Greene's Release

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009...9:22 pm

FREE Podcast – Loss of a Loved One

Greene’s Release Podcasts >> Loss Of A Loved One >> Transcript

The overwhelming emotions you feel today are not due to the loss of your loved one.

Sounds amazing doesn’t it.

Let me clarify. Say you stubbed and fractured your big toe, but just left it without any treatment. Then stubbed it really hard again an hour later, imagine how much it would now hurt. And then someone stood on it a couple of hours later, your toe is absolutely throbbing now. Later on in the day you caught it on a chair as you walked through the living room.

The pain in your big toe is now unbearable. But still you seek no treatment at all.
And then your poor toe has to try and heal itself, without any rest or care or consideration.
It is continually walked on, jammed in shoes, caught in clothing, hit by moving objects, stubbed on furniture, and then jumped on by a cat while you sleep.

If you’re like me you’re probably cringing at the mere thought of this pain, but you can really appreciate how awful it would be. Good because you need to.

The toe was injured badly, but the subsequent treatment heightened and complicated the initial injury. Therefore, the pain felt days later, which was so much worse than the original pain, is not due to fracturing the toe, but instead from what happened since fracturing it.

This is exactly what is happening with your grief!

The overwhelming emotions you feel today are not due to the loss of your loved one. Whether your loved one passed a month, year or even 10 years ago. The heart wrenching pain you feel today is NOT due to that event.

The pain you feel today is a combination of ALL the times you have felt emotional pain. That is why it is so overwhelming.

The pain of grief can actually worsen with time….because of the stubbed toe affect…

There are 5 Different Reasons for Grief Emotions

Spontaneous Emotions of Grief

Spontaneous Emotions are just that, spontaneous reactions to life events. Whether you find yourself feeling sad, angry, hurt or even numb and shut down, these emotions are perfectly normal expressions of what you feel about this tragedy. You feel them because you care.

Here are a couple of examples.

You’re feeling fine as you enter your local grocery store, but as soon as you reach the counter and your eyes meet the cashier’s, you spontaneously burst into tears, without any idea why.
It’s been 10 years since your loss. You’re driving down the road and a song begins on the radio, and the words trigger emotional pain within you. You begin to cry in deep, agonizing sobs and have to pull off the road as your emotions spin out of control.
Emotional responses to grief are very sad and painful, yes. However, you do not need to hold onto them for a lifetime, and fill yourself with pain and relive it over and over and over again, as most people do.

The overwhelming emotions you feel today are not due to the loss of your loved one. The pain you feel today is a combination of ALL your spontaneous emotions of grief.

Emotional Shocks

I call emotional shocks the forgotten emotions of grief.

After the death of a loved one, we endure countless Emotional Shocks; one after another, after another (the funeral, telling friends about the death, going out for the first time without the loved one, facing friends and family and feeling vulnerable, dealing with hospital bills long after the loss).

Sometimes it is hard to tell when one ends and the next begins as they start blending together until it can seem like life is one big emotional shock.
We usually try to brush them aside, and get on with something else. But the thing is. Each time we do this we are actually repressing and sending these emotions directly into an inner storage box, to compound and heighten the next emotional response to a similar event.
Unresolved Emotional Shocks can cause post traumatic stress or panic attacks, result in emotional outbursts at the most inconvenient times, trigger repeats whenever we undertake a similar activity, and make our lives very miserable.

The overwhelming emotions you feel today are not due to the loss of your loved one. The pain you feel today is a combination of ALL your spontaneous emotions of grief and ALL your emotional shocks.

Turning spontaneous emotions into mind chatter emotions

A very effective way people use to avoid painful emotions is to think and over-think about their topic. For Example: A person may get into an empty bed and feel the ache of loneliness, which is expected and a perfectly natural spontaneous emotional response to the death of a spouse.

But instead of just feeling, experiencing then releasing that spontaneous emotion, they start thinking about the life topic of loneliness.

”I hate being alone, I hate that this happened. Why has my life gone away? Nothing is normal anymore. I stare out the window, looking at nothing, wondering if I will always feel this terrible numbness.” Their emotional pain grows with each thought.
By the time they are finished thinking and fall asleep, this person is totally overwhelmed with loneliness, life and the prospect of their future isolation.
Doing this has transformed a normal spontaneous emotion into something that feels far worse than it did originally.

This is one-way people unknowingly complicate and make this first stage of their grief far more difficult and painful than it needs to be.

The overwhelming emotions you feel today are not due to the loss of your loved one. The pain you feel today is a combination of ALL your spontaneous emotions of grief and ALL your emotional shocks and ALL the times you have thought about your spontaneous emotions.

Mind chatter emotions

Mind Chatter Emotions come when we think about life issues and events, over and over in our minds. The more we think, the more emotional impact we create. We might not realize, but we are the ones creating and feeding this emotional distress.

For Example: Last week’s mail is piling up on the counter. As you add to the pile you start worrying how on earth you are going to get through it all — take care of bills that are due, the insurance company needs dependent information, or your child’s school papers that have to be filled out. There’s too many things overwhelming you, making it difficult to think straight much less get anything done.
Here’s another Example: Your life has changed forever after the loss of your son. He shouldn’t have died in the war. It was wrong. Your mind and body are overcome with anger and resentment as you spend hour after hour reliving the night a knock came to your door. You torment yourself with thoughts, over and over and over and over again.

Our mind’s naturally go crazy after the loss of a loved one, for specific reasons. We can learn about and understand our mind’s natural panic, and take specific steps to rein in our mind chatter and worry, so we make life and getting things done far easier for ourselves.

The overwhelming emotions you feel today are not due to the loss of your loved one. The pain you feel today is a combination of ALL your spontaneous emotions of grief and ALL your emotional shocks and ALL the times you have thought about your spontaneous emotions and ALL the times you have spent thinking about your loss.

Self Blame

Why haven’t I dealt with this? Why aren’t I over it yet? Why do these extreme emotions keep taking over? Why do I ache? Why can’t I get on with my life?

How do you feel when you start beating yourself up? What additional emotions are you creating with these thoughts? Is that helping you?

Here is some information that may help.

Of course our mind is going crazy. Of course it is trying to regroup and come up with solutions from the perspective of this emergency. It’s frame of reference has been shattered, what was known as normal and safe is gone, your comfort zone has vanished, your daily life events have altered in a flash and there are just too many things coming at you at the same time.
The mind that assumes its frame of reference has been lost goes into overdrive, frantically searching its memory banks and racing around trying to figure out how to make everything right again from the perspective of this emergency.
It overlooks what was previously known (life framework), and instead questions and investigates everything, as it now thinks that nothing can be taken for granted. The ordinary, mundane event becomes an insurmountable problem as the mind checks and double checks to see if it is safe and can become part of a new frame of reference (rules of life) that it assumes needs to be created.
With so much going on inside our minds, emotionally in response to our devastating loss, not to mention trying to complete tasks (funeral, organizing a new job, the kids), and providing for normal life necessities, it would be unusual if we weren’t overwhelmed by stress.

So, when you start beating yourself up for having a bad day, feeling sad, or emotional when you think you should be over it, or doing better by now, stop, think and then you may decide to be kind to yourself because you really have been through a lot.

The overwhelming emotions you feel today are not due to the loss of your loved one. The pain you feel today is a combination of ALL your spontaneous emotions of grief and ALL your emotional shocks and ALL the times you have thought about your spontaneous emotions and ALL the times you have spent thinking about your loss and ALL the times you have complained at yourself for not coping or getting over this, and ALL the implications on your mind from this emergency.

There’s another topic that I’d like to clarify quickly – Emotions themselves

Go listen to our The Truth about Emotions podcast as it will help clarify emotions in general for you. Then you can really appreciate all the repressed emotions of grief that are inside you and how they got there.

You are literally a stockpile of painful emotions. This is why you hurt and feel a grief ache. And also why you may feel that you haven’t recovered or your life isn’t what it should be.

I am so touched by the people I do grieving releases with. They are filled and overcome by these painful emotions. It is very sad.

So why do you still feel these emotions months, years or even decades later?

Your loss may have been 5 weeks, 5 years or 50 years ago, but you still feel it as strongly today as you did back then because until released, these stored emotions are held within us.
Just imagine how much pain is stored inside you. Mountains of it.

Now, you still wonder why grief is overwhelming??

Or are you starting to appreciate and understand the enormity and implications of this event.

Of course everyone’s experience of grief is different, because of their individual personalities, make up and types of experiences. But grief is grief, and it hurts so much. And some people never recover from this hurt because they didn’t know they could.

Here’s where it gets exciting

Well for me it is exciting, because I am thrilled to tell you that there is a way you CAN release your spontaneous emotions as they occur, and their stockpile.

And you CAN release your emotional shocks as they happen, and their stockpile.
And you CAN learn how to curb your mind chatter and make your life immeasurably easier.
And you CAN go through your grief as a process, with clear direction, and purpose, and find the peace and resolution you seek, and feel good about your loved one rather than mere pain whenever you think of them.
And you CAN feel as though you have honored their memory so you do feel ready to heal.

About 6 months ago I started working with a lovely lady by the name of Elaine Williams. Elaine’s husband died nearly 5 years ago, but she was still filled with overwhelming pain and emotions, and wanted to find a way to recover and rebuild her life.

The results Elaine accomplished with Greene’s Release were amazing to say the least, and I was delighted to watch her pain heal bit by bit. Then Elaine who happens to be a brilliant writer and author, and I decided to create a specific Greene’s Release book so other grieving people could heal just like she was in the process of doing.

This book evolved into one that gently guides people through a journey to release and heal the emotional pain of their loss. But we couldn’t forget their overwhelmed mind, mind chatter and worry, and healing the stress of this ordeal.

The techniques, concepts, exercises, and healing ideas presented in this book were spontaneously created by our connection and earnest desire to make this book something that would truly help the grieving heart.

I am absolutely thrilled with the outcome, and believe it will change the whole direction of grief and mourning.

Now there is a clear path through grief so people don’t have to sit aimlessly in it, or hope that time will help heal this horrific pain. Now they have a companion to hold their hand and be there with them, and the answers that they seek. And now they can heal their emotional pain whether its from a recent loss or one that occurred months, years or even decades prior.

This podcast is to tell you that you don’t have to hurt endlessly. You don’t have to sit in this pain. You can heal and release it, in a way that feels okay for you.

This podcast is to tell you that there is another way!!

The grief book is called Heal Your Pain: Releasing the Emotions of Grief & Loss.

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