How Are You Expressing Those Emotions?

Which emotions feel inflamed at present? What could increase your sense of calm? What could decrease your stress at this time? What’s something you notice you’ve been doing well? Where do you notice the love in your life? Take a cleansing breath. Turn off your music and blow out your candle. Take a final look at your journal, knowing you can revisit your hearts at any time. When things are not going so well, our thoughts can be problematic. Our thoughts can seem to move unbidden, no longer in the background, but out of our control and often linked to strong emotions. During the day we can find ourselves stuck in unhelpful patterns of thinking. At night, these worries and doubts can loom larger in the dark and keep us from sleep. The language we use in our thinking both reveals and shapes our inner state. Paradoxically, if we learn to live in the present, both the anxieties of the past and fears about the future fade into proportions that enable us to cope and then to heal. Thinking is what the mind does best. From birth we develop patterns in our thinking, and our brain develops highly specialized areas of activity and connectivity. The neuroplasticity of our brains ensures that the brain continues to adapt and grow throughout life.

More Than You Know

Some patterns of fixed thinking can trap us in unhelpful forms. In grief we can find ourselves practising unhelpful thought patterns, especially in the middle of the night. This pattern can be part of ruminating, when the same negative thoughts are played in repetitive and reinforcing loops. Circular and unproductive thinking can drain our energy and contribute to anxiety and depression. This pattern emphasizes our difficulties without ever finding solutions. It can make us feel trapped and without hope. This pattern often appears when are trying to make decisions. We swing from one option to the other, but before we can firm up plans and take action, the mind swings back to other options or previous thoughts. We waver between possibilities, feeling unable to progress. These patterns can lead to feeling stuck and anxious. One minute we are able to use our thoughts to support positive action, and the next moment our thoughts seem in disarray and things seem to fall apart. It can lead to reduced confidence and extreme caution with new situations.

If I Look Back I Am Lost

This pattern is a form of catastrophizing in which we use our thoughts to imagine all that could go wrong, jumping from one disastrous outcome to the next. Each escalation raises the temperature of the situation, leads us away from reality, and reduces any sense of control or choice. It fosters fear and, if practised often, it becomes difficult to approach challenges with calm and confidence. The inner voice offers criticism and name calling that we wouldn’t dream of using with others. The past certainly has echoes in our present, but the ways we think about the past can distract us from our present and reduce our sense of being fully alive. In grief, our sense of freedom and choice can limit our confidence in our future. While grieving, we spend a lot of energy wishing and hoping that things could be different, and it may take years to come to terms with that yearning. Over time we begin to see that while some things are outside our control, thoughts and actions are ours to use in ways that serve our lives now. Our dreams seem to have lives of their own and there are many approaches to interpreting their meaning. Some of these are based on the idea that our dreams are completing some response to various moments and circumstances in our waking lives, while others connect our dreams to the deepest parts of consciousness that haven’t yet been integrated. Both of these approaches can be helpful in exploring the role of dreams during grief. Much of our experience of grief is integrating a new reality, without our loved one.

Here, There and Everywhere

At times we feel that daily life is too much to experience, let alone interpret. Our dreams can provide a way to sift through the reality, not in a linear or literal way, but using the language of symbols, energy, connections, and emotions. It is no wonder then that our dreams in grief can be doorways to healing us. When we wake from a dream state, the substance of the dream may be lost, but we can recall glimpses or images. The strong emotions in a dream can wake us and they can linger long after sleep ends. I woke at one stage during the night. Lying on my back, I woke in time to feel a tear drop from my left eye on to the pillow. I couldn’t catch the dream that had caused it, but in that moment, I was still living it. You may recall your dreams with a sense of deep connection to your loved one. What are you noticing about your dreams? Which experiences carry over from dreaming to waking? What feelings are generated by your dreams? Dreams are full of representations and symbols which are difficult to interpret using literal approaches. They bring together amazing and vivid collections of people and creatures and places and events, and when we wake, we may try to make sense of the dream. While you might reflect on the meaning of something in a dream dictionary, our dreams are a highly subjective experience, and the meaning, if it can be discovered at all, lies within us. How would you describe that energy? Where is that energy present in your life? How might you increase or decrease that energy in your life? In reflecting on your dream, which emotions were present? Where was the emotional intensity of the dream? How are those emotions present in your daily life? How are you expressing those emotions? What are your unexpressed emotions? What could the dream symbolize for you? What message does the dream carry for you?