After a death or breakup, what causes that grief, why does it hurt so much and what can you do to alleviate it?

If you’ve experienced the loss of a person, either through death or the breakup of a relationship, you’ll know that you’re often left with a whole bunch of unanswered questions, and this horrible, dreadful heavy feeling that you can’t quite pinpoint and don’t know how to begin releasing.

So what exactly does that feeling consist of and how do you create mental, emotional and spiritual relief so that you can be at peace internally?

The Mirrors of Relationship

At the first level of emotional turmoil you have the mirrors of relationship, which in a nutshell is the energetic reason that you and this person were attracted into each other’s lives.

A vast majority of the people and relationships that come into our lives only come to show us an aspect of ourselves that is ready to cleared or fixed. If the relationship energy is made up of purely mirrors, then by the time you’ve cleared the mirrors the attachment and attraction to the person will have disappeared.

I know it sounds farfetched, but it really does happen: you get the awareness of the mirror and all of a sudden you just aren’t attached and miserable anymore; it just melts away in a second. The even more amazing thing is that if the attachment disappears in you, it will disappear in the other party as well, so it’s also a great way to finally end a relationship that seems to be going back and forth endlessly.

On the flipside, if you clear all the mirrors and reach a level of peace with each other, you may naturally gravitate back towards each other – without the problems that originally pulled you apart. In this case you are most likely dealing with a soulmate or twin flame relationship.

Learn more about the mirrors of relationship:

• Understanding mirrors: http://lifecoachestoolbox.com/index.php/what-are-the-mirrors-of-relationship
• Mirrors question set: http://lifecoachestoolbox.com/index.php/mr-right-vs-mr-right-now
• Free online mirrors tool: http://lifecoachestoolbox.com/index.php/smashing-mirrors-diagnostic-tool

What causes the grief?

If you’ve cleared mirrors and you still have pain and there’s been no movement towards reconciliation occurring, then your pain most likely stems from a sacrifice, compromise or loss.

Common sacrifices & losses that cause grief

Not having a home or belonging with that person

When you form a close emotional bond with someone, there’s a sense of belonging that happens and they become part of your family: the people you call home.

Once of the senses of loss you’re feeling is that you have lost a home – you feel abandoned and homeless, lost and looking for a direction and safe space.

Coaching solution:

List all the other places and people in your life that feel at home and belong with. Make a point of engaging in social activities with these people.

Not having an anchor

An anchor is more than a home – it’s a person you take with you everywhere, regardless of how your environment or life changes. For some of us this is a friend, for some a family member and for others their romantic partner.

Anchor relationships are the really crucial relationships we have, and so when you lose your anchor you lose a lot of key elements in your life, including:

• Someone to talk to and share with
• Someone to vent to
• Someone to plan with
• Someone who wants and needs you
• Someone who wants to hear from you
• A partner in crime and all-round accomplice
• A place where your needs and what’s going on with you matters
• A place to express your love

For many people this last point – a place to express your love – is something they’ll glance over, thinking it doesn’t apply to them, and then wonder why I didn’t include an option for someone who loves you.

The reasoning is simple: if you really wanted someone who loves you, you’d be all over your stalkers. When we love someone else, it is about the love we feel inside ourselves for and around them, and how we express that love – that’s why we call it being in love.

It’s not that you’re missing being loved by the person – you’re missing being able to express the love you feel for the person. If you get very honest, you’ll realize you probably haven’t thought about the other person’s feelings once: it’s always about your pain and your feelings because we live our lives from a subjective point of view.

Coaching solutions:

• Identify friends and family that can fill these roles for you and make use of the people, messaging and calling them whenever you feel the need to contact the person you’ve lost.
• To deal with unexpressed love, send love and light to the person every time the thought of them arises.
  • You can look at a photo of the person or imagine them in your mind, but just take a minute to stop and center and imagine your love leaving you and flowing to them. You can say something like: “I bless and release you in love and light.”
  • Like a forgiveness exercise, you don’t always feel aligned with this one in the beginning – the journey is to keep going until you can do it without feeling any pain or turmoil, or you no longer feel the need to do it. If you keep at it, you will eventually get that sudden energetic release – the struggle is reaching it.
  • This is also one of those exercises that gets harder to do at first, so expect your resistance to the exercise to increase over the first while you’re doing it. You may even reach a day or two that it feels impossible and like this is a waste of time. That increased resistance is your ego fighting back – the anger and frustration you feel at yourself is your ego fighting back too. This journey is about overcoming the Ego, so don’t let the difficulty put you off. If you’re finding it difficult, you’re doing it right.

Unrealized dreams

When you begin a relationship and bond with someone, you begin to plan and look forward together. It’s quite a natural response – we all expect our relationships to continue forever; it’s why we’re so surprised when a long-term romantic partnership comes to an end.

However the end of the relationship does not mean that the hopes and desires and dreams have gone away – it just means that you have to sacrifice those unrealized expectations and let go of those dreams. Letting go of a dream is difficult under any circumstances – when there’s grief and loss, it feels almost unbearable.

Coaching solutions:

• List all the unrealized dreams and plans you can remember, and then use one or more of the following options:
  • See the other person going off to complete that dream alone and bless them with love and light
  • Use acceptance by saying: “I accept that this dream will never realize for this person and me. I’m sorry, I love you, I forgive you, please forgive me.”
  • See yourself going to complete the dream alone and list at least three scenarios in which it works out better because that person is no longer around, e.g. you meet someone new with exactly the same interests and you go onto even greater success than you previously imagined. Get extreme here – imagine the wildest, most amazing and miraculous possibilities. Dream enormously big here.
• List all the dreams and opportunities that are open to you because this person is no longer around – and take the first steps towards achieving one of those dreams.
  • Set yourself a completely new goal that in no way reminds you of what you’ve lost.
  • This will also serve as a useful distraction while you’re lonely, so make it something complicated that will engross and absorb you.

A chaotic and uncertain future

Aside from dreams being taken away, the loss of a relationship through death or separation also creates an uncertain future, because you’re directionless and you may no longer feel like you have a reason to go on.

Coaching solutions:

• List all the other reasons you have to go on and stick around:
  • People who need you around
  • People who would miss you if you were gone
  • Ways you make a difference in the world
  • Ways the world would be worse off because you’re gone
    • Watch the movie It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/ - for some inspiration in this regard. In the movie the main character is shown what the world would be like if he had never existed.
• Make a list of dreams and desires you’ve had since childhood, especially future possibilities you can pursue because this person is no longer in your life. Make an active move towards starting to follow one of those paths.