Make some changes

We know now that we should resist making big changes in our lives at this time. However, there is positive value in making some small, but symbolic, alterations to our surroundings and the way we live.

We can understand the vehement concern a bereaved parent has with ‘keeping his room exactly as it was’. Generally, however, there can be something very unhealthy about an obsession to preserve things the way the dead person left them. Even a mild inclination to do this is dangerous because it becomes more and more difficult to go back on the idea. We can find ourselves stuck in a world where ‘nothing has happened’ – and where the flow of our grief has become arrested.

It can be helpful, when the time seems right, deliberately to make some changes which are not fundamental but which are a token acknowledgement that our lives are changed:

• re-arrange or replace some of the furniture
• have a spring-clean and clear out unwanted rubbish
• buy some new domes
• alter your daily routine in some small way.

The idea is not to put the past behind us – but to stop it forming itself into a mental shrine.

There’s a time and place for everything.

One day when I was coming home from shopping in town, I rested on a bench in the park where we used to sit before her illness. I began to think about our times together. This happened again later in the week and before I knew it that park bench became a quiet, safe haven where I could think about mother, the past and the future.

We’ll not be able to compartmentalise our thoughts at first; our loss may be ever present. However, as time goes by there is much to be said for having a special time and place where we can give special, uninterrupted attention to our thoughts. It may be a good idea for this ‘safe haven’ to be out of the home – away from day-to-day distraction.

This is not to put our feelings at arm’s length but, rather, to give ourselves the opportunity to focus on our thoughts more intensely. If we can do this away from home it allows us to continue living with less grief distraction.

How can we tell things are improving?

Our progress through grief can be so slow that change can be indistinct. One way of pinning down our emotional progress is to look occasionally at the following statements. It’s unlikely we could have owned any of them during the first time of shock. When we can respond positively to most of them we can be sure that we’re moving forward.

• I’ll always remember the time when...
• I have decided I am going to do the following...
• I spend much less time caught up with negative or self-destructive thoughts...
• I would never have guessed that I would be able to...
• It’s been awful, but the one important thing I have learned is...
• I can talk about her in the past tense without a feeling of despair...
• I’ve changed: I’ve become...
• I can enjoy pleasant memories of our time together...
• I was useless when it happened but at least now I can...
• I can smile and laugh without feeling bad about it...
• I’m beginning to be interested in other things and other people...
• I’m looking forward to...
• Although my memories will last forever, I feel I can finally say goodbye.

Our preoccupation with our distress will begin to fade. Sometimes something funny will happen to us, just as it used to. Sometimes we’ll recall something hilarious that happened in the past. When that happens, we should go ahead and laugh if it feels funny. We won’t be desecrating our loved one’s memory – we’ll be re-creating something of the life we used to have.

Food and sleep

All griefs with bread are less.

George Herbert (1593–1633) Outlandish Proverbs

We’ll have plenty of helpful enquiries about whether we’re eating properly or whether we’re getting enough sleep. Such concern may seem unnecessary – even faintly condescending.

However, the truth is that when we are overwhelmed with loss our body stops giving a high priority to its own maintenance; all our energy becomes focused on our immediate grief. This is fine in the short term but over the days and weeks that follow, poor nutrition and lack of sleep will actually increase our vulnerability to the effects of our loss.

We cannot rely on our appetite to keep us well fed, so we must do so consciously – or be reminded.

Sleeping patterns can be disrupted in the same way. It may be that for a very short time – days rather than weeks we can benefit from some prescribed sleeping tablets.

Relaxation

The tension and stress of bereavement are likely to be reflected in aches and tension in our muscles, which will make us irritable and even more depressed. Just as exercise dissipates the stress, so relaxation can achieve a similar effect.

There are many ways of achieving physical calm – yoga, meditation, aromatherapy, visualisation. It’s important to choose the method with which we feel most comfortable. There are classes and study groups as well as self-help videos and audio-tapes.

However, there are some simple exercises which we can do ourselves every day, which will not only give us a short cut to relaxation, but will help us keep active – providing that we’re not physically unfit.

Exercise

The only cure for grief is action.

G. H. Lewes, Life of Lope De Vega

What possible connection can there be between exercise and dealing with grief?

There are three possible links:

• Emotional stress and physical tension are closely related. By imposing muscular tension through exercise the physical relaxation that follows has the effect of reducing our mental tension or depression.
• One of the effects of depression is that the world becomes oppressive and our power to affect things seems to have been removed. By setting (even a limited) physical goal – a walking destination, for example – we gain a sense of achievement which can help to restore our feeling that we are capable.
• Exercise also releases chemicals in the brain which can ease pain and distress. This can give us back a feeling of mental well-being – at least for a while.

Exhaust yourself

Most houses have their own gym: it’s called a staircase.

This exercise involves running upstairs (mine has 15 treads) ten times, as hard and energetically as you can – it doesn’t matter if that’s not very much. Your movement in coming down should be the opposite – as if you were a marionette on strings flopping as lightly as possible from step to step.

Stretch yourself

Lie on a bed with your feet and hands supported.

Slowly raise your extended right leg – keeping your right big toe as close to the wall opposite as possible, point into the corner of the wall and ceiling and try to scrape the ceiling with your toe until you reach a point directly above your head. (You’ll know when you have reached it because you’ll be too uncomfortable to continue.) Instead of lowering your leg let gravity make it flop heavily on to the bed.

Repeat with your left leg and repeat both five times.

Do the same with your right and left arms, pointing, stretching, raising and dropping ten times.

Deep muscle relaxation

A basic technique which is easy to learn and remember and can be practised at almost any time when you are not going to be disturbed.

It’s best to lie flat on the floor or a bed with your arms at your side. The idea is to tighten muscles for a count of three and then, slowly, allow yourself to feel the tension draining away as you relax them. Move in a sequence from the hands to the shoulder and then from the toes to the head.

• Make tight fists: relax.
• Tighten the arm muscles (excluding the hands): relax.
• Try to make your shoulders touch your ears: relax.
• Screw up your toes: relax.
• Point your feet away from you so that they are parallel with your legs: relax.
• Stretch your leg muscles by pointing your toes towards your head: relax.
• Tighten your thigh muscles by pressing the back of your knees towards the floor: relax.
• Clench your buttocks together: relax.
• Tightly hold in your stomach muscles: relax.
• Press the small of your back against the floor: relax.
• Tighten your chest muscles by taking in, and holding, a deep breath: relax.
• Try to make your shoulders touch your ears (again): relax.
• Stretch your chin towards the ceiling: relax.
• Bury your chin in your chest: relax.
• Clench your teeth and press your lips tightly together: relax.
• Close your eyes as hard as you can: relax.
• Raise your eyebrows as far back as you can: relax.
• Screw up all your face muscles: relax.

You should now be feeling relaxed. If you are aware of any leftover tension repeat the relevant part of the exercise.

The whole exercise should take about 20 minutes. If you want to ‘feel the benefit’ do it during the day: if you do it in bed at night, you will almost certainly be asleep in 15 minutes.

Timed breathing

Now that your muscles are relaxed you can do something about reducing further tensions.

Still lying on your back with your arms at your sides, take in a slow breath through your nose, silently counting five seconds – ‘one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two...’

Now hold your breath for a count of five, slowly breathe out through your mouth for a count of five and count five before breathing in again. Repeat this sequence ten times.

Self-hypnosis

Every day in every way I am getting better and better.

Following on from one or all of the exercises above we can make use of our ability to relax to help us get rid of further stresses and negative thoughts.

When we relax completely we are very near to the trancelike state evoked by hypnosis. This is near the point where our consciousness meets our sub-consciousness – that ‘floating’ state we are in when we wake up from sleep. This is a useful area because the traffic of thoughts between the two states is particularly easy; ‘deliberate’, imagined thoughts can be transformed into settled, ‘natural’ attitudes. Normally, a hypnotherapist will be more powerful in making suggestions about such new attitudes, feelings and behaviours but, in a milder form, we can do it ourselves.

The idea is to try to get rid of negative ways of thinking, to protect ourselves from hurt and to strengthen our self-confidence. Before you start, choose something about yourself which you would like to change: something about your attitudes, your level of functioning, your preoccupations or your anxieties. We’ll use the example of being able to face groups of people without fear.

• Find a comfortable position – sitting or lying down. When you have achieved a relaxed and semi-drowsy state, slowly visualise a calm setting. It should be remote from your familiar surroundings, where you can feel comfortable and completely at ease – preferably a real place you have visited: a beach, a landscape, a room or some other imagined scene. You should be standing outside and slightly above the scene with some shallow steps leading down to it.
• Spend some minutes looking around, enjoying the scene, sounds, smells and memories.
• Slowly descend the steps, pausing a few seconds on each one – there will be half a dozen. At each step think the words ‘deeper’, ‘deeper still’, ‘still deeper...’
• At the bottom, finally ‘in’ the scene, you should be in a mild, pleasant, relaxed ‘trance’.

• As you look about you, say to yourself confidently (according to your example) ‘I feel comfortable in the company of other people’.
• Drink in the pleasure of your imagined scene as you repeat the suggestion several times, with pauses in between. Look around at the imagined strangers about you, smiling warmly at them.
• When you feel completely at ease with your self-suggestion in this safe setting, hold on to your confidence and imagine yourself in another situation where you would normally have a problem – for example, a social evening where you know people are going to be uncomfortable about mentioning your partner’s death. Imagine the assured person you were before – now completely at ease with people’s embarrassment. What would this new ‘assured’ person say to them?
• Now go back to your safe, happy setting and repeat your suggestion a few more times.
• Turn round and slowly climb up the steps – this time telling yourself ‘lighter’, ‘lighter still’, ‘even lighter’.
• Open your eyes and slowly come back to the ‘real’ world.

This is an exercise you can use in many different ways. Decide on the positive suggestion you want to make to yourself, repeat it with confidence in a safe, imagined place, keep the assured feeling and imagine a more challenging environment. Slowly return by way of the reassuring safe setting.

Don’t be afraid that you’ll get stuck or that being interrupted is ‘dangerous’ – you’ll be in charge all the time.

Make sure that your suggestion is wholly positive. For example it’s no good telling yourself, T mustn’t worry about meeting new people’.

What you wish to work on is up to you:

• loneliness
• anxiety
• fear of going out
• being assertive
• self-esteem.

You should be fairly calm to start with. It just won’t work if you’re in a bad mood or feeling destructive (you’d do better to try some vigorous exercise or talk out your feelings with a friend). Self-hypnosis will only work if you are hoping it will.

Written positive affirmations

We are not moved by events, but by the views we take of them.

Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD)

Consider the important parts of your life – particularly those areas which preoccupy your thinking. Compose some statements which reframe your thoughts in a positive way. Two rules:

• make them short, straightforward and clear
• make them believable and attainable.

Write them down and add a sentence which amplifies and justifies what you have written – making them as personal to you as possible. Read them aloud to yourself regularly and add to the list. Here are some examples.

• I deserve all that is good in life...
• I forgive myself for...
• I am free to...
• I accept myself the way I am.
• I wish to let go of all bad feeling about the past.
• In the future, I look forward to...
• I love myself and deserve to be loved.
• I have the strength and energy to overcome difficulties.
• I will allow myself a daily treat.
• I will take care of my health.
• I will be kind and generous to myself.
• I will seek and enjoy warm, loving relationships.

We should aim to develop ‘the undisturbed calmness of mind’ described by ancient philosophy. We can do this by encouraging:

Friendliness towards the happy
Compassion for the unhappy
Delight in the virtuous

Indifference towards the wicked.

Patanjali, Indian sage and author

The Deborah Kerr theory

Whenever I feel afraid, I whistle a happy tune...

(Rodgers and Hammerstein, The King and I, 1956)

... there is nothing either good or had, hut thinking makes it so...

Shakespeare, Hamlet

The problem with the feelings that make up our grief is that they will not be rushed. We haven’t got the resources to ‘pull ourselves together’ or ‘snap out of it’. When other people make such suggestions – and they usually do it non-verbally – there’s something peculiarly insulting about it.

However, we can escape temporarily from the oppressive dreariness of our thoughts for short periods reasonably easily.

We all know that our moods affect the way we appear to others. When we are feeling miserable our posture closes up, our head and shoulders drop and we avert our gaze; it is as though we were rolling up into a ball – like a hedgehog – to protect ourselves from the world.

What is not so well known is that the reverse is also true. Not only does our mood affect our appearance, but the way we hold ourselves and how we present ourselves to the world can have a significant effect on the way we feel.

Choose a time when you are feeling reasonably at ease and try the following experiment. Sit in a comfortable, easy chair and draw your knees up towards your chest; clasp your legs with your arms and lower your forehead against your knees. Sit like this for half a minute and then say – meaning it: T feel really happy.’ It’s nearly impossible to get the words out and even more difficult for your face to look pleased.

Now try the opposite. Sit up straight, head upright, arms at your side and legs slightly apart, feet on the floor. After a while try saying – with feeling – ‘I feel really miserable today’. Again there’s something about our open, confident physical posture which resists any association with depressive thoughts.

This could be because there is some reverse chemical action between our physical attitude and our brain. More likely, the effect is caused by a long-developed learned association between our feelings and appearance – just as we can’t help looking sad or happy when we feel that way, so we are drawn to feel the way that we look.

The implications of this are not profound. There is no question of ‘recovering’ from depression with some programme of posturing and pulling faces. However, for short periods, in the depths of our grief, we can induce short spells of well-being, which can remind us of our temporarily lost ability to feel good. Here’s how.

The task is to walk for an hour. Find a route – preferably one that is new to you – where you are unlikely to meet anyone you know. There should be no destination to distract you.

The idea is that you should walk for half an hour, turn round and then walk back.

What is important is how you walk. Your head should be erect and your spine straight – as though you were being suspended by a marionette’s string from the back of the top of your head. You’re three centimetres taller than usual; it’s as though your feet are just touching the floor.

Hold your shoulders back and swing your arms in rhythm with your stride, which should be long enough to cause some slight strain on your calf muscles. Your pace should be brisk –sufficient to cause a glow of perspiration – without you becoming out of breath.

People you meet will note how confident and assured you appear. Can you manage a slight smile? Don’t stop – but make an effort to be curious about what’s happening en route.

When you get back, have a cup of tea and notice how you’ve have been feeling.

It will soon pass, as your real world returns, but you may be reassured that you still have the potential for positive living. Repeat three times a week, after meals. Remember: