How to Let Go of Old Grief and Live in the Present

In this episode I’m talking about something all of us humans have to deal with at some point in our lives ...loss …and the energies of grief.  

You might immediately dismiss this topic if you haven’t suffered a bereavement but hang in there for a moment, as I’m not just talking about death. 

I’m talking about every kind of loss. 

Grief shows up in many different ways throughout life.…examples include things like the loss of a relationship, the loss of the ability to have children, the loss of a career, the loss of a dream, the loss of an expected future…the list goes on. 

In this podcast I talk about the process of working through the difficult feelings that arise out of loss; about the process of letting go ….and how to arrive at a place of acceptance and inner calm. 

Thanks for listening!

You can discover more about my work on my website: https://www.harinderghatora.co.uk

Follow me on Instagram for free information on healthy, balanced living: https://www.instagram.com/harinder_ghatora/

Transcript

Hello there. I hope you’re having a good day. Today, I’m talking about something all of us humans have to deal with at some point in our lives …. loss…and the energies of grief.  

You might immediately dismiss this topic if you haven’t ever suffered a bereavement but hang in there for a moment, as I’m not just talking about death…I’ll be talking about every kind of loss. Grief shows up in very many ways throughout life.…examples include things like the loss of a relationship, the loss of the ability to have children, the loss of a career, the loss of a dream, the loss of an expected future…the list goes on. 

 How do most of us cope with the energies of loss? Well, let me start with an analogy … of an attic. Most of us use our attics as a storage room where things are put so that they’re out of the way…things that were maybe treasured and loved once upon a time but don’t serve a useful purpose anymore. It’s convenient right? Up in the attic they’re out of sight and out of mind…those things aren’t bothering us….and, after a while we may even forget that they’re up there at all. Time goes by and slowly these things turn into clutter…. hidden away in the shadows…covered in dust …but taking up valuable space, physically and energetically in our houses. 

This is actually no different to having old unprocessed emotional energy sitting at the core of our being. We go through something difficult, we feel upset, disturbed, overwhelmed at the time but we have to get to work, tend to the kids, get the shopping in, do the laundry, meet so and so, go here, go there… and this energy simply gets pushed into the shadows of our being. It just quietly sits there waiting for us to process it. Like an attic full of clutter. 

Feelings of loss are usually held in the heart. If we’re not good at dealing with our emotional stuff at the time that it comes up, then our hearts can become full of unresolved grief; cluttered with the heaviness of old losses, memories, regrets, pain, and attachments that we hold onto even when they no longer serve us. This keeps a part of us firmly stuck in the past and stops us moving forward in life. 

 In this podcast I’m going to be talking about the process of working through the difficult feelings that arise out of loss, about the process of letting go… ….and how we can arrive at a place of acceptance and inner calm. 

This is Harinder and you’re listening to the Bringing You Back into Balance podcast.

I know the feelings of loss very well. I suffered a huge bereavement at a very young age, and it took me well over a decade and a half to realise that the issues I was having with my mental and emotional health were actually coming from this single shocking experience that I had gone through. I was brought up by my grandma – she was so dear to me – my parents are first generation immigrants and when they arrived in this country, they had very little so they had to work…they worked incredibly hard and created a wonderful life for me and my younger brother. This included my mum – she had to work, and this meant that my grandma stepped in and took care of us. She very much became my mum in a way – she did everything for me and my brother – we’d sleep with her, we’d eat with her, she got us up in the morning, she walked us to school, she collected us from school. She watched Play School with us and loved us so much. You know, I can still feel her love when I think back to my younger life. She really was the centre of my world. I can’t stress this enough. That was until we all went to India on a pilgrimage to the Himalayan mountains, we had wonderful time until the last six days.  A week before we were all to fly back home my grandma dropped down dead. Literally. I so clearly remember that morning. My mum, dad and I decided to go to the local bazaar and do some shopping. We were staying at my mum’s ancestral home for those last few days. We left my grandma well…happy, smiling and joking about with my mum’s cousins and…can you believe it…sixty minutes later discovered she had suddenly died Someone had been sent to find us in the bazaar. When we got back, she had been laid out in the middle of the courtyard…dead. My world came to an absolute standstill. 

I was clearly very distressed at the time but even I didn’t realise just how traumatising this shocking event had been for me. Well, it was India, it was hot…my grandma was cremated the very next day, and we returned home to the UK.  It was September so we immediately went back to school. I must have started the equivalent of year 8. The day-to-day business of life simply carried on as usual. On the surface we just kind of all moved on but I went on to suffer chronic anxiety and panic disorder for well over a decade and a half after this event. Now, as a psychotherapist I totally recognise that I had all the classic signs of PTSD. It wasn’t until my late twenties that the pieces of the puzzle in relation to my mental health started coming together and the healing finally started. It did take another decade or so to heal, but I’m over it now…. I’m noticing that I’m not getting emotionally upset as I recall this event for this podcast. Now, there was a time when I would have dismissed the connection between this experience and the state of my health, but I know better now. 

Loss and the mental and emotional fallout from it show up a lot in my work as you can imagine. Everyone has suffered some kind of loss and the energetic imprint of this can disturb a person’s inner peace and create a stuckness in a person’s life for decades to come.

I always make a point of asking new clients if they have suffered any major bereavement or loss in their life.  And, as I mentioned earlier, when I talk about loss – I’m not just talking about death – the losses I come across in my holistic life coaching practice include all sorts of things ….divorce ….infertility, kids leaving home, the loss of health, of status…of identity … a way of life….of possessions and even a parent suffering from dementia… all of these kinds of experiences result in difficult and painful feelings that need to be processed.  

Loss creates change – change in the outside world and/or change in the inner world. Some losses are so life altering that they can fundamentally shift our world, so much so that our life can never be the same again. Loss can change how we see life and how we see ourselves in our life. It can severely affect our perception of the future in that we thought life was going to be a certain way and it turns out to now be completely different. Change is very challenging to the human mind, it can be frightened, disorientating and destabilising. 

For that reason, it needs to be managed. If we stay attached to what we are losing or have lost – it can seriously limit our freedom…hinder our ability to gracefully move through life…adversely affect our mental, emotional, physical, even spiritual health. And, if we haven’t let go, it can keep a part of us firmly stuck in the past…usually in a low mood.

I often recognise the physical, mental, emotional, and social legacy left behind by unresolved grief even when my clients haven’t consciously drawn the link…as I hadn’t done myself when I was younger. 

Signs of unresolved grief I commonly see include:

-       General anxiety and phobias 

-       Profound/lingering sorrow/sadness and depression

-       Sleep disturbances 

-       An increased risk of physical illness – grief has been known to linger in the lungs and the heart causing disease if left unresolved for too long

-       Relationship difficulties where self-protective energetic barriers have been placed over the heart to prevent further pain and hurt but which inadvertently prevent closeness in any relationship

-       Numbness, fatigue, digestive issues

-       Workaholism and hyperactivity where people distract themselves from their pain by being excessive busy

-       Self-anaesthetizing activities such as overindulgence in substances like food and alcohol and drugs so that the pain is numbed out

-       An overly cautious approach to life because the trust in life has been broken

-       The avoidance of people, places or events that remind a person of the loss

-       Outbursts of anger and rage often over relatively minor things 

-       And, spiritually speaking, a blocking off of the heart chakra – which makes it difficult to give and receive love.

 You can see from this long, and I have to add non-exhaustive list that every aspect of a person’s life can be affected by unresolved grief. 

This is why it’s so important to recognise it within the self and to actively work to heal it.

 Healing grief is a process …. a process of gently letting go … and this process involves several distinct but overlapping phases. Gaining an understanding of these can help us move through loss with greater ease and grace. This understanding can bring greater self-compassion and clarity. The mental understanding can alleviate additional worry and angst about what is happening to us when we are already experiencing pain from the loss itself. 

The phases of letting go involve dealing with shock … overcoming denial … working through guilt … dealing with anger (this can also include feelings of powerlessness, despair and hopelessness) … and dealing with sadness … until we eventually arrive at a place of acceptance.

I’ve worked with a lot of clients around the issue of grief and loss…I volunteered at the local hospice for four years, and what strikes me is how people can hold onto the pain for years and years without even being aware of this fact. 

There are obviously many ways in which to work through grief but in my practice, I use a combination of psychotherapy and divine healing which is the modality I love working with because it is clean, efficient, and highly effective.  

The easiest way to explain the process of letting go is by talking through a client journey.  It’s really important for me to state here that the examples I’m about to present are based on real client work but are purely fictional. In order to protect my client’s privacy, I have changed key details and created composite examples. Client confidentiality is of paramount importance to me, and I don’t want anyone worrying that I’m going to be disclosing their private business to everyone in this podcast. 

The case study is on a fifty-two-year-old woman. Let’s call her Natasha. Well, Natasha complained about always suffering from depression in the winter months – as the days closed in, she would notice her mood getting lower and lower…and she found all she wanted to do was withdraw from the world. She found it difficult to get through the joy of Christmas even though she had a grandchild. She dreaded this time of year and felt guilty for not sharing in the festive mood especially since her granddaughter had arrived.  She put on a pretence but inside she was so low. 

 So, my first thoughts were obviously seasonal affective disorder. As I’m sure you know, this type of depression is related to changes in the seasons, it’s connected to the amount of daylight we are exposed to. That fitted with my clients reported problem. But as Natasha continued to talk, she mentioned a heavy feeling in her heart. I asked if she had had her heart checked. She said yes and there was nothing wrong…she said she knew it wasn’t physical because the feeling came and went over different times of the year. 

 Now, whenever anyone mentions their heart, my mind automatically starts reflecting on issues to do with the heart chakra – the energetic centre that sits in the same place as the human heart. I know from my spiritual work that grief, grudges, grievances are held here in this chakra. So, I made a point of asking Natasha. Had she ever lost anyone…or anything.  And, lo and behold, do you know what she said… her baby son had died…. she was only 19 at the time and his birth was in November. Bingo! I intuitively knew that was it. His birth had been complicated and he had suffered a loss of oxygen to the brain resulting in severe brain damage and death four weeks later. I felt a huge wave of heart-breaking sadness….what a tragic thing to have happened….I noticed my own feelings but also continued to observe Natasha carefully as she recounted this experience from her history. I noticed how she was very matter of fact about it. There was no emotional content to this story. Was this further evidence of repressed feelings where she had buried all her pain ….or maybe she had done the work? She was fifty-two years old now. That’s a long time to have elapsed. 

 I put my theory to her – that the low mood in the lead up to winter could possibly be the emotional fallout from this very heartbreaking experience. Natasha said ‘no…it can’t be that. It was so long ago…she never thinks about that time in her life…and, anyway she went on to have three other healthy happy children who were all adults now. She just got on with it. It can’t be that. 

 I asked her if she’d ever grieved the loss of her son…she reported feeling sad for a time but then got pregnant shortly after so no, not really …she hadn’t given it too much thought after her second child was born. 

 I work in a very intuitive way and every fibre of my being was saying this is it – this is what is causing the depression or at least significantly contributing to it. So, I suggested we do a healing session on this, and she gave her permission.

 We started by clearing the trauma – this was such an awful shocking experience for any woman to go through and she was only 19 years old at the time so there was bound to be a lot of trauma around this.

 Trauma is what happens inside us in response to a distressing event. Shocking experiences like this involve intense pain and our mental and emotional energy systems can get so overwhelmed that we can’t process what is happening to us all in one go at the time it is happening. We dissociate and deny the emotional experience. In order to survive we have no choice but to push our feelings into the subconscious and even unconscious parts of our being. We simply disconnect from them. The juggernaut of pain hitting us is way too much to take in – so a part of our energy often goes into freeze mode, and we go numb. 

 There are lots of ways of clearing trauma. There’s EMDR, somatic experiencing, hypnotherapy, reiki, shamanic healing. In my practice I use divine healing. I love its simplicity, cleanness and effectiveness. Divine healing works by bringing in higher frequency light or energy which simply transmutes lower frequency energies. If you shine a torch into a dark corner, the darkness effortlessly disappears. 

 Getting back to Natasha…We arranged a session and started by doing a trauma release process. Natasha reported feeling very cold and tingling as this clearing was going on. Trauma is always cold – so her feedback during this part of the session made sense to me. 

 After dealing with the trauma, we moved onto the second focus which was dealing with the denial. I could see from the very matter-of-fact way in which Natasha was talking about this experience that she had denied her feelings at the time. The denial in this context was not about the event having happened but around the depth and severity of her feelings about the event. We all do this during a difficult time or encounter….something difficult happens, we start to feel distressed but we can’t fall apart….it’s not appropriate so we take a deep breath and we tell ourselves everything is going to be okay…it’s alright…I’m alright…I can handle this….everything is going to be okay…I…am...okay. Breathe…I often hear denial in phrases like ‘it is as it is’… ‘I’m fine’… ‘I’ve dealt with it’… ‘it didn’t bother me’.

 Natasha said she worked in a bank back then and about two weeks after the death of her son she went back to work…everyone told her to get back to normal life…and that routine was good for her…to start looking forward… that everything was going to be okay…that these things happened …that she was young and she’d have another child …and on and on went the advice…well-intentioned advice which sadly, inadvertently resulted in her abandoning herself emotionally speaking.

 So, like everyone who goes into denial Natasha put on a mask, told herself she’s fine…there’s nothing she can do…this was God’s will and she just got on with it. All good at the time in that work distracted her from her pain and she did her best to move on but…. not good when it came to her emotions – these were severely denied, and her psyche did a brilliant job of suppressing her memories. As she got busy with life…and time went on… she learnt to avoid these painful feelings.

 I asked Natasha about her emotions at the time. How did she remember feeling? And you know what? She said she couldn’t recall anything. There was also a massive block on her memories as she couldn’t remember large chunks of time around her early twenties.  

 We’re all frightened of feeling our difficult feelings. That is what trauma is. The human mind fears that if it allows itself to connect with this pain then it’s going to get totally overwhelmed…flip out…go mad… maybe even die. The fear is of not being able to cope…so the mind simply doesn’t go there. This avoidance spells danger in the long run as a time comes when these feelings become repressed, and our mind disconnects from them. We consciously forget they are even there, but they continue to affect us. These were probably causing the winter depression. 

 Grief brings a myriad of feelings – the main ones being guilt, anger and sadness. 

 As we’d cleared the trauma and the denial – Natasha’s feelings started to flow. She started connecting with herself. The guilt appeared… I must have done something wrong….it must have been my fault. She disclosed that she was a secret smoker…did that have anything to do with it? She messed around with her friends as a teenager often binge drinking – she even remembered a phase where she and her friends used to sniff glue….maybe this caused her son’s death. Maybe she was being punished – maybe it was payback for all the sneaking around behind her parents back – maybe it was all her fault at some level – some really intense pain came up for her at this stage of the process. She sobbed deeply for a few moments. I gave her a moment – this was the buried pain coming up for clearing. We needed to give it space. It passed through. I asked her where this pain was – she said it was in her heart and in her stomach area. We did the healing command codes and transmuted the energy. 

 Next, we worked through the anger. As she spoke a lot of anger came up – first at herself – then at her parents for being so strict with her …then at her husband for being so cold and non-responsive around the time of their son’s death (he was clearly in shock too) … then at her in-laws…why did everyone insist that she return to work so soon…..then at the hospital and the medical staff – something had clearly gone wrong during the birth – now as a fifty-two year old woman she was looking back at it all and the anger started to emerge. She hadn’t questioned anything at the time – she hadn’t received any real explanation of what had even happened. We took our time through this phase.  It’s an important part of the letting go process. Anger and the more vulnerable feelings that often sit under it – the hopelessness, the despair, the powerlessness all needed to be acknowledged, momentarily felt before being transmuted with higher frequency energies. The powerlessness was particularly resonant with Natasha. There was absolutely nothing she could do to help her baby son.

 I reflected back my hunch that these feelings of hopelessness, despair and powerlessness were the energies she was experiencing every winter. They were kind of leaking out from the shadows. I have seen that the older we get the less able we are to keep these energetic dams in place. And, for women, the menopause seems to kick start a deep emotional purge. Natasha now began to see the connection. She couldn’t initially feel the anger, but she could certainly connect more fully to these feelings of hopelessness, despair, and powerlessness. 

 And, then the sadness kicked in – another round of intense pain came up and more tears flowed…this time triggered by “did you give your son a name?’ “Aaron…his name was Aaron.” All the stuff Natasha had repressed – came flooding out. This is often the stage that’s the most disturbing as it can feel so overwhelming. As with the guilt, Natasha just needed time and a safe space to let these feelings flow – it didn’t last too long – a few more moments of sobbing – of connecting to the sadness, of connecting to the feelings of loss, of emptiness, of despondency. We cleared these low frequency energies using the appropriate healing command codes. Natasha visibly looked lighter and brighter…the muscles around her face softened, her shoulders relaxed down…she yawned a few times as her nervous system regulated.

 All these years Natasha had avoided her pain, had resisted connecting to the memories of her son, Aaron, had refused to look back at the horrendous experience she had gone through. Now, she was able to speak about him. It felt important to honour him. We spent time talking about him. This was her first born child…her son. She reflected on how old Aaron would have been now – what he might have gone on to do…who he would have become as an adult…. We reflected on all the things that Natasha had lost in addition to his physical presence in her life – all her dreams and hopes for him. She concluded he would have been a very powerful part of her and her husband’s support system. 

 The final part of the letting go process involves arriving at a place of acceptance. This is where Natasha could finally let go and move on. Natasha had thought she’d resolved the whole issue some thirty odd years ago, but this healing session clearly demonstrated that the unprocessed feelings were still there in the shadows of her being. Now that the feelings had been unearthed and cleared using the healing process Natasha was finally able to reflect on what she had learnt from this experience. This final stage of the letting go process involves consciously holding onto the wisdom that has been gained…lessons that have been learnt at a mental and spiritual level, the strength that has been shown, the resiliency that has been cultivated and the compassion for others that has been unexpectedly developed. By having the courage to face the pain, to give it space to move through her, Natasha naturally arrived at a place of deep inner peace around this awful life event. And all of this happened in one two hour divine healing session. It blows me away every time. I eagerly waited to see how Natasha felt after a few weeks, as the energies often need time to fully settle down. 

 I was overjoyed to hear that she had found a new deep sense of inner contentment. She noticed she wasn’t feeling so low and depressed. She said it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, her heart felt lighter, and she felt more relaxed in her body than she could ever remember. 

 Well, we’ll have to wait until next year to see if the low mood around the approaching winter months has completely disappeared next October, or whether there is some more work to be done. I’m pretty sure that it will and if not completely then the low mood will have certainly reduced in its intensity.

 At the end of that healing session, I invited Natasha to think about a way of honouring Aaron’s 4-weeks of life. It felt like an important thing to do, especially as his memory had been repressed for over three decades. I was amazed at the creative idea Natasha came back with a fortnight later. She did some research and found the charity Bliss where you can knit things for premature or sick babies – little hats, jackets, booties. Natasha vowed to make and donate a few items every year in the lead up to Aaron’s birthday. She also said she sat her children down and told them about the whole experience. No-one had ever spoken about it before, so they were totally unaware that they had an older sibling.  

 Grief is difficult for everyone. It can be complex. And it can involve trauma. The stages of grief are well documented and put simply involve shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, a period of depression, then after a period of time an upward turn, a reconstruction and working through process and then, finally, acceptance and hope. It’s important to note the experience of grief is different for everyone and people move through the phases in their own way. The models of grief are presented in a nice, neat, and tidy way but we all know that it’s not a linear process; people move in and out of the different stages…some overlap…some are experienced more fully than others. But, we all need to go the process – whether it’s with recent grief or old grief – there’s no avoiding it if we want to heal. 

 The divine healing process I take my clients through involves the stages of trauma release, the unlocking of any denied, buried emotions, the processing of anger, the processing of sadness and finally, the resolution where peace can be made around what has happened. Sometimes, if complex things have happened, we may have to visit other clearing processes as part of the session. Divine healing sessions can become really fascinating as we follow the prompts and uncover further underlying patterns and programming.

 Let me invite you to cast your mind back over your life and consider if you may be holding onto grief. Have you experienced a major loss? Were you able to grieve fully at the time? – and remember we’re not just talking about death. I recently worked with someone who was still grieving the loss of her marriage some seven years after her husband had left her for another woman. She just couldn’t make any sense of what had happened and there was a huge wound around betrayal. Her confidence had been so severely damaged that she carried around two beliefs that would prevent any relationship coming into her life. That she wasn’t loveable and that she couldn’t trust another man. What if it happens again. She had invested ten years of her life in this marriage, and it had all gone to pot. She had envisaged growing old with her husband and now she had nothing. And, to make matters worse her bitterness, anger and sadness had begun to turn her children against her. She just couldn’t accept what had happened. There was a lot of low frequency energy to work through. 

 And there was another person who was grieving the loss of her very much alive father – he has dementia and has been slowly losing his memory. She was absolutely heartbroken when she visited him and he, not only didn’t recognise her but got so confused about who she was and why she was in his house that he became very distressed. This woman was struggling with some very complicated issues. She struggled with the internal conflict that arose from wanting to see her beloved father yet at the same time knowing that her presence disturbed him so much.  And how do you even begin to process the grief of losing someone who isn’t dead? There was great resistance to mourning his loss when he was very much alive. 

 I’ve also worked with people who have been trying to conceive – the highs and lows of IVF treatment are gruelling at every level of a person’s being and then if after all that hope, time, energy, and money the process is unsuccessful the heartbreak is debilitating. The feelings of loss are huge. This grief is not commonly recognised in the world, so it is done quietly / behind closed doors alongside complicated feelings of shame, bitterness, envy and worthlessness.

 Loss, in its many guises can be so overwhelming that we struggle to process all the feelings at the time, but it is important to allow yourself some time to come to terms with the grief…to feel the feelings, to give them space so that they can be released. 

 If you do find yourself dwelling on some old grief or are going through something right now, then reach out to someone supportive; someone you can trust; someone who will allow you to talk through your feelings and the situation you find yourself in. 

 Journal about the experience you’ve lived through or are living through. This helps us make sense of what has happened and help us connect with and release our deepest feelings. 

 If you have some unfinished business with someone, especially someone who isn’t in your life now then write a letter in which you express your deepest truths. You don’t have to send the letter; it’s the expression that is important. This is particularly good for handling unfinished business with someone who has died. It can help you let go and move forward. 

Use art to give expression to your feelings; draw, scribble, paint, represent your emotions as characters. This can be very cathartic and healing. 

Move your body through practices like yoga, stretching, walking in nature or light exercise. We hold old pent-up energies in our bodies so this helps to release them.  

If you’re dealing with anger, then get the anger out of your system by punching or screaming into a pillow.  

When intense difficult feelings arise practise what I call extreme self-care. 

Invest in taking extra good care of yourself mentally and physically – e.g. soaking in bath salts, eating nourishing food, resting more, walking in nature are all known to help.  

Practice the RAIN method RAIN stands for Recognize what is happening; Allow the experience to be there, just as it is; Investigate with interest and care; Nurture with self-compassion. This method involves mindfully sitting with and non-judgementally observing your feelings.  

Or join a support group. This can really help as you have somewhere to share your experience, somewhere to be heard, seen and recognised, somewhere where you can receive support and also offer care and support to others who have gone through a similar experience. 

And finally speak to a professional. If you have suffered a significant loss, are struggling and/or there is trauma involved then it can be a good idea to work with someone who can hold a safe space and help facilitate the release of these difficult feelings. I know from my healing work that if grief is not processed it can ultimately adversely affect the human body. It goes without saying that none of us want a future full of sickness and disease. 

Okay, so that’s it for today…I hope I’ve left you with something useful. 

If you liked this podcast, then please subscribe …that way you won’t miss any future episodes… And can if you can leave me a good review it will help more people to access this free content as the podcast platforms promote those podcasts more. Tell your family and friends about it. Today’s topic is relevant to everyone – we’ll go through some sort of loss and the more we know about the process and how to help ourselves the better it is for our long-term health.

Right, you enjoy the rest of your day. And remember, take really good care of yourself because you and I both know that if you don’t, no one else will.

Bye for now…