Six Mindful Strategies to Recover from the Shock of Loss
When they returned to the States, Mark and Selena told me they had finally begun to heal. The deep compassion that had been awakened in them had eased their grief, and they felt they’d transformed from suffering parents who had lost their children to people who reached out to other suffering parents. They said they no longer felt quite so alone.
Over the next few months, Mark and Selena continued their mindfulness meditation practice and began to move forward with their lives. Selena, who loved music returned to school to earn a master’s degree and began working with children as a music therapist. Mark went back to his work as an electrician, but he now approached it in a very different way. When he consulted with clients, he suggested bold changes they hadn’t considered and had more patience and compassion with them. In time, Mark and Selena adopted two special-needs children and had another child of their own. They continued to talk about their children who died and kept photographs of them in their home, but they were able to creatively transform their tragedy into a new life with meaning and purpose.
For those of us who are unable to take such radical steps here are six strategies from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind to help you mindfully recover from a loss.
Six Mindful Strategies to Recover from Trauma, Loss & Change
- Reach out for Support: Don’t try to bear your trauma alone. Ask for assistance from your friends, spiritual leaders, support groups and professionals.
- Sit quietly and reflect: No matter the severity of your trauma, sit quietly and ask yourself, “Historically have I experienced other challenges in my life and how did I navigate through them?” Now use these past experiences to tap into your internal courage and strength and explore if you can implement the same strategies again.
- Trust Your Inner Resources: Once you realize that you survived other traumas before now trust in yourself to know that you have the ability to get through your present challenge.
- Learn to Keep Yourself Centered through the Unbearable Feelings of Grief: When the waves of sadness and helplessness wash over you initially feel the emotion and it’s depth but then start to breathe through the grief with slow deep breaths. This will help you stay grounded and bring you back to the present.
- Start Imagining a New Life: Even though you are experiencing immense grief start to imagine and invent in your mind’s eye a new future for yourself.
- Practice Mindfulness: While doing grounding practices such as meditation, yoga, or even walks in nature remember that your loss is cyclical like the seasons. Even when we are in the depths of winter we know that eventually it will become more manageable with advent of summer. Learn to tolerate and pace yourself through the most severe times.
Many of us admire people like Al Gore, who found his road to the White House suddenly blocked and chose to focus on educating people about global warming, and Christopher Reeve, who left acting behind after becoming a quadriplegic and went on to become a film director and advocate for those suffering from spinal cord injuries because they were able to let go of the past and transform their lives. You too have the ability to tap into your inner courage, move forward with your life and even reinvent yourself.
Ronald Alexander, PhD is a leadership consultant, psychotherapist, international trainer, and the Executive Director of the OpenMind Training Institute, a leading edge organization that offers personal and professional training programs in mind-body therapies, transformational leadership, and mindfulness. He is the author of the widely acclaimed book Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisi… that provides practical and innovative applications to help us through today’s challenging times and upon which this article is based. Alexander is a pioneer in the fields of Positive Psychology, Creativity Thinking, Eastern Wisdom Traditions and Mindfulness Training. He has been conducting professional and personal trainings that support strategies of personal, clinical and corporate excellence in the USA, Europe, Canada, and Asia & Australia since 1970. www.ronaldalexander.com
