“I had just learned your grief process in 1990 when my father had a heart attack.

I was with him in

the hospital for three days until he died. He was already brain dead when I arrived at the hospital,
and the process of his death…I’ll simply describe as horrific and gruesome. Nonetheless, I utilized
your grief process the entire time and the experience was transformational for me. I never lost my
connection with what I’ll call his soul, and still sense him. I’m very grateful to both of you for your
work.”
—Kirk VandenBerghe

Introduction 
We have been teaching the grief resolution process in Master Practitioner trainings ever since we
developed it over fourteen years ago. Heart of the Mind (1, Ch. 11)  provides an introduction to this
process, and a videotaped demonstration Resolving Grief(2) by Connirae provides an example of
it.  This process is quite often very useful, since the grief response of emptiness and sadness in
response to the loss of a loved person is something that everyone will experience at some time in
their lives, and many people experience many significant losses. Unresolved grief is often a major
unrecognized factor in a wide range of other difficulties that bring people to seek therapy,
including  lack of motivation, depression, chronic illness, and mid-life crisis.   
            When we first decided to model the grief response, we contrasted the experiences of people
who were particularly resourceful in dealing with significant losses, with the experiences of those
who were still experiencing sadness and grieving, and who had difficulty getting on with their lives
after a loss.
            We found that those who were grieving–whether long-term or short-term–did something that
could be described in one of two ways:

          1. Recalling the ending. Often they made the mistake of recalling the ending of the relationship,
rather than the loving connection itself. For instance, they might recall the last heated argument that
led to the breakup, or the ugly divorce process, the horrible terminal illness, or whatever other
unpleasant events resulted in the ending of the relationship, rather than the loving relationship itself.
            Even when they recall this event in a dissociated way, as if seen on  a TV screen, the
feelings are of unpleasantness, rather than loving connection.  Many people recall these events as if
they were happening here and now, with the full intensity of the unpleasantness of the original
event.  This ending of the relationship is not the precious experience that the person is grieving for,
and this common mistake makes it impossible to experience the special loving feelings that they had
with the lost person.
           When someone recalls the ending, one of the first steps in the process is to ask them to think
of what they loved and appreciated about the lost relationship, rather than the end of the
relationship. This is a request to the client to change the content of their representation.
          For some people, shifting attention from the ending to a special memory of the lost person is a
complete intervention, and they don’t have to go through the rest of the processes below. When they
remember the good times as if they are happening again, they no longer feel any loss. As Dr. Seuss
said, “Don’t cry because it’s over; be glad that it happened.”
          If their image of the end of the relationship continues to intrude and trouble them, you can use
the NLP phobia cure in order to resolve it, and you could also use some other intervention that
examines the ending in order to learn from it, and then applies those learnings to future scenarios,
so that they are prepared for any potential repetition.