In traditional models of grief stage four is named depression. This can lead to some confusion, depression is a clinical state often treated with medication that occurs when there has not been a significant loss. As a result I prefer to call this state remorse because sadness and remorse often arise out of the inner reflection and soul searching that constitute stage four. Stage five resembles the “mid-life crisis”, when the meaning and purpose of life come into question.
Sadness and remorse are the predominant feelings during this phase. We are deeply saddened by the loss, and may feel totally despondent. Continuing on with life may seem futile, what’s the point? We are filled with remorse as we ponder all the things we could have or should have done with our life, if only we had been different. There is a sense of failure, and we blame ourselves. All of these feelings are perfectly normal, and we must allow ourselves to process and incorporate them. The internalization process started in stage four continues in stage five, but the implications and ramifications are deepening and expanding and a form of paralysis may set in, a mental fog, a sense of numbness.
This numbing is really helpful in a way, for it allows us to examine our role in the crisis, but even more importantly our role in general from a safe distance. There is a sense, that we haven’t been the person we wanted to be, the person we should have and could have been. We have been an inferior version of ourselves and we have been inadequate and insufficient. Our role was not one we would have chosen for ourselves, our life isn’t one that we would have chosen. If only things had been different.
When one has reached this state you must not let others talk you down from it, or talk you out of it. This is the radical breakthrough moment where real and meaningful change can occur, where life takes on a new meaning and purpose that is far more reflective of who you really are and were always meant to be.
Psychologists will tell you that by two years of age your character, your personality is basically formed, and that by age five it is fully developed. In other words your persona, or personality and your role in the family and in life is set, fully fixed by age five. You where fully formed during a period of time in which you had no power no control, and few real choices. In other words who you have been up until this moment wasn’t determined by you, but was fully determined by others and factors beyond your control. Up until this moment you never had the need to change, but now because of this crisis, there is a compulsion to change, it feels like you have to change, there is an inner compulsion to change or to die. Choose life, choose change, rebel against your ego that resists change. Rebel against the members of your family and friends that want you to continue on in the role you have always played. The role you were assigned. the role that has always kept you stuck.
I repeat, you were fully formed by the age of five, by factors beyond your control, and by people you had no influence over. You are not your fault.
If by the age of two your Core Constellation of Feelings was fully formed and these shaped all your values and beliefs, how could you have ever been anyone else than who you have been up until know.
Now here comes the hard part, if you had no power, no choice and no control over the factors that created who you are, the factors that created the false-self from which you have played your role and lived your life, then how on earth can you be to blame. Whatever you have done, you are not to blame, you are not guilty, and there is no shame. By the age of five an imposter had taken over your life. The imposter, that isn’t even real, might be guilty, but You, You are not.
This crisis almost seems a perfectly designed moment for you to challenge your very existence. Who are you really? Why are you here? What is the true meaning and purpose of life? Seize this moment, this crisis has given you a real opportunity, an excuse even, to create meaningful change in your life. To become the person you always wanted to be. The person you have always wanted to be, is alive and well within you. That is why you have always wanted to be it. We can only search for things we know we have lost. It is time to stop looking on the outside for that which is within.
Abducted in childhood and hidden in shame, how on Earth can You be to blame.
No blame, no shame, use this crisis to set yourself free.
Shakespeare said
“All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;“
But the footnote was omitted.
Not one Soul was injured or harmed during the making of this play, it was all an illusion, intended for enlightenment purposes only.