Upvoted: deliberate grieving is a critical self-improvement skill. I personally mostly frame it in terms of admitting, rather than letting go or accepting; in terms of your two steps, I’ve been calling the orientation part “admitting”, and the catharsis part “grieving”.
A lot of critical motivation drivers are hung up on trying to get positive things from people that we didn’t get as kids, and that we created a bunch of coping mechanisms (e.g. most kinds of perfectionism) to work around.
Admitting that we were hurt by not getting those things and that our coping mechanisms will in fact not magically fix anything is a prerequisite to moving past them and actually living life. (Because otherwise our brains will keep insisting that if we try hard enough we can retroactively make everyone love and respect us.)
Hmm. I think admitting also makes sense to be considered a step in the process, but one of the important elements of what I’m calling “orientation” is locating-the-thing-that-needs-admitting, in the space of all the possible things you might need to admit.
I think sometimes the admitting part also is pretty trivial (although definitely sometimes even after locating it, admitting sucks and is super hard)
Thinking back to my experience… I’d say that in my grieving-for-justice, most of the process was “figuring out what needed grieving”. But, in a lot of grieving-at-work, more of the work lives in the “admitting” part.
one of the important elements of what I’m calling “orientation” is locating-the-thing-that-needs-admitting, in the space of all the possible things you might need to admit
True! Perhaps orientation should be that part in an orient-admit-grieve trifecta. It’s certainly the longer part, anyway.
I mostly do orientation by asking what it is I least want to admit, most wish were not true, and/or am most afraid is true. Then admitting those things are true or at least that they might be or that I’m afraid they are or wish they weren’t.
Also, per Curse of the Counterfactual, anything I think is a “should” is a good candidate for admitting the opposite, and the Work of Byron Katie (aka MBSR in current psych research lingo I think?) a good tool for doing so.
Upvoted: deliberate grieving is a critical self-improvement skill. I personally mostly frame it in terms of admitting, rather than letting go or accepting; in terms of your two steps, I’ve been calling the orientation part “admitting”, and the catharsis part “grieving”.
A lot of critical motivation drivers are hung up on trying to get positive things from people that we didn’t get as kids, and that we created a bunch of coping mechanisms (e.g. most kinds of perfectionism) to work around.
Admitting that we were hurt by not getting those things and that our coping mechanisms will in fact not magically fix anything is a prerequisite to moving past them and actually living life. (Because otherwise our brains will keep insisting that if we try hard enough we can retroactively make everyone love and respect us.)
Hmm. I think admitting also makes sense to be considered a step in the process, but one of the important elements of what I’m calling “orientation” is locating-the-thing-that-needs-admitting, in the space of all the possible things you might need to admit.
I think sometimes the admitting part also is pretty trivial (although definitely sometimes even after locating it, admitting sucks and is super hard)
Thinking back to my experience… I’d say that in my grieving-for-justice, most of the process was “figuring out what needed grieving”. But, in a lot of grieving-at-work, more of the work lives in the “admitting” part.
(I might update the post fleshing this out)
True! Perhaps orientation should be that part in an orient-admit-grieve trifecta. It’s certainly the longer part, anyway.
I mostly do orientation by asking what it is I least want to admit, most wish were not true, and/or am most afraid is true. Then admitting those things are true or at least that they might be or that I’m afraid they are or wish they weren’t.
Also, per Curse of the Counterfactual, anything I think is a “should” is a good candidate for admitting the opposite, and the Work of Byron Katie (aka MBSR in current psych research lingo I think?) a good tool for doing so.