By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to be with the grieving part of yourself and allow it to do its own healing work.
Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.
In this episode, you’ll discover the two parts of yourself that have to work together in the grieving process. Why grieving has to move at the pace of the slowest part of you, and how to patiently invite expansion without pushing for it. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.
As highly sensitive people We love deeply, and we feel lost deeply. And in this session, we’re going to do a little bit of inner work to help process loss when it happens. Grieving is a process, and it isn’t resolved in one session. It isn’t resolved just from listening to one episode of a podcast.
It’s a process. But I want to share with you how you can use This particular process, the work of Byron Katie, to work through grief as you move through it, my mom died when I was when I was 40, it was 15 years ago, and it was suddenly, it was in a plane crash, and it was unexpected, and I was doing the work of Byron Katie at that time on a daily basis, and I just The very next day began to question my stressful thoughts about it.
And for about two months straight, I did the work almost exclusively on this loss. And it little by little shifted. And my experience is I really processed that loss, and it doesn’t come back to haunt me. What I feel now is more love rather than sadness. And so that’s my invitation to you is that if you’re dealing with a loss of any kind, that you take your time and you give yourself space.
to do your inner work because it can it can begin to shift things. So we’ll do a little piece of this now together. And I’m going to go back to the day after my mom died. And I even remember the work that I did that day. It was, I was questioning the thought, I want my mommy. And it was just a very visceral feeling coming from my heart.
And, that is. That’s where I started. So let’s start with that here today. You may have someone else that you’ve lost. Maybe it’s your dad, or maybe it’s a friend or a brother or sister or a child or someone that you loved. Could be anyone. So you just, you substitute your own name or your own relation in there.
I’ll be doing it on I Want My Mom. Let’s begin by being in that space where you’re feeling that want, where you’re feeling that loss. You may need to close your eyes and get in touch with the experience of loss. It’s often, for me, seeing that they were there and then knowing that they’re not there, that change.
The first question of the work is it true? The first question of the work is it
true? Is it true you want, in my case, I want my mommy, or you want your whoever it is? Is it true? And I want you to be so honest with this so that it’s coming from the deepest part inside of you. I like to say there’s two parts of me. There’s the wise part that sees things. It’s enlightened and wise and clear and has everything in perspective.
And then there’s the stuck part of me, the part that’s grieving, the part that hurts, the part that’s sad. And this work is for the stuck part. It’s for that part inside, that emotional part. So as you’re answering these questions, I want that part of you to answer the questions. You want this person. Is it true?
And give yourself time to emote if that is needed. Pause the recording, be patient with yourself.
You want this person. Is it true?
And we’re looking for a yes or a no. And this is a meditation.
So I’m going to go with a yes. I want my mommy.
Whatever your answer is, that’s fine. And take your time, literally. Pause the recording if you need more time to sit in this. When you’re ready, let’s go to question two. If you answered yes to question one, then question two is for you. Can you absolutely know it’s true you want this person, basically, to be alive?
Are you sure?
Be gentle with yourself as you wait for your answers to arise.
And be honest with yourself. Don’t push yourself ahead of your own evolution here.
So I’m doing this work from the moment, from the day after my mom died. I’m in her house.
And Is it, can I absolutely know it’s true, I want my mommy? Yes, it’s true. That’s my honest answer.
So question three is, how do you react? What happens to you when you have this thought, I want so and I want them to be alive. How do you react?
Again, be gentle with yourself.
These reactions can be strong.
I feel sad, I feel alone,
I want to cry.
There’s a constriction. in my heart
and I can’t stop thinking of my mom.
So how do you react when you think of this person that you love who has died?
I start to wonder what is all this life and death. I don’t get it. It’s beyond comprehension.
I’m confused or bewildered in a way.
When you have the thought you want them, let’s just change it to you want them to be alive. What happens to you? What’s the emotional, physical, mental reaction?
For me, it’s a kind of desperation. That’s where the tears want to come from.
I want to get her back. I want to go back in time,
and I can’t, so I feel powerless, I
feel small.
And then notice the images that are there when you think you want this person, you want them to be alive. Notice the images and memories coming into your mind.
I can see myself talking to my mom just two days before, and I was planning to see her just in a day or so.
I see an image of myself being on a plane and talking to someone about, I was going to go visit my mom, and she said make sure take advantage of her while she’s still there. Little did I know that I would never see her again.
I feel the sadness in that, I feel it in my gut, I feel it in my stomach.
I see images of her greeting me with open arms in the door so many times. I
see images of her telling me that she loved her, loved me.
I see her smile.
I see a loving mom.
And when I see those images, I feel sad, because the thought is, I want my mommy. And basically the idea is, I don’t have her anymore.
So it’s interesting. The more nostalgic I become, the more sad I become. And these images come, my mind just goes to them.
So what images are you seeing?
And you may see images from the future as well. What is your life going to be like now? Without this person,
and what are the emotions that come with those images?
Again, for me, it’s a mix of sadness, but also a little fear. Oh my gosh, now I’m all grown up. And am I really? Am I okay in this world without my mom?
So these reactions can be many. And if you need more time, keep looking, keep experiencing, allow this. stuck or grieving part of you to take its time in this. How do you react? How do you react when you think you want them to be alive?
How do you treat yourself?
I feel sorry for myself. I
treat myself as if I’m incapable of living.
So again, pause the recording if you need more time. But let’s move now to question four of the work, which is in the situation here. Who would you be without the thought or without undue attachment to the thought that you want them to be alive? Who would you be without that story, without that idea you want them to be alive?
It’s very slight, but I feel there’s a relaxation there. There’s a slight easing, like a kind of beginning of acceptance.
If the thought wasn’t there, and this is hypothetical, doesn’t mean you can be there. But if you imagine what it would like, what it would be like to be there, that’s what we’re looking at. So if you didn’t have this thought in your mind somehow, by some miracle, that you want them to be alive, what would it be like?
now that they’ve died.
Again, for me it feels accepting. I feel a certain freedom to move forward, to see what the next steps are would be, to be practical in terms of taking care of everything after she’s died.
Who would you be without the thought you want them to be alive?
I see the natural course of life where we’re born and we live and we die and it’s nothing unusual. Even though I like them to be alive, there’s a certain openness to the mystery. of it.
Without the thought, I want my mommy. I want her to be alive. I’m open to the possibility of it being okay.
And throughout all of this, I just want to remind you not to push yourself ahead of your evolution. Take your time. Don’t try to change yourself. Don’t try to be more over it than you are, but just explore with an open mind, hypothetically, what it would be like. Who would you be without the thought? I want them to still be alive.
I notice more breath in me,
more awareness of myself,
that I’m okay,
and an awareness of the love I have for my mom.
So we’ve seen the effect of this thought. I want this person to still be alive. When the thought is there, the grief is more intense. If the thought was not there, the grief would be less intense, maybe even not there. So this desire, this wanting, this argument with the way things actually are, is what causes this depth of stress, depth of grief.
So let’s try turning the thought around and explore some opposites to try to balance this and see if we can find other perspectives. So the original statement was, I want my mommy is what I said. And we generalized it to say, I want them to be alive, want the other person to be alive, to still be alive.
So a turnaround would be, I want me to still be alive.
And this is a sweet little turnaround because what is happening here with grief, they died and now I’m dying. So now we have two deaths here, that’s a little too much. So I want me to still be alive,
because I am.
And then you have to think, what does that mean for you? What would being alive still mean? Be, what would still, what would that be like, to really be alive? Living, connecting with others, caring with, about others. doing things that interest me, being excited about life, in general terms, this is being alive.
So if you can find anything like that, this can be your medicine. This can be the balance to everything has to stop because they died. And this Again, it’s not something to rush, but it’s a possibility that may draw you, and it’s a balance. So I want me to still be alive. There’s an excitement. I feel it in my solar plexus, like a kind of excitement.
What will I do next? How can I be here for everyone? How can I be here in this? Unusual situation and how I move forward and it’s a feeling of love.
So another turnaround would be I don’t want them to still be alive. Now this sounds sacrilegious, of course, goes against the very want that we’re talking about, but hold it as a balance. Hold it as something to balance this over like the imbalance of wanting too much when it’s no longer possible.
Wanting the impossible and being attached to that is stressful. How could this turnaround be true? I don’t want them to still be alive.
How is it okay that they have died? In
my mom’s case, she didn’t have to grow old. She died when she was 70, and she died quickly.
Yes, I don’t want her to still be alive.
And maybe that doesn’t exactly fit. But we’re just brainstorming here. Okay, what could be an example? of this turnaround. I don’t want them to still be alive.
In a way, for me,
it’s me really being on my own, being quote unquote all grown up.
And there’s a part of me that has, that finds truth in that. So I don’t want her to still be alive.
What do you find? How could it be that this person being gone is a good thing for you or for them?
We’re looking for balance.
And notice you can have two wants. You can have, you can want them to be alive and you cannot want them to be alive and it’s okay. But if the focus is only on I want them to be alive and they’re not, then it’s more grief experience. So is there any way that their death is a good thing somehow?
I look in retrospect now and mom left me some life insurance money that allowed me to get my training in the work of Byron Katie. So I’m grateful for that. I didn’t have that money. Probably would have never happened without that.
There’s a gift.
How about you? How is this death okay, or even good, somehow?
In a way, it makes me dig deep, look at the deeper parts of life, look closely,
think deeply,
and that’s how I grow.
So again, you can spend More time. This can be something that happens for days or weeks or months or years of just keeping an open mind about how them dying at this time was okay, was good.
And each example that you find can soften and balance this crying that’s happening. In this episode, we looked at the two parts of yourself that have to work together in the grieving process. And we saw there’s a wise part, a part that gets it, that has that broad perspective. And there’s the stuck part, the grieving part, the part that just wants things to be the way it wants it.
And we saw that when you’re grieving, you have to move at the pace of the slowest part of you. That is, that grieving part, that emotional part. And you can’t rush it. Even though we’re challenging that part. Even though we’re saying, is it true? And even though we’re asking it to turn around these This idea that I still want that person to be alive.
Even though we’re challenging that part, we’re also being respectful of that part. And we’re not rushing it. We’re not pushing it. We’re letting it find whatever it finds. Because when it finds it, something shifts. When the kind of wise part that sees everything clearly anyway sees it, eh, it doesn’t really touch anything that deeply.
So we have to move at the pace of the slowest part of us. And then we looked at how to patiently invite expansion without pushing for it. It’s really the same idea here that Expansion happens when it happens, and we can’t always control that. Grieving is a process, and it takes as long as it takes. And maybe it’s never over, there’s no right or wrong when it comes to grieving. But what we can do is keep inviting that little bit of expansion, inviting the mind to look at both sides of the picture. How even something tragic is okay, or could be okay. The mind can even touch it, and it may touch it and recoil, but even if it just touches a little bit, it can expand a little bit.
And then, over time, as you keep inviting, and keep exploring, and keep looking, pieces of grief start to fall away. I remember in the same few months after my mom died and I was Doing the work on different thoughts every day, whatever came up, and one of them was I need to understand how it happened. Like I was noticing how I was obsessing about how this accident must have happened and trying to figure it out.
I was getting technical, actually. And what I realized is I was trying to prevent it from happening. And so questioning that and turning it around and seeing that I don’t need to understand how it happened, a big piece of the grief fell off just then. The idea is to be patient and consistent if you can, persistent if you will, but gentle with yourself so that you begin to explore all of the different pieces of of thinking that are holding up the grieving process.
And just trust your stress. Your stress will tell you the next one to look at. So thank you for doing this work. It’s important work. It’s deep work. And I honor you and commend you for even thinking about it. So thanks for being here. As always, it’s a pleasure to sit with you. And I look forward to the next time.
And in the meantime, have a great rest of your day.
