Healing Perspectives: June 2008

Greetings Friend,
Whenever you hear someone say, "Good grief!" I'm confident you would agree they're probably not saying that grief is good. Instead, they're most likely using this expression as a means of vocalizing their disgust, frustration, or even regret. However, the truth is that grief is good because it serves as a powerful healer for the mind, the body and the soul while at the same time creating the opportunity for personal growth and spiritual development.

Grief is like an emotional scab. It lets us know where we are in the healing process, and like a scab falling off indicates the underlying wound has completely healed. The value of grief is that it makes it possible for us to emote how we're feeling rather than burying those painful emotions deep inside until they wreak havoc on the immune system, leaving us vulnerable to a variety of ailments such as arthritis, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and even cancer.

Yet if in fact, grief is so good for our health, why then is it viewed as being harmful or worse yet, seen as an indictor of vulnerability, weakness and even helplessness? Especially if the grieving process takes longer than what's viewed as socially acceptable. Why is it that the supportive efforts around grief discourage fully expressing how and what we're feeling? What are those well-meaning people in our life really saying when they tell us to think positively, be strong, keep a stiff upper lip, and don't cry? What do they mean when they ask, "Don't you think it's time to move on?"

What they're really saying is that they're glad they aren't in the same position because they wouldn't know how to express those painful emotions. What they're telling us is that they're not prepared to deal with a loss, and that they don't understand how the soul uses strong emotions and even painful emotions for the purpose of healing.

Grief Comes in Many Forms

When asked to think about grief, most people associate it with the loss of a loved one or the loss of a pet. We see it as part of the bereavement process associated with a physical death. However, as shared in the 2008 Message of New Beginnings we are reminded that loss comes in many forms. There can be the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship, the loss of an identity, the loss of a habit or a comfort zone, the loss of a lifestyle, and even the loss of an old emotional hurt. Don't all of these losses also have a sense of grief around them? Don't they all require time to heal? Don't we each have our own way of dealing with these losses?

As a companion, grief can be difficult to live with because it requires that we deal with a myriad of emotions such as sadness, sorrow, anger, guilt, fear, anxiety, and shame. It makes us prone to mood swings and depression and necessitates letting go of the past. Grief involves telling our story over and over again as a way of healing sometimes even to the point that we get tired of telling the same old story. In the grieving process, we grow stronger, tougher, and at the same time learn to become more compassionate and patient with ourselves. Grief causes us to rethink our life and lifestyle and decide how we want to move forward. Do we want to move forward with true grit and with an unstoppable resilience, or do we want to move forward with a kindness toward ourselves - a kindness so gentle that it makes it possible to heal the deepest of emotional hurts? Since grief comes in so many forms, it can be our worst enemy or our best friend. However, one thing is for sure, grief makes us feel our emotions deeply and teaches us how to deal with them. It makes us accept loss as a part of life and the growing process, and it makes us receptive to change - change that must happen if there are to be new beginnings.

Five Ways to Successfully Deal with Grief

1. Stop denying the grief - As long as you're avoiding or controlling your grief, you're denying how you feel and you're locked in a battle between your head and heart. All this does is foster anger and inhibits the grieving process.
2. Create a nurturing environment - It's important to surround yourself with people who will allow you to express how you feel and share your fears. Avoid people who try to make you okay or who isn't interested in listening.
3. Go toward love - Anytime you experience a loss, whether minor or major, go toward love and steer away from fear. Love moves you forward, fear keeps you where you are. Love opens the heart to grieve, fear buries grief energetically deep within the body.
4. Eat, but don't let food become your emotional warm fuzzy - Eat sensibly, meaning chose foods that don't spike your glycemic-index. Eat regularly and avoid binges. It's easy to forget to eat when dealing with a loss. It's also easy to use a loss to justify excessive eating.
5. Get plenty of rest - It's important to maintain a normal sleeping pattern and to even take short naps during the day as sleep is regenerative. When rested, you're able to deal with grief more effectively. When you're tired, your ability to cope lessens dramatically.

Grief is a Healthy Mindset

How you experience grief and express it is reflective of your willingness to let go and your willingness to rejoin life fully following a loss. Grief, while an emotion, is also an attitude that reflects how you view life. Do you have a positive attitude or negative attitude toward life, meaning when faced with a loss do you pick yourself up by the bootstraps or does loss set you back to the point where it immobilizes you mentally and emotionally?

When you shift your mindset around grief and begin to see it as a positive contributor to the healing process, you'll be more open to developing the adaptation skills that will help you deal with a major setback should one come your way. You'll also begin to appreciate the purpose behind the numerous daily losses you experience, and rather than seeing them as insurmountable obstacles, you'll see them as the opportunity to grow.

Let's face it; life is filled with cars not starting, broken relationships, incomplete tasks, financial setbacks, and the loss of jobs. The way we handle these situations and the emotions associated with them such as the anger, disappointment, rage, guilt and grief is a sneak preview of how we'll handle the major losses that impact not only our life, but also our health. If we can remember that the five stages of loss, denial, anger, bargaining, grief and acceptance are also the five stages for living, then we'll see the value in allowing ourselves the time needed to grieve. We'll see that grief really is productive and we'll be willing to take that first step toward creating the life and the health we desire. Most important, we'll notice that with every loss we are presented the opportunity for a new beginning.

Light & Love,
Carol

If you want to learn more about grief and where we energetically store it in the organs, glands, and muscle structure of the body, then I encourage you to read my latest book, Healing Happens with Your Help .

Illnesses and Their Hidden Meanings

Tendinitis

General Description: Tendinitis is an inflammatory condition of the tendon sheathing and the enclosed tendon, especially where the tendons are affixed to the bone. Most tendinitis occurs as the result of sports injuries. It can also occur from a blow to an affected body part, or an acidic forming diet, or from repetitive tasks, or it can be a secondary result of joint diseases such rheumatoid arthritis, gout, systemic scleroderma, and Reiter's syndrome. Moving the joint near the inflamed tendon may cause severe pain.

Psychological Implications: Trying to hold on to things too tightly and the fear of letting go are two metaphors that describe the behavior associated with tendinitis. People who suffer from tendinitis that's associated with joint diseases tend to display an inner conflict between who they truly are and who they think they should be. They tend to compromise themselves and create undue stress while trying to please others at their own expense. As a result, they tend to feel as if they're being pulled in too many different directions at the same time. Other fears associated with tendinitis are fear of abandonment, fear of betrayal, fear of losing touch with reality, and fear of not being supported. In the case of tendinitis of the Achilles tendon, they are afraid to trust themselves.

Associated emotions: Frustration, guilt, anger, helplessness, grief
What to change: Thoughts

To learn how you can change your thoughts, refer to my Healing Happens with Your Help book.

Healing Hint:
Studies show that you might live longer by drinking certain beverages, especially tea (the more the better, meaning drinking at least four cups a day of green, black or oolong tea), red wine in moderation, and even coffee because it is helpful in preventing diabetes, gallstones, kidney stones, Parkinson's disease, and even heart disease. So, drink up!