Hey There!

Welcome to The Beare Truth Newsletter. Grief is avoided by most of us. No one wants to feel sad - but it is reality and it will find its way to you one way or another. It takes practice to allow grief to exist in our lives - and it is our natural psychic cleanser.

We are blocking our full experience of life if we don’t learn to grieve.

So, let’s explore this a little more here.

And, we love hearing from you. Your thoughts are always welcome. PLEASE REPLY WITH YOUR COMMENTS. It helps us to grow.

We all want joy. The happiness obsession is rampant. It is related to the addiction epidemic. We all find something to assuage our unexpressed emotions. Most of us don’t have much experience with the full range of feeling.

Consider

“Embrace your grief. For there, your soul will grow”

― C. G. Jung

For many of us, our caregivers only showed tears when things were very bad. There may have been some bursts of anger, and not much more. We may have heard, “I’ll give you something to cry about” or were otherwise shamed about our natural human expression of sadness and hurt.

We are emotional beings. It takes practice and support to normalize feelings expression and to open the channel. Grief unblocks the flow. Yes, grief. The thing we think is the worst of all possible experiences.

I spent the first 30 years of my life following the tough-guy rules my Dad handed me. Packing the grief away year after year. When my daughter died, it came in flood. But I soon shut it down until my life eventually crashed.

Finally, I found recovery and a men’s experiential group - those guys taught me how to grieve deeply. They helped me find the full range of my emotional life. They helped me discard the notion that grief was bad, odd, or weak. I’ve been involved in emotional healing work as a lifestyle for many years. Now, I’m clear - It’s normal, healthy, and deeply masculine to express emotion.

Many women have been mislead and shamed about their grief as well. Grief can be a messy business. That old “be pretty at all costs” message is a problem. And again, for men and women, there is nothing weak about it. It is a superpower to have access to the deepest part of our soul.

The pain we encounter is supposed to be felt - then allowed expression. In most contemporary cultures, this is way down the scale of importance. Succeed, be tough, win, look good, and keep it all together are a few of the mantras. Just like anything that is put under pressure, leakage or an explosion will eventually occur. Big losses or big consequences are the only thing that can crack us open.

Most of us experience this as a horrific occurrence and can’t wait to “get over it.” Of course, it is more than the grief in the moment we’re experiencing, it’s a mountain of previously avoided grief - and yes, it can feel horrific.

If we hear the call and access support, we can normalize tearfulness. We can allow our natural emotional cleansing to occur. Grief becomes a part of our lives rather than dreaded. If you have trouble accessing your tears, you’re not alone. We are encouraged to shut it down, avoid it, and medicate it at every turn in our culture.

It’s not a life sentence. When we begin to let the pain out, joy becomes more accessible. And again a different way: When we let the grief flow, joy and peace become more pronounced and available to us.

And that’s what we want right? True joy and a deep sense of peace.

With support, we can overcome the personal, familial, and cultural resistance to living from the heart.

An Affirmation:

Today, when I feel the sadness and tears arising, I let them come. I am learning to allow my body to heal. I am inviting my natural expression of grief to lead me to the river of joy.

1. Start Journaling: There’s no better way to get the river flowing than journaling. Keep it private. Try not to edit. Write toward the topics that you know contain buried grief. Do some non-dominant handwriting with your inner child. Ask a question with your dominant hand, and allow your inner child to respond with your non-dominant hand.

2. Start your healing process: Get a good somatic therapist. Search psychology today and use the keyword “somatic.” Get in an experiential group. A great community program that focuses on healing the inner child is Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA). Consider The Deep Waters Experience or another of the programs on this list: Recovery and Trauma Resources.

3. Read my book: I wrote a book that addresses all of this. Stop Doing Sh*t You Don’t Want to Do: A Straightforward Guide to Letting Go of Unresolved Trauma

4. Notice: Have you seen people run for the tissues when someone is crying? Or wanting to touch and hug someone to get them to stop crying? These are behaviors that signal a desire to “clean up” and stop crying. Comments like, “cheer up”, “get over it”, and “it will be alright”, are codependent fixer expressions that are not helpful. Just be there and hold loving space. Nothing to do. Nothing to say. Just feel.

1. What were you told about grief as a child

2. What was modeled for you about feelings expression as a child?

3. How do you avoid grief?

4. How do you allow your tears to come forward?

5. Do you have people in your life who are in recovery and are doing healing work?

6. What can you do to increase the full expression of feeling in your life?

7. What changes have you made to bring your emotions forward?

Grief and joy are the same river. Surround yourself with people on the path.

Take good care of yourself. Please reply to this email with your comments.

Warmly,

Bob

I know I sent this last time, but in case you missed it, I was just a guest on Dr. Stacy Thayers CyberPsych podcast.

The topic was vulnerability in the workplace. Check it out. 

Vulnerability as a Superpower with Dr. Bob Beare

P.S. Share your process of healing with us! We'd love to hear your stories and insights. Connect on social media (see links above and below), and PLEASE REPLY TO THIS EMAIL with your comments! Your participation helps us all connect in this community. And let us know if you don’t want it published - otherwise, we sure will.

P.P.S. I need your help. The new book STOP DOING SH*T YOU DON’T WANT TO DO is out now! Get it here. Browse the book and write a great review here. And please forward these links to your peeps! We are still in the promo period and sales and reviews are extremely important to stay on the top of Amazon’s list. And, the Audiobook version is now available on Spotify, Google Play, and Libro! It is coming soon to other platforms! THANK YOU!!!

From our last newsletter on Depression, here are the thoughts of some of our community members: