When someone we love dies, it’s natural to feel grief, sadness and loss. Sometimes these emotions are so overwhelming that our normal life has to pause. For those of us inclined to repress our feelings, grief can be a real struggle, but it’s something we really need to go through, ideally integrating our loss and achieving a deeper and more peaceful awareness of life.
But that’s the result of going through our grief and coming out the other side. Sometimes we just get stuck in all the suffering.
Working with clients on this issue, I’ve noticed four main reasons people get trapped with their grief – two are emotional and two stem from limiting beliefs. Luckily all four can be tapped away, allowing one’s grief to run its course.
In no particular order, here are the four problems:
Resentment or Anger
Once someone has died, it's a bit late to tell them off. We’re basically stuck with these feelings, especially since we’re not supposed to “speak ill of the dead.”
Unfortunately, grief doesn’t really cancel out anger, resentment or bitterness. Instead, those unresolved feelings contaminate our grief, keeping us stuck in it.
Sometimes the person who’s died treated us harshly and never apologized. I’ve worked with clients who were hoping for a deathbed apology, and never got it. Or our dearly departed left their affairs in disarray and the whole mess got dropped in our lap to sort out. One young woman spent years caring for her ailing father. He knew he was on his way out, but neglected to give her the passwords to his various accounts until it was too late.
Her anger was totally understandable, but unbearable for her.
Another, more primal anger can come from feeling abandoned: “How could you do this to me?” “How could you leave me here all alone?” Feelings of betrayal, that may seem childish and unacceptable, can really get in the way! Lucky for us, just a few rounds of tapping while speaking the ‘unspeakable’ tends to work wonders in letting irritation, resentment, anger and even bitterness go.
Guilt
Guilt can be another grief showstopper. We might feel bad about something we did that genuinely hurt our loved one. Or perhaps we’d let the relationship slide a bit, or just weren’t there for them at the end. Whatever it is, it’s too late now to apologize and try to make things right.
Much like resentment, guilt seems to contaminate our grief, preventing it from moving through us.
From my point of view, even if there really is some legitimate reason to feel guilty, feeling bad about ourselves doesn’t help our dearly departed. In fact, it benefits no one.
I believe the best we can do, for ourselves and everyone else in our lives, is to forgive ourselves, so that our grief can finally run its course. Then perhaps we can live a better life going forward. EFT tapping can really help here, whether it’s forgiving ourselves or forgiving the person who died.
Fear of Losing Connection
Some people hold a very unhelpful belief that letting go of their grief means forgetting about their loved one. The pain and suffering of grief seems necessary to stay connected with their loved one. They imagine that letting go of grief means letting go of their memories. They’ll just drift away into forgetfulness, and there’s NO WAY they’re going to let that happen!
I suppose that’s kind of heroic, in a way. Or would be, if the belief was actually true.
It’s totally not.
More than likely, we have some really good memories of our dearly departed. Maybe an entire bank of them. These are rightfully ours. They belong to us and are important for keeping the person alive in our hearts.
Fixating on their death actually makes it more difficult to access the good and happy memories. all of our good memories. Our pain prevents us from thinking of them with pleasure, and so our connection with our loved one is actually diminished. Not good!
In tapping with a client, I’ll often use the reframe: “When I think about ____, I’d love to remember her with pleasure, instead of all this pain.”
“Even though I have this fear, that letting go of my painful grief means I’ll lose my connection with _____, I give myself permission to remember all of the good times we’ve had”
Fear of Dishonoring Our Loved One
The idea here is that our painful grief proves how important our loved one was to us. It’s a sort of testimony to how much we care.
On the surface, this belief may seem legitimate, especially in the early stages of our grief. So, letting go of our grief must mean we really don’t care. It’s no big deal to us. And that’s such an appalling thought that we can get stuck.
I’m not sure how anyone decides how long is ‘too long,’ but at some point, hasn’t it gone on long enough? Endlessly suffering to prove how much we care eventually leads to neglecting ourselves and the people around us.
And honestly, who are we trying to impress anyway? Who is it we need to prove our love to this way?
I think the answer is, or should be, no one.
For my clients who do get stuck this way, we’ll tap on the fact that their loved one would never want them to go on suffering. To the contrary, that’s the last thing they’d ever want.
Grief as a Barrier
According to Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls, our loved ones often try to communicate with us after their death. They want to let us know they’re okay, but find our grief to be an impenetrable barrier. It’s as though we’re using our free will to suffer, and no one is allowed to interfere.
In my own experience, it’s hard to go on missing someone when we’re truly aware of their presence. Especially if that comes with some level of communication or communion. Sure, we may miss their physical presence in our life. Absolutely.
But knowing they’re still around can be tremendously comforting.
For me, restoring connection with our loved one is probably the greatest reason to tap away blocks to releasing our grief.
Copyright Rob Nelson 2023
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