3 Ways to Alleviate the Grief of Saying Goodbye to Your Old Self

Written by Katie Cavenagh

You’re not the same person when you go to bed as you were when you woke up in the morning.

Your choices, actions, and feelings from the course of the day shift you into a more experienced version of yourself. Kind of like when you get those lightbulb moments. Or when you encounter something and know there’s never any going back from there on out.

We change, grow, learn, and expand throughout every moment of every day. We are meant to change as we experience things that teach us about love, who we are, what we want, and why we’re here.

We move through life as feeling, doing creatures, and develop layers of lies (the beliefs like we’re not good enough, we’re inherently bad, or love doesn’t stick around) that we spend our entire lives breaking through to find the truth.

When we find the truth, we heal that part of ourself. We change and become more conscious — the next level version of who we are meant to be. There’s no turning back because that old you can never exist ever again. You’ve experienced something that changed you forever, and that old version of who you used to be is packing their bags for the curb.

But why is it when you level up you get sad?

We forget that we’re exiting a pretty intimate relationship with a part of who we were, and letting that go can bring on grief. We have to release who we were to fully become who we are meant to be, and just like any close, long term relationship, it can be hard to walk away, even when you know it’s for the best.

Here are three ways to alleviate some of the grief that comes with healing and upgrading yourself on your spiritual journey.

• Let yourself feel sad. The only way out is in, and by denying yourself of feeling into the sadness, anger, or whatever else may come up, you limit your ability to heal. 
  
  Often we think “I shouldn’t feel this way, I’m healing”, but part of the process is to leave our comfort zone and step into the unknown. Leaving that comfy (yet outdated) version of yourself is hard, let’s face it, and can be a big messy, lonely, emotional gap of sorrow.
  
  Giving yourself time to grieve the loss of who you were allows for even deeper healing and self-love. Acknowledging things about yourself brings them to the light for healing, and from there, these timelines can be transmuted, integrated, and assimilated. 

• Create a supportive environment. Having the right kind of support is key to moving out of the old energy of the past.
  
  People will inevitably try to pull you backwards into who you were (often because your changing triggers something needing healing within them), and will thwart your progress.
  
  Sometimes you have to walk away from these people for a while so you can focus on you, your healing, and your growth. The new you can’t keep hanging out where the old you did if it didn’t support you changing.
  
  Inner environment is just as important too, as your self-talk can make or break you. Check yourself before you wreck yourself to make sure you’re supporting your healing journey with what you say, think, believe, and feel.
  
  Allow yourself the space to let certain people, places, and things go. As you do this, you’re creating a pathway for what will support you to come in.
  

• Give yourself time. Healing is a process and time is the only x-factor.
  
  You can’t go any faster through the process than you are meant to go, and you can’t go to step 100 if you’re only at step 3.
  
  The reason we sometimes get frustrated or sad is because we think we need to be on a certain timeline and things should happen faster than they might be. But, everything is right on schedule.
  
  Sometimes there’s other bits of information that need to be gathered before the next step can be revealed (kind of like a video game where you need a better sword to beat the boss at the end of the level), and we can only glean that information by living through the experience.
  
  Being present in the moment takes you out of the past/future timelines, and gives you the opportunity to find what needs to come in next. Simply being present and staying out of the stories of the past and future allow you to see and accept things as they are, through your new lens of perception.

It’s a scary thing to become someone new, and we do it every day on an unnoticeable level. But when we decide to change on a larger scale, we must remember that our new life is going to cost us our old one.

The decision to change puts everything you need into motion, and when you know it’s the right thing for you, you’re willing to do the work to process and move forward. It’s never easy, but it’s always worth it.

And if you need guidance, healing, or help along the way, we’re here at The Red Barn to support you.

Written by Katie Cavenagh, Energy Alignment Specialist & Wordsmith. Find more at FeelYourLight.com/blog and https://katiecavenagh.medium.com/