WIXLIB

My Hearts of Grief WorkbookName:Date:

The Hearts of GriefIntroductionThe Hearts of Grief have been developed to helpyou through your own personal grievingexperience. They will help you to make sense ofwhere you are at the moment and where you wouldbenefit from most support. This clarity is aninvaluable first step because when you have lost aloved one or have experienced any form of loss itis so hard to focus on anything. These Hearts ofGrief will help you focus on what you need to do tohelp yourself. This clarity and focus is a crucial firststep towards healing.By completing the Hearts of Grief you will be ableto see clearly which aspects of your loss are mostdifficult for you and where you are right now interms of emotional wellbeing. If you are not intouch with and acknowledge your emotional stateeverything else in your life will be far more difficultto deal with. Address this aspect of your loss andyou will be helping yourself immeasurably. Thisfirst small step not only gives you a point fromwhich to start healing it can be a reference pointyou can use to measure your journey towards

peace and beyond.The second two Hearts of Grief (only one givenhere) provide personalised records, which will helpyou identify exactly how you are feeling and whichemotions are most intense with you. As youremotional wellbeing is a crucial part of helpingyourself at this difficult time, these heart of grief area simple yet integral aspects of your healing.These two hearts of grief are used in several waysand through several stages of the Joy BeyondGrief programme, so please do not underestimatetheir importance in your journey.The first Emotional Heart is the Emotional Heart ofGrief - Fear which looks at the more “negative”emotions you may be experiencing, By helpingyourself on an emotional level you are laying thefoundations to help yourself with all other aspectsof your life. Remember your emotional health iscrucial to your ability to move through your grievingexperience as smoothly as is possible.It is often said that if you keep yourself busy andpush aside any negative, sad feelings you will behelping yourself to “get over your loss”, well, frommy experience this could not be further from the

truth. If you try to ignore how you are feeling thenthese feelings grow in intensity until you have noother option other than to acknowledge them. Youknow the situation where someone seems to fly offthe handle for the smallest of things. Well, that is abrilliant example of those feelings bursting out asthey had not been addressed and have built upand built up. If you then continue to ignore themover an extended period of time not only may theydevelop into physical problems but they will keepyou stuck in your grief and this has the potential fora lot of unnecessary suffering. (See my “FREE 9Myths of Grief” for further information on thiswww.janicethompson.co.uk ). Please use thehearts of grief to help you with your emotional wellbeing.So why use these tools when grieving? Howare they going to help me?I cannot overemphasis how essential it is toidentify, isolate, look at and address the feelingsyou are experiencing around your loss. The Heartsof Grief are practical, easy to use tools to help youwith your feelings, which can be so seeminglyunpredictable and overwhelming during loss. Theywill be the foundations to you feeling more incontrol of your emotions.

Joy Beyond Grief is all about YOU and helping youto understand your own personal journey. Grief is atotally individual experience and you come to griefwith your own unique outlook on life, your ownbeliefs and your own personal experiences. Byunderstanding how you are feeling you can beginto understand what your own grief means to you.These charts are simple to use and can be filled inregularly to monitor change and furthermore theyare a source of reference for many exercisesthroughout the Joy Beyond Grief Programmes(including Joy Beyond Grief for professionals andJoy Beyond Grief for individual loss). Holding ontonegative emotions is exhausting and keeps youstuck, releasing them and learning what letting gotruly means can be the difference between makingsense of your loss and feeling lost. Not recognizingor ignoring your feelings can be so detrimental toyour well-being and your physical health at the bestof times let alone at this difficult time, so please joinme in completing the Hearts of Grief.So I have filled in these hearts of grief, nowwhat?

Having filled in your Hearts of Grief you now havea couple of options, you can either simply keepthem safe and check them every few weeks to seeif anything has changed, so they would act as asort of journal for you to monitor any changes.However, I would recommend that you become alittle more pro active than that. I would like to invitejoin me on one of my Joy Beyond Grief Workshopsor have a one-to-one session, for more informationplease go to http://www.janicethompson.co.uk/#You will also find out about some extremely helpfulself-help tools, learn some new techniques and seegrief in a new light.So let’s get started.

The Emotional Heart of Grief-FearBelow is a list of emotions, which are commonlyexperienced with loss. Please read through themand see if any resonate with how you are feeling.This list is not exhaustive and if you wish to add aparticular emotion that you feel is important to youor if you just prefer a different word from thoseshown then please add your own. Also, andcrucially if you are experiencing a specific feelingsuch as “ that aching in my heart, or “that pit in mystomach” or “that heaviness in my chest” thenplease include those feelings. The important thingis that you keep this emotional heart of grief totallypersonal to YOU. Try to be as honest as you canas this will help you move towards feeling bettersooner.List of haustedNo EnergyGuiltDenialFrustrationDespair

fusionNow, write down your choice of emotions below, atthis point you may have none or anything up to 8 orbeyond, just fill in as honestly as you can.1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/Now you have 8 of the emotions/feelings youexperience the most, which are totally personal toyou. They are part of your own unique griefexperience and as such should be respected andacknowledged. The next stage is to put each ofthese emotions into the heart of grief, in thefollowing pages after the example. Once you haveput each of the emotions on the lines provided thenyou need to give each a rating between -10 and 0

where -10 is the most intense you feel that emotionand 0 is the least intense you feel that emotion.Please see the example given in which the feelingof hopeless is very intense whereas the feeling ofdisbelief is not so intense. (note: on this heart ofgrief you are ultimately aiming to move towards thecentre of the heart, towards your true self. The waythe green arrows are showing)It is a good idea to do this weekly as you canmonitor exactly how you are feeling and for thenext part of the programme this will be invaluablein terms of moving through those emotions in ahealthy way. So, at the end of each week assessthe most intense you have experienced each of theemotions on your own personalised EmotionalHeart of Grief – Fear (I have given an examplefrom my own journal).

You now have completed the Emotional Heart ofGrief-Fear. This in itself is a massive first step tohelping yourself though your grieving experience.As I have previously said you could keep these asa record of how you were on the date recorded andat regular intervals re do them, this would give yousome indication of whether things had changed foryou or not. However, I would seriously recommendthat you do much more with these Hearts of Grief.I would like to invite you to actively work towardshelping yourself to feel better and beyond with thesupport of the Joy Beyond Grief Programme. YourHearts of grief will act as markers along yourjourney and are used in several different way in theprogramme. They will help with your transitionfrom pain towards a place of peace and beyondtowards positive transformation.Grief can be so very painful, it can be so difficult tothink, function or even just get out of bed in themorning. I know because I have been there andit’s hell. However, my transformation gave me themotivation and passion to help others who areexperiencing loss. Although I know the pain of lossI totally recognize everyones loss is very different

and that is why I set up the Joy Beyond GriefProgramme, which at its heart recognizes thisindividual aspect of grief. These heart of grief are awere developed to start that small step out of thedark to help guide and support you out of thequagmire.Grief can take us into a lonely place, so pleaseconsider the Joy Beyond Grief Programme or evensome individual one to one work as this supportmay prove to be invaluable in terms of you healingfrom your pain. The Joy Beyond Grief facebookpage is also a way to connect and help you feelless alone so please join s there too.Some people suffer for years with grief and if thatis you it will show on the Hearts of Grief. I wouldlike to invite you to begin your healing process in agentle, proactive, positive, empowering way. Withboth the emotional hearts of grief you will beidentifying and acknowledging where you are andwith the Emotional Heart of Grief-Fear you willhave a frame of reference you will be moving awayfrom and with the Emotional Heart of Grief – Love(not shown here) you will have a frame ofreference you will be moving towards.

I would like to share the most beneficial techniquesand tools I discovered through my own loss andwhich have helped many of my clients over theyears. They are incorporated in my Joy BeyondGrief Programme alongside my own developments.All the techniques I use with the Heart of Grief willtruly help you through your grieving experience to aplace not only of peace but beyond towards one ofjoy. This may be hard for you to even comprehendat this moment but I can assure you it is possible, Ihave achieved it and so have many of the people Ihave worked with. To truly make sense of your lossand make positive changes in your life is reallypossible.Please feel free to contact me for the next smallstep in your journey where you will have theopportunity to gain support and guidance withusing the Heart of Grief to there full potential. Or ifyou would like further help along on your journey orsimply have any questions at all please feel free toget in touch.For FREE talks & workshop dates please visit mywebsite .Love and Peace xx

and make positive changes in your life is really possible. Please feel free to contact me for the next small step in your journey where you will have the opportunity to gain support and guidance with using the Heart of Grief to there full potential. Or if you would like further help along on your journey or