Non-Resistance Outdoes Your Winning Recipe And Subdues Grief

YOU DECIDED AS a child that you were not extroverted enough to succeed in the world. So you created a winning recipe to help you cope.  Today the recipe allows you to hide behind a socially acceptable way to be – certain, fearful, intimate, outrageous, or thoughtful. Or any of the thousands of other ways introverts try to be to gain success.  For example, my recipe is to be methodical by building step by step procedures to cope with life.

In Post #17 we talked about dealing with grief over the death of a loved one or dear friend, or a break with them so severe that it felt like they died. Here we will continue that theme and discuss an additional approach, that of non-resistance.

You may have noticed that when you resist things in life they tend to persist.  This is as true of grief as anything else; the longer you fight it the longer it seems to afflict you.  The paradox is that when you adopt non-resistance you free up the possibility for whatever you are resisting to disappear.

I discovered this when I lost the most fabulous woman I had ever met.

How I Discovered The Non-Resistance Solution

ONE NIGHT AT a seminar I met Sandy, a young woman who had seen me at a country and western bar. I was dancing with some of my young friends from the computer store where I worked. 

I recently divorced and she had just separated from her husband. She was hurt and lonely. On our first date we took a trip to the beach at Key Biscayne. I rubbed her feet and made her feel safe and taken care of.  She did the same for me with her easy manner, and exemplification of the integrity value that was the subject of the seminar we were taking. 

She was not an introvert. But she was quiet and we shared a commitment to the distinctions we had learned in the course. I felt no need to run my winning recipe.   I could openly be an introvert with her with no need to compensate for not being outgoing enough. 

We soon had sex and over the next days I fell in love with her.  She was the most special creature I had ever known. I was ecstatic that such a woman even existed.  

Every day on a break I called her from a public phone across the street from the computer store where I worked. I treasured those talks with her.  On a call one day a few weeks into our relationship she shocked me by saying that she was going to stop seeing me.  I descended into a grief as immediate and intense as if someone had just told me that she had been killed in a car accident. 

She said the father of her children told her he wanted to get back together with her. She decided to give him another chance, even though he had been sleeping with another woman.  Instead of going back to work, I lay in the grass in an empty lot next to the store to mourn. 

In the seminar I was taking with Sandy, I had learned that whatever people resisted in life tended to persist. As counter-intuitive as it seemed, the best approach was non-resistance.  Even though I was devastated, I had not argued with her, nor had I protested what was happening.  I did not know how I could ever find another woman who would elicit such passion from me.  But I still  drove home in a mood of complete capitulation to the event.

Then that night she called me at home – her ex decided he could not leave his lover, and would not be coming back!  She asked if I would be willing to see her again, and I almost crawled up the phone wire.  I adored her more than anything in the world.  The solution to the grief had not been to  resist, but instead to allow things to play out on their own.

Unpacking The Non-Resistance Solution

If I had resisted the terrible news that Sandy gave me that day, I could well have made the situation worse.  When her ex backed out, she could then have decided she did not want to be with a man who opposed her over something so important and so early in the relationship.  But instead, she called me and wanted to come back.

I had not been able to control what her ex would do or not do.  But I had been able to control myself by surrendering to the news that brought me such grief.  The solution to the angst had been the very non-resistance that at the time seemed paradoxical to engage in.

How To Turn Your Grieving Into Surrender

If you are in a resistant stage of grief about the death of someone you love (denial, anger, bargaining or depression), or if it feels like they have died and you are resisting that emotion, here is a way to move more quickly towards acceptance:

1. Go to Post #17 and complete the “death exercise.”  That is the quickest and most reliable way to let go of resistance to another’s passing.  If after several tries you still have some resistance left, go to Step 2.

2. Give up the notion that you can change reality. What keeps you stuck in resistance is the crazy idea, perhaps not even conscious, that somehow there is a way to undo what happened to the other person. 

You have probably been conditioned to never give up. You may be carrying that over to the thought that surrendering to reality would mean giving up on the person who died.  But that is not what you are giving up.  Instead you are only letting go of the notion that you can change the fact that they are gone.  I did not give up on Sandy being the most wonderful woman I had ever met.  But I did give up on the idea that I would ever see her again. 

3. Acknowledge the relief. Once you see that you are powerless to change the physical reality of your loved one’s passing, a weight will likely lift off of you.  Notice it and use it to make each day slightly better than the last. By adopting non-resistance you will help to ensure that the grief does not persist.

I Invite You To Stop Resisting And Dispel Your Grief Today

• How did it feel to let go of your resistance?  If you would like us to consider sharing your story with The Satisfied Introvert community anonymously please email it to me at thesatisfiedintrovert@gmail.com.
• How can I help you to give up on being able to change reality? Please go to the Contact page and enter your name, email, and questions. I cannot answer everyone, but will do my best – especially if the answer could benefit others.
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Welcome to the relief that comes from giving up

control over something you cannot change,

and the peace of mind that tells 

you your grief has ended

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