Losing your spouse is one of the most difficult things that a person can endure. Widows tend to experience large amounts of grief, which can make life uncomfortable.
Grief is a very challenging experience, one that refuses to be cut-and-dry. Everyone experiences grief differently, and many people experience grief in a number of different ways throughout their life. The grief of losing a spouse, for example, may be much different than the grief of losing a friend.
The grief that accompanies losing a spouse can be all-encompassing, and involves a number of additional aspects aside from just losing your partner. You also lose out on the potential for fulfilling future plans. You lose out on opportunities. You lose out on having someone to accompany you while you are out and about.
These things compound and can make grief very difficult to overcome. However, thanks to holistic mind-body treatments, you can learn to manage your grief much more effectively.
The Importance of Mind-Body Work for Treating Grief
Because grief is, by nature, a very difficult and powerful emotion, many people have a hard time facing it directly. In some cases, it may seem easier to bottle up our grief rather than let it all out. It may seem more responsible – especially if we’re taking care of others – to put our grief on the back burner so we can act strong in the face of adversity.
While all of these possibilities are valid, suppressing your grief doesn’t make it go away. Instead, it just stores it for later.
Where does grief get stored? Generally, in your body. Emotions and psychological issues that are unaddressed or repressed tend to make their way into the body, where they are stored until they can be dealt with at a later date.
Unfortunately, the body may not respond well to this. Holding onto negative emotions creates stress for the body, and can lead to physical difficulties and can even contribute to illness. This is one of the reasons that it’s incredibly important to work through emotions as quickly as possible when they come up.
Sometimes, however, our emotions can seem too intense to handle when we’re on our own. And, when the emotions arise because of the loss of our spouse, it might seem like we have nobody to turn to.
This is one of the reasons that holistic mind-body approaches can be useful for helping widows cope with the grief of losing a spouse.
Holistic Mind-Body Methods for Treating Grief
There are a number of different mind-body methods which can be useful for helping someone overcome grief.
1) Somato-Emotional Repatterning
Somato-emotional repatterning (SER) can be understood by breaking apart the name of the treatment. SER repatterns, or changes and improves, our somatic (body-stored) emotions. In that sense, somato-emotional repatterning is a tool that allows us to work through emotions that are stuck in the body and typically difficult to work through.
Somato-emotional repatterning can work wonders for people who struggle with grief. As a mind-body approach, somato-emotional repatterning works to achieve harmony between the psychological and physical aspects of the human being.
For example, a widow may continually tell herself that she’s okay. However, deep down, she may still feel distraught with grief. This creates dissonance, or incongruence, between what the mind thinks and what the body feels.
Somato-emotional repatterning can help to heal this dissonance and help people release both the mental and physical aspects of grief.
2) Hypnosis
Hypnosis, or hypnotherapy, is another holistic method that can help widows tackle their grief.
Hypnotherapy is a form of treatment that allows people to find a space of calm and peace despite overwhelming emotional circumstances. Hypnosis helps allow people to access their subconscious mind – the part of our mind that is ‘running the show’, and which we are hardly ever aware of.
The subconscious mind also holds onto feelings of grief, sadness, and despair, especially when we’re not dealing with these feelings upfront. In some cases, people repress their grief to the point that they are entirely unable to access it with their conscious mind.
By using hypnosis, you will be able to access your grief. Through the use of hypnotic cues and encouragement, you can develop a mindstate and the mental clarity to help you process your grief effectively.
3) Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP, is a form of therapy that uses linguistic cues to help reprogram and reformat the mind.
NLP practitioners and coaches are able to help their clients directly interact with their subconscious mind. Unlike hypnotherapy, NLP does not require that clients enter a trance state. Rather, by using a variety of techniques based on linguistics, suggestion, and psychology, NLP practitioners are able to work with clients’ emotions and fears directly.
NLP is a very effective and quick-working process that can help widows overcome their grief.
Conclusion
The loss of a spouse can be very difficult, and widows often have to cope with serious grief. Fortunately, there are a number of holistic and mind-body approaches which can help widows overcome the pain of grief.
If you or someone you know are struggling with the loss of a spouse, please contact me and let’s begin working through your grief together.
