The Pivotal Process of Grieving Yourself

Caylen Sunderman, M.S., LMFT, PLMFT

As a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice, I work with what I call the “wounded well.” My clients are great people, normal people, people like you and me. They lead a normal life, or work hard to maintain the apparition of a normal life. They have hurts, wounds, pains. They have decided they no longer want to succumb to the pain when it hits. Succumbing to pain can look like different things, such as alcoholism, addiction, anger, aggression, affairs or sexual addiction, to name a few.  The wounded well can live this life until it becomes too hard to manage their poison of choice, and they seek therapy.

The wounded well are moms, dads, attorneys, presidents and vice presidents of companies, nurses, physicians, marketers, pastors, and even therapists. What all of the wounded well have in common is that they have something painful in their past that is haunting them and at times, the pain takes over and they don’t like what happens.  The painful event may be the lack of healthy parenting they received, the death of someone, a violation of trust, a major mental or physical illness (in yourself or someone close to you), having bullied or having been bullied, a terrible accident, and the list goes on.

Often times where there is pain, there is shame. The shame comes up when you think of your past and how you reacted in the moment.  Most feel shame for the armor they employed to cope with all the feelings and aches that were happening.  Perhaps you spent your 20’s zoned out on drugs or alcohol or sexual addiction. Perhaps you lived in a daze of heavy medications. Perhaps you were promiscuous or allowed yourself to be in unsafe situations in which you were violated. Maybe you dated an abusive boyfriend for too long, or allowed people to take advantage of you in some way, because you needed what love they could give you.  When these thoughts and memories arise, as they do, you feel shameful of what you did to survive.

This is who and what grieve when we grieve ourselves.

So how do you grieve yourself and what does that even mean? Here are the general steps, distilled down to the most basic elements.

1. Acknowledge him/her. What was that phase of life like? What did he/she do that incites feelings of guilt or shame? Oftentimes the things the wounded well did were mostly self-destructive, such as drinking, addiction, or self-harm. Occasionally they harmed someone else, either emotionally or physically (possibly in a life-or-death situation, or in a war). Allow yourself to think back to that time and begin to write.  If you don’t write, begin to talk to someone, someone very safe. Write or speak the story of that person. Describe the context, illustrate the person you were, discuss the feelings you had. This isn’t meant to be shareable, it’s meant to define what you’re grieving. In therapy we can’t change anything until we are aware of what we are changing, and this is part of that process. Tell the story of the person you were.

2. Now describe the circumstances leading up to that time in your life. This isn’t about finding excuses. In our field, we have a saying, “there is no such thing as a merit-less monster.” This is a hard concept to chew on, but it means that even our negative actions are meant to gain something positive. Perhaps it’s control you were trying to gain when you had an eating disorder. Perhaps you needed a way to extricate the emotional pain from being entrenched in your wounded soul, so you cut yourself. Is it possible the person who slept around in college wasn’t cared for as a child should be, leaving him or her desperate for the closeness and connection they felt in promiscuity? This is not to excuse your behaviors. It’s to wrap context around the behaviors, because in context, most things make sense.

Most of the wounded well have what we call attachment injuries. This means someone wasn’t “there” or worse, was destructive, when you needed them. Perhaps you turned towards them and they turned away from you or betrayed you. When attachment injuries aren’t corrected, there isn’t a felt safety in relationships and they get off track.

3. Feel. Grieve. Cry. 

Now you reconcile the person you were with the context in which they existed, and you grieve. You grieve the 20 year old you who did the best they could with what you had. You grieve the 35 year old you who drank too much and hurt your family with your drinking. You grieve the 45 year old you who went through an excruciating divorce.  The working concept of failure in my office is that although brutal, once you begin to learn from a failure, it is no longer a failure. This is exciting and hopeful, and then you begin to understand that all past missteps and hurts are healed in the present moment. Grieve that person you were so that they don’t run you any longer. When you’ve grieved yourself, you get choice moving forward: choice in how you act when you feel things, choice in your words, choice in who you offload your hurt to moving forward.  If you wrote out your story, burn it in a fire-pit, in a ceremony of one,  and grieve.

Can this be intense and drawn out? Absolutely. Does it test your stamina and patience? Yes. Can it be life giving and lead to you being the YOU that you want to be? Most definitely!

Emotional wounds are just like physical wounds: treating them isn’t guaranteed to be a pretty and painless process, but it does set you up for proper healing, with antibiotics and a clean line of sutures. However, unlike physical wounds, we don’t treat our emotional wounds properly and they get infected, they fester, that have jagged edges, and they tear open at unpredictable and inopportune times.

Take time, think about the past you. Once you’ve begun grieving him or her, you then also get to celebrate the successes you had along the way! You didn’t get to be you without some successes and wins, yet they tend to be overshadowed by your missteps. This is what we do in therapy through various processes. You tell your story, you grieve the person you were and the things you did, and you let them rest. You no longer suffer under the weight of the old you. You then look around, take a deep breath, and move forward as the loving and beautiful person you are!

Cheers,

Caylen Sunderman, M.S., LMFT, PLMFT