Grief: The Healing Emotion

Being alive in this imperfect and dysfunctional world, we’ve each experienced heartache and wounding. Not only have we experienced things that were harmful, but we’ve also missed out on experiencing things that we were made for. In our earliest years, we may have missed out on things we needed for our secure attachment, such as: healthy affection from a father, his protective embrace, a mother's look of delight and love, being spoken to in soothing tones, and much more.

In our peer groups and adult relationships, we experience a variety of betrayals, from the disappointment of unmet expectations to the violence committed against our person, our dignity, our sense of self.

As we experience trauma and wounding, we often feel dissonant or confused, which leaves us trying to make sense of what is happening. Often, we cannot make sense of it. To our deep heart and soul, it is senseless! We were made for something so much more; for perfect harmony in our relationships with God, with ourselves, and with others. We are each created by our Creator, Who is Love Himself, to be loved and to give ourselves in love. As life unfolds and this deep purpose is repeatedly denied, we grieve!

Except, often we do not grieve. What I predominantly experience in inner healing work is how we’ve dissociated from our emotions around painful events and circumstances and disconnected from our need to express the grief they have caused us.

Of course, the dissociation and disconnection are the inner being’s way of protecting us from being overwhelmed by it all! God created us resilient, with myriad ways of picking ourselves up and continuing onward, even though this comes at a cost, be that our mental health or the optimal functioning of our physical bodies (and often, both).

Our pain, unexpressed emotions, unacknowledged stories of harm or heartache, become what Dr. Karl Lehman¹ terms “unprocessed toxic content,” which remains within our bodies and leads to somatic expressions of that toxicity.

Common somatic expressions of unprocessed toxic content include:

• • neck, shoulder, back pain
  • headaches or migraines
  • autoimmune conditions
  • insomnia
  • irritable bowel syndrome
  • inflammation
  • “unexplainable” chronic pain

Inner Healing Through Grief

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert. – Isaiah 43:19

In God’s perfect timing, He invites each of us to an inner healing relationship with Him. Inner healing includes: unburdening from identity lies, connecting with “lost” or “forgotten” parts of ourselves, reprocessing traumatic memories, the Lord providing for our unmet attachment needs, encountering the Lord’s love and mercy in new and intimate ways, and more. You can read two earlier posts I’ve written on these topics via the links at the end of this article.

The aspect of inner healing that is on my heart to write about today is the need to grieve.

Through all of the traumas, wounding and adversities we’ve experienced flows the theme of loss. The appropriate, and necessary, response to loss is grief. Grieving is a crucial aspect of inner healing…grieving what is, as well as what is not. Opening the door to grief may seem like a scary prospect. As one of my clients said, “there is an ocean of grief in here and I’m afraid I’ll drown in it.”

As this brave woman faced her ocean of grief, she recalled the scene in The Chosen when Jesus walked on the water to His disciples who were in their boat, fighting against the storm and the tumultuous sea. Simon Peter, overwhelmed with pain and grief, greets Jesus with anger.

It is common for us to repress our grief with anger too. Anger moves us in ways that we may experience as powerful, whereas grief moves us to shed tears, feel deep anguish, and powerlessness. In the scene, Simon Peter begins by expressing His anger at Jesus, and progresses to expressing his deep grief and fears, while Jesus holds him and lets him cry (you can watch the scene at the link below).

This is precisely the movement of emotion that Jesus invites each of us to encounter with Him as well; a movement that is necessary for our healing. Our bodies provide clues of where to start. For example, in a recent session, as the client was describing the traumatic event we were working with, I asked her to check in with her body and notice any physical sensations she was aware of. She reported tightness and knots throughout her upper back and shoulders.

Using a process that I call “The ABCs,” she placed a hand on her shoulder and acknowledged (that’s the A), “I’m all knotted up. I’m holding on tightly.” Then came the B, which is Breathe and Befriend, by taking a few long, slow breaths in and out, and befriending herself by simply staying present and witnessing the pain she was feeling.

The C is Christ. We invited the Lord to meet her right there in the pain, the tightness, the memory that was knotted up in there. We told Him the story. While He obviously already knew all about it, speaking it out (to Him and to ourselves) is a necessary step in the process. Jesus tells us that it is the truth the makes us free (Ref. John 8:32), and speaking the story out loud is sharing the truth of what we experienced.

The waves of tears came as she held tightly to Jesus. Despite feeling “pulled under” for a moment, she reached for His hand, which is always extended to us, and immediately felt His strength keeping her afloat. When she checked back in with her body, the knot had loosened and the tightness softened.

Hand in hand with our Lord, He will guide our grieving process so as not to overwhelm us, but to bring release and processing of the unprocessed toxic content. As we ride the wave into the shore, we rest with Him for moments of interior integration and closure.

Together with our Lord, we are safe to explore the ocean of grief, one bucket-full at a time.

If you would like a coach to journey with you, visit our coaching page here: https://youaremadenew.com/catholic-coaching-inner-healing/ or email me at [email protected].

I would also highly recommend our Sacred Story Coaching Groups with Betsy Leon. Spring 2025 groups will begin in April. Learn more here: https://youaremadenew.com/sacred-story-groups

Click here to watch the full scene of Jesus and Simon Peter walking on the water in the storm.

Two articles mentioned above:
Healing Encounters with the Lord
Ride the Healing Wave

¹ Dr. Karl Lehman, M.D., is a psychiatrist and the creator of The Immanuel Approach, a Christ-centered approach to healing traumatic memories.

De Yarrison, Copyright 2025