She taught me my first professional lesson about the power of discussing the emotional events in our lives.
I was in my first year of training as a therapist and she was in her early 70‘s, articulate and pretty with short-cropped salt and pepper hair. “My children want me to see a therapist about my grief,” she said, “but I wanted to come because I need to learn how to enjoy my life again.”
Their father, her husband had died several months earlier. “My children want me to cry, but I’ve cried my entire married life,” she said, “and I’m ready to move on.”
She told me about the first year of their marriage. That she had unexpectedly found him in bed with a neighbor. How she stood holding her groceries as the woman gathered her things and ran from the house. And how he, half dressed, approached her with an announcement that they would never speak of this again.
They didn’t…and her grieving began in that moment.
Although she pleaded with him over the years to talk about it or try therapy, he refused and 49 years passed by.
I’ve come to know that grief is not always about death. We can grieve the loss of a dream for ourselves or for someone we love. I believe my client grieved who she thought she would be in their marriage and what she hoped their marriage could have been if they had healed this wound.
So when he died, she was tormented by sadness and relief.
I get it, I know it’s hard to say what you feel. And it can be even harder to hear what someone else feels, especially if you’re the reason for their pain. But, the answer is to just begin.
Here are a few tools that might help you:Pick a quiet chunk of time and focus on one situation at a time If you want to tell someone about how you feel:
- Use “I.” for example, I want to let you know how I feel about______.
- Say, I don’t expect you to fix it, I just hope you will listen.
- Before you start, remind yourself to just listen – Don’t bring it back to you.
- When they finish, ask…how can I help you with this?
When the major emotional situations aren’t acknowledged they get metaphorically tossed in a pile. As life goes on the pile gets bigger and feelings of isolation and resentment can build up.
Of course, I can’t say that it would have all worked out perfectly if my client’s husband had agreed to talk about this situation. But I do believe that their married life could have been very different if her pain had been acknowledged.