Traumatic grief can affect us emotionally, physically, psychologically, and spiritually. We become disconnected from ourselves. Disconnection can cause disease or illness.
Two types of guided tools are offered. Therapeutic Meditation Practices may help reduce emotional and physical distress while strengthening our awareness of the present moment. Therapeutic Self-Healing Processes connect with, soothe, and heal our wounded younger parts. Combined, and with repetition, we may develop a greater capacity to experience painful emotions without becoming overwhelmed.
Another tool to help us reconnect with ourselves is journaling. I offer opportunities to write and reflect after each lesson, meditation, group, or companioning session.
Following my experiences with suicide loss, I struggled with hypervigilance, inadequate sleep, nightmares, anxiety attacks, and ruminating thoughts—the same questions and concerns repeating themselves over and over. I struggled to relax my body and mind.
Benefits of Practice: Learning to Listen to The Body
Benefits of using these tools with curiosity and compassion have helped calm my organism, my body.
Listening to a guided therapeutic meditation practice helped me focus on my body in the present moment, beginning with my breath. For me, this became a grounding practice, a way to lessen my tendency to dissociate or disconnect from what I was experiencing.
Throughout the meditation, attention gradually shifts from the breath to the whole body, inviting us to notice areas that may need attention. The monthly program offered educates and builds meditation practices in eight self-connection areas as they relate to the uniqueness of suicide grief: intentions, breath, feelings in our bodies, emotions, limiting beliefs, personal power, and our Something Bigger.
I have come to believe our bodies have much to tell us about how we are living and what we may need.
We might notice tension in our shoulders, tightness in our chest, or discomfort in our stomach. Rather than immediately trying to change those sensations, we are invited to become curious about them.
What emotion am I experiencing? Where am I feeling this in my body? What might I need?
Sometimes we shift our attention to a more comfortable or neutral part of the body before returning to an area of discomfort. This lets us move between difficult and more manageable sensations rather than staying focused entirely on distress.
For me, this practice has offered something especially meaningful.
I have learned that I can hold difficult feelings and positive feelings at the same time. I can hold traumatic grief and love at the same time.
One does not have to replace the other.
Without judgment, but with curiosity, Therapeutic Meditation Process™ invites us to explore and reconnect with parts of our organism that became disconnected following our traumatic grief from suicide loss.
Process: When Present Trauma Awakens Past Wounds
Another tool is the therapeutic self-healing process. This focuses on recognizing and offering compassion to wounded parts of us tied to childhood experiences.
I believe that significant losses in adulthood can awaken emotional wounds from earlier in our lives. This can make the current loss feel even more intense.
Emotions like abandonment, helplessness, fear, or not feeling safe may return, sometimes with an intensity we don't fully understand.
Through this tool, I have explored ways to reconnect with those parts of myself, offering attention and compassion rather than judgment. You may be familiar with the term “inner child” work. This is similar.
The process has been extremely helpful in my own healing journey.
Disclaimer: It is important to distinguish my personal experience from scientific evidence. Although trauma research recognizes connections between earlier adversity and responses to later stressful experiences, the TMP approach I use specifically has not been independently researched and verified scientifically or established as an effective treatment for childhood trauma.
What Does Research Tell Us About Meditation and Grief?
There is research supporting the potential benefits of mindfulness (present moment) meditation for certain psychological symptoms, including anxiety and depression.
A systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine by Goyal and colleagues (2014) found moderate evidence that mindfulness meditation programs can improve anxiety and depression.
However, research specifically examining meditation for traumatic grief and prolonged grief disorder is more limited.
A randomized clinical trial published in 2024 compared mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with grief-focused cognitive behavioral therapy for people experiencing prolonged grief disorder. Both approaches were examined, but grief-focused cognitive behavioral therapy produced greater improvement in prolonged grief symptoms at the six-month follow-up.
These findings remind us that meditation may be a helpful supportive practice, but it is not an established stand-alone treatment for traumatic grief.
There is also an important distinction between the structured mindfulness programs studied in research and the particular guided Therapeutic Meditation Processes I use. Although they share elements of present-moment awareness, mindfulness research findings don't automatically apply to TMP.
Meditation Doesn't Feel Safe for Everyone
I think it is especially important to acknowledge this.
Meditation is often presented as calming. But that isn't always the case, particularly for someone who has experienced trauma.
Closing our eyes, becoming still, or focusing attention inward can sometimes increase anxiety, emotional distress, or dissociation.
That was my experience initially.
However, because I was familiar with mindfulness meditation through teaching Dialectical Behavior Therapy coping skills to my clients, I continued exploring it as a self-help practice.
Before finding TMP, I discovered Yoga Nidra, a form of guided meditation. Having someone's voice guide my attention helped interrupt my distressing thoughts and gave me something to focus on.
This experience led me to explore meditation practices that felt better suited to my trauma-related needs.
I eventually found the Therapeutic Meditation Process (TMP).
TMP quickly became more than an occasional meditation for me. It helped me develop a self-connection practice that extended into many areas of my life.
I recognize that what helped me may not help everyone. We each bring our own experiences, needs, and responses to these practices.
You don't need to close your eyes, stay still, or keep going with a meditation that feels uncomfortable.
Meditation as One Part of Grief Support
I do not believe we can meditate our way out of grief. Nor do I believe that we should try.
Grief deserves acknowledgment, experience, and support.
For those experiencing traumatic grief, meditation may offer one way to develop present-moment awareness, recognize emotional and physical responses, and practice self-compassion.
Meditation is only one possible part of a broader support system.
Professional psychotherapy, grief companioning, and peer support groups can each serve different purposes. Some people may benefit from a combination of these approaches, depending on their needs.
In my work at Art Affects, LLC, I offer tools and forms of support that have been meaningful in my own journey following suicide loss. I have transformed these TMP’s by using language and concepts that pertain to the suicide grief survivor specifically.
These include guided Therapeutic Meditation Processes to support reconnection with ourselves, meditation practices that explore earlier emotional wounds, journaling prompts, individual grief companioning, creative expression, and opportunities for connection through peer support.
I offer them not as promises of healing, but as invitations to explore what may help as you travel through your journey of loss.
Perhaps one of the most meaningful things I have learned, while using TMP’s, is that I don't have to choose between feeling my grief and experiencing the love that remains.
Both can simultaneously exist within me.
Sometimes, through a mini-breath practice, taking a few moments to be present with myself helps me to recognize that.
Research References
Goyal, M., et al. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(3), 357–368.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24395196/
Randomized clinical trial (2024). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy vs Mindfulness in treatment of prolonged grief disorder.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38656428/
