Ven. Dr K Sri Dhammananda

How to Overcome your Difficulties

Fear is nothing more than a state of mind. Here is the key to help one understand the principle by which fear may be mastered. A noted British anatomist was once asked by a student what was the best cure for fear, and he answered, “Try doing something for someone.”

The student was considerably astonished by the reply, and requested further enlightenment, whereupon his instructor said, “You can’t have two opposing sets of thoughts in your mind at one and the same time.” One set of thoughts will always drive the other out. If, for instance, your mind is completely occupied with an unselfish desire to help someone else, you cannot be harbouring fear at the same time.

Editor’s Note

By reflecting on these wise words, we appreciate our healthcare workers who courageously cared for the SARS patients during the outbreak in 2003. Once again we salute all our healthcare workers!

This article focuses on the possible consequences of using FEAR to guide our recovery from significant emotional loss.

Retained FEAR is cumulative and cumulatively negative. If the griever does not feel safe enough to communicate about their fears, then the fears themselves appear to be real and begin to define and limit the griever. In a play on that old phrase “you are what you eat”…”you create what you fear.”

Fear is one of the most normal emotional responses to loss. The fear of the unknown, the fear of the unfamiliar, the fear of adapting to a dramatic change in all our of familiar habits, behaviours, and feelings.
Fear is one of the most common emotional responses to loss. For example, when a spouse dies – How can I go on without him/her? Or, after a divorce. Where will I find another mate as wonderful, as beautiful?

These fears are normal and natural responses to the end of long-term relationships. If acknowledged and allowed, those fears and the thoughts and feelings they generate, can be completed and diminish without serious aftermath. As we learn to acknowledge and complete our relationship to our fear, we can then move on to the more important task of grieving and completing the relationship that ended or changed.

But, if we have been socialized to believe fear is unnatural or bad, then we tend to bury our fears to avoid feeling judged by our fellows who seem to want us to feel better very quickly after a loss.

There is also danger in that we have been socialized to express fear indirectly as anger. While there is often some unexpressed anger attached to incomplete relationships, we usually discover that it accounts for a very small percentage of unresolved grief. It is also important not to confuse Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s “stages of dying,” which includes anger, with the totally unique responses that follow a loss.

An even larger danger looms in the fact that we develop relationships with and loyalties to our fears. We believe them as if they were real. We defend them with our lives, and to some extent, it is, indeed, our lives that w are gambling with. As we develop a fierce relationship with our fears, we lose sight of our original objective, which was to grieve and complete the relationship that has ended or changed. It is as if we have shifted all of our energy to the fear so we do not have to deal with the painful emotions caused by the loss.

Reminders of loved ones who have died, or relationship that have ended will often take us on a rocket ride to the PAST, where we are liable to dig up a little regret. After thinking about that regret for a while, we might rocket out to the FUTURE, where we will generate some worry or FEAR. The point is that those fears we generate, while they feel totally real, are often the result of some out-of-the-moment adventures. It may be helpful to remember this little phrase: “My feelings are real, but they do no necessarily represent reality.”

While FEAR is often the emotional response to loss, in our society, ISOLATION is frequently the behavioral reaction to the fear. If isolation is the problem, then participation is a major part of the solution. Fight your way through the fear so that you will not isolate further. Recovery from significant emotional loss is not achieved alone.

©1993 by The Grief Recovery Institute. All right reserved. Grief “Recovery” is a Registered Service Mark of the Grief Recovery Institute. All material is protected by US Code and the Lanham Act. Do not reproduce in any manner without permission.

“The one battle most lose is the battle over the fear of failure…
try…
start…
begin…
and you’ll be assured you won the first round.”

- Robert Schuller, Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do!

For those of you who are near and dear to friends who have recently experienced a painful loss of any kind, re-read all of the above. You must recognize that the inability to concentrate is the single most common of all responses to loss. Do not berate. Do not scold. Do not have an opinion or judgement. Remember your friend is on another planet – the planet grief. Their entire being is trying to make sense out of an incredibly painful experience.

By definition, “grief is the normal and natural emotional response to loss of any kind.” Most of us have been falsely socialized to shift the emotional reaction into the intellect. But, the head is not broken – the heart is broken. You must resist the temptation to make intellectual comments to your grieving friend. For example, while it is intellectually accurate that “life goes on,” many grievers have a hard time participating in life at all, so life “goes on” without them.

If someone staggered towards you with an arrow sticking out of his or her chest, and blood dripping from the wound, you would probably recognize that the person might be in massive physical pain. It is unlikely that you would say, “Don’t feel bad, at least it wasn’t a poison arrow,” and just keep walking past them. More likely, you would say “My gosh, you must be in terrible pain, let me call an ambulance.”

Yet when someone’s heart has been broken by a major loss, most people say “Don’t Feel bad, you should feel grateful you had them so long.” While it may be intellectually accurate that you have a great deal of gratitude in that relationship, that is usually not the foremost emotional response to the death of a loved one. Perhaps it would be helpful to imagine that there is an emotional arrow sticking out of their chest. It will remind you to respond more helpfully.

Even though death can be separated into two categories, sudden death or long term illness, ultimately all death is sudden. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if someone has tended to a dying loved one for a long time, that they would automatically have less pain then someone who has lost someone to a sudden death. In fact, it is a good idea to make no assumptions at all. The finality of death, along with end of any hopes of a miracle remission or cure, brings a tremendous amount of emotional pain. For many people, drowning in a sea of painful emotions, numbness seems like a constant companion. It may take hours or even days to sort out the feelings and thoughts that have been unearthed by the death of a loved one. The death of a “less than loved one”may produce even more confusing emotions.

We have been talking mainly about reactions to death. The emotional response to divorce, while different, is parallel. Divorce is the “death of a relationship.” Quite often, one divorcing partner feels as if there has been a sudden death and one feels like they have been caught in a long-term illness. In either situation, there is liable to be the same inability to concentrate that affects those responding to death. It is also quite probable that those reeling from the affects of a divorce will have some difficulty identifying the feelings they are experiencing. As we pointed out earlier, this reduced ability to concentrate is normal. Don’t fight it. Be gentle with yourself.

Friends, be alert to the emotional arrow that you can’t see. Your friend has a broken heart. You need to be gentle also.

- 2002 Russell P. Friedman, John W. James and The Grief Recovery Institute, USA. All rights reserved.

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