Dealing with Grief

The common perceptions of grief are the feelings which arise on the passing away of a loved one. I have spent the past two years reading many books on grief, death and dying. The most beautiful among them being ‘On Grief and Grieving’ by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, which talks about the five stages of grieving – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. 

Recently, when someone approached me for help to deal with the pain of separation, I realised that what this person is going through is also intense grief or bereavement, yet in another form. It set me thinking. Can the five stages of grieving be applied to grief in situations such as separation, a break-up or even simple plain unrequited love too? And the answer I got was –absolutely yes. Grief is to do with loss or perceived loss and is not limited to death alone.

In such situations, some common questions that arise are – Why me? What is in it for me? What did I do to warrant such pain? Much as we would want answers to these questions, the hard truth is that we rarely get them while in the midst of the grief. I know this metaphor is an oft repeated one, but it bears repetition. The events of our lives may be likened to tiny dots that are drawn at random on a sheet of paper. As we move on from event to event, these dots get connected in random order, making no sense to us at the point in time. But if we were to back at our lives at a later point in time, we would marvel at the design that has been created by the master designer using the very same dots.

A poignant question I was asked recently was – “Do I necessarily have to go through this pain? It’s too intense. What do I do to alleviate the pain?” What I have understood is this – Oftentimes we have to go through the pain to get to the other side. We can take as much pain as we want to, since we internally have all the resources required to deal with it. 

Some of the best learning’s I’ve got on pain and grief have been from Dick McHugh. In his words, “The more you resist, the more it persists. The more you accept, the more it transforms.”   No one can teach us or help us respond to pain. All it needs is our attention, an acknowledgement that it is there and the willingness to experience it fully.  The path to liberation from the pain or grief goes through the act of experiencing it. Accept it and also be watchful, lest your mind takes the pain and converts it into suffering.

Also read my recent article on Dealing with Pain & Grief 
http://rapportinrelationships.blogspot.in/2015/11/dealing-with-pain-grief.html

Becoming better listeners

When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened? Truly listened to all that the other person said and more importantly, left unsaid? The sad part is that many of us believe ourselves to be good listeners, little realising that what we have heard may be just the tip of the iceberg and unaware of the whole submerged mountain of information that we have missed.

Do these listening patterns seem familiar to you: We listen and in the process of listening, constantly think of how to respond? So much so that we often cut in-between the other persons talk, just to have our say. I’m sure there are some of us who take pride in our multitasking abilities, the ability to listen in the midst of doing a zillion other activities. Are we even aware that we could have lost out on a whole lot of information in this process?

Why listen? Much has been said and written about the importance of listening – at work, in teams, with customers etc. It all boils down to one reason – it is to establish a relationship based on trust and respect, be it with anybody – child, parent, colleague, friend, partner. That being the aim, I ought to be most concerned, not at what I've listened to and caught on, but on what I could have missed out. Because my map of the world is different from yours. And it becomes essential for me to get an inkling of your map of the world to even start the process of trust and relationship building.

What would be of immense value to me as a listener would be to leave the self aside and focus my attention on what is being said. An aid to the process would be to have a blank white board in my mind, on which the other person’s words are written, in exactly the way that they are being said. And on that white board, I underline, what I think are important words, and repeat them back in exactly the same way, just so we both know that we are looking at the same map of the world. And while I fill in the white board with the words being spoken, the camera of my mind also clicks images of the nuances of expressions flitting across the person’s face. 

And together, the words and the images come together to form a beautiful collage in my mind, which tell me a story - the story of the other persons experience and views.  A story which I periodically check with the other person to see if I’ve got it right. And once the collage is ready, I look at it, take my understanding of it and then decide my response.
This process, if attempted, goes a long way to enable genuine listening among persons. A listening which is not done for the listener’s sake alone, but a listening which aims to establish trust & respect and through it, the foundation of a solid relationship.

Ten life learning’s

The past 10 days have been enforced rest, courtesy an infection that’s taking time to heal. Having nothing better to do, my mind has had a field time jumping from one scenario to another, all in the fantasy world. In the midst of this mental frolicking, it has also had time to ponder on what could be the learning’s that I could derive from this experience.
So here are my ten life learning's of the past few days, in random order.

1. Take time to reflect on what is important and what’s not. Things considered to be of life or death importance may not appear so when reasoned upon in quiet reflection. You would be pleasantly surprised at what is ultimately important to you.
2.  Let go of one-upmanship in relationships. Life is more important than a game of one-upmanship. Very often in the game of one-upmanship the other person(s) remain ignorant of the game being played.
3. The little things in life matter the most…like the ability to get a good night’s rest. Be thankful for them.
4. Search for the small things to appreciate in another person. It may seem inconsequential to you, but of great consequence to the other.
5. Focus on and magnify the good done by others. Ignore and blur the irritating parts. Everyone has their quirks.
6. You have tremendous goodwill working for you…from people and the universe around. You may be unaware of it. Believe in it.
7. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak…without adequate rest. There is only so much that the human body can drive itself to do without adequate rest, especially after a certain age.
8. Take care of your voice. It is perhaps the one main outlet of all your thoughts and desires and taken for granted most of the time.  Voice abuse can happen when we raise our voice in anger, in excitement. Voicing our opinions as a matter of freedom of speech without giving thought to its impact on others, may also leave a detrimental effect.
9. The mind is capable of immense potential…to take care of the body. Having positive thoughts influences that.
10. There is a positive intention behind every single thing that happens in our lives. Meditate & search for that. It will provide meaning to life.  

Anger Management: Part 2

In my last blog, I talked about the fact that extraneous factors do not press the trigger button for anger. We do, because much as we would like to believe that we do not have a choice, the truth is that we do. We push the trigger button for anger because we choose to.

Anger is such a ‘hot’ subject that I figured it warranted another write-up. This time I want to discuss about the emotional aspect of anger. We are largely led to believe that anger is a negative emotion and that it is not good to get angry. However, psychologists say that it is one of the basic emotions that need to be experienced fully. Let me share my experience with anger.

All through my childhood and early adulthood, I have been an extremely calm person. All this changed, seemingly without provocation, in the blink of an eye, under changed circumstances. And I started experiencing and expressing anger in different situations and levels. This seemingly about turn made no sense to me. Having never ever felt anger for much of my life, I suddenly felt I had metamorphosed into a different being entirely at times. And I began to feel guilty about getting angry. Now, that can be a vicious circle.
Till sometime ago, when I finally realised that I have both calmness and anger within me, as two ends of a spectrum. I let these two ends of the spectrum have a dialogue with each other. The realisation I came to was that both form an essential part of who I am and one is not better than the other, neither do either of them control who I am. Both are good in their own time and place, if expressed in a healthy manner, as they both have their own positive intentions. Once the acceptance came in, the guilt vanished and a collapse of the two extremities happened. This resulted in a new found sense of calmness and an ability to take ownership of my thoughts and feelings; and an ability to express my anger, if I so want to, in a manner that I want to. Always keeping in mind that it’s always my finger on the trigger button, not somebody else’s.


With this awareness has also come the experience that my decision to choose calmness over anger much of the time is surely becoming an intrinsic, unconscious one. I also realise that anger, far from being a negative emotion, bears a positive influence if expressed in a healthy manner. Because it’s the intention behind it that's important - the primary focus being to deepen a relationship.


For the first part of this series read my blog Anger Management

Anger Management

Familiar sounding terms? There are umpteen training programs and trainers that specialise in anger management. Are we to then assume that anger is an emotion that is not productive and therefore to be managed? Let’s probe this a little deeper.  

When do we get angry? When things don’t go our way? When someone else makes us angry? When we get frustrated? When someone doesn’t understand us? The list is endless…Consider the reasons closely. Almost all of the reasons will be attributed to a source or reason outside of us. Something which is ‘apparently’ outside of our control. What is the implication of this? Consider the following two response options: 

1.  When I get angry and say that someone or something outside of me ‘made’ me angry, what I am actually implying is that I have given that someone or something else power over my emotions. Think it over. In this world where we prize our independence and ability to think and act for ourselves so highly, is that what we want to do? Surrender the power over our emotional framework to someone or something outside of us? Where is the independence and ability to think and act for ourselves being manifest here? 

2. What if on the other hand, I recognise that while the other person or thing has created a situation which is not what I want, I retain the choice to react to that changed situation in a manner that I want to.

Which response do you think gives me greater power and flexibility? In the latter response, I retain my independence and ability to manage my own emotions, because I recognise that I can decide how I choose to react.

When we become aware of and recognise that this centre of control lies within us, and not with extraneous situations or persons, that’s when true anger management comes in. Because in that recognition comes the realisation that anger need not be managed. Since we now can choose to respond in one of many different ways.

We also start looking at the situation more closely and consider what could be the positive intention behind it. And when we uncover that positive meaning of that feeling of angst, we open up to ourselves a whole new world of response possibilities, putting the control of our emotions squarely within ourselves.      


For further readings on Anger Management read my next blog Anger Management: part 2