How to Coach Yourself and Others Grief Coaching and Counseling

place where we will not be interrupted. If we feel safe enough, soon after the words start to flow will come other expressions of that feeling, which could include tears, shouting, sobbing, body sensations, etc.. Again, there are a number of methods which provide a safe context in which to express feelings. Step Three – Resolution The third step in healing an unresourceful emotion or feeling is to achieve some resolution around it. This resolution would include the following elements a full exposure to the feeling, a diminishing of the intensity of the feeling to a level that is first comfortable and then truly absent, a feeling of peacefulness around the event or subject that triggered the feeling in the first place, and some insight into what was going on for us. Many emotional healing methods do not achieve all of these markers of success. Some try to immediately get an insight as to what caused the feeling and then use that insight to "think away the feeling", which is pretty close to willfully suppressing it - it will arise again another day. Some try to put whipped cream on the cow patty, by "reframing" a painful incident through rationalizing about it, verbally minimizing it, putting a positive spin on it, etc. - this again merely shoves the feeling into a storage place, from which it will probably emerge at a later date. Some methods place a lot of value on the expression phase, having people scream, punch pillows, kick their feet, etc. etc., but then do not actually resolve the underlying feeling. I watched in one workshop as a woman screamed at 5 different representatives of her pain - 5 people who played the role of her antagonist - by the end of the workshop she was exhausted, but her issues remained unresolved. The facilitators confused exhaustion of the participants with resolution of problems. Some methods attempt to quickly reduce the intensity of the feeling by use of physiological actions having clients do lots of slow, deep breathing, for example, which is known to reduce tension in the body and induce feelings of relaxation and calmness. An effective method of curbing symptoms of distress is taking a deep breath and forcefully blowing out through a small hole in your mouth, letting your cheeks puff out. This puts pressure on the vagus nerve, which is one of the most important nerves in the body, and tells it to reset to a normal (calmer) state. Attempts to "speed things along", which can include constant prompting of the client to "find another (deeper) feeling", often result in temporary relief but not resolution. The problematic feeling eventually returns. I once filmed a "master healer" running a number of healing processes and

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