Sometimes the most joyful and vivid memories can bring the greatest suffering. Especially when we lose a loved one as a result of death, divorce or rupture of relations. We recall happy times when we enjoyed love, proximity, interconnection, did everything together and took care of each other – and the pain from loss seems monstrous. The psychotherapist tells how to deal with this.
Method for taking loss
When a loved one dies, the method of taking losses usually helps well. The idea is to develop a ritual or a ceremony that you will regularly repeat. This will help you cope with the pain of loss. There are no rules of how to do this, how long and how often. You will try and decide for yourself. Here are the elements that can be included in the ritual.
The same time and place
Regular practice at the same time and in one place often brings good fruits. You can go to the cemetery, on the shore of the reservoir or to the forest, choose a special place for prayer or take a separate room in the house for these purposes. The ritual can take five minutes, hour or half a day. There are no strict rules: try it – and you will understand what helps you personally.
A subject
It is useful to have something at hand that will remind you of a loved one: photography, drawing, item, his favorite toy.
Symbolic actions
The idea is that your actions symbolize the love of the deceased. You can light a candle, put flowers on the grave, play a certain musical work, read poetry, pronounce a prayer or make notes in a diary. If someone else is involved in the ritual, you can hold his hand, hug or pray together.
Remember and let the memories stay
Your goal is to remember a loved one and allow your feelings to exist. Free the space for everything: love and sadness, joy and fear, fun and loneliness. Admit that it hurts you very much, sympathize with yourself.
Remember that unwanted memories can visit you. If this happens, do not drive them away: notice, name and let them stay. This is important, because unpleasant thoughts disappear only for a while, and then return with renewed vigor.
Choose memories
We are almost no power over memory. Memories come and go when they want. Often they arise at the most inopportune moment. And when we want to call them, they do not appear. But during the ritual of grief, you can focus on certain memories that are dear to you. Analyze how you want to remember a person. Perhaps you will want to save certain events or cases in your memory, some phrases or actions, characteristics of the character that you considered sweet, personal qualities that you admired. In this case, you can intentionally revive the desired memories, observe and enjoy them.
Talk to your loved ones
And the last, but no less important hint: a conversation with a loved one helps many. Perhaps such an offer will seem strange to you – in the end, your interlocutor is no longer alive. But such imaginary conversations help to recover a lot. If you want to try, speak out loud or to yourself. Perhaps you will want to chat about the old days, to tell the person what you did not have time to tell what is happening in your life. If you wish, imagine that your loved one answers.
Exercise “We support ourselves”
How to behave if you are attacked by really terrible memories, saturated with fear associated with threats, danger, cruelty, death, disaster? Perform the following exercise: imagine that you are transferred to the past, at the moment when trouble happened to you, and provide yourself support, which you Viagra receptfritt i Sverige did not have then.
For example, Antonio, for the first time performing this exercise, mentally endured the next day after his daughter’s death, saw himself and imagined that he put his hands on his shoulders and talked with him calmly and kindly. Emily survived a terrible car accident, after which her pelvic bones were fragmented, and all her legs were in scars. In her imagination, she went four months ago, at the moment when she was finally taken out of a moilly car, and supported herself in an accident. Consoled, held her hand in an ambulance carriage and stood by the bed in the hospital.
Please note that when doing this exercise, you do not return to terrible events in your life. Instead of mentally going back, at the moment when the trouble happened, you will be transferred to a later period of time. Finding yourself there, provide yourself the necessary support.
There is no “erase” button in the brain, and we cannot delete painful memories. But over time, you will learn how to treat yourself and allow your memories to exist without resisting it. Most likely, you will note that, firstly, they began to appear less often, and secondly, they gradually lose their strength.
