[Neurons] 2024 Neurons #24 MEANINGFUJL MOURNING: Positive Sadness

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2024 Neurons #24

June 3, 2024

Emotional Intelligence Series #23

 

 
MEANINGFUL MOURNING

Positive   Sadness

 

When it comes to human life, loss is inevitable.  In this, loss is part and
parcel of reality, andloss is totally democratic-it happens to everyone.  So
it is something we all have to deal with at various times in our lives.  Yet
not everyone manages loss effectively or meaningfully.  In fact, without the
ability to handle loss with graceful understanding and acceptance, a person
may experience the very opposite- neurotic loss and grief.

 

Now a with everything else in life, it is not what happens to you that
matters most, it is how you interpret it-the meanings you give to it.  This
distinction separates meaningful grief (good grief) and neurotic grief.  For
grief to become destructive, sick, and neurotic, interpret the loss using
the Cognitive Distortions (over-generalize, either/or thinking, personalize,
emotionalize, catastrophizing, tunnel-vision, etc.).  "I'll never get over
this loss."  "This is the end of my life."  "I see no reason to keep
living."

 

If you over-identify with the loss, then your grief becomes existential and
part of what you are trying to grieve (but cannot) is yourself.  By
exaggerating the grief, making demands on reality (should-ing), using
impossibility thinking ("I'll never get over this."), etc., you have all of
the cognitive-emotional tools you need to turn a loss into a never-ending
tragedy-a demon which will haunt your soul. 

 

How then should we think about a loss?  First, forget about Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross' "stages of grief."  Those stages describes how someone who does
not know how to properly think about loss and experience grief.  Those
stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance describe the long
and slow and painful process of coming to terms with life on planet Earth as
it is-acceptance.  Why not start there?  If you start with acceptance, then
you can skip over all of the unnecessary mental-emotional pain involved in
the previous stages.

 

Acceptance: Start with the fact that loss is an inevitable fact in human
experience.  You may not like this, but that's the way it is.  If you live
long enough, you will lose friends, loved ones, parents, colleagues, etc.
and if you are living, you will lose opportunities, and you may experience
divorce, breakups, loss of your best friend, failure of a career aspiration,
defeat of a dream, etc.

 

Acceptance is simple acknowledgment.  You acknowledge what happens.  Doing
this enables you to adjust your expectations, making them more realistic.
The truth is you have no guarantee of tomorrow.  Nor does anyone.
Accidents, storms, earthquakes, crashes, etc. can happen nearly at any time
and without warning.  Those who know that tend to focus on living life fully
today as possible without demand that life be just or fair or anything else.

 

Gratitude: Healthy acceptance of reality, of mortality, and of fallibility
can then lead you to live more gratefully for the life you have today.  It
is this sense of appreciation that enables you to mourn meaningfully.  In
your mourning, you acknowledge the value and importance of the person or
experience.  You own it.  "Yes, I loved her very much."  "Yes, that job
meant a lot to me."

 

Meaning: Appreciation opens up your awareness of a person's or an
experience's meaning and significance.  And with that, you can now truly
honor and celebrate that person.  This is what happens in meaningful
mourning-you search for the meaningfulness in order to acknowledge it.  You
focus on the person's best moments and contributions to your life, not her
absence.  You simultaneously honor two emotions in yourself-the pain of the
loss and the joy of the person.  And what you remember-what you take away
with you is the person's love and care, humor and playfulness, intelligence
and creativity, etc.

 

Expression: Emotions need to be expressed.  The paradox is that by
expressing what you feel, you thereby release the emotion.  By holding in
the expression, you prevent coming to terms with the loss and set up a
process that can turn the emotions really toxic.  Let your emotions be felt,
listen to their messages, acknowledge them, "I am feeling alone, miserable,
lost, unsure."  Expressing the emotion can be therapeutic.  After all, you
can't heal what you won't confront.  But take care about cognitive
distortions that can get embedded in the expression.  You still have to tell
yourself the truth, and not lies.  "I'll never get over this" is both an
exaggeration and a lie; "Life has betrayed me and is cruel" is personalizing
and awfulizing.  Health expressing tells the truth.

 

Replace: Grieving is a gift, a healing gift, if you handle it properly.
Mourning the loss of a person, experience, or thing that you had in your
life is designed so that you learn, grow, and move on.  It is not designed
to wallow in misery, loneliness, regrets, guilt, etc.  If you lost a friend,
find a new friend.  If you lost a job, find a new job.  Mourning becomes
meaningful when you use it to learn about yourself, your values, purpose,
and about the preciousness of life, the shortness of life, and the vitality
of living fully in this moment.

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 

 



 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20240602/d22ff106/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 7843 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20240602/d22ff106/attachment-0001.jpg>