Leaning Into Your Pain: What a “Lousy” Place To Be

The pain that results from the death of a loved one can be excruciating.  This pain takes on both physical and emotional manifestations.  You might feel physically numb or exhausted; a tightness in your stomach, chest or throat; hollow, light-headed or shaky within; dizzy, nauseous, constipated or prone to diarrhea.  Emotional feelings such as nervousness, fear, anxiety, anger, rage, guilt, depression, desperation, helplessness and hopelessness may emerge in clusters at varying intervals like a powerful overwhelming wave or a wet, dark blanket.  The physical and emotional dimensions of grief come in great intensity like a powerful unexpected cramp.  Leaning into this pain runs against our grain.  Our instinctive tendencies move us to avoid the pain with all its unpleasantness.  Leaning into the pain seems foolhardy and even masochistic.  Who wants to be in such an uncomfortable and lousy place as grief?  Certainly, few people choose such pain but many find themselves victimized by the death of a loved one.

The pain of grief grips each of us differently.  Like a fingerprint, each person’s journey with grief will vary somewhat.  But the general reality is this:  one cannot go around, under or over grief.  One must go through grief by leaning into the pain to work it out.  It sounds dreadful!  It feels terrible!  But unless one goes through its fires, one has difficulty in future relationships.  The unfinished business – those feelings, thoughts, intentions and behaviors that were never transacted or broached with the dead loved one – clogs us up.  If this blockage stays, one tends to get sick.  For many the blockage, doesn’t totally restrict their interacting with others, but it certainly does affect these relationships.  For a person to flow interpersonally, exchanging his precious gifts of self with another, the damned-up reservoirs of past grief need to be eroded and opened up.  Thus the term “grief work” is very apropos.  Work it is!  It’s very; hard and personally draining but only by attending to such pain can we move on to future close relationships in a healthy manner and place the deceased loved one in a proper perspective.

After one loses an arm or leg, for whatever reason, the time for physical and emotional rehabilitation is considerable. Sadly, little time, thought and energy is given to our rehabilitation after the death of a loved one.  People move on, denying, avoiding and rationalizing.  This ultimately prolongs one’s grief even though its intensity seems to diminish, and it renders one less competent interpersonally because of what is locked or blocked in our inner reservoirs of pain.  Some argue that at least they are not conscious of hurting; but they are nonetheless limited because they have denied an important reality – their pain given the death of a loved one.  Our own fears of dying and by extension the deaths of those closest to us are so difficult to fathom and digest.  They are put out of our conscious awareness.  Such is the human tendency to recoil from life’s pain.

But how is one to lean into the pain, to more effectively work through grief?  Grief work is in essence a thorough and on-going review process.  It is very repetitive.  It takes a long time.  It is never fully or finally accomplished, but the intensity of the pain does lessen and the frequency of the pain becomes more intermittent.  Certain occasions, dates, seasons, songs, people or places may trigger our grief anew, but with time and earnest attention our fears turn into nods and even smiles as we remember our loved ones.

Keeping a daily or at least a regular journal noting your thoughts, feelings, intentions, behaviors and dreams is another way of regularly expressing grief.  Writing gets at one’s inner experience and puts it out onto paper.  This is a healthy means of self-expression.  Another helpful method of working on grief is to write a letter to the dead loved one.  In this letter express your feelings, whatever was not said or done or intended that may be of concern.  If you are working with a therapist or talking to a good friend or family person, have them read the letter and possibly R.S.V.P. as your dead loved one might.  To R.S.V.P. a person must know much about the deceased and be competent and comfortable with this technique.

Leaning into the pain by reflecting upon the meaning and the significance of “linking objects” – these objects which are retained, held onto, or preserved which hold intact our connection with our dead loved ones. -  is another important vehicle for grieving.  Linking objects such as a room maintained just as it was, a special chair kept in the same place which on one else uses, a baseball mitt, a musical instrument, a hat, or the dead person’s closet left intact, etc., can become like shrines which keep our grief stuck.  Slowly we begin to change and let go of our “linking objects.”  This reflects that we are working through our grief and beginning to let go of our beloved as they were then and moving toward accepting them as they are now.  This is a gradual process of letting go which is a key component of grieving.  Linking objects are not easily discarded.  Most often the bereaved rearranges a room, lets others use the special chair, packs and moves the clothing, gives away some possessions while putting aside a few special things.  The key is flexibility and gradual change.  The shrine-like nature of the object diminishes.  We remember and treasure but these memories are not frozen in time or prone to consistently render one breathless.  We still tear up, we begin to smile but our predominant feeling becomes a deeper understanding, acceptance and appreciation for the beloved.  This is another indication that the grief process is moving ahead.

Two other important ways of working through grief are affirmation and visualization.  A bereaved person’s self-esteem tends to lessen considerable during one’s grief.  So often she/he will say to her or himself “I can’t” or “I’ll never be able,” etc.  Such statements tend to be negative.  Self-talk such as this limits one and can become self-fulfilling.  “I can’t” becomes “won’t” which then becomes “don’t.”  Negative vicious cycles confirm such self-talk which keeps one’s self-esteem low and the person mired in self-defeating grief.  Self-talk needs to become more positive.  Instead of focusing on one’s liabilities, center on one’s possibilities what one “can do.”  If you attend to what you “can do,” you “will do.”  Sometimes this seems so difficult!  To aid in this regard use creative visualization.  Get into a relaxed posture and breathe deeply for a few minutes.  As you exhale, let go of your conscious thoughts and concerns.  Let your deep breathing begin to relax you.  Feel lighter and more relaxed.  Now envision yourself doing those things you can do (or want to do) or being the way you would like to be.  See yourself being and doing those positive, more creative and self-affirming behaviors which will enable you to cope more effectively.  Let this visualization serve you as your game plan.  Work at actualizing your visualized ways of being.  As you do this, your self-esteem will begin to increase and you will be working most effectively on your grief.

A final suggestion for coping with the pain of your grief is to clearly delineate in writing or conversation what you miss and do not miss concerning your loved one.  Early in grief the focus is almost totally on what one misses about a loved one.  Later on in the grief process one is usually more ready to look at what one does not miss about a deceased loved one.  Sometimes there is a hesitancy to acknowledge what one does not miss.  Coming to terms with ambivalent feelings is an important aspect of grief.  The questions “what you miss” and “what you do not miss” about a loved one hone in on the humanness of relationships and the mix of feelings a bereaved person experiences; love, disappointment, respect, anger, appreciation, guilt, resentment, etc.  These are just some of the emotions one may feel toward a dead loved one.  Acknowledging, accepting and acting upon these emotions appropriately is a vital task in the grieving process.

The aforementioned methods of coping with grief are specific suggestions for how one can lean into the pain.  Granted, it is a “lousy” place to be.  But not to be there, to deny or avoid one’s pain invalidates your reality.  Not to grieve the death of a loved one prevents one from getting on with life again. Only by leaning into the pain can one regain a perspective on life and move on, not permanently depleted, and in the long haul enhanced because your metal was processed in one of life’s most trying furnaces.  Let us move on as we resolve to continue journeying along life’s way.

By Terrance O’Brien, Ph.D., marriage & family therapist in private practice, special consultant/trainer for Hope For Bereaved a local/national presenter of workshops.