Saturday, November 15, 2008

The Importance of Grief Work in Being Free

I recently saw a client who, along with other issues, is struggling with "frozen grief", having to do with realities from childhood that were, indeed, deeply sad, shame inducing, security destroying, and chaotic. The tears, as the subject came up, were right behind the eyeballs, the pain of the memories was present and palpable, yet this client has learned to use humor as a way of coping with these feelings, instead of actually working toward some level of real resolution and integration. In other words, the client is stuck in the past as far as this issue goes, and is therefore handicapped in current life.

The major theme to emerge during the session had to do with "honoring" this grief, acknowledging it's real importance, respecting it, and somehow finding a way or ways to give explicit form to it. Why drag up old hurts, some would ask? Simply because the ways in which these hurts so obviously impact current life in negative, undermining, destructive, and ironically painful ways is unhealthy, that is, it causes unhappiness.

Pretending that old hurts are in the past is simply an illusion. The reality is that these hurts will and do affect our lives today. If they were left in the past with no adverse affect in the present, we could agree with the "why not leave them in the past" approach. But that's just not the way it works. We're structured in such a way psychologically that our experiences have lasting impact, and traumatic experiences have lasting traumatic impact, unless they can be resolved, integrated, healed.

The "get over it" view is unfortunate, not just because it is lacking in compassion, but because it's unrealistic, it's bad science. Like a garden, we are organic beings with particular kinds of needs if we are to flourish. We can survive even if these needs are never met, but we cannot "do well". Grief work is a natural process of healing the psyche from traumatic wounding.