powerful. Right after her session, she called her ex-husband and apologized to him for her part in the breakup of their relationship, and now she is a different woman!”
Hurt and Anger
Anger and hurt are two sides of the same coin. Depending on your unique personality and life events, you spontaneously feel one of them first, but they are stacked. For example, Mary was stuck in her anger at being betrayed. As she dived into it and gave it a voice, she uncovered the deeper hurt. Previously, she had only allowed herself to experience the anger.
Many women feel hurt first because they are uncomfortable with anger. Dipping into their depths, they eventually discover the anger. Barbara was deeply hurt that her stepdad had sexually abused her as a child. She could not understand why and tended to blame herself. When she found the hurt in her body and allowed it, she was also able to sense the underlying and appropriate indignant anger—“How could he be so narcissistic?” and “Where was Mom?” With a feeling of safety created through imagination, she could voice her angry feelings directly without risking emotional or physical retaliation. In the experience of standing up for herself for the first time, her countenance transformed from worry and tension to relaxation and beauty. Her appearance, in fact, changed dramatically. The previous hardness that had kept people away vanished, and she felt safe enough to be her true self: smart, soft, and beautiful.
If anger expresses first, it is important to get down to the hurt, and if hurt shows up first, it is important to get down to the anger. Whichever feeling initially surfaces is more comfortable, and the one underneath is less comfortable. Diving into what is less comfortable and surviving unharmed yield resilience and strength.
What is your conditioned take on anger? Did your family welcome such feelings or judge them? Were you punished or made fun of when angry? Did you share your feelings openly or were you ashamed?
What anger is present for you right this minute? Is it indignation at how you've been treated by family, friends, a spouse, an employer, strangers? Take a minute to allow whatever there is to rise to the surface of your mind and take a look at it. Write it down so you can work with it in the Practice It Yourself section at the end of the chapter.
Sadness and Grief
Another set of often dammed feelings is sadness/grief. Who wants to be sad or grieve? No one. Most of us try to avoid these two related feelings at all costs. But sadness and grief are inevitable in this life. Some of us may have more than our share and some less, but it's impossible to live life without them. We all understand loss is a part of living. However, we play games to trick ourselves into believing we can transcend sadness and grief. Though this path may seem to be the high road at the time, it does not take into account the body's reaction—remember, emotional pain is a physical experience. This visceral response to discomfort is the nervous system preparing the body to react to stress or an emergency. You may think, “I'm okay,” but your body is still processing the experience in its own way.
Sadness and grief are sometimes interchangeable, but they usually differ in duration. Sadness can last a few minutes to a few hours and represents a normal response to perceived and actual loss. Grief usually lasts a few weeks to a few years and involves various states of mind over the course of its resolution. Sadness, if extended, may become grief, and grief includes many feelings of sadness.
Putting a name to these feelings makes them sound almost simple: “sadness and grief,” so neat and tidy. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The internal, subjective experience of loss is indescribably painful—it's the realization that our life can change in a split second and we can lose what we have held close to keep us safe and happy. Grief shatters our illusion of control and involuntarily reveals feelings of helplessness.
Early in my career, a bright, kind thirty-year-old woman I will call Jane taught me a great deal about sadness and grief. Years after her father's death, she was still holding on to the sadness; it was such a strong influence she found herself unable to develop a long-term romantic relationship. As she looked deeply into her connection with her deceased dad, two things became clear. First, she had a wonderfully close rapport with him and he had been her biggest cheerleader. Second, she was clinging to the sadness because it was all that was left of him in a worldly way; it was their last physical connection. She was stuck in a dead feeling about her most loving relationship and unable to move past it because if she did, she thought she would lose what little was left.
As Jane delved deeper, she was able to find the energy of her dad's love permanently imprinted in her heart. By tuning in to her feelings, she could reconnect with his undying affection whenever she chose. Freed from grief, her heart opened. She had her personal cheerleader back. His love again supported her to enjoy life and welcome intimacy with a romantic partner.
Before long, Jane met an attractive young man, fell in love, married, and had a child. It was natural and very tender. She had recovered the feeling of her dad's unconditional love. We both learned that love does not end with physical death.
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross eloquently discerned that grief is a natural process in which we move through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When and how we move through each stage is spontaneous and personal. And even though we may wish to avoid all the messiness of it, the body needs to process the experience regardless of what we think. Whether the loss is through death, divorce, rejection, firing, or something personal, the five stages still apply.
The Stages of Grief
DENIAL
The intellectual mind does not seem able to comprehend the instantaneous awareness that something we consider essential is here one minute and gone the next; it defies logic and we resist. Those of us old enough to remember watching television January 28, 1986, all can understand denial from the experience of watching live as the space shuttle Challenger launched and broke apart seventy-three seconds into takeoff. The whole country saw the spacecraft disintegrate before our eyes as seven heroic lives evaporated with it. Our brains could not compute. We were shocked, stunned, and immobilized by denial.
ANGER
Next comes the anger: Someone must be at fault—and “How could they!” No matter how mature we are, we go through a stage of wanting to blame someone. After all, if someone is at fault, we might prevent this experience from happening again and save ourselves future suffering. It's a very understandable response, but it doesn't work. No matter how much we want to feel better by being angry, it does not bring back what we have lost.
BARGAINING
Eventually, the mind recovers enough to raise its intellectual voice, and we start negotiating with life, a partner, a boss, a higher power, or just ourselves. Sometimes, we promise to behave better in exchange for a feeling of security instead of grief—“I'll be a more loving person and never get mad,” “I'll never drink again,” or “I'll pray every day.” Other times, we hope to replay the events that occurred in ways that save us from suffering—“If only I hadn't gone to that party,” “If only I had looked into his room when I noticed his door ajar,” “If only I had forced him to go to the doctor.” More than anything, we want some comfort even though we know a different outcome is unattainable.
DEPRESSION
When the mind and body accept that the loss is real and there is no evading it, there is a period of depression—being engulfed in the sadness of
