Paul Cockayne – 07791 970406– paulcockayne3@gmail.com
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In my last post, I talked about the “needs wheel”, and how a loss affects us because it leaves us with a gap in our wheel; it can feel like we have lost a part of ourselves, like there’s a hole inside us.
How can we fill that hole? Well, the simple answer to that is “slowly”. Recovery from loss is a slow process; it is partly a matter of waiting for that hole to heal up, just as a wound might heal through a gradual, natural process. However, we can help this process along by understanding the loss – what exactly was it about the loss that is difficult for us? What specifically are we missing? So, going back to the needs wheel, we can think about the gap or gaps that the loss has left – did that person give us love, or companionship, or fun?
Understanding exactly what we’ve lost can help us recover. In the short term we may be able throw ourselves into things to fill – or partially fill – the hole For instance, organising a funeral, concentrating on our work, cleaning the house or partying. There are many immediate things we might do to help ease the loss we are feeling, to ease the pain a little. Such things distract us and can be very useful in the short term, but don’t necessarily tend to be helpful in the longer term.
If the loss is a deep one – the loss of a close parent or long term partner, for example – the things we miss will tend to be much more difficult to replace. If you are lacking love or security, doing something short term like getting drunk is unlikely to help beyond enabling you to forget about the loss for a while.
Sometimes, after a relationship breakup, people move straight into a “rebound relationship”. I think that this is often an attempt to plug the gap in their needs wheel with an identical slice of pie. Most rebound relationships do not last, of course. This is partly because finding an identical slice of pie is impossible – and expecting a new partner to fill the gap left by one’s ex is unreasonable, and likely to put great strain on them and on the relationship.
A new relationship needs to be allowed to grow naturally. It will never be the same as the last relationship, as the one you’ve lost, but given time it will take its place in your needs wheel, while other things will change around it to fill in the gaps left by your loss.
So big losses mend slowly, and accepting that can be a big step. It takes time to grieve but if you are able to sit with it, to accept the pain as part of a natural process, the healing can happen. If you are inclined to fight the pain, to distract yourself from it, the loss can be all the harder to deal with.