The Web address of this
guide is
http://sfhelp.org/grief/guide3.htm
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This is a study guide for the third of eight self-study
lessons. The lessons are designed to help you break the lethal [wounds + unawareness]
cycle
that may be degrading your life.
This guide exists because my experience over 28 years as a
family-systems therapist suggests that (a) unfinished grief is
stressful and physically dangerous, (b) most average adults
don't know how to grieve effec-tively, and (c) they don't (want
to) know what that means.
This puts parents at risk of
not teaching their kids how to understand bonding, losses, and
health three-level grief. That jeopardizes future generations in
many ways.
Objective - Lesson 3 will empower you to (a)
understand bonding, losses, and healthy three-level grieving; so you
can (b) assess for and finish incomplete grief, (c) evolve a
pro-grief family, and (d) break the [wounds + unawareness] cycle.
Requisites
Read the
intro to this nonprofit site, and
the premises underlying it.
make major progress on
lessons 1 and
2. This lesson builds on them.
adopt a long-range view
and the unbiased curiosity of a student as you study. You'll use this
information for the rest of your life.
Why Study This Lesson?
Starting in infancy, healthy people automatically form bonds(emotional / spiritual
attachments) to many things throughout their lives - like special people,
animals, dreams, places, rituals, freedoms, se-curities, and special objects. By
choice or chance, these bonds break, causing painful losses.
Nature provides an effective way of
accepting our losses and resuming normal life - grief, or mour-ning.
If people have several requisites, they grieve effectively.
People who survive a
low-nurturance childhood
often lack one or more requisites and are unable to grieve well or at
all - i.e. their grief gets slowed or blocked.
Our warp-speed, over-stimulated Western culture pays little attention to
healthy mourning. Older ("underdeveloped") cultures seem to be far more
respectful of this vital life-balancing process.
social environments that
(a) don't nurture well, and (b) discourage healthy
mourning.
Incomplete grief causes
chronic stress and a mix of
observable physical, emotional, and beha-vioral symptoms. This including
(some) obesity, addictions, "depressions," "rage attacks," insomnia, and
some digestive malfunctions.
These in turn
stress marriages and
families, inhibit effective parenting, and promote our unremarked U.S.
divorce epidemic.
If underlying wounds and unawareness aren't admitted and significantly
reduced, they and these secondary symptoms may promote premature death.
All healthy adults and kids have
major losses to mourn. Members of typical
divorcing families and
stepfamilies have major "extra" losses. From
30 years' clinical
experience with members of hundreds of such families, it appears to me that...
many of them are significantly stressed by
incomplete grief, and...
typical family adults and many lay and professional family supporters don't
know this, what it means, or what to do about it.
In
50 adult years, I have never met one family couple that intentionally developed a
"pro-grief"
policy for their home, and helped their kids
learn and follow it.
Has your family done this?
Lesson three uses the key ideas in
Lessons 1 and 2 to show you how to spot unfinished grief and what to
do about it. Teaching these ideas to the young people in your life is a
priceless gift which will help spare them from inheriting the lethal [wounds
+ unawareness] cycle.
Status
Check:
on a scale of one (I don't
know how to grieve well) to ten (I'm knowledgeable about and very effective
at mourning broken bonds), rank your ability to grieve now ___. We'll
see if your rating changes at the end of this lesson.
Lesson 3 Study Guide
Check off each step when you feel finished. Take your time!
Lesson 3, Module 1
- Learn "Good-grief" Basics
__
3-1) See how much you know about bonds, losses and grieving now -
take this quiz.
__ 3-2) See how many
of these questions about bonding, losses, and mourning
you can answer.
__ 3-3) Study this
introduction to good-grief basics.
__ 3-4) Compare these
three grief levels and phases with your
experience.
__ 3-5) Learn about
inner and outer permissions to grieve. Do you have
both of these?
__ 3-6) Consider
these ideas about personal and family grieving
"policies." Then...
__ 3-7) Compose your
personal grieving policy and discuss it with other family members.
__ 3-8) Ask your mate
(if any), to compose a personal grieving policy, and see how compatible it
is to yours. Discuss any significant differences Option -
meditate and identify the grieving policy you were taught by
your caregivers - perhaps more by their actions than words. "No policy"
is a policy.
__ 3-9) See if you
agree with these seven requisites for
healthy grieving. If you do, see if you have all of them now. If
not, why?
__ 3-10) Study these
several steps to practicing healthy grief. If you
agree with them, invite other family members to join you in growing a
pro-grief family for all your sakes.
__ 3-11) Read several
other authors' opinions about
healthy morning to widen your perspective. They
will not mention
the [wounds + unawareness] cycle, and still can be informative.
__ 3-12) Ask other
family adults to help you see that your young people learn good-grief basics
as part of protecting them against the [wounds + unawareness]
cycle.
__ 3-13)Cement your learnings by
practicing these good-grief basics over time. Start with drafting
a fam- ily good-grief policy (7 above), and review it periodically
and after any family member has a ma- jor loss. Then encourage your
members to provide external permissions (5 above) to grieve.
__ 3-14)Option
- keep a
log or journal of
your grieving thoughts, questions, and learnings. Doing this is a
way to
gauge your growth over time - specially if you're reducing false-self wounds
(lesson 1).
Lesson 3, Module 2 - Assess Yourself for Incomplete Grief
Take some weeks to do these "assignments." thoroly - specially if you're reducing
false-self wounds (Lesson 1). These tasks are not a weekend project! Feel free
to edit these tasks or improvise to better fit you. View this as a win-win
project - either you have no significant unfinished grief, or you can become
aware of any you have so you can reduce it.
__ 3-15) Reread this
brief report on "complicated" (unfinished) grief - and wonder if it applies
to you.
__ 3-16) _ Review this
perspective on losses (broken bonds),
and _ study these worksheets of common abstract
and physical losses. Edit the worksheets as
appropriate for your unique life history
__ 3-17) Meditate and
write down the personal
grief policy of each of your major childhood caregivers, as
judged by their remembered actions. Decide if you were raised in a
"pro-grief" childhood (one with consistent,
genuine permissions to grieve well). If not, expect some unfinished grief.
Option - also decide what each caregiver's personal
anger policy was.
Feeling and safely expressing anger
is a requisite
for healthy grief..
__ 3-18) Draw a
timeline of your life from birth to the present. Use your learnings from
(15) above and mark each major loss you experienced with an
"x" on
the timeline. Note the date of each one.
Keep in mind that a (a)
number of small losses can feel like a big one, and (b)
some losses
happen gradually (like aging). Option - color-code the losses for
physical (say, blue) and abstract (red). Focus on your losses,
not your family's.
__ 3-19) Using these
symptoms of incomplete grief, assess each of your
losses across the years to see if you feel you have fully
accepted them and their effects mentally + emotionally + spiritually.
Option - list your losses and note "F(inished),"
"U(nfinished)," or"?" (not sure)for each one.
__ 3-20)Options
- show the symptoms of unfinished grief to someone who knows you well, and
ask whether they see any of them for losses in question. Some
losses are hard to judge (e.g. "I lost my self esteem
between ages 3 and 14." To be really sure, consider hiring a professional
(certi- fied)
grief counselor to help you assess.
__ 3-21) If you have
had periods of significant depression, and/or are taking anti-depressant
medica- tion, read this.
Pills will not help you break denials and resume healthy grief!
__ 3-22) Incomplete
mourning can promote (a) "anger management"
problems and (b) any of the four types of
addiction (can you name them?). If you
are significantly overweight, you may
have a food (chemical) addiction. Some wound-reduction experts
propose "Every fat cell is an unshed tear."
__ 3-23)As you assess, note your feelings
and thoughts. Excessive anger and/or sadness ("vs. depres- sion"),
anxiety, or avoiding these steps may indicate (a) false-self wounds (Lesson
1) and signi- ficant unfinished grief.
Lesson 3, Module 3
- Complete any Unfinished Grief
If you have honestly assessed yourself for (a) false-self wounds and (b)
incomplete grief, and you believe you have neither, then read this module for
awareness.
Progress at Lesson 1and Modules 1 and 2 above prepare you for this
work. Healthy grief is a major payoff for breaking the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle. Expect this work to take "as long as it
takes," and be patient. "Progress, not perfection!"
Keep your perspective:
completing old mourning is part of the main goal:freeing your Self,
raising your knowledge and awareness, and
improving your wholistic health, daily serenity, and longevity.
__ 3-24) Use this
worksheet to clarify your present values about bonding, losses,
and grieving. If any of them discourage you from mourning
completely, revise them so they encourage you.
__ 3-25) Reread
this article on inner and outer permissions to
grieve. If you don't have solid inner permis- sion, (a) use
parts work
(Lesson 1) to identify the subselves who withhold permission, and to
negotiate their help in fully accepting the effects of your
losses.
__ 3-26) Assess your living and work
environments for solid outer permissions to grieve. If key
people around you are not genuinely empathic and
supportive, seek others
who are. Often they will be guided by their true Selves.
__ 3-27)Review your current daily
priorities. If "self nurturance"
is not close to or at the top, use
parts work to discover who
devalues that
and correct it. Part of self-nurturance is setting aside enough
solitary time to grieve, and being patient with the process.
__ 3-28) If you
haven't already, define your personal grieving policy
- and use it to guide you through these steps!
__ 3-29)Read this article on completing
grief, and apply it to each loss you feel unfinished with. If you
get
stuck, consider getting professional help from an
inner-family therapist and/or a
licensed grief counselor.Option - use this chart of grief levels
and phases to identify where you're stuck, and why.
__ 3-30)Option
- as you do these steps, let key
other people know what you're doing and why. Lessons 1 to
3 may significantly change your attitudes and behaviors, which may alarm
insecure (woun- ded, unaware)
people. They may try to sabotage your efforts, and keep you wounded and
stuck.
If this happens, review and live by your
personal rights as a dignified,
unique person. . Scan these communication
options and this article to help you
assert and defend your
boundaries effectively - and keep
healing!
Status
Checks
Back away from the details now - pause, breathe, and reflect on why you read
this guide. How do you feel - honestly - about committing time and effort to
these three modules so far?
I feel __ highly motivated
__ moderately motivated __ uninterested in this work now.
On a scale of one (I don't know how to grieve well) to ten (I'm
knowledgeable about and very effective at mourning broken bonds), rank your
ability to grieve now ___. Compare your answer here to the one at the
top of this lesson. Did it change? Who just answered - your
true Self
or
''someone else''?
Finally, take this good-grief quiz again and
affirm your learnings.
Lesson 3, Module 4
- Seek and give effective grief support
You will encounter "losers" (people with losses) wherever you go - in your
family, workplace, church, and community. Many will be unaware they're ruled
by a false self, and may have unfinished grief. They may need knowledgeable,
caring support at times - just like you do. This final module focuses on
learning what typical grievers need - and don't need.
__ 3-31)
From your life experience and all that you've learned here,
write down the specific things that
typical healthy
(minimally-wounded) adults and kids need to help them grieve well.
__ 3-32)
Compare your list to this,
and reflect who taught you your beliefs. Then update your opinion as
needed.
__ 3-33) Identify
specific things that typical grievers don't need - like hearing...
"I know just how you
feel." No you don't - even if you've had a similar loss.
platitudes like
"Things'll get better with time - you'll see!"
about your or
others' losses - or "(your loss) could be a LOT worse!".
"C'mon - you have SO much
to be thankful for! Look on the bright side!"
"Aren't you over that
(loss) yet?"
"Keep a stiff upper lip!"
(so I can avoid discomfort with your emotions)"
"Just accept (your loss)
and move on!"
"Don't you ever stop
blubbering?"
"Don't you realize you're
depressing everyone?" That's their problem, not yours!
"Honestly - what's the big
deal (about your loss)?"
"I know, I know -
you've told (your loss story) over and over again!" Doing so is part
of healthy grief.
"Let's talk about
something positive for a change." Wounded, uninformed people cast
grieving as negative to diminish their own discomfort."
"Isn't (someone) great?
S/He never lets anything get her down (so you shouldn't either)."
et cetera.
Comments like these are usually
about...
the speaker's
discomfort with your emotions (which may trigger their own),
their frustration at not
knowing how to support you; Option - tell them what you
need!
unhealthy grieving values
(Avoid trying to "convert" or "correct" them);
major ignorance about
losses and the process of three-level grieving; and/or...
lack of real empathy for
you, and/or denial of their own grief.
Learn what
programs and resources your local hospitals and mental-health centers have
for grie-vers. Note programs that acknowledge that grieving spans
far more than death of a loved one.
Also note that no programs will acknowledge the core need of
freeing your true Self to grieve well. (Lesson 1).
Option - alert any counselors or programs you find to this
free Break the Cycle! course.
This is the third of eight self-study guides designed to
help you free your family and descendents from the lethal [wounds +
unawareness] legacy.
Premise - Incomplete grief is widespread, and contributes
to major personal, family, and social problems. This Lesson's modules
combat that by focusing on...
learning basic
information on bonding, losses, and healthy grief;
assessing
yourself for incomplete grief;
completing any
you find; and...
seeking and
giving effective grieving support.
The overall goal
for this Lesson is to motivate and prepare you to build a
"pro-grief" family and help break the expanding
[wounds + unawareness] cycle burdening most families and our
society.
Pause, breathe, and reflect - why did you read this article? Did you get
what you needed? If not, what do you need? Who's
answering these questions - your
true Self, or
someone else?
The Web address of this
guide is
http://sfhelp.org/grief/guide3.htm
Objective - Lesson 3 will empower you to (a)
understand bonding, losses, and healthy three-level grieving; so you
can (b) assess for and finish incomplete grief, (c) evolve a
pro-grief family, and (d) break the [wounds + unawareness] cycle.
Status
Checks