The overwhelming and all consuming feeling of grief, loss, anger and anxiety can grip your reality and shake you into pieces. When you experience these powerful emotions it is important to find your way to feel well again in positive and productive ways.
While drinking yourself to oblivion or rebelling against the world may seem like the ideal solution to numb the pain, the truth is it will still be there the next day, month and year lurking in your subconscious and you’ll just have an ever growing hangover to add to your heart break.
So how do we cope and where do we turn to feel better? A support system and empowering knowledge is vital to recovery. Although everything you need to get to a better place is within you some times when you are so close to a project you feel like you are trapped in a huge frightening labyrinth rather than a potentially manageable maze.
You can have the answers to your problems and the power to turn pain into learning and stress into motivation.
To better understand why you feel this way it is vitally important to know that every negative in life has positive intention. Simply being open to learning positives through the negative lessons you are given in life.
As you may know the process of grief, loss or stress goes though 5 stages:
Denial Stage
This isn’t or cannot happen to me. I don’t deserve this. Ignoring, avoiding or pushing the problem and the feelings tied around the issue down and away.
Anger Stage
Overwhelming aggressive and temperamental feelings towards yourself or others or the cause of the grief, stress or loss.
Bargaining Stage
“If only’s”. If only I had thought to seek help sooner, done things differently, if only I could take it back and try again.
Depression Stage
Sense of hopelessness, despair, feeling lifeless, hollow or empty.
Acceptance Stage
Coming to terms with the cause and the process of grief, loss or stress.
Accepting what is and what isn’t and feeling at peace, letting go or dealing with the above emotions and their cause.
What isn’t in this clinical process and should be of the highest importance is the learning. We are not often taught the way to truly understand the positive intention from a negative situation.
Acceptance for people often ends with them avoiding the pain, memories or relationships that caused their grief, stress or loss in fear of repeating the cycle. If a positive learning is not achieved it can mean that the person continues to replicate the issue throughout their life until they learn from it.
Also within each cycle can be underlining issues of shame or guilt at feeling anger or sadness. All of these need to be dealt with in a healthy way so that an individual can move on to become the best version on themselves from lessons they have learnt from their hardships.
The Learning stage (Achieving an Inspired Brain!!)
After acceptance it is a powerful time to start allowing yourself to fully feel and express your fear, longing, pain and angst and freely embracing everything that would have caused you pain in a positive light. Learning’s are felt when you can truly come from a reflective perspective, where you can see the powerful message behind any misfortune.
For example: The thought and feeling process of an Adult victim of child abuse.
Denial: Disbelief, this couldn’t happen to me, I trusted them that they wouldn’t hurt me, I was a defenceless child counting on them to do the right thing and genuinely care for my well being.
Anger: How could they rob me of my childhood/innocence, personal power creating feelings of bitterness, hatred and rage.
Bargaining: If only I hadn’t of been born or had different parents/siblings/family/friends, if only I hadn’t of been a girl/boy, if only I had been a better child.
Depression: Ashamed, broken, dirty, loss, hopeless, unloved, unworthy, dark, desperate and guilty.
Acceptance: What’s happened is in the past, ownership, moving on and letting go.
With out understanding a positive learning: Attracts abusive relationships, expects less for themself, treats and speaks of themself badly, has self harm, eating disorder or suicidal tendencies, lives with a scarcity mindset (Never enough- love, money, time, happiness) and the abusers ‘win’ by disempowering him/her not only as a child but into adulthood as well.
With a understanding of a positive Learning: Learnt to reclaim their personal power, treats others how he or she wishes they was treated (Taken care of, loved, cherished, valued and worthy). To create a new pattern in their life to protect those who are defenceless. To genuinely be a better person for themself and rise above the damage of the abuser(s). To never take for granted good days, health, little things in life and to seek others who help her not hurt them (aim to not to replicate the problem). Also if he or she does happen to encounter problems they can more readily cope and again, attaining a positive lesson.
When you can uncover the gift of the negative events in our life we can understand how to reach our highest potential by having to dust ourselves off and climb up higher than before.
If you feel you have any tricky prickly pointy pain lurking in your mind and soul and even if you have no idea why you feel this way, know that you can and will survive and once you survive you can thrive beyond your wildest dreams.
