The threat of change can keep you stuck in your grief
It’s so interesting how threatened we can be by change. There are many reasons why people choose to stay in grief (and often do it permanently) and one is simply that it becomes very, very familiar….and without it??…well the unknown can be just too terrifying.
When I talk about people not wanting to be out of grief I can be met with “but nobody would want to stay in pain. It isn’t a choice”.
Very often it is. Not a conscious one…but a choice nonetheless. Because it can be a safe place to be…a place you know. Better the devil you know.
What might exist on the other side of grief can seem too uncertain – and our minds don’t like that one bit.
And when it feels like your world has completely changed and then that your grief is what you know (and who you are even) there can be very deep unconscious fear around giving it up.
I remember long ago, before I found this journey, before any of the deaths, knowing a woman in her 60’s who wore her grief like a blanket. She has taken it on like a calling, a profession, a lover. She had never had a family or profession of her own, instead looking after her father until he died, then her mother until she died, and then taking up role as a carer for her brother. Even then I could see a tangible choice – a desire to stay where she was. She knew her grief well – it gave her purpose. She talked about it constantly and it was her reason for everything she had, everything she didn’t. Her grief made sense to her and made everything else make sense too. She had nothing outside of her grief and refused to look for anything else. It had become all she knew and I doubt she ever gave it up, so scared was she of what in the world she would be, do, or have without it.
Often we have to work WITH the ego when it comes to shifting these beliefs. Letting it know that it is safe to change. Or that we will change the grief, but that doesn’t mean that everything in the world has to change. That everything will be ok, and that things only have to change in a way and at a pace that is right for you.
Much love,
Kristie
xx
