Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2011 23:45:16 GMT
An extract from Richard Bandler's Book "Get The Life You Want" on dealing with grief, getting through and over it to having a more happier and fuller life.
The more people are stuck for a long period of time feeling bad about the past, the less time they have to begin making life more wonderful. It's important for people to know how to get over such things so they can begin creating new relationships and new joy in their lives.
Grief is a natural process that occurs when somebody dies. We all grieve and that's appropriate, to a certain extent. In the early stages, it's important that you get through grief. However, over the years, again and again,I've had clients who were still grieving three, four, five, even twenty five, thirty-five, and forty years later.
There comes a point at which grief isn't healthy anymore. Certainly,
when you're married to someone for a long time and they pass
away, your thoughts of them are going to be there forever. When
people lose a child, they are, of course, going to hurt, and they're
going to hurt for a long time. Their thoughts of their child will always
be there, but they don't have to hurt forever.
In fact, one of the cases I had was a woman who came to me who
had had four children. Her sixteen-year-old boy had died of cancer,
which was a long, drawn-out and painful process. She went to pieces.
Her husband brought her to me and said that the family was falling
apart. All she did was cry and grieve. When I asked how long he had
been dead, he replied, "Three years." I made a decision at that point
in time that I had to do something to shock her a little bit, to wake
her up out of her grief and get her to pay attention to the other children
she had.
The question I asked her is one that's worth considering for
almost anybody who loses somebody and grieves over them. The
question is simple. I turned to her and asked her if she would rather
I put her in a hypnotic trance and give her amnesia, so it would be
like she had never known her son. Would she give up all the memories
of his sixteen years of life in exchange for not feeling the pain
she had now? She looked at me quite angrily and said no, and I said,
"Good. The reason you don't want to give up those memories is
because if you gave yourself amnesia from ever having known somebody you loved, you'd miss out on all the good times. In fact, that's what's happening now."
When you took inventory, one of the things that happened was
that some of the images you made in your mind were images where
you saw what happened at the time as if you were there. These
images are associated. In some of those images, you saw yourself in
those memories, and those are entirely different because they are
disassociated.
The trouble with long, drawn-out deaths-in fact, all deaths-is
when people remember the person who has died, they make life-size
images and they see those images as if they're happening now.
It's very difficult to get through the pain of death. When people look at good memories, they'll see themselves in the good memories, but
they'll remember the funeral. They'll remember the death as if it's
happening now. In other words, they'll be associated with it, and this
is simply backward. The process of flipping pictures is how people
come out of grief when they stop remembering the tragedy of death
and start remembering the good times vividly and associating with
good memories.
I put the grieving mother into a light, closed-eye process. I had
her go through and take ten really good memories and see what she
saw at the time and hear what she heard, and then look at the
unpleasant memories and see herself worrying next to the hospital
bed of her son. By going back and forth between these things, it tells
us unconsciously how to sort our memories so that we disassociate
from the unpleasantness of someone's death and associate with the
good memories. And then there's only one more step, which is to
put it in the past.
The trick is to take the bad memories and to push them off into
the distance, so they go into the past where they belong. If we hold
on to memories as if they're happening to us now, then it's very hard
for us to get over grief and into the natural process of healing. We
need to do what's important, which is, once again, to come back to
our senses and look at the people who are still around. Everybody's
got some friends, everybody's got some relatives, and even older
people who have lost the people they have loved (like a husband of
fifty years) need to realize there's still life out there. There are still
other people.
All of our bad memories are made possible by the way in which we hold on to them.
The best thing about the future is that it's in front of you. The best
thing about the past is that it lies behind.
Getting Over Grieving Exercise
1. Think of all the memories you have of the person who
has passed away.
2. Remember all the good memories about being with
them by being associated in the memories. Feel them
as if they are happening now.
3. Remember all the bad times by looking at yourself in
the image. See yourself going through the experiences
in small images, which is like watching yourself on a
small, black and white television screen.
4. Take your time line and imagine a line stretching way
behind you that represents certain times from your
past you have forgotten and never think about. Imagine
taking all of the bad times with this person and
placing them all on this line way off behind you.
5. Imagine a wonderful future in front of you where you
honor their memory by living as fully and as happily
as possible.
The exercise above is not just for reading and practicing once. And please read my other posts.
All my offerings on this board are designed to help you to discover that you haven't tried everything and that you do have more choices in how you can change and feel about yourself and your life.
Love and best wishes,
Whitelighter
