"When grief has nowhere to go"

Here is a recent letter and answer to/from Philippa Perry about unresolved grief and working with frightening dreams. Here is an excerpt from Philippa's comments

"I think this is unprocessed grief. When a feeling, especially a painful, frightening, or overwhelming one, is not fully put into words or images, it remains unprocessed. Feelings need expression in order to be metabolised by the mind; without that, they tend to linger or resurface.

Unprocessed feelings may haunt us indirectly: through moods we can’t explain, sudden waves of dread or sadness, anxiety that seems to come from nowhere, or through nightmares that feel vivid, violent, and intrusive. When feelings feel too big, too dangerous, or too lonely to hold, the understandable temptation is to bury them, to numb them, to try not to feel them at all. But buried feelings don’t stay buried. Until they are worked through by being named, felt, symbolised, and given some meaning, they often return, again and again, demanding attention.

Dreams are often one of the places where these unspoken emotions insist on being seen, because the psyche is still trying to heal, to make sense, and to complete something that was never fully allowed to happen at the time"

Read it in full here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/philippaperry/p/when-grief-has-nowhere-to-go?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web