Loss and Grief
There is no right or wrong way to handle grief. Grief comes in many different forms including a loved one dying, the end of a relationship, loss of a job or even children growing up and leaving for college. We all experience grief in our own unique way. For some the process may take months or years and others struggle with grief over the course of their entire lifetime.
From a spiritual perspective grieving is often linked with a lifelong lesson of abandonment. It is something that we come face to face with many times throughout our lives. Often one loss can trigger the memory of other losses we have had in our lifetime. The lesson in abandonment is not so much about being left but about how we react to the loss.
As a society, people tend to support the grieving process around death as socially acceptable. However, we often judge the amount of time someone should grieve based on the relationship with the deceased, closeness of the relationship and the age of the person who has died. There is no right or wrong way to grieve or no precise remedy to heal. Grief is a very personal process for each person.
While our society tends to emphasize grief in the context of death, there are many others who experience grief based on a loss that has nothing to do with death. Divorce and breakups of significant relationships have a very large component of grief even if we are happy to see the relationship end. Some may miss the intimacy or reliability of the relationship and others may just be happy it’s over. In either case, at some point, we loved or cared for this person and had hopes and plans for the future that will never be realized. Letting go of our “happily ever after” is part of the grieving process at the end of any relationship.
Recognizing our own grief and loss, honoring ourselves and our own process and not judging another’s grief process is all part of the human experience. Don’t judge what it looks like, how it feels or the way others may be treating us. In some families loss can trigger relationship problems that may not have been prevalent before. This may make the loss feel more intense because the relationships we relied on for stability are also changing as we grieve.
There is no magic cure or pill for grief. It is something that all humans experience. Often how we fill the hole of grief can directly determine how we handle the loss. If we fill the hole of divorce with anger and resentment we are bound to be bitter. If we fill the hole of death with blame and self-criticism over what we could have done, we often cause ourselves more pain and stretch out the process. What would happen if we filled the hole of grief about job loss with the hope for new and better opportunities on the horizon? What if we filled the loss of divorce with gratitude and understanding, even if we feel wronged? How would it feel to fill the hole of death with gratitude, laughter and good memories, no matter how few and far between?
What if we all decided to honor each other’s grief and support each other in the process? What if we stopped saying things like “suck it up” and “just move on”? If we can see that we all experience grief and the pain of loss, we can empower and honor the journeys of others as well as our own.
Spirit Guides
About 7 years ago, when I began this journey, I had no idea what spirit guides were or how they worked with us. I don’t even think I had ever heard the term. So many people have asked me about spirit guides and how they work that I thought I would give you a brief introduction in a Q & A format, using the questions I get asked all the time. As always, this is my understanding and interpretation. Take what resonates with you and leave the rest.
What are spirit guides?
Spirit guides are beings from the other side that help us connect with our higher selves. They are not to be confused with angels since angels have never incarnated. Spirit guides are beings who have lived the human lessons and are working to learn from the other side. They are also not usually our loved ones who have crossed over. On one or two occasions, I have seen this but not too often.
What do they do?
Spirit guides help us connect to our higher selves and offer guidance and advice about situations we are experiencing and life lessons. Usually guides do not push us to make decisions or force their selves upon us. They will wait until we request help.
How many I have?
Generally speaking, we have one master guide that has signed up with us for this lifetime. They are there with us throughout our journey. There are also other guides that are there with us for certain events or times in our lives. For example, you may have a bully to contend with in 8th grade that would have a guide specifically dedicated to that situation or you may have guides that are there to help you deal with loss. I like to look at this with an analogy to healthcare. Your master guide is your general practitioner while the others are specialists. You can have many guides simultaneously communicating with you or only one.
Can I share a spirit guide with someone?
Many guides help many people. It is not uncommon to have a guide that you share with someone else but when they communicate with you, it is almost always about only you.
Who are you talking to during a reading?
When I do readings I communicate with whatever guides show up. My guides are also present in a reading to help facilitate and conduct communication. The information that comes through in most readings (non-medium) is from your spirit guides.
What is my spirit guides name?
The name of you spirit guide is not important. Spirit guides names can be found through doing meditations and connecting with them. However, knowing the name of your spirit guide does not make a difference. A name is something that, as humans, we consider important. Spirit guides are not human and they just want to be there for you. You can give your spirit guides any name you like or try and figure their names out. Usually the name a spirit guide will give is just to help us feel some sense of familiarity. If you cannot find or hear your spirit guides name, don’t worry about it. They are there and always willing to help, regardless of knowing their name or not.
How do they communicate with me?
Spirit guides communicate with us in a wide variety of ways. Usually, as in all psychic communication, we use our senses to connect as well as our 6th sense of knowing.
Sight: Sometimes we will see spirit guides in meditation. We can see parts of them or all of them and usually they manifest in physical human form. Sometimes in pictures we may see small white orbs, which can be spirit guides, angels or loved ones on the other side. Spirit guides also communicate messages with things we see every day. For example, we may see a particular animal over and over again. There is a lot of information on animal totems and their meanings online. Seeing these animals may be a message from spirit that can be interpreted by looking up the meaning of that particular animal. Other ways they communicate are through intuitive card decks like Angel Cards or Tarot cards.
Smell: You may smell something familiar that reminds you of a certain time in your life or brings you comfort. Many people experience a connection to loved ones who have passed away in a similar fashion.
Touch: Feeling guides is fairly common. You may just feel a presence with you or get goose bumps. We may feel our guides presence in a meditation or feel a gentle touch when we need to reconnect with reality. This happens to me a lot when I am on the light rail. I often space out and feel my guides touch my hand to reconnect me with the moment.
Taste: This is pretty self-explanatory but not very common. Sometimes a person can taste something familiar like a food they may have enjoyed or something that reminds them of a time, place or person in their life. The best example I can give about this is that sometimes I can taste recipes or food to communicate a message to a client. Mostly, this happens in readings with loved ones on the other side but on occasion it has happened with a living person or situation.
Hear: Our guides communicate with us like this a lot. Often the voice we hear is quiet, subtle and sounds like our own. Guides do not need to be loud or overpowering to get their messages across. Often, the messages they give us validate something we may already know. Their voices do not sound like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz but, instead, sounds just like us. We may also hear chimes, bells or other sounds that connect us to our guides. This is the most common way that guides communicate with us.
Know: I cannot really explain this. Some things you just ‘know’. That’s your 6th sense.
How can I connect with them better?
First and foremost, to connect with your intuition, guides, angels or loved ones - meditate. Meditate, meditate, meditate! I can’t stress this enough. Every source I have ever read or heard and all my experience says to meditate. When I say meditate I do not mean sitting atop a mountain with your legs folded, listening to the sounds of nature, although that works too. Setting aside about 15 or 30 minutes a day, whatever is comfortable and just quieting your mind is good enough. This is not always an easy task with our busy lives' but if you want to make a commitment to connect with spirit, please take this time! Do whatever works for you, just make sure you won’t be disturbed and you are comfortable. Remember, the more consistently you meditate the easier your connection to spirit. Learning to meditate sounds simple enough but it isn’t. Don’t be discouraged it you don’t get anything at first or even for months. If anything, you will at least be learning to quiet your mind and relax.
Top 10 Thinking Traps
I have noticed, though, in all my communications with people throughout my life, that what causes most of our problems isn’t our lack of inner knowing but our thoughts. Our thoughts can mess us all up. They can cause us to not trust our own intuition, to be insecure about ourselves, our relationships, our world and muddle communication.
These muddled thoughts are often called cognitive distortions in the mental health world. I, however think of them as thinking traps because of how they can keep you stuck. Unfortunately, these thoughts also lead to depression if left unchecked.
I took the list of the top ten and decided to add my own little spin to them There are also some tips for overcoming these thoughts. This can be a challenging task but it is well worth your time. The key to any change is awareness and acceptance. Be aware of who you really are, then accept it. If you can do those first two steps you can then change the things you don’t like without beating yourself up.
All or Nothing
This is very black and white thinking. You may use the words ‘either’ and ‘or’ a lot to signify only two choices. If things don’t work out the way you planned, you think you failed. This thinking also involves how you see people around you. An example would be: “My father left when I was young, so he didn’t love me.” These thoughts don’t compensate for the complex nature of people or our lives.
Overgeneralizing
This is when you view an event as a never ending pattern of events, even if it only happens once or twice. For example saying, “Nothing good ever happens to me” or “I’m so unlucky all the time.” It also happens when we use words like ‘never’, ‘always’, ‘every time’, etc. Rarely does anything in our lives happen that consistently.
Dwelling on the Negatives
I think of this as a mental filter that blocks us from seeing the things that are actually working for us. For instance, if your boss at work is constantly frustrating you, you many only focus on that aspect of the job. You may not notice that you have a job that pays well or offers other incentives or benefits because of this one aspect you don’t enjoy. Another example is when we are only noticing the things that are going wrong for us instead of what is going right.
Discounting the Positives
This is about insisting that your accomplishments or positive qualities don’t count. For example, when someone gives you a compliment, you may think, they were just being nice or they didn’t mean it. You may have a special talent or passion but only see all the things you can do better instead of honoring your gifts.
Jumping to Conclusions
There are two ways that these thoughts pop up.
- Mind Reading is assuming that people are acting negatively toward you without any evidence to suggest that it’s true.
- Fortune Telling is assuming things will turn out badly before you have even begun.
Notice that both of these types of thinking involving making assumptions.
Magnification or Minimization
Magnification involves blowing things out of proportion. Example: You lose your job, then think, “I will lose my house, my family and all my saving because I’m out of a job.” You may be able to find another job quickly or use other resources but cannot see it because you’re thinking is so drastically blown out of proportion. On the other end of this spectrum is minimizing problems that have significance to trivial matters. Example: “I only got one DUI, so it’s ok” or if a partner leaves you thinking, “Oh, they’ll come back” instead of dealing with the grief.
Emotional Reasoning
This thinking is using your emotions as a basis for deciding who you are or how you see the world around you. Example: “I feel stupid, so I must be.” Our feelings change from day to day based on a wide variety of factors so using them to determine who we are doesn’t really work.
‘Should’-ing yourself and others to death.
How many times do you tell yourself or others what you/they should do, say, feel or think or listen to others ideas about what you should do, say, think or feel? Maybe it isn’t the word ‘should’ that you use but instead ‘must’, ‘ought’ or ‘have to’. These are very judgmental thoughts and cause us to be incredibly hard on others and others. Another part of this type of thinking includes comparing yourself to others.
Labeling
Instead of just thinking that you made a mistake, you think I’m a jerk, a fool, an idiot or any other label. This also goes for how you see others as well.
Personalization or Blame
Sometimes we blame ourselves for circumstances that we have no control over or situations where we may not be entirely responsible for the outcome. On the other hand, blaming others for your circumstances and denying your own role in your problems can keep you stuck too. Examples include: “It’s my fault my son was in that car accident” or “If you would have told me about_____________, then I wouldn’t have done ____.”
TIPS for Change
- Don’t expect to change overnight. It probably took you many years to get to this point and won’t be resolved in a week or two.
- Meditation or any form of slowing down or relaxing will help bring awareness to your thoughts.
- Keep a journal. When you have a problem, write it down. Later, when you are in a calmer place, go back and look at the entry objectively to see if you have any of the thinking traps listed above.
- Be mindful of how you talk to others and yourself. What types of words are you using?
- When you catch yourself in a thinking trap, be a reporter and try to objectively see the situation from the standpoint of an observer.
- Understand that feelings don’t create your thoughts but thoughts create your feelings. Your thoughts determine how you will perceive a situation. It goes in this order. Thoughts lead to feelings which lead to actions.
- Be proactive in your life. Act instead of Re-act. If there are situations that you have the power to change, do so. Even if you aren’t successful, it’s empowering to try.
- If you are feeling stuck or depressed, seek help. There are many resources for counseling in your local cities or neighborhoods that are accessible.
- Set goals. Then set smaller goals to reach those goals. Accomplishing the small steps can help you feel more confident.
- Instead of saying ‘should’, ‘ought to’, ‘must’, or ‘have to’, try substituting the word ‘could’.
The Super Human Computer
From the time we are born we receive messages about who we are and what we are supposed to be. We hear it from our family, friends, peers, colleagues, teachers and many others. We also hear messages about what is ‘right’, ‘wrong’ and ‘acceptable’ by society through magazines, books, movie and all media, as well as through religion and education.
Some of the messages we receive build confidence, love and trust in ourselves and for others while some are more harmful and cause us to feel abandoned, rejected, undeserving and fearful of ourselves and the world we live in. The information we are receiving can be very overt like when someone says, “You’re so smart” or “You don’t deserve that” or they can be subtle and derived through action or inaction. For example, if you go to hug a parent and they push you away or having your parent go to all your soccer games when you are a kid. Each action sends a message that we interpret.
So here we are - these old souls as brand new humans - free from bias or judgment, when we are born into a world full of messages. We practically become computers sorting through all of these messages. The first and most common messages we hear we begin to start categorizing as ‘real’. If the people around you are saying it, if they are supposed to love you or respect you, if we read it or see it on TV, it must be true, right? So the computer chugs along categorizing, year after year, the messages that are ‘real’ and the ones that aren’t.
At this point, we have so many files of who are and what we are supposed to be that if life goes along comfortably without any changes - we’re good to go. But since life is change, we inevitably have to go through the old files, especially if the change is difficult. Sometimes the catalyst for going through our files may be a change in career, having a child or buying your first home. Then others may be more painful like a divorce or the death of a loved one. Whatever the catalyst, the purging of the files is needed to keep us emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually healthy. Some of those old files can be toxic to your sense of self, mood and esteem. Some thoughts may just be keeping you stuck.
When we experience anything, the computer checks it's files and sends us our message. If we have been taught we aren't smart or capable, we may balk at new activities because the computer reminds us :You're not capable. This is why some of the messages we receive when we are young stay with us-because they are programmed. We don't need those messages shown to us because they are stored in the computer. This is why when we leave harmful relationships or experiences the same messages come to us. What messages come up for you?
It is completely possible to re-program your own Super Human Computer. The first step is awareness. Be aware of what messages you hear. Are they true? Do they resonate with you? If not, replace them. If the thought that comes up is, "I am not capable or smart", replace it with something like, "I am a quick learner" or " I like to try new things" or "I am good at many things". You may have to replace thoughts many times over until the new one starts to show up but don't give up. The process is worth the wait..
Ponder this:
'Good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’-What would happen if you took those four words out of your vocabulary? What would you do differently if those words didn’t exist? How would your life change? If those words are important or necessary for you, who decided this? Do these beliefs still resonate with you? Are there things that need to change?
ACTIVITY #1
Make a list of 50 things you like about yourself. Skip the things you can do better. Look for small things like, "I am a good kisser" or " I cook a great lasagna". Find the big things too like, "I am smart, capable, intelligent and or kind. How did it feel writing this list? Was it difficult or easy? What made it that way?
ACTIVITY #2
What are your values? What values would you like to change?
Choose several words from the list that are important to you; ideas you value.
Accomplishment Achievement Accountability Accuracy Adventure Awareness Beauty Challenge Change Cleanliness, orderliness Collaboration Commitment Communication Community Compassion Competence Competition Concern for others Consciousness Connection Content over form Continuous improvement Cooperation Coordination Creativity Decisiveness Delight of being, joy Democracy Discipline Discovery Diversity Ease of Use Efficiency Equality Excellence Fairness Faith Faithfulness Family Flair Freedom Friendship Fun Global family Good will Goodness Gratitude Hard work Harmony Honesty Honor Improvement Independence Individuality Inner peace Innovation Integrity Intensity Justice Kindness Knowledge Leadership Love Loyalty Meaning Money Openness Patriotism Peace Perfection Personal Growth Pleasure Power Practicality Preservation Privacy Progress Prosperity, Wealth Purpose Punctuality Quality of work Regularity Reliability Resourcefulness Respect for others Responsiveness Results-oriented Rule of Law Safety Satisfying others Security Self-care Self-reliance Service Simplicity Skill Solving Problems Spirituality Stability Status Success Teamwork Timeliness Tolerance Tradition Tranquility Trust Truth Unity Variety Wisdom
Now create circles on a piece of paper related to the size of the ideas value in your life. For instance, if ‘Love” is more important to you than “Perfection” than the ‘Love” circle should be bigger. Do this for as many values as you want. You do not have to use all the values on this page and you will see some are similar but I have chosen different words. You may also add words that are your own as well.
Now that you have this page of circles, what do you think? Do you like the size of your circles related to your values? Are there some circles you would like to grow? Are there some circles you would like to diminish or have disappear entirely? How do you think you can begin to change the sizes of the circles?
ACTIVITY #3What are 3 thoughts you tell yourself that you would like to change? What do you want to replace those thoughts with?
Suggested companion reading: You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
Next week (9/7/11) Digging through the baggage of memories and the thoughts tied to them………..
Heart of Wisdom blogs are about the integration between the human and the soul. This weekly blog is dedicated to helping readers live authentic lives. The activities and questions are meant to help you provide your own insight into the inner workings of you. Some weeks may be more spiritual while other will be based more in psychology. The balance between the two is the balance between our human heart and our natural intuitive wisdom. I welcome comments or suggestions by email at info@readingsbykim.com. Thank you for reading and feel free to share this blog with family and friends.
Love and butterflies,
Kim Moore
