One of the foundational principles of the Healthy Grieving process is that you cannot heal if you feel like a victim in your experience of loss.
Often in a workshop or training, therapists – and particularly trauma therapists who deal with people who actually were victims in a traumatic event –find this concept challenging. The other day in a workshop one of the therapists asked, “Well, what if the person actually was a victim – for example in a violent crime?” and the trainer answered, “For the purposes of the Healthy Grieving process, it doesn’t matter.”
And there was a palpable reaction to that response in the room.
But then a cool thing happened.
Without any prearrangement, our volunteer that day (we always have a volunteer go through the process in the front of the room so attendees get to witness the process in action) became the perfect example and demonstration of the principle.
The grief he wanted to let go of was being taken away from the loving foster home he lived in from age three to age six. The grief from that loss was, as he described it, “still alive in him” all these years later.
You could hardly think of a more traumatic event for a little child than finally finding a place of safety, love and belonging – and being wrenched away from that with no warning. His description of holding onto the front door knob for dear life as two adults tried to drag him away was heartrending.
Yet for the purpose of the grieving process — for going back to that moment and feeling the feelings and letting them go and taking back what part of himself was lost in that experience — the fact that he was or wasn’t a “victim of a trauma” did not play into it. In fact, if he had spent any time blaming his mother for giving him up in the first place, the social workers for taking him, the foster parents for letting him go, or any outside force, the healing experience would not have happened.
In the Healthy Grieving process, the external event – traumatic or otherwise – is not the focus. It is a completely internal process where the part of ourselves that was lost gets reclaimed — and that can only be done with an internal focus. If any part of us is taking the stance that what happened should or shouldn’t have happened and/or who was responsible, or who was to blame, we put the power outside of ourselves.
We have to take the power back in order to heal. We have to understand that it is our response to the event (that our experience of the event is where the loss actually takes place) that needs to be healed — not the event itself.
And that can be hard to understand.
Until you see it in action.