Tuning in to your inner world and your emotions like this, and intentionally choosing to feel, comfort, act, or distract will eventually lead you to feel enlivened and strong, even if you’re contending with difficult emotions pretty much constantly.

What is true is that our society is death-phobic, and our collective fear of facing death and loss perpetuates some hurtful falsehoods about grief, like “grief takes a certain amount of time,” or you need to do specific “grief work” to be okay.

Softness in the face of difficulty leads to transformation, and transformation most often hurts. To trust softness as a response to difficulty’s hardness requires strength, courage, and awareness. This trust is much easier to come by when I have support through the difficulty.

When helping friends greive, it’s also okay to hold hope for your friend’s future, but inside yourself. Your friend will NOT want to hear about how much you believe that he will eventually heal. But within your heart, you can hold a gentle confidence that they will heal.

When you kindly listen to your #deeper self, you invite your self to speak. And when it believes it will be heard, your deeper self will speak. Within each moment, you’ll begin to hear your self express interests, loves, pains, and hates.

Popular grief myths — about stages of grief; about closure and acceptance; about how grief takes a year; about therapy being for grief gone wrong — hurt countless people every day. #griefmyths #griefwisdom #griefsupport

When the bedrock of your life has shattered, grief and pain are so overwhelming and intense that there’s no room to take in or respond to #traumas outside the immediate center of your life. #Griefadvocate #deeptherapist

Our nervous systems like uncertainty only if there's safety in the background. Without safety, no amount of planning can adequately prepare us for the way death slams uncertainty into life, destabilizing relationships and physical places that were havens of safety.

Immobilization as a Response to Trauma #polyvagaltheory #trauma #traumahealing #shorts #short

Loss is brutal... Grief is agonizing ... and when you’re grieving, everyone has an opinion about how you’re supposed to make your way through the experience of loss.

Curiosity and #openness in the face of difficulty cause the ripples of transformation to manifest in a number of significant ways. Hardened fear, rage, paralysis, and reactivity give way to #feelings altogether different....

Nothing can prepare us for the #reverberating silence that loss leaves in its wake.

Softness in the face of difficulty leads to transformation, and transformation most often hurts. To trust softness as a response to difficulty’s hardness requires strength, courage, and awareness. This trust is much easier to come by when I have support and holding from others.

When you can allow people who can understand your sadness and pain to walk into the scary places with you, you will feel a connection within your pain, a connection that does not make the pain go away but that helps you bear the hurt. Connection within pain is love. #connection

In our culture, when we encounter a situation like this [greiving friends or family] where we can’t fix the problem, we have no idea what to do to help. #learningaboutgrief #supportinggrief #helpwithloss #deeptherapist #helptonavigateloss

Helping those #greive by making the implicit explicit around offering help can make all things easier. Say something like, “I’m offering to do [task x] to help you, but I don’t want to interfere. Please tell me honestly whether you want me to do this or not. #Griefadvocate

What is true is that our society is death-phobic, and our collective fear of facing death and loss perpetuates some hurtful falsehoods about grief, like “grief takes a certain amount of time,” or you need to do specific “grief work” to be okay.

It’s hard to notice the kind of influence another has on you while they’re still around. Yet in my husband's absence, I see his impact on the choices I make each day. In this way, his #love continues to under-gird my #life even after all this time.

Therapists need to show up as attachment figures for our patients in an empathic, connected way, directly helping them with their emotions.

Tuning in to your inner world and your emotions like this, and intentionally choosing to feel, comfort, act, or distract will eventually lead you to feel enlivened and strong, even if you’re contending with difficult emotions pretty much constantly.

Putting words to your felt emotions begins the process of making sense of them. This helps you discern what actions, emotional expressions, or distractions will truly help you move through your feelings, or healthily bear your emotional state if it’s ongoing.

From both sides of the therapy room, I have learned something profound: The most important thing for anyone going through a loss, a trauma, a change, or a transition is the support of at least one important person who can simply be there with you, unflinching & solid.

Grief-spawned gratitude is neither sweet nor pretty. And it doesn’t lessen the anguish of grief one iota. Author Cheryl Strayed says it well: It’s like being slapped and kissed at the same time.

I advocate for grief in the midst of a culture that doesn’t want to know how hard life can be. I midwife others through their losses and traumas. I honor their pain and help them to bear to heal and learn and grow. #grief #advocate

The thing about saying yes to a longing for #transition is that big life change involves #gain AND #loss. #Deeptherapist #griefadvocate