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Keri L

What's Your Grief? Eight Skills for Grieving the Ideal

One might have grief with the term “happily ever after.”  It would seem the ideal rarely aligns with reality.  We long for the perfect or ideal life; oftentimes, forgoing happiness until all the pieces are in the right place.  Where do these ideals that we chase come from, though?


From a young age we are influenced by our nuclear family, then our extended family, and then it continues to extend to community, peers, and eventually greater society.  These rules we adopt, like hand-me-downs, become the framework for which we build new information.  In psychology, a schema is a pattern of thinking or behavior that helps us to organize and make sense of the world.  It is through these schemas that our beliefs or ideals are formed. 


We begin to place meaning on things that we desire, expect, hope for, or believe that we are guaranteed.  We make a plan attached to some arbitrary timeline about where we are supposed to be in life, who we are supposed to be or what we are supposed to show for it.  When we lose our place along this timeline it comes with a sense of loss.  That sense of loss permeates a person’s life creating some discord for what was supposed to be and what actually is. 


How do we cope when “happily ever after” seems so far away?  First, acknowledge and experience feelings around the loss.  Second, take inventory of your values.  Third, assess your needs.  Fourth, be curious when it comes to your ideals and the old stories to which they are attached.  Fifth, expand your awareness.  Sixth, practice gratitude.  Seventh, live more in the present.  Eighth, learn that happiness is not something that is earned or something that can be taken away, but rather something that is already within you.


If you are struggling with loss or trying to make sense of your world and your place in it, please feel free to contact us to begin your transformation to aligning your real with the ideal.




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