Welcome to another beautiful week over here in AwakenYou world; I hope wherever you are listening to this episode that this may be the sunshine you were looking for in your day. Today’s topic is one that you might not think could brighten your day but keep listening; what you discover might loosen up something inside of you that feels like a warm ray of sunshine. It just so happens that I am experiencing grief around something in my own life, and when I uncovered grief, everything fell into place, and it made me think about all of you. I know for sure that there have been many times in my marriage when I was experiencing grief. As a matter of fact, I still do, but years ago, I didn’t know it, and if I had someone help me to see it, I would have been able to work through it differently. Today let’s see if it could be grief that you are feeling about your marriage under other possible emotions like anger, fear, guilt, shame, annoyance, frustration, sadness, and loneliness; what else are you feeling?
First, I want to share how I discovered grief in my own life because it might help you better understand your underlying emotion. A few weeks back, I had a general feeling of melancholy which Google defines as a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no apparent cause, and this is spot on. I even impressed myself with naming the emotion weeks ago, and now looking it up for you and seeing that it was actually spot on, I had this somewhat overwhelming sadness, but I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. I had ideas like the weather, but it didn’t seem quite enough; I was just “blah.” So what I did was I sat down with myself, some paper and a pencil by my side, and I processed emotions, going into the process wanting to discover what it was I was actually feeling. Go to Ep 23: How To Process Those Emotions and you can try it for yourself. Often I will use this process to look at an emotion I am feeling, get familiar with it, and get a better understanding of why it is there, but this day I went into the process not knowing what emotion I was feeling.
Similar to the process I described in episode 23, I turned into my body, described what I was experiencing, started asking questions, and, wham, grief came to me. I started crying, and what I was grieving was revealed. When this information was revealed I understood why I was feeling the way I was feeling and was better able to allow for it. When you practice processing your emotions, you get in touch with what is happening in your body and the actual messages that it is sending you. I highly recommend you process the practice from that episode regularly and watch what you start to learn about yourself and what you are experiencing.
Could you be experiencing grief in your marriage?
I highly recommend you use the process in episode 23 to discover whether you are feeling grief, and I also highly recommend you book yourself a free mini-session to have me walk you through the process.
Many of us associate grief with death, but grief comes in many forms: when you get a negative medical test result, loss of a job, divorce, and we also will often feel grief when our expectations aren’t fulfilled. That could be when you thought you would get a job promotion but didn’t or in the case of our marriages, when you thought you found the perfect mate to live a happily ever after and that isn’t what you are experiencing. Often we realize we are feeling some of the emotions I listed above, like disappointment, frustration, sadness, anger, and discouragement. Often, under these emotions is the grief of an unmet expectation.
All of the above emotions are valid and have a lot of information to share with you, but when you can process the emotion of grief you will find a whole new understanding of what you are experiencing. With this new understanding, I often see that people can give themselves the gift of space and hope to start creating something different. Space helps them settle into what they are experiencing, and hope allows them to see an opening of possibility.
Grief often helps you make sense of where you are at and gain insight into what is happening for you to start moving towards solutions. It brings in some compassion for yourself and for the expectations you may be placing on your spouse.
If you think you are feeling grief about where you are in your marriage I would love to share a mini-session with you to help you pull apart what is happening and how you might want to start moving towards what you want instead of pushing it away. Let’s normalize this emotion that you might be feeling in your marriage and then use it to get to where you want to be to celebrate a brand new beginning in your life!
I am a marriage coach who helps women and couples go from feeling powerless to change how they feel about their marriage to feeling powerful and taking ownership of how they feel. My process isn’t about changing your partner; it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your marriage, and through this process, you will begin to find that your partner will change as well! If you’re ready to take yourself to a place where you can finally fall in love with your life and your spouse, then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s talk about the next steps to making your dream life your reality.
