One of the major issues some of my clients seem to have is allowing themselves to be angry with God, when they have experienced a loss. It's is understandable when the client begins to express their anger that they would naturally bring up the fact that they are angry with God. As we begin to process their grief, many of my clients are looking for "permission" to express anger towards God. I don't claim to be "Christian" counselor, however, when the client wants to explore spiritual issues, I can accomodate. I have often felt the pain the client feels when expressing their grief about the loss of their loved one. It is common to have pent up anger, because most of us were brought up with the notion that we cannot and should not be angry with God or we should not express anger towards God. Why not? I have often given "permission" to clients to verbalize such anger. A client once taught me what she heard in a pastor's eulogy. In the case of someone with cancer, the pastor explained that God doesn't take a love one away, cancer takes your loved one, God takes them away from cancer. With that single perspective I have grown more in tune with the grief process. How important it is to "blame" someone or something. It's that process that Kubler-Ross, address in the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining,Depression and Acceptance (not in any particular order). Each stage has its own dimension and dynamics. All stages are equally important, but the one that I see that people have the most trouble with is the Anger part. I always want to make this aspect of the grief process more "mainstream" for lack of a better word. I believe that Anger gets such a bad rap, there really isn't anything wrong with anger, it's how it's expressed that people have a problem with; therefore it is "bad". As long as it doesn't hurt you, a loved one or property, I'm thinking, it's ok. It's ok to scream at God, it's ok to say that you're angry with God. I think as long as God is "perfect" and all knowing, we are like small children with our parents when we get angry and don't get what we want. Our parents don't hate us if we say we are angry with them, well guess what? God doesn't either.
Every stage of the grief process is important and there are many ways to facilitate each step and processing our feelings, thoughts with a therapist is strongly encouraged.
Every stage of the grief process is important and there are many ways to facilitate each step and processing our feelings, thoughts with a therapist is strongly encouraged.

No comments:
Post a Comment