Cancer as a Gateway

Multi-Dimensional Approach To Healing

Grief: What to expect...


Determining when it is normal and when you need guidance, support, counseling.



Unresolved grief can lead to clinical depression and suicidality

      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:

  • Grieving is normal, all of the symptoms are normal.
  • We tend to want to fix the process, over medicate, diagnose. Very important to normalize the process, so we can move through it with less fear and more compassion, and not put band-aides on broken hearts, when the wounding will only resurface in the future wider and deeper.
  • There is no such thing as completion or resolution. Grieving is a continued evolution of relating to loss, of integrating that loss into meaningful perspectives that allows the pain to point us toward greater contact with the world.
  • Our task is to create a new relationship with our lost loved one, and to carry forward the wisdom gained.
  • There are phases to grieving, but not linear steps.
  • There is a bio-chemical reaction in grief. In other words, a biological response that creates the mind’s confusion, the body fatigue, and the limited ability to function and cope. It helps to understand this biology so as to not judge our situation as a measure of our worth, or to push ourselves out of the process. It is an exhausting process that requires we move between curling up, and movement, to allow the integration to continue.

 Modalities to offer healing beyond trauma, loss, catastrophic illness:

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.

 2007 present centered psychotherapyTM, L.L.C.
www.dianerenzcounseling.com 720 317 5170