Hello to all, and welcome back to the third episode of Healing the Unresolved: Putting the Past in the Past.

So our first question that we are going to respond to today is from an individual who submitted their question from overseas. And one of the central themes to the question that they asked centers around loss. So the individual who submitted the question has suffered a lot of loss in their life, specifically in the form of a number of relatives, including their own father, that passed away early from physical illness. So now the individual has now had their own child, a beautiful son who’s about to turn six, and suddenly she finds herself seized with fears of something happening to her, and worrying that what if she becomes sick and suddenly passes away like so many of her other relatives had done.

There’s been this internal epic battle going on within her, saying, “I know this is irrational, but yet why is it consuming me like this?” It has become a terrible obsession, to use her own words, and she knows that she just shouldn’t be letting this disturb her life in the way that it has, but it always seems to be in the back of her mind, like elevator music, this fear. And it’s robbing her from the present moment. She has prayed to God and to the saints for relief, and yet somehow it still keeps popping up in her mind, and it’s kind of become the new normal for her. She is very much seeking some advice on how to get relief from this struggle.

So first of all, I am very sorry for your losses. That is a lot of loss, a lot of family members that were lost way too early due to physical sickness. Certainly the struggles that you’re having now are very understandable.

One of the things—there’s a number of things operating here, but one of the things is something that we all struggle with, and that is difficulty tolerating uncertainty. You see, none of us like uncertainty. Our ability to tolerate uncertainty is kind of like a spectrum, and we’re all on there somewhere. Some of us are quite content with just of course surrendering and being at peace with the present moment and really okay with not knowing, and very often prefer not to know. And then there’s some of us that are—we don’t like the not-knowing. We like control and we don’t like uncertainty, but we tolerate it. And then there’s some of us that just cannot rest if there’s any perceived uncertainty in our life, and we just have an extreme need for control. But very often, if we are at that most, at that end of the spectrum we just described, often it’s because of something that happened in our life that made us associate uncertainty with bad things happening.

And so there’s definitely a difficulty in tolerating uncertainty here, and also some control issues. It’s human nature. When we start to feel out of control, which I think all of us have at one time or another—and it’s really widespread, this struggle, these days—we tend to compensate by overcontrolling other areas of our lives. It’s human nature. We don’t like to feel not in control, and when we feel not in control and out of control, we tend to cope and compensate by overcontrolling in some area of our life. And for everybody, it looks different. There’s all kinds of manifestations from that: health fears, clamping down on trying to control events or even other people in our life, overreactions. We’re kind of hyper-reactive; we’re on edge, because we just cannot tolerate anything else in our life being out of control.

So all these losses that you’ve suffered, if we have not worked through them properly, unresolved grief, when it pushes up from under the surface, can absolutely make us feel out of control and overwhelmed. And it will come out sideways, because when it comes to grief, we can run, but we can’t hide. We can try to put time and we can try to put distance between us and grief, distance in the form of time, but in the end it’s going to come knocking and basically demand to be dealt with. That’s what will give us peace. That’s the good news and the bad news. The bad news is, for some of us, it’s like: “Oh, no, I don’t want it to be that,” but the good news is, when we take it head on and start to grieve fully, we really can get a sense of peace and feel more calm and more in the present moment and not so tortured any more.

Always remember that saying, because I’m speaking now to the health fears, because the submitter of the question has shared that they’ve kind of had some hypochondria going on, where they’re starting to obsess about bodily sensations and having a terrible fear that they will get sick and their six-year-old child will be left alone or without a mom, just like she lost her dad way too young. And so we’re feeling out of control, and this obsession with our own health features is a form of overcontrol, except we’re hurting ourselves; it’s not working. So always remember that saying: The more we try to control what we can’t control, the more out-of-control we feel. It’s only when we let go of our need for control that we truly gain it. So there’s a paradox there.

Also, and this hopefully is very practical, whenever we have a fear of a certain outcome or scenario happening, often unconsciously we have assigned a way-too-high percentage of a chance that we think it’s going to happen; we’ve over-assessed the threat. Maybe emotionally we feel, oh, this is going to happen; it’s like 50%. But if we sit and say, cognitively, what percentage of a chance do we really believe this is going to happen, the percentage is often very different. For example, there might be individuals who have terrible anxiety getting in their car and driving, because they’re absolutely terrified they’re going to get into an accident. And if you ask them, “Well, what are the chances you’re going to get into an accident?” they’re like: “50%!” And could we imagine that 50% of the people out there were getting into car accidents? It would be a calamity! Society would shut down; the roads would be gridlocked. And so it’s a very tiny fraction, maybe .00-something percent that that would happen, and likewise here.

I think for the individual submitting the question, let us ask ourselves: What’s the percentage of a chance that I will become ill when I’m very young and have young children and pass away? Of course, that could happen to any of us, but what’s the—how big of a threat is it truly? And let us come up with a number, and is that number realistic? Very often, it’s inflated, that our fears have inflated it, because it’s not 50% and it’s not 25%, and it’s certainly probably not 15 or 10%. It’s probably much, much, much less. Sometimes when we acknowledge that reality, our emotions then can guide on that new number, and that more realistic number. So that’s a very helpful exercise to do here.

It might not be the threat—in all likelihood it is not—it’s not the threat that we think it is. So it’s not coming from evidence; it’s coming from past unresolved experiences. And so, in all likelihood, as we said before, there is some unresolved grief going on. Let us go and focus on: This really isn’t about you or your son; this is about your relatives who have passed away. And have we fully grieved them, especially your father? My sense is, by how many years ago he passed away, you were very young, and you might not have been at a stage of life where you truly knew how to grieve. Many teenagers or young adults, when they lose a parent, they just— they go into survival mode, and they really might not grieve fully, and they might have to revisit it later in life and young adulthood or midlife and finish the grieving process. I’ve seen that many times.

And so we might need to go back and maybe start writing or journaling about those who have passed on, and see if there are any pockets of grief that have been lying dormant under the surface, because if that’s what it is and we can get that emotion up and out, we’re going to feel a lot better. The anxiety’s going to dissipate; the need for control’s going to dissipate. We’re going to be more in the present moment and more trusting of the present, and feeling a little more confident that: “Hey, I surrendered to God and I don’t have control, but that doesn’t— Because I’m giving up control doesn’t mean something bad’s going to happen.”

And when we grieve what we’re supposed to be grieving, when we finally start to grieve the core event, it separates the past from the present, and we feel less overwhelmed and more at peace. So hopefully that’s some helpful information. I wish I could— Please don’t hesitate to email me and let me know how that worked for you.

And finally, I just wanted to add something else, and this is very important as well. One of the things that’s operating here is that you’re suffering from a fear that somehow your son is going to experience what you did. And for everybody who has suffered profoundly painful experiences in their early life, or traumatic experiences, it’s inevitable that when we become parents ourselves, at some point we’re going to experience some fear that our kids are going to experience the same thing, and that can manifest itself in so many different ways in our parenting: we’re overbearing, we’re overcontrolling, we overfunction, we’re overprotective, we rescue them—we can go on and on and on. And certainly that’s happening here.

I’m sure you look at your son and you see yourself, and you don’t ever want him to experience the pain and grief and the losses that you did. And that’s only normal and natural, and it means that you’re a good, loving mother, but it’s robbing you from the present moment, because there’s no evidence to indicate he’s going to suffer the same losses that you did. Certainly in time he will, and, God willing, when he’s much older, but that’s— Knowing what’s going on is half the battle, and that is what is going on. It’s just that we have this fear that somehow our past is going to reappear in the present and claim our kids, and they won’t get to experience that kind of carefree predictable life that maybe we didn’t have growing up.

Okay, so on to the next question. The next individual who submitted a question has some questions about healing because they have a lot of stress and anxiety. One core issue or event that occurred in her life was some abandonment, that their father had abandoned her and her mom when she was only six years old. That’s very painful. And also, in the present, [she] and her husband are trying really hard to have a baby, and it’s been difficult; it hasn’t been working out, and some individuals in her life, who probably were well-intentioned, were suggesting adoption, but that’s very upsetting to the one who submitted this question.

And also there’s a great sensitivity to the topic, so the mere mention, if somebody mentions children even or talks about children in front of them, it kind of causes a wound. So this individual, you’ve been visiting monasteries and offering prayers there and visiting wonder-working icons. You seem to think you’re going overboard with that, but certainly not. I don’t think you can go overboard with that. But you said that it gives you peace, and it gives you more faith, patience, and hope, by going to the monasteries and praying and seeking out the wonder-working icons.

I’m going to answer that last part and then go to the beginning. First of all, do not doubt yourself. Going to the monasteries is wonderful, and we should do that. And seeking out the wonder-working icons is wonderful, and if we have the time and are willing to travel, certainly, go for it. And it should—it absolutely gives us faith and patience and hope, so don’t doubt that. You certainly are not going overboard, so pray away, and visit those places. Often that’s where you will find the answers. Eventually you’ll come to that, whether it’s deliverance or acceptance or peace; wherever you need to be, you will find it through the activities that you’re doing.

But let me now go back to the beginning of the question. You have a lot of stress and anxiety in your life, and there was kind of a… We don’t know how much of that is coming from the present or this painful issue that your did kind of left when you were six. The thing with anxiety is that where there’s anxiety, there’s a perceived threat. You see, we are not feeling safe.

And many of us who struggle with anxiety sometimes don’t ask those simple questions for ourselves. Whether we’re walking or sitting alone, we should dialogue with ourselves and say, “All right, I’m feeling anxious, but why? What’s the fear? What’s the threat? If I’m feeling anxious, it’s because I think there’s a threat in my life. What is it?” And sometimes just answering that question helps us. Why are we not feeling safe? What’s the fear? And I would encourage the person who submitted this question to start with that, because I don’t have that information. If I had that information, I think I’d be able to give a much deeper answer here.

But abandonment is traumatic. When we had a caretaker not be there for us in our early life, whether it was— Abandonment does not always take the more obvious, extreme forms that many of us think of when we think of abandonment. There’s often: “Well, both of my parents left me alone. They dropped me off on the curb somewhere.” “I came home one day and no one was home, and that was it.” But those are very… the ones we’re more familiar with, but sometimes even if our parents struggled with addiction or alcoholism, and there were certain moments where they weren’t there for us; they weren’t at the helm. No one was at the steering wheel, in the driver’s seat. That’s scary for a child. When a parent isn’t there, that’s a very frightening moment, even if it’s just temporary, and it leaves a mark; it leaves a wound.

But here, your dad left when you were six, and that’s huge, and that’s painful. So if that has not been fully dealt with and worked through, that certainly could be feeding some of your present-day stress and anxiety because in the end— When we’ve suffered a traumatic experience, we have a fear of it reoccurring in the present, and it can distort how we perceive the present. So present-day events that naturally would be stressful and upsetting on their own suddenly become amplified ten-fold because we’re identifying or believing that they’re a much greater threat than they are, because the past is leaking into the present. So we’re not just feeling the disappointment of this normal, present-day disappointment, but the past is being added on top of it. And it feels catastrophic.

And we don’t know if that’s what’s going on here, but it’s something for you to rule out. For example, not being able to have a child is incredibly upsetting, and it’s painful. Everywhere you look around, you see peers left and right having babies, and it just happens automatically. And inevitably our mind wanders to: “Why not me?” And it’s hard not to get upset at God sometimes. “Am I being punished? Did we do something wrong?” And of course not; you’re not being punished, and you’ve done nothing wrong. Having said that, don’t give up, because I have seen many people struggle with this, and suddenly, when they least expect it, it starts to work out, you see.

But we don’t know. Of course, we don’t know what’s going to happen here, but your feelings are normal. But we want to do a little bit of work here. What you said about the anxiety and stress that you struggle with, we want to identify: What’s the fear? And what are the threats that you have identified in your present life that [need] to be articulated? And that in itself will give you some relief and your starting point in how to resolve it, and it might answer: Is it going back to what Dad did when you were six years old? That fear of abandonment and our present life can manifest itself in so many different ways. You see, it’s not abandon— If we were abandoned when we were young, and we worry and we fear it in the present, we usually don’t fear it in the form we experienced it as a kid, because we can’t. We’re not six years old any more. Mom and Dad aren’t there any more; they can’t walk out on us any more—but who else in our life could? Maybe we fear God’s going to abandon us, or that life is going to abandon me: I’m not going to get the life that I want, and I’m going to feel profoundly disappointed, just like I did back then.

We don’t know if there’s any of that going on. It’s good, certainly, to rule it out, and sometimes even when our kids grow up we feel abandoned. “I don’t want to be left alone.” So you want to rule out: is that a fear operating here, a fear of being alone? “I want my family. I want to have a family around me, because I didn’t get that normal family experience growing up, because my dad walked out when I was six years old. So now I want my own family; I want that sense of security. I don’t want to be alone.”

And that’s painful. So you want to identify: is there any of that going on? And if there is, it means you’re normal, and you want to come to terms with that, you see. And maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just: “Hey, I love children, and I want to have them. I want to have that normal experience.” And that’s okay; you’re allowed that. But really, like I said, keep going to the monasteries and seeking out the wonder-working icons. Absolutely, you’re not going overboard, but make sure you do the other work that we just talked about here.

Okay, I hope that was helpful, and feel free to email me in the event that— to give me an update, to see if that hit the mark or not, because I don’t want to give you an insufficient answer, or if you have another question, don’t hesitate to respond. I just want to say, for everyone who has submitted a question, if you feel the question wasn’t fully answered or you have something else you wanted to ask, feel free to ask a second question about the same topic. That is no problem whatsoever.

The next question is from an individual who was widowed back in the late ‘80s, after they had had their sixth baby. So the family is booming, the sixth baby is born, and suddenly this young woman finds herself a widow. How painful! And I’m sorry for your loss. I can only imagine. But after the passing of your husband and their father, all the kids remained close to each other. But there was one of the children [who] struggled and had been struggling for some time with some anger and tantrums and having some crises in high school, and just had a lot of struggles. I won’t go into any details.

And so it seemed like, for a time, everybody was doing okay as the decades passed, but then more recently, in recent years, not too long ago, an email was sent. The middle sibling sent an email to the other siblings, with things that the submitter of the question feels were really distorted and untrue. And unfortunately this email had a devastating effect on the family and divided the family. So some of the kids supported mom, and then some felt—believed the email and kind of fell in line with their other sibling who was upset. And to this day, after a few years, the family continues to be divided. So not only did she lose her husband and go through that trauma in the late ‘80s, but now there’s this loss. She wasn’t expecting this to happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Now I feel like I’ve lost the three of my children and the four grandchildren that they had.

And then you also said, “My heart is broken,” and I can understand that. Certainly it pains me even just to hear of this scenario. And so, first and foremost—and many of us who hear this question can relate to a broken or fractured relationship with a close family member, and sometimes we try to force our way through life, and we try to convince ourselves: “Well, it is what it is. I’m okay with it, and I’m just going to live my life.” Well, easier said than done. Sometimes we tell ourselves a story when we say those things to our self. We have a broken or fractured relationship in our life, we try to convince ourselves that “I’m okay with it and I don’t really care and I’m going to live my life,” but it’s unnatural. It’s unnatural to live with broken relationships in our life. God did not create us to be at peace with that, you see. And so our hearts and our souls yearn for love and peace.

In fact, we’re about to enter into the Nativity season, one of the most beautiful times of year. The Nativity season does not tolerate broken relationships well. The spirit of reconciliation permeates everything! Because what is Nativity? God becoming man in order to heal the break and divide between God and man. I mean, the whole event of the Incarnation is based on that, an act of love. So the spirit of Christmas and Nativity permeates everything and all of our hearts. And that’s why we often hear of stories of reconciliation during the holidays, because it’s a powerful time. The Nativity season is powerful, and the Nativity spirit moves us. It pulls those heart cords, tugs at our heart to reach out to those broken relationships. We feel those broken relationships ever so profoundly during the Nativity season. It weighs on us more than any other time of year. For some people, sadly, they dread Christmas because of that. But, no, no, let us embrace it.

So don’t give up reaching out, and continue to pray for reconciliation, because when we have broken relationships, we often are powerless, and when we continue to overfunction—which you’re not—but keep trying to reach out. It can sometimes make things worse or cause tension. So what do we do? We pray. And I am convinced—this is just my opinion—one of the most swiftly answered prayers are prayers of reconciliation, like: “Lord, please, help there to be peace between me and so-and-so.” Keep plugging away at it. And so often what I see is that when we least expect it, the person who we thought we would never hear from suddenly surfaces. Maybe it’s an email or a text along the lines of: “Hey, can you talk? Can we talk?” I’ve seen that so many times.

We want to go through our life keeping a vigil, a silent watch for it. We keep a vigil for this person. They’re not home; we don’t have contact with them, but we keep that candle burning in our heart, waiting for them to return. And we keep it through prayer, always keeping the conduit open. And let’s not slip—we don’t— For everyone listening, don’t tell ourselves a story and say, “We don’t care. I’m fine. I don’t care if I hear from them.” I think we’re telling our self a story. God did not create us to tolerate broken relationships, so let’s not try to convince ourselves otherwise. And of course, the one who submitted this question I know is not struggling with that, but I just share that.

I think that’s it. If I add two more, I don’t want to take away… I don’t want to add too much to it. I will add this. Grieve. Grieve: it is a loss. And when we survive something like you survived—six kids, and your husband passes away, that’s traumatic! And it’s only natural that after that— And you work through that, and you come to some peace after that… Hopefully, we think—it’s only natural to hope that that’s it: “Could I have some smooth sailing the rest of the way?” And then, at this late stage, to have the family become divided, it’s just—it’s devastating. I understand that, because we could kind of feel like this wasn’t supposed to happen. We all worked so hard; we’ve come so far. And for this division to rear its ugly head now is just so devastating.

But we can get that hope back. Just because it’s this way now doesn’t mean it will remain that way. So, patience, faith, and get those prayers of reconciliation going. And they’re not lost. If there is a perception that they’re permanently lost, I would be in bad shape, too. But they’re not lost—they’re there! There’s just a distance. And that distance can be traversed, and we’re going to need God’s help to traverse that distance.

And that Nativity season is approaching. Nativity begins November 15, actually. It is one week from today! That beautiful time of year that will start to tug at our heart cords and really get us thinking about those we lost and those we miss. It humbles us. There’s a great peace and humility that visits our hearts and makes us want to reach out. Definitely, every so often, reach out. And it might get smacked down, it might get shut down, but that’s okay; at least you tried. And no one can accuse you of not caring, or saying, “All these years, I never heard from you; you never reached out.” And don’t give up. They’re not lost; they’re there. And we just want to patiently wait at that divide between us and them, just wait there and pray and keep that silent vigil there. Often when we least expect it, we get a message from somebody.

We hope in the power of the Nativity season especially. I hope this is helpful. Again, if there’s more questions that you have related to this answer, please, don’t hesitate to email me back. And so, please, if there’s anyone out there struggling with any—in any area of their life, whether it’s relationships or personal struggles, please reach out. We certainly welcome the questions, and we’ll protect your confidentiality. So to everyone listening, have a blessed day. God bless you, and take care.