grief work

» foxydani - grief work

First of all I would like to thank you for your messages and insights, secondly I'm working on the affirmations and learning about spirituality but I keep hearing the term "grief work" and I'm not sure I understand what that means. Could you explain?

-- posted by foxydani

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» joy2meu - Re: grief work

In response to grief work posted by foxydani:

Dani,
I want to mention again something I have mentioned previously in these discussion threads. That is, that I don't get to suite101 very often because I am too busy. Anyone who wants some feedback from me, or to ask a question, will get a much quicker response by e-mailing me directly. And often it is possible to find the answers by visiting my web site. The site index page http://Joy2MeU.com/Siteindex.htm is a good place to look for articles on specific subjects.

That said, I will explain a little about grief work - and point you at some pages of my site that will be helpful.

Emotions are energy that is manifested in our bodies. Emotions and thoughts are two different - though intimately interrelated - types of energy. Growing up in emotionally dysfunctional, emotionally dishonest cultures has taught us all to have a dysfunctional relationship with our own feelings. It is important to work on changing our relationships with our own emotions.

Emotions are actually metaphysical in nature - as I explained in my March 2004 article here on Suite101:

"Metaphysical means beyond the physical - that is beyond the concrete three-dimensional reality that we experience, that can be seen and measured. One of the reasons that emotions have been so discounted in Western Civilization has been because it is not possible to take an x-ray and see that we have unresolved grief from the past that is knocking our system out of balance and causing us to be depressed." - March 2004 Energetic Attraction - emotional familiarity or Karmic connection? http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/3691...

It is releasing that unresolved emotional energy from the past that grief work is about. We also, of course, want to be able to own our grief in the present - but as long as we haven't grieved our emotional wounds from the past then it is impossible to have grief in the present that is just about the present. Any emotional wounding in the now will trigger grief from the past - will "push our buttons."

I addressed this specifically in one of my articles in my Serenity Prayers series of articles that I originally published here on Suite101.

"We all have reactive emotional "buttons" - an internal emotional mine field - that cause us to have intense emotional reactions when a button is pushed, when one of the unhealed wounds in our psyche gets activated. Other people, life events, an old song, etc., can trigger these emotional wounds.

Having these strong emotional reactions is not a sign that we are crazy, it is just a symptom of codependency. It is important to stop judging and shaming ourselves - or blaming others - for these reactions. It is vital to start learning how to disarm those buttons - how to heal our emotional wounds." - Emotional Discernment - taking power away from the fear http://Joy2MeU.com/emotional_discernment...

As I mention in this quote, we need to disarm those emotional buttons from the past. This involves both the actual energy release work and changing our attitudes towards the feelings. That is what the inner child healing work is about. As long as we are reacting to unhealed wounds from the past / unresolved grief, and allowing our relationships with our own emotions - as well as with our self, our own mind, body, and spirit, with life and other people - to be dictated by childhood intellectual programming then we are incapable of being in the now in an emotionally honest, appropriately adult way. Here is a quote from my book (which I think you would find very helpful in understanding this healing process):

"Feelings are real - they are emotional energy that is manifested in our body - but they are not necessarily fact.
What we feel is our "emotional truth" and it does not necessarily have anything to do with either facts or the emotional energy that is Truth with a capital "T" - especially when we our reacting out of an age of our inner child.

If we are reacting out of what our emotional truth was when we were five or nine or fourteen, then we are not capable of responding appropriately to what is happening in the moment; we are not being in the now.

When we are reacting out of old tapes based on attitudes and beliefs that are false or distorted, then our feelings cannot be trusted.

When we are reacting out of our childhood emotional wounds, then what we are feeling may have very little to do with the situation we are in or with the people with whom we are dealing in the moment.

In order to start be-ing in the moment in a healthy, age-appropriate way it is necessary to heal our "inner child." The inner child we need to heal is actually our "inner children" who have been running our lives because we have been unconsciously reacting to life out of the emotional wounds and attitudes, the old tapes, of our childhoods.

The way to stop reacting out of our inner children is to release the stored emotional energy from our childhoods by doing the grief work that will heal our wounds. The only effective, long term way to clear our emotional process - to clear the inner channel to Truth which exists in all of us - is to grieve the wounds which we suffered as children. The most important single tool, the tool which is vital to changing behavior patterns and attitudes in this healing transformation, is the grief process. The process of grieving.

We are all carrying around repressed pain, terror, shame, and rage energy from our childhoods, whether it was twenty years ago or fifty years ago. We have this grief energy within us even if we came from a relatively healthy family, because this society is emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional.

When someone "pushes your buttons," he/she is activating that stored, pressurized grief energy. She/he is gouging the old wounds, and all of the newer wounds that are piled on top of those original wounds by our repeating behavior patterns.

We are terrified of this pressurized pain, terror, shame, and rage energy - of "having our buttons pushed" - because we have experienced it in the past as instances where we have explosively overreacted in ways that caused us to later feel ashamed and crazy, or as implosive reactions that have thrown us into that deep dark pit of emotional despair within.

We are walking around with this set of buttons available to be pushed by any person, place, thing, or combination thereof that recreates the dynamics of the situation wherein we were originally wounded. (For example: a certain smell, the texture of a fabric, a tone of voice, a gesture, etc., can be emotional triggers that throw us back to an age of our inner child.)

We carry this set of buttons, this baggage, with us until we release that stored, pressurized grief energy in a healthy grieving process. This society's answer to behavior caused by unresolved grief is to shame you, label you, lock you up, and/or give you drugs. We do not have to play that game anymore. We have new tools now, and we have rediscovered the healing power of the natural grieving process.

It is through healing our inner child, our inner children, by grieving the wounds that we suffered, that we can change our behavior patterns and clear our emotional process. We can release the grief with its pent-up rage, shame, terror, and pain from those feeling places which exist within us." -Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls http://Joy2MeU.com/joy_22.htm

Here are some links to articles on my web site that specifically talk about grieving. All of these articles are part of the section of my site that is focused on inner child work: Inner Child Healing = a path to freedom, serenity, and empowerment http://Joy2MeU.com/Innerchildhealing.html

In my article Feeling the Feelings - grief / emotional energy release
http://Joy2MeU.com/emotions.html I discuss the importance of feeling the feelings. In my article Grief, Love, & Fear of Intimacy http://Joy2MeU.com/grief.html I discuss my first experience of doing deep grief work. In my article Grief Process Techniques http://Joy2MeU.com/Grief.htm I discuss some of the tools to aid us in our grieving. And in the article Grieving - examples of how the process works http://joy2meu.com/Grieving.html I talk about the importance of the grief process - and give some examples of both the shallower levels of grieving and the deep grief work.

I hope these are helpful.
Robert

-- posted by joy2meu

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