A common thread running through many of our articles is the mis-information we all acquired about the normal emotions caused by loss. We do not want to create any new loss issues here by blaming our parents in particular or society in general for having passed on ineffective ideas, skills, and tools. All we want to do is help establish that what most of us have been using to deal with our sad, painful or negative feelings hasn't worked, and that we need to acquire more effective tools for dealing with the loss events that affect and often limit our lives.

Much of the incorrect information we learned and practiced may have convinced us not to show our REAL feelings at any cost. We were taught to bury any feelings that dealt with sadness. We all heard: "Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone." This and hundreds of other clichés about dealing with sad feelings taught us to lie about how we felt. And even the lying was protected under mis-information like: "Don't burden others with your feelings."

When we make public appearances we often ask a large audience this question: "Do you like being lied to?" Of course no one says yes. Our next question is: "How many of you have ever said 'I'M FINE' when you were feeling terrible?" Every single hand in the audience goes up. Conclusion: Nobody likes being lied to...and everybody lies about their feelings. If this were a physical illness it would be an epidemic and the Centers for Disease Control would be granted billions of dollars to find a cure.

Every time we lie to others we lie to ourselves. Our subconscious mind hears the lie and continues to bury the feelings generated by the initial event. Unresolved losses are cumulative, and cumulatively negative. Time does not heal the pain caused by loss and neither does lying about our feelings.

It would be impossible to cure such a massive problem in a single written article, but let's try for a little bit of recovery. Allow yourself to believe that the subconscious will take actions based on conscious commands. When we lie and say we are fine, we tell our subconscious that there is no problem so it need not search out a solution. The net effect is to allow the cause of the problem to go unattended and re-bury itself. The next time it attacks us we may not be able to recognize the source of the attack.

A major key to recovery is to communicate every feeling in the moment you have it. It does not require any special skills to tell the truth about what you are feeling.

For example: "How are you?" ... "I'm having a tough day, thanks for asking." The answer is truthful but does not invite any help or advice. Nor does it expose you as defective or make you vulnerable in any way. It also has the capacity of serving notice that you are not on your best game and the other party can respond accordingly. When you say "I'm fine," but you're really not, you have sent a very confusing message.

For example, here's a question we often get: "Sometimes I tell people 'I'm fine' and they don't seem to believe me. Why not?"

The answer lies in the fact that only 20% of your ability to communicate is verbal, leaving about 80% as non-verbal. Non-verbal communication includes tone of voice as well as facial and body signals. When our verbal and non-verbal signals do not match, most people will respond to the non-verbal. When presented with conflicting verbal and non-verbal messages, people will invariably respond to the non-verbal, since it is so dominant.

So when you lie, most people can SEE it. You almost never fool anybody.

Truth or lies, your choice - your consequences.

By Russell Friedman

John W. James and Russell Friedman are co-founders of The Grief Recovery Institute Educational Foundation, and co-authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook and When Children Grieve, both from HarperCollins. The Institute and thousands of affiliates throughout the United States and Canada offer a variety of programs for grievers. Additional information is available by calling 888-773-2683 or on the web at www.grief.net . To view previous media related articles please go to www.grief.net/Media/MediaIndex.html . Eric Cline is Director of Canadian Operations