Kindly e mail me at ameeta_shah@hotmail.com and one can plan accordingly.

Even though death of a loved one is something each and every one of us here on earth faces at one time or another it is one that we are as always unprepared for. Somehow we feel we will be immune to it and it won’t happen to us. Every person shares how acute the pain of this loss feels. It is this intense helplessness at the finality of this separation.

Your father seems to have been the backbone of your family and a true mentor and so his absence would be most missed. Death is the time to remember our true nature as souls and that as souls we are yet together. Probably your father and you have had lifetimes together before and will do so in future too.

When we feel sad we sometimes try too hard not to feel sad. Instead connecting to one’s feelings could be helpful. Your family can have certain shared times fixed with each other to talk about things you remember about him. These can be limited in a disciplined way to 15 mins or half hour. Initially a daily time feels good and eventually once or twice a week to finally letting go such a schedule can help the process of remembering and letting go. You can give each other permission to talk both the things you loved about him and the happy memories and things you found difficult about him or tough moments with him. Very often one idealizes the person who has died though they are human too and we may have been hurt with them too at some times. Being able to talk about both the experiences, helps.

Doing other things in the person’s memory also helps one to let go such as ‘planting a tree’ in their name or donating a meal or facility to a charity in the person’s name, having a family booklet where family members write down anything they wish whenever they feel can help. Any of these ideas can be an individual method to handle the grief too – to have a fixed time to think of the person or a diary to write one’s thoughts and feelings. The grieving time can be a time to allow oneself or each other to cry it out too. Once the set time is over one can make efforts to handle routine and get oneself out of the mood.

Grief goes through the stages of feelings such as shock and denial “this can’t be happening” to depression “fear, loneliness and emptiness” to anger “why me? and searching for whom to blame” to a ‘bargaining stage’ where one makes mental bargains with god or oneself of accepting if in return ‘x’ happens and finally to acceptance ‘this is a neutral stage of neither sadness nor happiness but a neutral acceptance of what has happened and of re-inventing life” Anger and depression alternate in a person and appear as anxiety and irritability. As we understand our situation and the genuine struggles we face without the support of the lost person and therefore we will need to give ourselves space and time to cope - to manage and not manage, we may ease this stress. We are kind to ourselves for our inefficiencies that can happen and then we work to restore our mood.

Re-inventing life is something we need to do as we lose purpose when we lose a person and we lose the story we imagined with the person. We have to re-invent new purpose with the other members in our family by realizing their importance and also the importance of our own existence that we owe joyous living to ourselves and the others too. There is a guilt that we need to let go off over being able to enjoy even when we have lost a dear one. We need to recognize the truly loving lost person would want us to be happy and to remember them in joy not in sadness.

Finally it is possible at our deeper self in a relaxed alpha mind level at our sub-conscious mind levels to meet our loved one. We can send our prayers and thoughts of peace to our loved ones, meet them, hear what they say and complete what we want to say to them. We can complete our farewell in peace so that they can move on too and so can we, knowing full well we are still always connected and we will probably receive support even when we don’t realize it.

EFT is definitely a great tool that works on our emotions and our energy. It works beautifully as self healing tool. EFT tells us that the true cause of our distress is the disruption of the energy flow and is the reason that we are not able to stop our reactions. Negative thinking is a result of this energy disruption which when restored will make the thinking balanced once again. You can visit the site emofree.com and you will get a lot of information there. Alternately many practitioners run courses that you can join - as I do too and you may come across it in advertisements in Life Positive too.

You have not mentioned psychotherapy or counselling. It will be very useful for him to start therapy. I believe it is beneficial to have person go through psychotherapy with therapies such as NLP, hypnotherapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, regression therapy and emotional freedom methods as drugless methods of healing before medications are given.

Your son actually just went through a grief reaction which does involve sometimes sobbing and as we accept it and soothe the person they begin to recover. You can also consult a psychotherapist for yourself on how to handle your child to calm him and enable him to understand his situation better. Even now as you start therapy and he adjusts to it you can help him to reduce the medications and then have more complete healing for him.

He could delay his MBA entrance till he is recovered and use this gap year to do healing activities that are non competitive and at the same time they can be new learning and self development, adding to confidence and career strengths. These are hobby activities and health related such as yoga, tai chi, arts, crafts, music, or drama. He can do some online courses and less pressure based learning.

Volunteering to help others also sometimes takes the focus off from feeling sad for oneself and empathizing with others. When one feels too saddened it is also a time to connect with what one does have in life and do moments of silent thankfulness to Higher Powers for the areas in life that are working and for the things we take for granted and are blessed to have. When relationships break it is useful to encourage him to use the time to now connect to his own self that gets neglected when in a relationship. He can get back with old friends, his family, with his own interests and study areas.

You have been through pain and stress. This trauma can feel like it still exists with us. Celebrate your recovery with doing some special things for yourself – this way your subconscious mind feels secure that you are now well. Take a few minutes daily to be silent and to feel thankfulness for your cures. You may be feeling unresolved grief about the miscarriage. Sometimes we try to get too positive too fast without connecting to the feeling and the thoughts that go with it. Placing your palm on your chest and feeling your own touch can be comforting. Balancing the thoughts also reduces the distress. Allowing yourself to cry can be helpful. Then you can return to peace with the miscarriage by feeling nurturing feelings to yourself and knowing that everything that happens, happens for a reason sometimes unknown to us. One of the things that happen when we have gone through something is the realization of what pain is and the empathy for others. Sometimes when we go through pain we understand the pain of others better. We can use this time to send general prayers for those suffering.

Realize the powers of the mind in wellness. Then we don’t feel at the mercy of luck for our health which makes us insecure and then worrying about it all the time. We know that any physical illness is related to our emotions as mind and body are one system. Ulcers can be related to worrying and trying to control matters too much or to unresolved hurt and anger. Check if you can cope differently with your issues and thereby let go the stress. Once you are looking after your emotions, connecting to them and resolving them you can be secure to have good health. Convert your worry into action such as taking care of your food, sleep, exercise, lifestyle habits, emotional management and into intention “I intend to feel vibrant and well. I am looking after my health and being positive.” Feel a smile on your face and a faith about this intention. You will be free of the worry! Love & light...