Without Acceptance, There Is No Duel That Heals

After the death of a loved one or a couple break-up, among many other situations that can happen, all of them coincide in one thing: you have to enter the room of mourning. However, sometimes we get stuck inside that room. Because we forget that there is no grief that heals without acceptance and, even less, without pain.

All mourning, by definition, requires of us: will, commitment, faith, resources, etc.  On the other hand, its course is known: a stage in which we first deny what happened, to become angry and feel angry about it, then the world comes over us and sadness becomes the predominant emotional color to finally accept the happened. But, during all these phases we suffer and sometimes that suffering leads us to stagnate in one of them.

We may spend a long time denying that break that has occurred: it hurts to look at her face. Perhaps, it is easier for us to get angry, blame others or the world for what happened. Therefore, we stay there, without allowing ourselves to cry, be sad, release how bad we feel inside.

There is no grief that heals without pain

It may seem paradoxical, but there is no grief that heals without pain. It is necessary to sink into the well of our feelings. Notice how we let ourselves fall while we try to deny what happened, we get angry and, later, we release all the sadness that has settled inside us. It is, in this penultimate phase, in which hopelessness makes an appearance and the situation becomes more critical due to the danger of abandonment.

Hopelessness takes away our desire for everything. It invites us to feel victims of circumstances and to go in search of depression, which with our actions we call unconsciously. We believe that we do not have the strength to go ahead and get out of that well in which we have plunged. A well that seems to have no outlet.

However, everything is the fruit of our perspective, or at least a good part. Well, we create a good part of the reality that we thus wish to perceive. Somehow, if in those moments the pain is so deep that we believe that there is no hope for us, it will be so. We have entered a dark room from which we do not have the strength to get out, for now.

It may take weeks, even months, for this feeling to keep us trapped. However, the pain that we feed will end up ceasing and we will tire of that situation in which we have been involved. One day we will wake up wanting to get out of that well of sadness where our own tears were drowning us.

The dread to feel

Even though we know that no grief can heal without pain and acceptance, the next time we walk into the same room we will probably feel just as awkward as the first time. This is so because it is difficult for us to feel and because when we feel we have an inner voice that tells us that those emotions will last forever. That is why we tend to run away.

When we have no choice but to deal with what we have experienced, we put certain strategies into practice to avoid feeling pain. So we go through each and every one of the phases of the duel, some being more painful than others. All for not reaching the final phase. The one that we avoid so much, but that will liberate us.

The well is not really such, it is a tunnel! It must be traveled, we enter it and we have to leave it. However, in our fear of feeling, experiencing and accepting what we have experienced, our lack of hope makes us perceive it as a well in which everything is meaningless.

For this reason, sometimes with the death of a family member or the breakup of a couple, we believe that we will not find a way to feel good, be happy and move on again. We believe that after that end there will be no more works or more adventures. We cling so much to those people and situations we have experienced with them that we think we don’t have a chance. However, this is not the case. But to understand it, you have to embrace the pain, feel it, and finally accept it in order to move on.