Unresolved Grief and a Loving Goodbye

P is in the habit of putting off the things he wants to do and comes to me for help in sorting out his life.

He hasn’t always been like this, he says, although these days he procrastinates about everything. He tells me that he’s unhappy and wants to get on with trying new things but feels stuck, so doesn’t do anything.

When he was younger, P says his mother persuaded him not to follow his dream career. He has always regretted his lack of courage in standing up to her back then and is angry that she convinced him to take a safe but boring job. Their relationship was often fraught, he adds, but because she was his only family he’d found a way to muddle through.

When his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, her rapid mental and physical decline meant that P had to find a residential home to care for her. He’d visited every week for four years, until she finally succumbed to the complications of her illness three years before.

He is visibly upset as he talks about his mother and how, eventually, she was no longer able to recognise him. He says that when she died he felt an enormous surge of sadness and regret that he hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye properly, or tell her how he really felt, neither then or when she’d first been diagnosed – which, for P, was the first time the mother he knew died.

Gently, I suggest that his state of feeling stuck in is rooted in his grief. He agrees to let me guide him through a process of creating the most loving goodbye to his mother, enabling him to privately work through all the things he wished he could have said.

When I help people through this process the most amazing things can happen. It’s not unusual for them to imagine what their loved one would say back to them, as if it were real. We both know it isn’t real but the Reptilian Complex – the part of the brain which has no conscious awareness of reality and which is in play here – has no idea it isn’t real.

And this is where profound change to the entire psyche can happen.

It was no different for P. Afterwards, though he was a little apprehensive before we began, he says it turned out to be easier than he thought and it was the most wonderful experience. I ask him how he feels and he replies that it’s like a great shift has taken place – a tangible change he can feel inside his physical body.

We talk a little more and he tells me about his mother in her prime. As our time comes to an end, he picks up his briefcase and slowly rises from the chair. As he leaves, P says he feels tired but at peace, and is ready to let his mother go and get on with his life.