Friends from the neighborhood may disappear
Charly García, The Dinosaurs.
Radio singers may disappear
Those in the newspapers may disappear
The person you love can disappear…
Gestalt psychotherapy, according to its scholars, offers the technique called the empty chair for the purpose of healing conflicting emotions or unfinished business that could not be resolved with certain people and is very useful when it comes to absent loved ones. The exercise in therapy consists of sitting in front of an empty chair and imagining that the person with whom we have issues to resolve is sitting there and it is about talking as if they were listening. Many people have given testimonies of a liberating experience by expressing oppressed feelings and emotions to those who for various reasons could not say them in their real presence.
We have lived one of the most difficult moments of humanity, we experience permanent grief from the lack of freedom to go out, to the absence or death of loved ones. Our feelings are on the surface and we have to add that the time of the end of the year festivities limits the handling of the various duels. For many of us, they have been the saddest holidays ever experienced, but it is also true that the Covid-19 pandemic has been the opportunity to make a call to take care of mental health as well as physical and it is on these dates that they are made All the resources at our disposal are necessary to overcome a time of great emotional intensity.
The end of the year parties are related to family gatherings, with the need to feel accompanied, they are customs that give meaning to life and during the festivities dinners are held where all loved ones sit at the table and what they capture everyone’s attention is the empty chair and an avalanche of feelings also flock to the meeting. So an adjustment is necessary for families, it is an opportunity to listen to oneself and understand what happens to us with that absence, as individuals, and as a family, have compassion for us, let off steam, and if necessary cry.
The interesting thing is how we work through grief for the next few years and for this the experts affirm that we must be aware of our pain, avoid reducing it with substances as much as possible and give ourselves the necessary time to live our own time to heal. Everyone has their own rhythm and there are no strict rules about the period that it should last, it is a particular process that should not remain static, otherwise, it will become an emotional illness or bodily pain that we do not want to have either.
The end of the year parties demand a lot from us; create a happy atmosphere, socialize, decorate the house, and according to the therapists: nothing should be forced, everything we want to do will be fine for now, even changing the routine or modifying the tradition and social gatherings with few guests, will allow us to relax and confront ourselves less with others; However, the same therapists affirm that family support, empathy with close loved ones is of great help in the grieving process.
Remind the absent person that they will not occupy their chair this year, talk about them, tell positive stories and anecdotes. Talking about the deceased person is necessary and healthy for our mental health. Silenced duels and hardening in the face of pain are not convenient. According to the experts, evoking the absent person helps to adjust and build a new way of carrying out the various celebrations of the year. In the future, it would be good to anticipate the feelings that will come to us with the absence of a loved one and share them, today many homes have had absences.
Some authors speak of the specific feelings that we must address during the impact of having an empty chair in our family gatherings and festivities and among others they are: guilt and loneliness. Guilt, for not being able or should not feel good in a festive atmosphere again, and loneliness for always missing that absent person. We must remember that being happy is okay, that happiness arises within ourselves and if we do it in honor of the deceased it is an act of love that transcends death because our loved ones also want our happiness. Loneliness is a matter that we must treat seriously, if the feeling is overwhelming, you must seek professional help.
Let us remember that attachment to people or things does not suit us, due to its impermanence, because everything that begins ends, even our loved ones will one day die in any way and although it is hard to believe, this pandemic will end as well. We must live in the present and show our affection and gratitude to our loved ones right now, why wait? …
We are interested in talking about grief at all times because it is a human experience that must be lived, it is inevitable and to make it a healthy experience, it is necessary to allow it, but also to calculate that it has been processed or overcome, if not, we insist share our feelings with friends and relatives and that fortunately, digital media give us the opportunity to do so; Let’s hug from a distance
We must be grateful for having met that loved one with whom we share a fragment of his life, they are genuine feelings that help to carry out healthy grief. But if it is the case that we are faced with the lack of acceptance of the loss and we see that time passes and sadness seizes us, especially because we understand that everything around us is very stressful, then we must go to professional help.
At Del Pueblo Funeral Home, we close the year 2021 with the great teaching of attending to our mental health, we must make a transformation effort to improve comprehensively. In these years of the pandemic, the empty chair has also been the one that we voluntarily left, to maintain a healthy distance, as an act of love, responsibility and to bring back the health that will always be the greatest gift at the end of the year. We hug you from a distance and remember that we make the most difficult moments easy.
