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WHEN IT’S OVER, SAY GOODBYE TO HOW IT WAS by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D. sashalessinphd@aol.com

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WHEN IT’S OVER, SAY GOODBYE TO HOW IT WAS by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D. sashalessinphd@aol.com
WHEN IT’S OVER, SAY GOODBYE TO HOW IT WAS by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D. sashalessinphd@aol.com

Based on Tobin, S., 'Saying Goodbye in Gestalt Therapyo in Banet, A., (ed.), Creative Psychotherapy, La Jolla: University Associates, 1976.

Do you still, after a long time, feel very strong feelings for a former lover or spouse with whom you are no longer in a physical relationship. Do you have strong unexpressed feelings for a friend, housemate or family member who has left? Or are you unable to finish grieving for someone who died?

If so, you may be suffering from hanging-on reaction. Whereas a healthy or adaptive reaction to losing someone you love is "a fairly long period of grief followed by a renewed interest in living people", if you have a hanging-on reaction, you continue to feel depressed and unable to fully enter new relationships. You may feel emotionally deadened. Your hanging on is designed to block the emotions stirred up by your loss of the relationship.

Tobin identifies emotions which you felt inside but did not express to the person as the underlying cause of hanging-on. When your relationship ends, you have accumulated unshared "resentments, frustrations, hurts, quilts" love and appreciation for the person. In healthy mourning and grieving, in your mind or aloud, you tell the person how you feel. You express the angry, loving, hurt and joyous emotions with full emotional release.

In hanging-on, however, you keep your feelings in, and they become tension and anxiety. You relive your loneliness by thinking about the past and avoid getting emotionally involved in the present; you become self-righteous or self- pitying; or, in the case of separation or divorce, you don’t give the other person the "satisfaction" of seeing and hearing your feelings.

GOODBYE EXERCISE

Imagine a person to whom you may be hanging on, someone who died or left. Pretend she or he sit before you now. Talk to that person as though she or he were here in front of you. Express your feelings toward this person.

Then switch seats. Put yourself in the other person’s place. Say your experience as her or him as you received the feelings expressed toward you. Respond.

Switch seats, back and forth, alternately playing yourself and the absent person till you’ve explored all your unfinished business and expressed all your emotions and thoughts toward her or him.

Then ask yourself if you’re ready to say goodbye to that person. If you’re not, that’s ok–you have more unfinished emotions to work through and are choosing, for now, not to complete the farewell process. If you’re ready to end the relationship, say, ‘Goodbye” several times. Release your feelings. Emote. Fully express your farewell.

Tobin reports that the results of saying goodbye this way are long-lasting. You will not spend your time thinking of the absent one; you will feel your own energy more, and you will feel "increased interest in your life and other people."

- Unsubscribed , posted 01/03/06

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