—

You need to feel safe and may find grieving and grief recovery/completion is best done in a group of like-minded, understanding people. People who are also walking a similar path you’re on, or those who can walk beside you to help you in the process.

Old, stifling ideas about grief may be holding you back. It may take someone with experience and training, looking in from the outside to help you recognize where change should and can occur.

As the experts at the Grief Recovery Institute remind us:

“It is very easy to do things just the way we have always done them. But traditions generally signify familiarity, not always value.

“…even very willing people sometimes cling to old, ineffective ideas. It may be a struggle for you to let different and better information in.”

Evaluating what you’ve been taught about grief—

From a young age we’re usually given wrong, often detrimental signals and instructions about how to deal with grief and sadness. These lessons or signals can affect us the rest of our lives and make future, successful grieving difficult or impossible.

Some of us grew up in environments where our families tolerated few if any human feelings or outward expression of emotions. And now that we’re adults, our siblings and family members may still balk at or reject our need to self-express.

Those experiences can permanently color your world, and often not with a pleasing palette.

You need to paint your own grief picture—with your own emotions.

Tell your own story.

You’re the protagonist in it, and you—not others—need to provide the ending.

Make grief personal—

To complete your grieving, you’ll want to communicate your wants, your needs, your thoughts and your feelings. Not what you think someone else wants you to feel, or what someone else has told you to feel, but honestly communicate what’s going on in your mind and heart.

It’s not about feeling dumb or smart. It’s about tuning into your sadness, your joy, your deepest emotions and being able to express them. Working through the intricacies of the loss. Weaving a unique and complete tapestry.

Learning to identify and communicate your individual, positive or negative feeling and then moving on to uncovering, identifying and dealing with the next one.

You can’t move on to the next feeling if you haven’t dealt sufficiently with the one that came before it.

The danger of ignoring and suppressing emotions—

We often think ignoring an emotion will make it disappear and stop bothering us.

Unfortunately, that’s not what usually happens. The brain remembers, and the body keeps the score.

Suppressing your emotions can lead to a build up that eventually gets unloaded like a pressure cooker erupting and scalding everyone around it.

And when you don’t allow others to express their emotions, you’re likely to be the one getting scalded.

Another danger of suppressing sad emotions is all the energy it takes to do it. It’s hard on the physical body to keep them suppressed. And all that suppression often ends up putting pressure on your physical body. The stress causes chronic inflammation that can lead to devastating illness—both mental and physical.

Don’t be afraid of emoting with tears—

Ever heard a parent say this to a child? “I can’t understand you when you’re crying. Stop crying so I can hear you.” (I’m cringing because I’m sure I’ve said it to my kids at least once.)

While it may be true that the parent is unable to understand a child’s speech through the crying, a child probably interprets a different way—that it’s not okay to cry when expressing emotion.

So, the first thing you remember as a grieving adult is: I shouldn’t cry while sharing my emotions with someone. It’s a sign of weakness, and they probably won’t like it.

But in order to successfully and comfortably express your grief emotions, it’s important that you not feel judged; and that you do not give the impression of judging others when they’re expressing their personal emotions.

One last thought—

Before we leave today’s session, I want to leave you with one last thought from the Grief Recovery Institute, which expresses all we’ve addressed in this and previous posts:

“Unresolved grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative. Unresolved grief does not go away by the counterproductive nonactions of trying not to fee bad or by replacing the loss or by grieving alone or by being strong or by keeping busy or by the passage of time.”

All the things we’ve likely learned along life’s way need to be changed.

The question is: Are you ready to complete your grief healing?

Invitation—

I invite you to answer and work through the following questions:

What kind of family dynamics, training or signals affected your emotions? The way they/you handled loss?
Can you identify any loss you haven’t fully grieved, or any uncompleted/unresolved grief?
In regard to that grief, what emotions did you have that you didn’t express or didn’t feel you were allowed to express?
If you wanted to cry and didn’t, why not? Who or what stopped you? Would you feel comfortable crying now, even if the loss happened years ago?

NEXT WEEK we’ll explore the many short-term behaviors we resort to in grief that temporarily relieve our grieving emotions and energy. You won’t want to miss it!

Until then, open yourself to a new attitude toward loss and grieving. Give yourself and others the space needed to resolve grief.

Blessings,

Andrea

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to thrive — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.