[jenluv]

The mourning of all the unmet needs -- that still will not be met. How do you do that? What shape does that take? What practical steps aid in this? How does a T help you to do this?

[rainbow8]

These are great questions! I wish I knew the answers; I hope you get some helpful responses. I can share my experiences but each of is different, and each T has a different approach.

From my own experience, I think that I'm mourning the unmet needs every time I get triggered by something I want from my T that she can't give me. I'm mourning right now by crying because she's away from me. I'm sure that's not all about her in the present; it's about my unmet needs from the past.

Ts can help by exploring what these needs are and how you can help meet them yourself. In IFS therapy, you talk about those parts that didn't get what they needed back then, you listen to how they feel, and then you discuss how your "adult" self can give those parts what they need from you, like hugging, touching, playing with them, and telling them you'll always be there to take care of them. In essence, your adult self CAN help meet those needs now.

My T helps me by actually meeting some of those needs though it can never replace whatever I didn't get, of course. When she holds my hand it's healing for me. It gives me a sense of safety I never got in my past.

So I think it's a combination of feeling those needs in a safe place, with your T, crying about them as much as you need to, just like mourning a person who dies, and accepting that you can't totally replace what you never got. Then, meeting some of those needs yourself, or allowing others, including your T, to give you some of what you needed. Just by being there for you consistently a T can help satisfy those needs.

I'm looking forward to the responses in this thread.

[unaluna]

I think that's for people who got a lot of needs met to begin with. That's why I was asking what are tears made of. If your "bank account" is empty to begin with, if only very basic needs were met, ie you're still breathing, then this is an elitist concept put forth by a bunch of rich (not necessarily financially) shrinks. You don't mourn never having had a penny to go into the candy store as a kid - you just want a taste of candy now. Then you can figure things out from there just fine!

[Sannah]

I think that it is allowing yourself to feel the sadness, to acknowledge the loss. I make up for my unmet needs from the past every day. I had a miserable life growing up but now I have a nice life and I try to be surrounded by love every day.

[mcl6136]

Why simply mourn when you could help re-weave the web?

Pitch in with your community. Be a mentor, a big sister, a big brother. Recycle. Laugh. Celebrate. Get involved. Rage. Cry from time to time but not too much.
Most of all, find an artistic outlet and use that talent to make beauty. There is too little beauty out there.

I had unmet needs but that is because I was born into a human family on planet earth, where few things are perfect...and true beauty is in scarce supply.

[CantExplain]

What does mourning look like? A bucket full of tears.

[Dreamy01]

For me it's a process, like unpeeling an onion. I have found it hard to grieve what I didn't get because it was all I knew and felt I deserved. It's only when I feel the need for something in the present (i.e from T) that I can appreciate what I lost out on. That's when the mourning begins. I think T can help by being supportive, offering a calm and safe space for the grief work to be done but also by letting it happen.

[elliemay]

I don't think anyone can tell you what your grief will look like. It is individual for each. It will play out as it plays out.

For me it started as a deep deep sense of resentment for being cheated of what was rightfully mine. Followed then by a realization that we really don't get "do overs". The time for all that had passed. I had to play the hand I was dealt.

Then I realized that I actually get to pick the cards in that hand. Things got a lot better after that, but it was a process, not a moment.

My therapist helped me to keep things in perspective and present in my life right then. It's easy to fall into the abyss with mourning. He helped keep me from doing that.

[ListenMoreTalkLess]

I have feelings similar to MCL. Parenting my children, meeting their needs, is a way of giving back and healing the needs that went unmet in my own childhood. On a smaller scale, teaching my students, giving them what they need to become professionals in their chosen field, encouraging and supporting them in their dreams. Volunteering, or sometimes writing a check, for local nonprofits that help other people. Helping out a friend in need, shoveling my neighbors' walkway and sidewalks in the winter.

I have also had waves of grief that come over me seemingly quite random, but when I am in the midst of working on things in T. I let them wash over me and they are bearable, and then they leave. And I go back to life.

[SpiritRunner]

I have been reading a lovely book about self-compassion ..... one thing this is about is recognizing your own pain, your own suffering, whether it's things from the past (like unmet attachment needs) or something in the present (that may or may not be related to that past wound or unmet need) and giving yourself compassion for that pain, that suffering.
My first T, last year, said something often about rescuing myself ..... I didn't quite fathom what she meant, or how to do it. She would talk about soothing myself, meeting my own needs .... I could grasp the intellectual concept of this, but the actual practice of it, how it would look, how it would feel to do it, how to plain do it, eluded me.
I don't know if I can say what my mourning looks like so much - but for a while last year, it felt very big and very deep, like bottomless darkness, an abyss, that I fell into, without having any anchor, even in myself to hold on to. I couldn't rescue myself, soothe myself then, too many other circumstances going on in my life and I didn't have the tools, coping skills, to deal with enormity of that mourning ..... but I think now I do and I think self-compassion is a way to both recognize mourning within ourselves, acknowledge, honor, experience it and also to comfort ourselves in it.
When I feel a wave passing over me, I don't fight it anymore. I let it pass over me, and I say within myself, this is a moment of suffering (mourning, whatever), it is OK to feel it and to be with it while it is here. It will pass and I will still be here and be safe.
Even if others don't know or understand the pain that is within me, or can't meet my needs in the way I want, I can look within myself and give myself the validation that the pain is real, even give myself the validation that the pain of feeling that others don't understand, don't have or haven't had validation/compassion ..... in giving myself that validation, I can give myself the comfort and compassion and meet the needs that maybe others have not met.
I can look within and see the young, hurt child from the past and take her in my arms as it were, and say, I understand your pain. You have the right to feel it. You have the right to comfort; you deserve it. You deserve compassion. - Who else can really do that for me ..... because only I was the one who was once that child (and still am) and only I can really know that child's pain and soothe it. This must be what T1 meant by rescuing myself, I think .....
So anyway, I guess that's how the mourning is for me and that's how I have learned (am still learning) to deal with it without being undone.
I'm not really sure this is something you were looking for as an answer, but this is something that's not always easy to put into words ...

[struggling2]

[jenluv]

SpiritRunner, that was amazing! Yes, yes, and yes. Wow. It may not be easy to put into words but I want to hug you long and hard for taking the time to do it. This is going in my journal for sure. Thank you so, so, so, so, so much.

[SpiritRunner]

Originally Posted by jenluv

SpiritRunner, that was amazing! Yes, yes, and yes. Wow. It may not be easy to put into words but I want to hug you long and hard for taking the time to do it. This is going in my journal for sure. Thank you so, so, so, so, so much.

I'm so glad it was helpful to you!