Loss response:
Mind: Shock, disbelief, overwhelm, sense of unreality
Heart: Sadness, anger, irritability, fear, guilt,
Somatic response: crying, breathing difficulties, sleep disturbance, digestive upset, flu-like symptoms, loss of appetite
Spirit: Loss of meaning, loss of faith, sense of isolation and profound aloneness
Continued response:
Mind: forgetfulness, loss of concentration, over thinking
Heart: Sadness, depression, despair, anger, anguish, emptiness
Somatic: exhaustion, continued sleep disturbance, decreased immunity to illness, loss of appetite, or excessive eating
Healing Toward Integration:
Mind: Meaning-making, Acceptance, clarity of one’s own process, Understanding, new view
Heart: compassion, Love, reconnection, heart broken open, increased desire to engage in relationship
Somatic: increased energy, improved sleep, appetite returns
Few general points on Loss/Grief:
Mind body impact: emotions inform the body system, working with the body regulates emotions
Spiritual transformation: through engaging a multidimensional (body,mind,heart,spirit) aspect of healing, concepts of Self, expand beyond the personal
Community/contact: We are biologically built to be with others. Contact not only assuages our isolation, it releases healing chemicals within the body. To be seen, heard, recognized for our losses, is integral in our ability to move on, knowing we have been understood, and our pain given significance.
Mindfulness: reducing suffering, recognizing our “true self”, you are beyond or, more than, whatever limited emotions you may be experiencing
Movement: engaging the body and emotions
Wilderness/nature: grounding, resourcing, restoring biorhythms, finding resilience
Psychotherapeutic techniques: EMDR, Body Psychotherapy (learning from sensation, unlocking the nervous system, balancing the nervous system, create new neural pathways, completing actions, cognitive behavioral approaches, transpersonal)
Breathwork: reinforming the nervous system, unlocking, unwinding, reconnecting. Real physiological changes in the body to cleanse toxins and release stress.
Visual imagery: creating new neural pathways
Art
Groups
Writing
Adventure/challenge
Ritual
Spiritual practice
Speaking/witnessing, recognition, marking
Meaning making
To raise awareness:
Mind, body, spirit, heart
To turn toward the pain
What does this crisis, this event, offer you, what is the gateway leading you toward.
Deeper understanding of self, of others, reconnection
Transpersonal perspectives
Larger capacity to stay, without reacting or withdrawing
Decreasing tendency toward self aggression, or other aggression
No projection
No layers of addiction, bad relationships, over eating, loneliness, hiding.
Instilling meaning, purpose
Expansion rather than contraction
Creating warriors: who feel the fear, relate to it, learn from it, and let it break us open, to relate more fully to life.