| |
| |
| |
| |
About a dozen years ago we turned our attention to the experience of Grief, and modeled people who felt joyful and resourceful (not just “OK”) about a loving relationship that had ended in death or divorce, etc. We discovered that these people still had vivid associated representations of the lost person, so they continued to feel a glad sense of the presence of the person who was actually lost in the “real world.” Most of us experience the same thing when we are temporarily separated from someone we love. Even though the person is physically absent (and could died in the interim) we continue to feel connected, because we still represent him/her as if s/he were physically present.
Understanding this made it relatively easy to teach this useful skill to others who were still stuck in feelings of emptiness, sadness, and despair. Only after the method was thoroughly tested did we realize that the same process could also be used for losses in the other four meta-program content sorting categories: things, activities, locations, and even information. And in fact these other categories are often overlooked aspects of the loss of a person. When a relationship ends, often things, activities, locations or information are also lost.
Next we realized that a loss in the external world often entails a loss of the sense of self as well. Loss of a spouse often results in a loss of self as a lovable person, and loss of a job may take a heavy toll on a person's self-worth. Although the same process works on both kinds of loss, it is respectful to realize and acknowledge the self dimension of a loss.
Later still, we found that the same process can be used with the loss of a dream—something that the person never actually had, except in their vivid imagination, perhaps for decades. This loss of a dream is often a major aspect of an actual loss. Someone who loses a child also loses their dream of the child's future growing up and maturing, etc.
This loss of a dream is at the core of what is often called a “mid-life” crisis, and the same process can also be used for this form of grief. What began as a search for a solution for a particular problem became a process with much wider applications, as well as a demonstration of the interrelatedness of many different distinctions that had already been made in the field.
About ten years ago we focused on anger and forgiveness in an advanced modeling seminar, and we and the participants together developed a pattern for helping people stuck in anger, resentment and desire for revenge. We found a way for people to move forward into an experience of congruent forgiveness that is consistent with taking positive action to maintain and support the values that were violated in the experience that led to anger. After developing this process, we realized that the few failures that we had experienced when using the grief process had resulted from unresolved anger and resentment toward the lost person, pointing out yet another interrelatedness.
| |
| |
| |
| |
