Thought for the Week

Timothy D. Stein, MFT, CSAT

April 28, 2014

Chronic grief is like addiction.  You crave the person and sadness is the hit.

When someone leaves our life, grieving their absence is a natural process.  And, like all natural processes, it runs its course to a resolution.  When we are stuck in grief, we have (unintentionally) interrupted the resolution and have created a process that starts to feed on itself.  We believe that our life and troubles would be fixed if the person were still around.  The overwhelming sadness we create with this belief reinforces the idea.  This is a cycle to be acknowledged, understood, and broken.  After all, the most important person in your life is still present – that person is you!

What grief or sadness am I holding on to – either intentionally or unintentionally?  What might the process of resolving this grief look like?  What gifts are waiting for me once this process is resolved?