A new grief model: 5 steps to HEALING from grief
So what does it actually take to heal from grief? What do you have to do to get there?
Here is my answer: A new grief model: 5 steps to HEALING from grief
Much love,
Kristie
xx
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I have arrived at an understanding of death I didn’t imagine existed. You have been a big part of that process. I am grateful. You’re a one-off, and no mistake! Thank you.
Hey Kristie – love it that you have a 5-Steps model! 🙂
What came strongly to me from listening to this is that I have no disagreement with anything you say, and also that – again as you say – we have very different (at least on a surface level) approaches to healing grief. And both are highly effective.
So the questions that come to me is, “How can differing approaches achieve the same result? And “What is the difference that makes the difference in both our approaches?” Something must be working at a core level to effect the healing.
I’m reminded of the research of Eugene Gendlin, a student of Carl Rogers, in the ’50s and ’60s into what made the various form of therapy effective. He found through observing countless sessions of the then available therapeutic modalities that no one approach was any more effective than another.
Hmmm … Puzzlement …
But eventually he noticed behaviours by the clients that clearly indicated whether they were going to heal or not. In other words it was the attitude of the clients and not a specific approach that he noticed was the prime arbiter of success.
Fascinating stuff. His research eventually became the profound practice of Focusing, later adapted also into Bio-Spiritual Focusing. Here’s a link to some basic info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing
I can feel a Skype conversation coming on …! 🙂
love’n hugs across the world,
Leo
Nick, I am so so pleased to read this. Thank you!! xx
Hi Leo!
I think it’s two things that make the difference and ensure healing (no matter what the process to get there).
One – the willingness in the person to heal. As you say, the attitude of the client.
And two – that the process they choose has the potential to take them where they want.
Your process, my process, Tabitha’s process, the handful of others we have come across…are all different from one another, but they are the same in that they are based on love and healing and freedom-from-grief and that is the outcome.
I’ve written before that I think of it like fitness. If someone wants to get fit they can dedicate themselves to yoga, to swimming, to running, to acrobatics, to pole dancing. A combination of their willingness/attitude and the fact that this activity CAN get them fit is what makes it happen.
I think it has to be both as to do one of our processes (as we’ve both seen) without a willingness to heal will mean someone doesn’t. And to have the willingness but to immerse themselves in traditional counselling, psychotherapy, bereavement groups and the like (which is all pain-based and build on the idea that healing is impossible and probably undesirable….so therefore cannot deliver them there) won’t get them there.
Though those who are truly willing tend to be unsatisfied and turn away from these traditional paths anyway, much like we both did and like our clients do.
Hahaha yes and it happened to turn out 5 steps. But just in this instance and just with my process. God forbid this become like the 5 stages and be applied blindly to everything in every way just for ease!
Chat soon!
xx
Hey Kristie – yep, I’m with you. I like the analogy with getting fit. Got me to reflect on a parallel example: the various spiritual paths to enlightenment.
There is no one “right” way to enlightenment (aka awakening, or freedom from suffering) as the history of the many great masters who have travelled very different paths demonstrates.
And yet it is also true that not everyone who sets out on a path actually gets to awaken, or at least not in one lifetime. So what makes the difference?
In my healing journey following Jenny’s death I now realise that I absolutely did not even consider the possibility of not healing. As the mission controller of the Apollo 13 mission famously said, “Failure is not an option”.
For me, not healing, not living free, not feeling all the love I had and still have for Jenny unhindered by pain simply was not an option.
Another way of saying this is that I was 100% DEVOTED to freedom and love; just as I was 100% devoted to loving Jenny when she was alive.
To me, as I reflect now, my willingness was key, absolutely. And it was my willingness, to be 100% devoted to love and freedom – and an absolute CERTAINTY that this was possible – which took me all the way.
And yes, all the devotion in the world would not have got me anywhere if I had wasted my time with one of the therapies that teach “you cannot recover from grief but can only come to live with it”.
blessings,
Leo
xx
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