Hello Everyone!

[dirk23wright]

Hi, I'm not an NDE survivor, but I do find them fascinating. I've been reading and listening to the stories for years now. I'm glad to be here to find out more from others about this topic.
I just completed my Grief Educator training with David Kessler. I'm qualified for peer-to-peer support. You can ask me anything about grief if you need support.
Dirk

[DTR1975]

Does your grief training follow the Kubler-Ross 5 stage model of grief or some other frame work?

[Giulia]

Hello and welcome to the Forum, dirk23wright.

I lost my precious husband on 15 December 2023 and grief is one of my core issues now. The ironic thing is that I had devoted all my free time to volunteer grief support work from 2002 to 2022, and now I am grief-stricken in a really bad way.

I wonder whether you have any suggestions for me.

Please make your self at home here and let us know a little more about yourself.

[dirk23wright]

Does your grief training follow the Kubler-Ross 5 stage model of grief or some other frame work?

Thanks for asking.

Yes, David Kessler co-wrote "On Grief and Grieving" with Ross. There is a misconception in the general population about what she meant and said about the 5 stages. In her original book "On Death and Dying" she explicitly said that the stages often appear in different orders in individuals, and some don't experience all of them, or they experience other emotions when they are dying or grieving. So, it's not a regular progression through the stages, or aspects, of grieving. They are just emotional states that many people experience during grieving.

For me, I have realized that every thought or memory we have of the person we lost may be in a different stage, and that it's not even important to identify the stages. The reason I say that is because catharsis is where the healing occurs. The longer we can stay in catharsis, the faster the healing occurs. However, catharsis is scary because we are out of control while in it. When we are in the throes of the emotional flow of catharsis, we have no control over what we feel, nor do we have control over our tears. While in catharsis, we cannot identify the emotion, because emotions are mute. They don't show up and say "Hello! I'm sadness." When we are just feeling it, in the pure flow of it, our intellectual side is mostly shut off. As soon as we identify the emotion "Oh, I'm sad right now" we pop out of the flow of catharsis. We go back into our intellectual side as soon as we identify the emotion with a name, and thus the healing stops. If the goal is to heal the pain, then the longer we can stay in catharsis, the better, in my opinion.

Grieving is huge. It's a gigantic topic.

[dirk23wright]

Hello and welcome to the Forum, dirk23wright.

I lost my precious husband on 15 December 2023 and grief is one of my core issues now. The ironic thing is that I had devoted all my free time to volunteer grief support work from 2002 to 2022, and now I am grief-stricken in a really bad way.

I wonder whether you have any suggestions for me.

Please make your self at home here and let us know a little more about yourself.

I'm sorry that you're suffering from this loss. The stronger the emotional bond with the person you lost, the more painful the grieving becomes. Grieving is about letting go of our attachment to the person, not the person themselves. Love is forever. Those we have loved are still loved by us even after they are gone. Grieving is about letting go of the attachment. After grieving is complete, we still love them, but the neediness is gone. We'll still shed a tear when we see their photo, but we won't be out of control with emotions anymore after grieving is complete.

What I do is sit in the darkness before bed each night and let the thoughts and memories that cause me distress to come to me. I allow the feelings to flow through me like water. I repeat the thought or memory, saying the memory out loud, and again allow the feelings to flow through me. The more I do this, and allow the feelings to flow, the faster the healing occurs. Very soon, usually, the thought no longer bothers me. I don't have an emotional reaction to the thought or memory. Then I can move on to the next thought or memory. It's a type of exposure therapy for the pain.

Grieving can take years to complete. We have to keep at it, and I call what I do intentional grieving. I go looking for the thoughts or memories that cause me distress. I'm not afraid of the despair because I know there are nuggets of golden wisdom down there. I always float back up to the top too. I don't have to worry about never coming back from the depths of despair. Once the thought or memory no longer bothers me, I just float back to the top, no worries.

Grieving is permanent. Once we complete grieving a loss, we never have to grieve it again.

Grieving makes us into better people. I have become a better person through grieving. I'm more patient and compassionate now.

My inspiration for Intentional Grieving was the Life Review from near death experiences. I thought to myself, "why not do my own life review while I'm still here?" So, I started doing that. I reviewed my life from the perspective of absolute responsibility, just like in the NDE LR. I took the attitude that I'm responsible for everything that happened in my life, at least to some extent. I took responsibility for my contribution to what happened in other words. That lead to 5 years now of grieving my own life. I still find memories or thoughts that cause me distress, but I'm not afraid anymore of feeling the pain around them. I know what to do now. So, that's part of the reason I wanted to join this site.

Grieving is an emotional process. It's not intellectual at all. We cannot rationalize it. Emotions exist in a different universe from the intellect. The way I see it, our emotional self provides commentary on our intellectual thoughts by showing us where the hurt is located. It's not that our thoughts cause the emotional reaction. It's that we are wounded emotionally and our emotional side is telling us where the sore spot is located when we have these thoughts and memories. The great mystery is how and why this works. Catharsis is when we're just in the flow of emotion, yet it heals us of the pain. It's completely unknown why this occurs. Catharsis has been side lined by psychologists since Freud. I see it as central to healing now. I'm not a psychologist though. I'm a retired engineer from the federal gov't. I'm completely unqualified academically to even discuss this, yet here I am with truths about grieving that David Kessler expressed clearly in his books and in the class I took. I found correspondence with David on grieving through my own experience of it. So, I guess I learned through doing, like a monkey I suppose.

Grieving is loving ourselves. Feeling our pain through catharsis is an act of loving ourself. We are nurturing ourselves through that act.

Grieving sets us free. We are no longer triggered by what others say, or what happens in our environment, when we complete our grieving. We can go and do whatever we want, say and hear anything, without an emotional reaction. That doesn't mean we don't feel. It just means that we don't suddenly burst into tears when someone says something, for example. We still feel it, but it doesn't throw us immediately into catharsis.

People avoid grieving because it's not an intellectual process, and because to heal it, we have to let ourselves be out of control with it. It's scary to do that, so we tend to avoid it. I'm not like that. I dive right in. I'm crazy like that.

Anything I don't grieve is dragged forward into my future and disrupts my relationships there. Grief doesn't sleep. It's always there, waiting to be healed. It's up to us to be diligent to find every thought or memory that causes us distress and heal it.

There is so much more to grieving that I can go into later. I hope this helps.

[Giulia]

Hello again, dirk23wright.

Thank you for this extremely interesting essay about grieving. You sound very qualified indeed.

You said

Grieving is permanent. Once we complete grieving a loss, we never have to grieve it again.

Do you mean that the positive effect of grieving (catharsis) is permanent?

I am not a psychologist either, yet I offered grief support online for 20 years mainly by listening to people and getting them to share.

My peculiarity is that I have been a researcher about life after death for my whole life and, as from the age of 29, I started having out-of-body experiences and was able to meet with my loved ones on the other side. In this way, the loss does not feel so raw. I also get to meet loved ones on the other side through dreams.

When I was 14, Dr Moody's book Life after Life was first published. Since I live in Italy, I started reading his book in separate chapters on Readers' Digest. So I was introduced to NDEs from the age of 14 and always felt fascinated by the topic. In particular, I found some synchronicities and similarities between Dr Moody's research conclusions and those of an Italian author called Ernesto Bozzano who, in his book The Crisis of Death published in 1930, produced a collection of 30 cases of transition from life to death based on mediumistic accounts from the 19th century and the early 20th century.

I look forward to reading more about grieving and your own experiences and thoughts.

[ADMINDiane]

A very warm welcome to youdirk23wright! We are happy that you have joined us
Thank you for your most comprehensive insight on grief and loss.

[dirk23wright]

Hello again, dirk23wright.

Thank you for this extremely interesting essay about grieving. You sound very qualified indeed.

You said

Grieving is permanent. Once we complete grieving a loss, we never have to grieve it again.

Do you mean that the positive effect of grieving (catharsis) is permanent?

I am not a psychologist either, yet I offered grief support online for 20 years mainly by listening to people and getting them to share.

My peculiarity is that I have been a researcher about life after death for my whole life and, as from the age of 29, I started having out-of-body experiences and was able to meet with my loved ones on the other side. In this way, the loss does not feel so raw. I also get to meet loved ones on the other side through dreams.

When I was 14, Dr Moody's book Life after Life was first published. Since I live in Italy, I started reading his book in separate chapters on Readers' Digest. So I was introduced to NDEs from the age of 14 and always felt fascinated by the topic. In particular, I found some synchronicities and similarities between Dr Moody's research conclusions and those of an Italian author called Ernesto Bozzano who, in his book The Crisis of Death published in 1930, produced a collection of 30 cases of transition from life to death based on mediumistic accounts from the 19th century and the early 20th century.

I look forward to reading more about grieving and your own experiences and thoughts.

Thanks! Yes, in my experience, the healing occurs during catharsis, but it may take several sessions to complete it.

So, that's why I repeat the thought or memory. It's like an exposure therapy for emotional pain. The more I'm exposed to the painful thought or memory, and the more I spend time in the catharsis associated with that, the faster the healing occurs such that the thought or memory no longer bothers me. For me now, I usually heal it completely in only one or two repeats. It used to take a lot longer. The more I become adept at just letting it all flow through me instantly with no resistance, the faster it all moves forward.

Take, for example, young children. Something painful happens in their life and they cry. They wail. They sob. If the parents allow them to complete it, the very soon just go back to what they were doing and forget about the pain. They healed it very quickly I believe because they just let it all out right then and there. Of course, having a breakdown in the middle of Walmart is a difficult thing for most people to perform, or to witness. But, if we were to be more like children, then it could become more acceptable.

So, once the thought or memory no longer bothers me, then I'm done with it. I forget about it. I move on to another tragic experience or thought and grieve that. I call it Intentional Grieving. It's a spiritual practice for me since in Buddhism they teach that suffering comes from attachment. If grieving heals attachment, then it must be a spiritual practice akin to what Buddha intended. I feel more free after grieving. I can think any thought and not get upset. I can recall any memory and it doesn't bother me. I can shed a tear reading someone else's story and when it's done, I'm done. I move on and take a sip of coffee. It doesn't stick to me, in other words. I don't have to do anything special to process myself in private if I'm exposed to these kinds of tragic stories.

That's what I mean by it being permanent. We don't have to revisit the pain because it's gone.

But, sometimes people confuse shedding a tear over a photo of our loved one with grieving. It's not necessarily grieving when we feel emotion. We can just as easily cry because we love them so much, not because we need them anymore. We can just feel so much love for them because grieving has opened us up to our feelings, and our ability to feel more deeply. Grieving makes us grow up emotionally. We become emotionally mature through grieving. It's a powerful tool for self transformation in my opinion and experience. The way that we hide grief now, or consider it an illness, is keeping us from growing up. We need to be exposed to real life tragedy, I believe, for us to grow. I have become a more compassionate and patient person through grieving, for example.

My technique of intentional grieving was inspired by the Life Review from NDEs. I'm certainly willing to offer peer-to-peer support for anyone grieving over their NDE. I have no doubts about the reality of NDEs, so that's not an issue at all for me. I'm not phased by strong emotions either. I'm weird that way.

[dirk23wright]

A very warm welcome to youdirk23wright! We are happy that you have joined us
Thank you for your most comprehensive insight on grief and loss.

Thanks! I appreciate the support and I'm glad you got value out of what I wrote.