This concludes an example of finishing incomplete
grief.
Key Divorce-related Losses
As a family
divorces, all bonded family members experience
a web of significant invisible and tangible losses over many years. If family adults
discourage healthy mourning,
the odds of significant incomplete or blocked grief in some members
are high - specially if one or more adults were controlled by protective
This seemed to have been true of Pat and
probably Ray.
Over several weeks of reflection, using these
loss
inventories and talking with divorced
friends, Pat identified many physical and invisible bonds that broke because
of their family's evolving divorce.
Examples of
the invisible losses include...
-
"I lost some
self-respect because of
our divorce.
believes that I shouldn't have married Ray, and that I caused our
divorce. Another part of me blames Ray." And...
-
"I've lost some
self-confidence. Am I
really able to choose a healthy partner and maintain a primary
relationship? Is there something wrong with me?" And...
-
"I've lost the
comfort of having a trusted,
loving partner I could talk with and depend on to be there in all
situations. I began losing that some years before we split up. And..."
-
"I've lost the
freedom of never having
to go through 'the dating' thing' again, and possibly having to deal
with the stresses of forming a stepfamily. And..."
-
"I lost
my cherished dream of
living in 'a
normal, happy family' through my old age." and...
-
"I've lost my current and long-term
financial security and some
related freedoms. The
kids and I have much less money now, despite Ray's child support
payments." and...
-
"I've lost the
certainty and pride of
being a beloved child of God. My church says that divorce is a sin, and
obviously Ray and I have broken our marital vows. I'm not sure what to
believe about my 'sinning.' I never had to wonder about this
before." And...
-
"I've lost my
confidence that our kids
were raised well and have a good start on their adult lives. I worry
about how our family
and divorce has
impacted both kids'
development, short and long-term - specially Steven. His school grades
have dropped way down since Ray moved out; he seems isolated, angry, and
secretive; and most of his friends seem to be pretty troubled.
Stevie
says he's not using drugs, but Lisa says he is. He refuses to consider counsel-ing, and says 'nothing's wrong, Mom!' I don't believe that, and
I'm not sure what to do. Maybe I should see a counselor..."
And...
-
"I've lost my
freedom to be a full-time
Mom and housewife. I'm really working two jobs now - co-parenting two
busy teens, and selling real estate. I've also lost my former
freedom from having to
negotiate child visitations, holidays, health insurance, school
activities, and financial support with Ray - and from wondering what
will happen if he decides to date and remarry." And...
-
I lost
my identity as a married
('normal') woman. Some people are still scornful and biased against
parents who divorce." And...
-
"I've lost some of my old
shared-parenting role.
With Ray not living here, I have more caregiving responsibility more
often now. This feels more stressful." And...
-
"I've lost 16 priceless years of potential happiness and contentment.
If I had made a wiser marital choice and had learned to problem-solve
more effectively, I wouldn't have 'wasted' these years with Ray."
(Pat later realized this was one of her subselves "talking," not her
true Self.)
-
"I've lost
pride in my appearance,
and confidence in my
health. I've gained about 20 pounds since our split-up, and I know I'm
not eating well and exercising enough. I no longer have the time or
energy to do those the way I used to. I'm uneasy about drinking more
alcohol, too - and I don't like to think about that. I think my Dad's
mother was an alcoholic, so I wonder... And..."
-
"I've lost the great
pleasure I felt at (most
of) our personal and family-holiday rituals, like family dinners,
birthdays, our week-end barbecues and picnics, making Easter eggs
together, campouts, vacations, anniversary gatherings, Independence Day,
Thanksgiving, and Christmas. These will never be the same as they were
for more than 17 years, including our courtship time. And..."
-
"I've lost
valued relationships with
most of Ray's relatives, and some of our mutual friends. I specially miss
feeling close to his father Norman and sister Nancine."
And...
Pat has more divorce-related losses, but these are enough for our example.
Note that her ex Ray, her kids
Steven and Lisa, and many of their relatives and key friends have similar
loss-clusters to mourn because of their family's reorganization into
two co-parenting homes. Also
note the difference between divorce-related changes, and losses.
All
losses are changes (which also require accepting and adapting to), but not all changes are losses (broken bonds). Finally,
note that typical adults and kids in a new stepfamily
have a large group of new losses like those above that need to
be mourned - whether prior losses have been well
grieved or not.
As Pat identified her life losses - specially those related to their
divorce - she felt drained, overwhel-med, and increasingly sad. Reviewing and naming her specific losses was very painful, and her true
Self had to keep her long-range vision and steadily resist some protective subselves' urging her to quit.
She reminded her subselves that
the payoff was to be able to decide whether
she was risking major health and relationship problems by avoiding her
grief. As her loss inventory grew, Pat realized that she knew no one else who had evolved such an inventory
or assessed for blocked grief.
+ + +
Stretch, breathe, and recall the big picture. This
Lesson-3 article proposes a framework for why and how to identify and finish
incomplete
grief. Let's continue with our example..
Option 5 - Assess for and Free up Incomplete Grief
After
several weeks of periodic study, meditation,
discussions, and journaling, Pat has concluded "Neither my childhood or my
marital family had the requisites for healthy mourning, so
I may be avoiding my
grief and not knowing it. Now I need to...
-
identify which
losses I may be denying; and whether I need to grieve them,
-
learn (a) why, and (b)
what I need to resume (or finish) healthy grief. I also need to...
-
work on evolving and implementing a
pro-grief policy in our home, and to...
-
learn how to assess and help
Lisa and Stevie to (a) reduce any psychological wounds, and (b) progress on
their mourning.
I also need to...
-
decide if and how I should try to
alert our
other family members to what I'm learning about inner wounds and
mourning our losses - starting with the kids' father Ray.
"Whew - this seems like a LOT of work!"
+ + +
Yes, it IS. As ecologist Barry Commoner said,
"The TANSTAFL principle
applies - There Ain't No Such Thing as Free Lunch."
|
If you're considering options like these, notice the
difference between labeling them as boring, unsatisfying "work"
and "rewarding self-care and healthy family nurturance." Your
(subselves') attitudes about healing wounds and
healthy
mourning (and other things)
makes a major difference! |
Identify Losses that aren't Fully Accepted
(Mourned) Yet
There are at least three ways to
check whether mourning a given loss is (a) accepted well enough, (b) in
process (incomplete), or (c) blocked. Sometimes
assessing this status isn't needed, because people intuit that they
have or haven't
grieved well enough.
Caution
- to protect anxious
or shamed
inner children, well-meaning Guardian subselves
like the
may argue persuasively that grief is done "well enough" when it really isn't.
This is the false-self wound of reality distortion at work.
If someone like Pat
(or you) feels ambivalent or unsure about
their grieving status, they can take each key loss or a cluster of
losses like those above, and...
-
research whether they have any of these
common symptoms, and/or...
-
take each
phase of the three levels of mourning,
and ask "Have I really moved through this phase, for this
loss?"; and/or...
-
hire a
licensed, experienced grief counselor
to help assess their mourning status - ideally, one who knows how to
work with personality subselves; and perhaps...
-
Participate in an effective, knowledgeable
physical or on-line grief-support group.
To
illustrate these options, we'll choose the cluster of
losses that typical adults (specially par-ents) like Pat and
Ray experience when they separate and divorce.
1) Check for Symptoms
Pat
took undistracted time to tailor this overview of the
multi-year divorce process to her
family's situation. She then applied her new awareness of her personal grief
policy, which she had inherited from her parents.
She acknowledged that her
way of coping with the many losses she had experienced from their slow
divorce process was similar to her mother's policy - "Just get on with
(life), and don't whine, cry, or complain."
Pat acknowledged some symptoms of
blocking her cluster of divorce losses:
-
She was
avoiding the collection of
pre-divorce family photos and courtship and marriage-anniversary
mementos - including her wedding ring - that were in a box in the
garage. She didn't want to throw them out, and didn't want to look at
them because of the discomfort (sadness + regret + guilt + anger) that
would cause.
-
Pat realized a pattern:
several weeks before
their marriage anniversary, she began to get "depressed" (sad). She
consciously avoided talking about their courtship and marriage - in
general, and around their anniversary.
Pat also saw that she tried to
avoid co-parenting contact with Ray around their anniversary, and avoid
mentioning him to the kids. The unspoken
family rule that had emerged
was "We (family members) will not mention our wedding anniversary or our
divorce."
-
Another uncomfortable pattern: Pat realized
she and Ray had each avoided asking Lisa and Stevie how they felt about
their parents' divorcing, and what they missed (lost). She also
recognized the same pattern of avoidance with her relatives. She didn't
want to experience their pain, and feeling responsible for
causing it. This could be promoting blocked grief in the kids.
-
Pat saw that at holiday times,
she had
pretended gaiety and cheer that she really didn't feel (and denied doing
this), rather than honestly expressing her sadness over lost traditions
and family togetherness.
Another part of her current grieving policy
became clear:
"I'm responsible
for how my actions affect other people, and I shouldn't inflict my
sorrow on the people I care about." (A healthier policy: "I should try
to be aware of other's feelings and needs, and respectfully accord others the responsibility for managing them, as I am responsible for
my feelings and needs.")
-
She began to notice how other divorced
parents talked (or didn't) about their marital and family split-up. Their
anger, bitterness, and sarcasm helped her realized that
she had
numbed her strong anger at herself - and some of her anger at "life" ("Our
divorce is so unfair!"), Ray, her parents, and their church.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized - and felt - her deep resentment and anger that her parents and grandparents had not
adequately prepared her to make a healthy marital commitment and to
resolve major marital conflicts effectively. Pat reminded herself that
feeling and respectfully expressing anger over a loss was a normal
phase in the emotional level of "good grief."
This led to reflecting on what her family, church, and society had
taught her to believe about
This teaching netted out to
"A good woman doesn't get angry, is patient and understanding, and
should not feel or express anger at people she loves."
-
Pat realized that when her kids and others
she cared about seemed to be sad, she tried to "cheer them up," and
"look at the bright side." A better ("pro-grief") choice would be to
empathically validate their feelings, ("You seem to be really sad right
now.") and encourage them to feel and
express current emotions honestly without
guilt or anxiety.
Her unconscious grief policy
included the toxic rule
"Sadness is painful and bad, and should be discouraged."
With what she was learning, a
healthier rule was "Sadness is a vital phase in our normal grief process, and should be respected
and fully expressed
rather than repressed or apologized for."
-
As she worked at Lesson 1 to reduce her
psychological wounds, Pat studied
addictions. She learned that the sugar in alcohol and "comfort foods" temporarily
muted feeling painful emotions. So did most fats, tobacco, shallow
breathing, and "antidepressant" drugs.
She concluded that
a diligent
had been compulsively overusing alcohol and excessive
fats and sugars to protect inner kids from feeling their sadness
and anger at many losses, not just those from her divorce.
|
Pat discovered more symptoms like
these, which convinced her that she was (i.e. her subselves were)
avoiding the pain of mourning some important childhood, teen, and
divorce-related losses. That conclusion justified taking the next
step... |
2) Explore
Why One or More Losses Aren't
Accepted Yet
This courageous middle-aged mother reviewed the three core causes of blocked grief:
-
significant
psychological
(false-self dominance), and...
-
ignorance of healthy-grieving basics
(Lesson 3) and
unawareness of specific
losses, and...
-
a social environment that
healthy grief.
She
felt she was making good progress with (a) learning "good grief"
basics, (b) updating her personal grieving policy
to healthier rules, and (c)
starting to respectfully confront and/or avoid people who discouraged her
from grieving well.
That left identifying and working
with the personality subselves that were withholding necessary internal
permission to grieve well. She began to identify these subselves with
respect and compassion, reminding herself that all her subselves were trying
to protect her - tho some didn't trust her Self to do this effectively yet.
Prior to this
good-grief work, Pat had studied and experimented with
ways to
to cause
healthy changes in their values, roles, perceptions, and allegiances. She
drew on what she had learned to do this grief work.
She picked one symptom of her blocked grief - pretending family-celebration
cheer that some subselves really didn't feel. Pat acknowledged that that was
being phony and dishonest (i.e. violating her
and discouraged healthy mourning.
Her true Self
meditated on how to change her (other subselves') attitudes and behavior in
order to be genuine and encourage her family members to grieve well.
She
decided that she wanted to:
-
be honest with other people about (express) her own
grieving emotions and encourage them to do the same,
-
give able adults responsibility for managing
their own feelings and filling their own needs without being insensitive
to them, and...
-
exchange empathic
support as they all
grieved their respective lost family
She reminded herself that devoted
Guardian subselves always act to protect one or more
from discomfort or possible injury. Next, Pat reviewed the roster of her
subselves that she'd evolved from her wound-recovery work.
She imagined
calling a council meeting of
all her subselves in a safe, non-distracted place, and (her Self) asking those
who needed her to pretend holiday gaiety to identify themselves. Pat tried
this alien exercise several times, and followed her intuition.
She
found that a coalition of subselves needed her to pretend: her
Moralizer, (Rule Keeper),
Perfectionist, Magician, her
Fantasizer, People Pleaser, Inner Critic, Guilty Girl, Abandoned Girl, and
Shamed Girl,
Pat called a meeting of
these subselves to learn why they needed her to pretend false
celebration gaiety rather than allow her
Sad Child and resentful subselves
to honestly express their feelings and needs to other family members. She
learned that...
-
Her
Moralizer insisted that she must "be responsible for her actions"
and must not "selfishly" inflict her sadness on other people, because it
"made them feel bad" (which was wrong);
-
Her
People Pleaser predicted that if Pat honestly expressed her
sadness at family gatherings, others would dislike, resent, and reject her. This terrified Pat's
Abandoned Child;
-
Her tireless
Inner Critic promised
relentless scorn if Pat disobeyed the Moralizer's rules;
-
Pat's black/white
Perfectionist insisted
she had to behave "just right" (per the Moralizer's rules) in all
situations, including family celebrations. Her
Shamed Girl a and
Guilty
Girl strongly
agreed;
-
Pat's
Fantasizer and
Magician wanted to
preserve the illusion that family gatherings could be wonderful (ideal),
despite their pretense (denials), repressed feelings, and prior losses;
-
Her
Guilty
Girl moaned that if Pat was honest about her sadness and
"made others uncomfortable," she (the child) would "feel really bad"
because she felt Pat was responsible for other's feelings. And the woman
learned that...
-
In varying degrees,
all these subselves distrusted
Pat's true Self to keep them safe enough in family gatherings,
and overruled her Sad Girl
and angry Girl This meant they resisted her Self's request to change their
attitudes
and behavior
Once Pat understood the values, fears, and goals of each of these
subselves, she (a) intentionally kept a long-range outlook, and (b)
patiently set out to persuade each of them to adopt a teamwork perspective and try some safe changes "to benefit all of
us." This was
part of her overall goal to
build her subselves' trust in the wisdom and reliability of her Self and other
subselves, and to
patiently grow their teamwork and harmony.
As
she worked at this, Pat watched for chances to
describe
what she was learning about healthy grief, subselves, inner wounds, and
personal and grief "policies" to her kids and other family members -
including her ex, Ray
She tried hard not to be "preachy" or
take responsibility for the other adults; and to be factual, brief, and
encouraging. Many of her family members were ruled by false selves
who were skeptical of, disinterested (i.e. "scared") in, and unempathic with her
wound-recovery and grief work. To keep her balance, Pat often used
these wise
along the way.
Over
time, Pat's Self persuaded her subselves to relax their distrust and
experiment with expressing family-celebration anger and sadness rather than
pretending. Her coalition of protective subselves grudgingly acknowledged
that no catastrophes happened, and everyone "survived."
With coaching and instruction,
her subselves began to appreciate and accept the benefits of healthy grief and the potential harm in blocking it. An important shift was steadily encouraging her subselves to
change outdated childhood attitudes about self-sacrifice ("Always think of
the other person / Don't be 'selfish!'") to adopt a new code of personal
rights as a dignified person - without major
anxiety, guilt or shame.
Let's
look briefly at a second vital focus of Pat's grief work, because it's common in
typical
Was Pat Addicted?
Premise
- addiction is a universal subself strategy to mute or numb
(medicate) major
Compulsive overuse of ethyl alcohol,
nicotine, and some "street" drugs is compounded by developing a bodily
craving for the chemicals. Each of the
of addiction is a reliable
way of avoiding the dis-comfort of healthy three-level grief.
As
her wounds receded, Pat had to confront a scary question:
"Am I addicted
to alcohol
and/or eating
too many fats and sugars to help avoid the discomfort of grieving?"
To
research this, she decided to stop drinking alcohol and snacking on
high-sugar foods. She also challenged herself to limit her food portions,
exercise more, and lose the extra 25 pounds she was carrying.
Over a period of some weeks, she
found that she could not stop using these chemicals or taking
too many second helpings at dinner. She felt major guilt and
frustration at
gradually reverting to her old low-exercise lifestyle despite vowing not to.
These results seemed to indicate that she
was
compulsively medicating her
- i.e. that some well-meaning
Guardian subselves felt she needed these
chemical and eating rituals for immediate relief, despite their long-term
health risks.
Pat
committed to using
to help her subselves choose healthier ways
of self-comforting and expressing and releasing their pain. First, she identified the
subselves which seemed to cause her toxic compulsions. They included...
-
My Addict - a common
Guardian subself who insisted that using the sugars and fats in alcohol and some
foods was merited to reduce the discomforts of...
-
My
Sad Girl, Lost Girl, Anxious Girl, Guilty Girl, and
Abandoned Girl, whose combined intense feelings and thoughts
were promoting major inner pain;
and...
-
My
Adult Woman and
Health Director, who all say "Addiction is harmful - Stop!!"; and...
-
My
Inner Critic - ("You're pathetic and
weak. You can't keep your promises to
yourself, can you?");
-
My
Procrastinator - ("Ah, come on - you can diet and exercise
tomorrow. How
about a little com-fort now?"); and...
-
My Magician / Rationalizer- ("Hey, you work
hard for other people, and you deserve a little
pleasure and comfort. What's a few extra pounds - you're not obese like
some real overeaters. And you don't crave alcohol in the morning
or have blackout like real alcoholics. No big deal - you're OK!"
(denials)
As
with reducing her compulsion to pretend false gaiety, Pat patiently set out
to change the ignorance and narrow immediate-gratification values of these
subselves one or two at a time.
Two fundamental goals were to...
-
connect
her competent
with each needy Inner Child, and
to...
-
persuade her Guardian subselves to
trust that her Self and other
would effectively help her needy little
girls release their various discomforts.
Pat
knew that despite compelling dangers, typical Guardian subselves resisted
healthy change because they feared they would no longer be needed, and lose their power and control. So she steadily
reassured her Guardians that her Manager subselves would
help each of them find interesting, valuable
new personality
roles, and stop
self-medicating with toxic chemicals and comfort-rituals.
She steadily encouraged
her subselves to meet and appreciate each other, and
grow group
and teamwork under the wise guidance of her Self (capital "S")
and her
Spiritual One.
See
this series of Lesson-1 articles and/or the
related
for more on effective parts work.
Pat
patiently applied her growing awareness and subself
cooperation to other specific childhood and divorce-related losses, despite
some disdain and anxiety among her family members.
She (her Self) also began
expressing some long-repressed (loss-related) hurts, anger, and resentments at
Ray, her parents, her kids, and - at times - some of her subselves.
She
worked to evolve a more balanced, healthy
and encourage the
same in Stevie and Lisa. She worked to develop respectful ways to (a) express
her
anger and frustration, and
(b)
assert her needs and limits, rather than the
ineffective ways she had learned as a child.
You just read a brief
illustration of two ways to (a) reduce inner wounds, and (b) identify
incomplete grief and facilitate healthy progress.
The first way is to learn about personality subselves, wounds, recovery, and healthy
three-level grieving. Among other benefits from this learning, Pat became
able to assess for unhealthy personal and family grief and anger policies, and personal and social permissions to grieve well.
The
second way is to use this new knowledge to (a) methodically identify
life-losses, (b) check each of them for symptoms of blocked grief, and
(c) patiently work to identify and retrain protective personality subselves who
may be blocking effective mourning. Doing this is part of the larger
goal of identifying and reducing any significant psychological wounds
Two
more options for forming a healthy grieving policy and identifying and
freeing blocked grief are to...
3) Hire a
Professional Grief Counselor and/or
(4) Join a Support Group
To
augment her own wound-reduction and grief work, Pat decided to try
professional grief therapy to guard against possible
reality-distortions fostered by protective subselves - e.g. "I have grieved my child-hood losses well
enough." She first researched the
criteria for choosing an effective counselor. She felt that a
qualified professional should...
-
be comfortable working with inner and outer
and...
-
accept the Lesson-1 concepts of harmonizing
personality subselves and
false-self
- or be open to learning about them; and...
-
be able to describe some comprehensive
framework of good-grief basics, including...
-
requisitres
for healthy grief,
-
the three
levels and phases,
-
the
causes and common
effects of incomplete grief, and...
-
the idea of inner
and outer
permissions to grieve;
and a qualified professional should have...
-
special training and
significant experience in promoting healthy personal and family grief,
and facilitating incomplete grief.
Pat
described these traits to her friends and coworkers and asked for referrals, but
got none. Then she called local mental health agencies asking for grief
therapists. She interviewed several, and chose a woman who came close enough
to her criteria. Several sessions with the woman affirmed the wound-recovery
and grief work she was already doing, and added several new options and
resources - including trying out a local adult
grief-support group.
Pause
and reflect - do you feel you may be incomplete or blocked in grieving some major life
losses? If so, do the options above seem to be practical ways to assess for
and reduce this stressor? If not - why not? Is your
or
"someone else"?
Summary Checklist
To facilitate
grieving any physical or abstract loss, get undistracted and check each
statement that is clearly true:
__ 1)
My true Self usually
right now.
__ 2) I can answer each of these
questions about wounds and recovery with
confidence now.
__ 3) I have honesty
myself for significant psychological wounds (Lesson 1).
__ 4) I'm committed to
my psychological wounds (freeing my true Self), and am making significant progress at doing so.
__ 5) I can accurately identify
(GWCs) now using
this and this.
__ 6) I can answer each of these
questions about bonds, losses, and healthy grief
now.
__ 7) I have thoughtfully
identified the major physical and
invisible losses in my life, starting in
early childhood.
__ 8) I have thoroughly assessed
myself for incomplete grief using this 3-level concept and these
symptoms,
or equivalent
__ 9) I have thoughtfully written
down my personal
about grieving well,
and I'm living by it.
__ 10)
I'm clear on whether I have _
personal and _social
to grieve well now. If I lack either
one, I'm actively correcting that now.
__ 11) I can clearly describe
what kind of support typical grievers need, and I know how to provide it.
__ 12) I often use the
and I understand how it relates to helping others grieve well.
If you can't confidently check each item
as true now, you may be ruled by a false self and may not be ready to
facilitate healthy grief.
Facilitating Others' Grief
If your feel your mate, relative, or dear friend hasn't finished
grieving some key loss/es, consider these options...
-
Make sure your true Self is guiding you
(Lesson 1), and choose a long-term outlook.
-
Use this
and this to estimate whether
your person is a Grown Wounded Child. If s/he is,
motivating her or him to
assess for psychological wounds must come before completing
grief.
-
Use these options for
giving effective feedback to
another person to suggest that s/he study and apply Lesson 1 in this
Web site. Defer discussing Lesson 3 until her or his true Self is
usually in charge.
-
Let these ageless
guide you. You cannot
make a wounded person want to recover
or grieve, but you can "plant seeds."
-
your person for
They are an instinctive way to mute unbearable
(wounds).
Stable sobriety from any addiction is needed before reducing
psychological wounds (and grieving).
Note
also that any addiction usually indicates a low-nurturance home and
family, which may be
with wound-reduction and healthy grieving.
-
If your person isn't ready to assess for
psychological wounds and reduce them (hasn't hit bottom), you may talk
about your own recovery and grieving process without expecting your
person to change anything yet. See this
for more options.
-
If s/he commits to empowering her/his
true Self (true wound recovery), you may mention that unfin-ished
grief can be toxic, and Lesson 3 is about learning how to grieve
well. Then let go of feeling responsible for your person
studying and acting on Lesson 3. If you feel compelled to rescue
your person, check yourself for false-self dominance and
codependence. Usually, rescuing someone (making them "feel better")
is about your own comfort!
-
If your person is usually guided by
his/her true Self, then ask if s/he will study and discuss Lesson 3
with you, and describe why you're asking. Option - ask your
person to read this article with an open mind, and to discuss it
with you. Whatever s/he decides to do, use these
guidelines to support her
or him while you progress on your own recovery and grieving.
Finally,
-
If your person is raising kids, invite
him or her to intentionally (a) teach their young people about
healthy 3-level grief, (b) model it, and (c) intentionally create a
pro-grief home for them. This will help to break the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle in their family!
Pause and reflect - what are you thinking and feeling now? If you
know someone who seems to be stuck in mourning, do you feel these
options could help you and them? Use the options as flexible
possibilities, not a rigid cookbook.
Recap
From 32 years' clinical research,
I propose that incomplete
grief is a little-known, widespread stressor in people, their families,
and our society. Lesson 3 in this self-improvement
focuses on healthy grieving basics.
This Lesson-3 article describes a
series of practical options for identifying and finishing incomplete
grief. It includes an illustration of an average person acting on these
options. The article closes with options for reacting to someone else's
unfinished mourning.
Pause, breathe, and recall why you read this article. Did you get what
you needed? If so, what do you need now? If not, what
you need? Is there anyone you want to
discuss these ideas with?
Who's answering these
questions - your wise resident
or
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