Loss Processing
The experience of loss is a normal, predictable part of the human condition, but that doesn’t diminish the pain we feel when we encounter it. As you practice this tool, you will learn to let go gracefully and experience an inner resource far greater than any external circumstance, relationship, or event.
Turn Pain Into Potential
Psychotherapist Barry Michels speaks with coach and therapist Kristan Sargeant about the Loss Processing tool.
Cues to Use the Tool
When you encounter a loss of any kind, from the micro to the macro. It could be losing a job, a relationship, or an apartment, or it could be a child moving out or even something as small as a TV show you like getting cancelled or your favorite dish at a restaurant being discontinued.
When someone you love has died.
When your sense of wellbeing is threatened by a loss.
The Tool in Brief
1. Feel the Loss
Think of something you’ve lost or are losing. Feel how attached you are to the thing you’ve had to give up. Feel the pain of the loss. Feel how much you miss it or wish it were in your life.
2. Give Up Everything
Now make a decision to let go of the thing and, as you do, imagine yourself falling backwards from a great height. Say to yourself, “I gave up [whatever you picked], and now I am willing to give up everything.” With this declaration, you plunge into the surface of the sun.
3. Experience Infinite Energy
Become one with the sun. You are now a radiant body of light and energy, eternally flowing out of itself in all directions. Say to yourself, “All I ever truly possess is this infinite flow of energy from inside of me.”
Try It Now
The Gifts of Loss Processing
While the experience of loss is very painful, it gives us the opportunity to experience a part of the Self that is not defined by the material world. Loss propels us to discover a limitless, eternal dimension of the Self greater than our individual identity, obscured by our attachment to people, places, and things. As you negotiate loss using this tool, you will recover a felt sense of an infinite Source residing within.
