Month: May 2013
It means what I want it to mean and no more
It means what I want it to mean and no more
Today I feel disconnected – like there’s something important missing, the only way I can articulate it is to say I feel like I’ve had something amputated.
There’s a part of me missing and it is the strangest sensation.
I don’t really want to give the missing part of me a label as that will begin to lead how I feel, that part is clearly Claire but beyond that I simply can’t articulate how I feel – and that’s the first time I’ve come across that problem.
I think it’s all tied up with the ‘erasing’ process. The other day my mobile rang and it was the home phone calling, so it popped up saying ‘Claire is calling you’ – that felt too weird so I had to delete her from my phone. Such a simple and actually meaningless task, yet I gave it meaning… OK – coaching mode kicking in now (I just spotted the complex equivalence trigger word in that sentence for any NLPers reading this), now I’m understanding it… I’m giving things meaning which don’t have any meaning except in my head.
- Deleting Claire from my phone doesn’t mean anything, other than she’s not in my phone.
- Putting widower on an official form doesn’t mean anything other than to tick a box for someone else.
- Calling her ‘my late wife’ whilst on the phone to the pension companies doesn’t mean anything other than a label that they can understand.
When I start out writing these posts I genuinely have no idea where they are going, I just type and see what happens and often in the middle I get a little light bulb go on and I reach a new understanding.
I understand now what I was doing, and I’m not doing it any more. It means what I want it to mean and no more!
Total Recall
Total Recall
I really want to be thankful today, and most of all I want to be thankful for the vivid memories I have of Claire. Enjoying those memories is a great sign to me that I’ve come a long way in 3 weeks. Yep, it’s 3 weeks today that Claire died.
Every now and then, when I was aware that I was enjoying a moment with Claire I made sure I fully associated in to that moment – it was a conscious decision to do and I have been doing it for about 5 years now.
As soon as I became aware that I was enjoying myself with her, it could be a chat, dinner, a romantic walk by the sea or simply she could have just looked lovely one day, when I noticed those times I made sure I didn’t delete ‘stuff’ – I fully associated in to the moment to be aware of everything I possibly could.
I’d look around me and notice how she looked, what she was wearing, how she smelt, what she said, what words she used, what we were talking about, what noises were in the background, what the temperature was like, what I was wearing, if we were enjoying food/drink then what tastes was I experiencing, what were other people doing around us, how did I feel, where was that feeling, what was her hair like, what jewellery did she have on, what sensations was I experiencing, what was Claire’s make-up like, what did her skin look like, how did it physically feel to hold her hand.
Noticing all those things deliberately means I REALLY enjoyed those times we shared, and what I didn’t realise at the time was how easy it would be to recall those times when I can have no more of them.
My memories of those times are not some hazy distant memory, I have total recall. I can enjoy them over and over as if Claire was here.
And even though I’m crying again now at the thought of never doing that again, I am truly happy that I did what I did so I can continue to enjoy those moments with clarity. The name ‘Claire’ even means clear and bright. And she still is.
Moving on and Grieving seem at odds
Moving on and Grieving seem at odds
I’ve not posted for a few days as we went down to Devon to spend some time with my sister and her family – thanks guys for having us – I must say I missed the therapy that writing this blog brings!
It was tough at the sea, being there without my Claire didn’t seem right. When ever we went we used to make a point of walking on the beach, hand in hand, often in the evening and talking about how nice it would be to live there – all a bit surreal.
We’re settling in to some new routines which, to be honest, doesn’t feel right. It feels as though we are re-writing our lives without someone who should be here.
On the one hand we need to move on and develop new routines, and on the other hand we need to… to…. to… I’m not sure sure what the words are. To respect, to grieve – yes that’s the one – ‘grieving’ and ‘moving on’ seem at odds.
So what is the highest positive intention of grieving for me? Protection>love>peace>amazing joy.
And what is the highest positive intention of moving on me? Surviving>belonging>peace>amazing joy.
So actually, grieving and moving on have the same highest positive intention for me of ‘amazing joy’ – so I wonder if I could allow all the resources that are available to the part of me that wants to grieve, to share those resources with the part of me that wants to move on. Perhaps they could share those resources in synergy and harmony, working together for the same highest positive intention of allowing me to have ‘amazing joy’.
Moving on and grieving have the same intention, so I can do both.
It’s OK to move on. It’s OK to grieve. Their purpose is amazing joy.
I can live with that!
A sense of dread
A sense of dread
Last night I experienced something really odd. A deep, painful and dark sense of complete and utter dread. If I think about my own death, about the eternity of not living I get that feeling, and last night, for the first time, I was thinking about Claire and all the lovely times we had and I got the same feeling. Deep, dark, black, heavy, in my chest rising and up & outwards down my arms.
A complete sense of dread. I’ll never see, hear or hold Claire EVER again. Even writing that down seems to elicit that state in me again, and I can feel it rising in my chest…
So what if that deep and dark sense of dread that rises from my chest happened in my little toe… can I still feel it, can I get that old state back?
No.
Well I wouldn’t want to do that then would I?
Each time I feel that deep and dark sense of dread that rises from my chest I’m going to force it in to my little toe, and for some weird reason I can no longer feel it.
This is weird shit, it works so I’m doing it.
The funeral is tomorrow. My little toe is going to get worked a lot.
A Thank You
A Thank You
Over the past couple of days I’ve had a few conversations about coping and grief, and how we deal with those emotions. I know this website gets read a lot and so I want to say a public thank you to Bruce Farrow and Kim Blackmore plus Dr Tad James (although I’ve never met him!).
Almost 2 years a go I started a journey of personal development in understanding how we think, how we communicate and how we deal with emotions and manage our state. Kim and Bruce were the trainers on that journey.
As part of my development we undertook therapy for negative emotions using Time Line Therapy ® developed by Dr Tad James (hence the thank you to him also).
Over the past 2 weeks since Claire’s untimely death the techniques, ideas and mind set I’ve developed have literally saved me from despair – each day I do Time Line Therapy on myself, learn from the day, apply what I learnt to myself, decide what I’ll do differently next time and move on… just a tiny bit.
I’m experiencing one of the biggest significant emotional events it’s possible to endure, yet I come to it clean. I have no baggage from the past which enables me to deal with this event, bit by bit, hour by hour and day by day I deal with what I experience each day and resolve it.
Writing this blog helps as I can use it as a dialogue with myself, one sentence is often me being client, the next me being coach. It helps – enormously. So if you read these posts and it sounds like two people having a conversation, then that’s often exactly what it is.
Bruce and Kim, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me access to all my resources, for helping me realise that I control my mind and therefore my results and for taking the lid off the dustbin!
Loneliness
Loneliness
Last night I realised that this is the longest time in 29 years that I haven’t seen Claire. She died 2 weeks ago and the first year we were going out with each other, she was 15 and I was 16, our parents ‘dragged’ us on our family holiday for a fortnight and we didn’t see each other – that’s been the only time we were apart for this long.
We didn’t live with each other before we were married, and so, since the 22nd June 1991 when we got back from our honeymoon we haven’t spent more than 6 days apart and we’ve spoken everyday for those last 22 years.
Yes, I guess today I feel a little lonely.
Now here are my thoughts about loneliness:
- Loneliness is a ‘label’ which has no definite meaning
- Because it has no definite meaning it means different things to different people
- Because it means different things to different people it can never be defined
- Because it can not be defined, what is it anyway and does it even exist?
I can give how I feel a label, I can call it ‘lonely’ if I like but I won’ t let it define me. If I label myself as ‘lonely’ then people will feel a need to respond in a certain way… dependant upon THEIR idea of what that label means. If I label myself as lonely I might start acting that way even more, and so it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
So I’m not ‘lonely’ I just want to talk to Claire. I want to hold her again.
What does holding her get for me?
I guess it helps me relax, feel warm inside, feel at peace. And if I close my eyes and take myself back to a time when I was holding her I can still feel that peace, relaxation and warmth.
Thank you Claire, you’re still with me. I love you.