How We Become – A Therapeutic Guide for Reflection

If you are new to my Substack, I’m delighted to welcome you to How We Become – A Therapeutic Guide for Reflection. The best place to start is with the opening piece, which you can find here.

If you have read the previous five chapters, a very warm welcome back. In this chapter, we deepen our exploration into the personal experience of grief, and what it means to each of us individually. Step lightly, stay open, and pause whenever needed. There is no rush.

Grief.

It weaves. It ebbs and flows. It slumbers. It screams. It laughs.

Grief refuses to be boxed in, and no wonder, when it is at the core of everything painful and meaningful to us. It’s why we find it so hard to know what to say when someone has experienced a loss. It’s why we struggle to express how we feel when we are going through it ourselves. It’s why hugs, being held, our tears soaked into someone else’s clothes feel so intimately healing.

Grief can unite us in profound ways, but it can also divide us. We fear saying the wrong thing, fear being reminded of our own mortality, fear being the cause of someone’s grief, fear plunging into old wounds – our own and others.

Where there is grief, there is sorrow, often masked by things that, while intended to protect us, can leave us more hurt.

But there is no harshness in the sound of sorrow. Remember this as I invite you in.

Loss and Grief

Grief is unruly by nature, and this is especially true for grief born from losses that hold duality, like the death of a complex parental figure, the loss of a job you didn’t like but which still provided purpose, the ending to a friendship due to disloyalty.

This kind of grief often doesn’t make itself known with a knock at the door you can easily hear and open for. It can approach silently, slowly turning up the volume on your worries. Your anger. Your sadness.

Perhaps it stays like this, present, but not known to you. Or perhaps it squeezes you so hard that something explodes. Waves of feelings washing over you, confounding you, consuming you.

Your mind may have latched onto explanations – and for most, there is a bountiful list of reasons our minds can go to when we experience sadness, anger or anxiety. Where it often doesn’t go, however, is to grief.

Navigating Loss

Some losses are more easily navigated and moved through, possibly because you felt well supported in one way or another, or you had time to anticipate and prepare for the loss, or there was an upcoming positive change as a result of this loss that helped you integrate it.

Other losses may appear small but did in fact impact you more profoundly than you realised at the time; staying with you in ways that, although difficult to understand consciously, leave you unsettled.

Then there are the despairing losses when someone close to you dies – unexpectedly, too soon, or they were so dear to you that even if it was ‘their time’ or ‘they are at peace now’ as many might tell you, you find little comfort in these words.

If you are in the midst of this kind of grief right now, it might not be the right time to go through this chapter’s exercises. Stay and read if it feels supportive but equally allow yourself to step away if needed. You can always come back; there is no rush. There is never a rush with grief. You are allowed to feel it, own it and express it in your own way, and at your own pace. The same applies if things come up that begin to feel too raw. Take your time and listen to your body.

Processing Loss

It can be comforting and grounding to keep going and surround yourself with the busyness of everyday life when going through a difficult time.

But it can also cause problems. If you continuously ignore or dismiss the significance of a loss, chances are triggers can come along and push you headlong into it without you even realising. And grief is not just crying and sadness. Unprocessed grief can take the shape of anxiety, depression, anger and aggression, panic attacks, dissociation, fatigue, all of which can seem unexplainable in the moment.

Expressing Grief

We have explored how early relational bonds have a significant impact on adult relationships, and different attachment patterns and unique emotional worlds also provide different ways to respond to loss and grief.

There are no absolutes, and the type of loss or bereavement, as well as current life circumstances, your individual way of experiencing and processing the world, and the journey you have taken since childhood, play a significant role in how you experience loss and grief now. That being said, it might be helpful to keep the descriptions below in mind when you explore your timeline of loss. Although simplistic, they can offer a glimpse into wider relational patterns.

Secure

Loss is painful regardless of your attachment experience, and personality plays a big role in how you both express and process grief. Those with a secure attachment may, however, find themselves better able to allow sorrow to exist, to be seen, and to be held. Although there are always subtleties worth staying curious about.

Avoidant

For those with an avoidant attachment style, there could be a tendency to quickly suppress painful feelings and move away from people who try to support them rather than move towards them. Difficult feelings can also convert into physical symptoms – like headaches or stomach issues.

Anxious

Those with an anxious attachment style may struggle to accept the loss and present very heightened emotions, like prolonged sadness or anger, and their grief and upset might grow rather than subside over time.

Disorganised

Those with a disorganised attachment style could become emotionally disorganised, with the loss triggering other difficult or traumatic memories from the past, leaving them unable to simply stay with and grieve the current loss.

Remember that this, should you wish to use it, sits in the background, not the foreground. Allowing things to emerge intuitively rather than through analysis can lead to a gentler sense of understanding and self-compassion.

Case Study: Maria and Tom

Tom and I are enjoying a ‘start of session’ back and forth about the joys of gardening when I notice Maria grabbing her phone out of her bag.

‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘I’m expecting to hear from a friend who’s just had surgery. You don’t mind, do you?’

I tell her that of course not, please take a moment to check. Looking at Tom, I notice his jaw has tightened slightly, his lips stretched thin across his face.

Maria doesn’t place the phone back in her bag but leaves it on the table. Tom whispers that she should put it away, and here starts a quiet little argument. I stay silent while they negotiate, ending with Maria roughly throwing the phone in her bag.

I decide to be direct.

‘I notice a bit of tension right now; would you like to tell me what’s happening?’

Maria looks noticeably uncomfortable, wringing her hands together in her lap. Tom closes his eyes as if to compose himself. Then speaks.

‘It’s just, Maria tends to get overly involved whenever a friend is going through something. I mean, this friend is not having serious surgery, she’s just having a non-cancerous mole removed.’ He puts exaggerated emphasis on ‘non-cancerous.’

‘It’s a big mole,’ Maria says, ‘and even if it’s removed just for comfort reasons, they’re still going to check it and that’s always a bit scary.’

Tom crosses his arms in front of his chest. ‘We’re in the middle of therapy. Couldn’t it wait? This is our space.’

Maria’s cheeks flush.

‘You seem frustrated, Tom,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ he says sharply. ‘She does this all the time, with everyone except me. She’ll drop anything, be interrupted anywhere when it comes to friends in need, but when it comes to doing the same for me, she doesn’t.’

Maria gasps. ‘That’s not true,’ she says, tears emerging.

Tom’s shoulders soften, as does his voice. ‘Ok, that was a bit unfair, you’re here for me too, it’s just you don’t have that same manic energy with me. Dropping everything.’

Something emerges for me, so I ask ‘what is it like for you, Maria, to support people? What happens in your body? What do you feel?’

Maria bites her lip. ‘I don’t know,’ she says.

I give a gentle smile and say, ‘it doesn’t have to make sense.’

She sighs and says ‘to be honest, most of the time I feel guilty. Like I should do something, must do something, otherwise they’ll think I’m a terrible friend.’ She looks at Tom. ‘I don’t feel that way with you because I know you won’t think I’m a terrible person.’

‘Wow,’ Tom says. ‘That’s…’ but he doesn’t say anything else, just places a hand over Maria’s.

‘That sounds hard,’ I say, ‘to feel this pressure. To always be on standby somehow and worry that you’ll be judged if you’re not.’

We sit with this silently for a while, until Tom speaks.

‘It reminds me a bit about your parents, he says. How you were always on their beck and call.’ He squeezes his eyes together as if he’s remembered something. ‘And how much they complained. That you hadn’t brought the right biscuits, or that you’d forgotten to close a window. Jeez, yeah, nothing was ever good enough.’

Maria looks at him. ‘I didn’t think you noticed, you were always a bit annoyed with me if I got frustrated.’

Tom removes his hand and leans forward, leaving a long pause. ‘Yeah, I think I was a bit jealous of you, that you had both your parents. Guess I didn’t factor in that it must have been your whole life, being judged like that.’

‘I was never quite good enough,’ Maria says, her voice low. ‘Grades were never quite right, clothes never quite right, my friends not good enough. They didn’t shout or yell, they were just so…she searches for the right word…dismissive.’

I lean forward slightly and say, ‘I can see you are welling up.’

She swallows, tears springing from her eyes. ‘I guess I just feel sad. Incredibly sad. I usually feel angry or annoyed, but right now I just want to cry.’

Her shoulders start to heave and Tom places his arm around her. She leans into him and cries, quietly at first, then sobs.

Tom looks a bit concerned, and I gently say, ‘this is grief.’

When her sobs have subsided and a calm has settled, Maria speaks of not being seen for who she is, of the lack of validation. Of always needing to perform, but never quite receiving what she longed for.

‘I just thought I was a bad daughter for being angry,’ she says.

I suggest that she, for now, simply allows her sorrow to exist. I invite Tom to be there with love, without trying to fix.

‘What if I can’t stop crying,’ Maria says. ‘It feels like that now.’ She laughs a little bit.

I say ‘you’ve held onto a lot of tears. It might feel like it will never stop, but look what happened now, some laughter. When grief is given space, it leaves room for a lot more lightness too.’

Exercise

COUPLES AND INDIVIDUALS

Start with the Secure Base

In the last chapter I asked you to create a timeline of loss. In the following exercises you are invited to move through this timeline, not just with an analytical eye, but with an awareness of your body.

A helpful way to get closer to grief is to pay attention to physical signals, as grief – and especially unprocessed grief – can manifest in the body. As you move through the timeline you can also stay aware of images, metaphors and dreams that may come up for you. These can be poignant messages.

If you are a couple, you can do this exercise together and talk through what comes up for you. Do one person’s timeline at a time. Listen, paraphrase and feel free to ask questions when they come up, but don’t interpret on your partner’s behalf.

If you are doing this as an individual, you can write down what comes up in your notebook/file. Keep the language simple.

1. Firstly, I would like you to reflect on how you experienced each loss on your timeline within yourself at the time.

For example: When we moved house when I was 13, I felt very scared and lonely, and I missed my old friends.

Pay attention to how fast you move through the losses. Which do you want to dwell on, and which do you race past? Might this be because it feels less important, or because it’s painful? You can highlight this on your timeline.

2. Describe how you were met, or not, by those around you when the loss occurred, and how you think this impacted you. Which coping or defence mechanism did it trigger?

For example: The adults were very engrossed in all the practicalities of the move, and we didn’t really talk about it. I think it impacted me in a way that I felt my feelings were not that important and my coping mechanism was to bottle them up.

3. Take a moment with each loss on your timeline and scan your body. Focus on the part of your body where you notice something, then see which feeling or emotion emerges for you. Note it down on your timeline.

4. Go through your timeline again with your new notes. Use the feeling and emotion words you noted down and reflect on how they may impact your relationships today. You can also look for recurring words on your timeline, and how they show up in the present.

For example: I did get better at sharing my feelings as I got older and made new friends, but I think sudden changes still make me fearful – a recurring word – and I struggle to talk about my feelings straight away.

5. Lastly, I would like you to describe what you may still need to integrate your loss, and how your partner/those around you can help you.

For example: I think I need time to process change at my own pace. I can be more vocal about this, and practice noticing and sharing my feelings when they happen.

This exercise may have brought up some difficult thoughts, feelings and memories, which may linger after the chapter is over and present in ways you won’t necessarily recognise straight away. Be aware of things such as a difference in mood or mood swings, physical symptoms, altered intimacy needs – either a need for more or for less intimacy – emotional or physical, and possibly more agitation. Also pay attention to your dreams and note them down if you can.

Now give yourself some time to digest your timeline of loss experience. Find a comfortable position and close your eyes. Let the words, images and feelings you are sitting with flow naturally, simply noticing them and then letting them float past.

These losses are not new to you, they are things you experienced, that you moved through, that you are allowing appropriate time to process and live with in new ways.

You can now do the Debrief.

The Life of Grief

As a continued project I invite you to start a project that expresses, releases or depicts your grief in some way. It doesn’t have to be related to a specific loss or experience of grief; it can also be about how you experience the concept of grief or loss within yourself.

The creative outlet could be anything; music, writing, drawing, knitting, planting something, photography, building something – anything at all. But it needs to be something you are physically doing and tending to. If you choose exercise or a sport for example, use notes or create a playlist to keep a record of how you are feeling before, after and, during.

Preparation for the Next Chapter

In preparation for the next chapter where we will explore conflict, I’d like you to think about a recent conflict you had and find an object to represent it. No need to analyse it for now, just follow your intuition. The object could be anything as long as it’s small enough to hold and carry in your hands.

If you are doing this as a couple, do not tell each other which conflict you chose or show the object to your partner.

I also invite you to reflect on this question:

What do you give – or withhold from – others that you long for yourself?

Ending Note

Speak to your sorrow and tell it this.

I want to be soft

with you

So soft

I don’t break

when I fall

Thank you for reading, and staying. If you have any questions or reflections to share, please don’t hesitate to message, or to leave a comment.