Emotional Muscle
Memory
The bio-chemistry of the human brain is being deciphered rapidly. Neurotransmitters have been identified, quantified, and classified.
The simple explanation is that our brains memorize passageways from stimulus to response at nearly imperceivable speeds. What is also obvious is that once the electro-chemical coding takes place and becomes entrenched, it is very hard to dislodge.
So what else is new?
We could have told you that a long time ago. It’s pretty simple - "What you practice is what you get good at" - even ending sentences with prepositions.
The best example of both sides of this equation is illustrated in having learned fingering on the piano incorrectly, and then at some later date, trying to re-learn it correctly. It’s not impossible, but comes in the range of very difficult, maybe 8 or 9 on a scale of ten.
Shifting from music to sports, one of the world's most recent phenoms, Tiger Woods, is an example of the positive side of physical muscle memory. Most people know that Tiger started playing golf at the ripe old age of one and a half, with excellent instruction, and now is far and away the best golfer in the world.
"What you practice is what you get good at" - there I go again.
Still in the golf world - it is said that in a tournament, marginal swing skills will crumble under pressure. If you ever needed an explanation for Tiger Wood's success, it is that his fundamental, memorized swing is very, very good, and therefore holds up under pressure.
At the Grief Recovery Institute we coined a phrase that relates to the emotional muscle memories we all acquire in childhood: "In a crisis we return to old beliefs and the behaviors that accompany them."
Grief, by any reasonable definition is a crisis. Whether the grief is caused by the death of a loved one, or a divorce, or any other major, emotional, life changing event, it creates a crisis.
Confronted with the myriad feelings caused by loss, we struggle to identify the beliefs and actions stored in our brains, that will help us deal with the crisis. Good plan - that is until our brain scavenges around and finds that the only pieces of information that it has stored on the topics of grief and recovery from loss are not effective. In addition, having discovered whatever resources we have, we apply them, even with their limited merit or viability, because they are all we have.
Most of our emotional muscle memory storage bins contain a host of outmoded and inaccurate ideas about dealing with loss. Those ideas have been unwittingly passed from generation to generation without benefit of a serious look to see if they are useful and current. There are six major myths, which we have chronicled in our books, that keep each succeeding generation tied to those obsolete ideas.
There are two tasks that confront anyone who wants to deal more effectively with the losses that are limiting their lives. First is to identify the buried ideas that crop up in response to a crisis of loss, and to recognize and dismiss those that are unhelpful. Second is to replace them with the ideas and actions that lead to completion of the unfinished business that is the hallmark of all significant emotional loss.
Oh yeah, there is a third thing, and we're sure Tiger would endorse this idea; practice, practice, practice, so you can develop a new emotional muscle memory that will hold up in a crisis.
Speaking of Tiger, this week marks the opening of that most hallowed of American golf traditions, The Masters. The tournament has its own grief issues as it confronts the protests aimed at its membership policies. While most people will see this as a social issue, and will have an opinion on one side of the debate or other, we will recognize it for what it is, a grief issue. Grief is about the change or end in anything familiar.
Whether the policy of the Augusta National Golf Club is right or wrong is only the surface issue. Underlying it is the basic fact that change is the most difficult of human endeavors.
We may not all be able to wear the green jacket emblematic of the mastery of golf, but we can all learn to master the tools and actions that can lead us out of the very rough emotions caused by the painful losses which cause major changes in our lives.
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 .