How to deal with any form of loss, bereavement, or grief. Dr Demartini shares more about a process he's been using with thousands of individuals that transforms grief into gratitude.

This content is for educational and personal development purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any psychological or medical conditions. The information and processes shared are for general educational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for professional mental-health or medical advice. If you are experiencing acute distress or ongoing clinical concerns, please consult a licensed health-care provider.

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If you were to die,

would you want your loved ones to be

mourning and grieving and affected and

altered in a depressive way for

any period of time? They go No.

I want my loved ones to go on and

live their life to the fullest.

In everyone's life,

somewhere along the line,

you're going to have some

perception of a loss, a bereavement.

It could be a loss of a pet, it

could be a loss of an individual,

it could be a loss of money,

it could be a loss of just about

anything that you attach to.

A loss of a friend, a loss of a

client, a loss of a business contact,

loss of opportunity, loss of a

child that goes off to college.

Anytime you perceive a

loss and you're having

grief, I'd like to address the

topic, a new perspective on grief.

I've been fascinated by this particular

topic for a long time, decades.

I was in El Salvador many years

and I had just come in from surfing,

and I was walking through the street of

a little town called La Libertad in El

Salvador. And I came across this

procession, this parade of people,

probably two to 300 people.

And it looked like a party,

like a celebration. So I spoke a little

bit of Spanish and I asked somebody,

qué pasa? What happened?

And finally somebody said

to me and said, well,

we're celebrating the death

of our mayor. And I thought,

what, they're celebrating and

partying about the death of the mayor.

And in my mind, I was taught that,

you know, when somebody dies,

there's a little bit of wearing a black

and there's mourning and there's quiet

and solemn and this kind of thing.

That was what I was culturally ingrained

with. It's what you see on television.

It's what you see pretty well

everywhere. And all of a sudden,

this was a bit of a twist.

So I followed the procession.

They went down to where they

were burying the individual,

and they had a party,

and they had celebration,

and people were having a

completely different perspective.

And I asked one of the

individuals, you know,

why are they celebrating ?

He said, the guy said, because,

their belief, the spirit is freed.

It's like a bird that's freed

and it can fly freely now,

it's not constrained by this body.

It's almost platonic in its teachings.

And that didn't go away from

my mind. I was thinking,

why is it that this culture has a

perspective of celebration and freedom?

And they're partying and

remembering the joyful parts of that

person's life and now their freedom.

And then if you go to maybe Greece or

somewhere in Europe where you see a death,

there's mourning and black, and

you know, it's a complete opposite.

At that moment I started to ask

the question, is bereavement, loss,

and the grief associated with it cultural?

Is it because of way we

perceive things, what we expect?

I started probing into it. That's when

I first got interested in the topic.

And I went into later

brain research and studying

the neurochemistry, and I found something.

And you may want to write this, it

may be a bit shocking to some of you.

It was a bit of a shock to me initially.

But now I've had the opportunity to help

probably 5,000 people have the death

process with people and help

them transition this thing.

And so I've got it down to a science

now and know how to deal with it,

show people how to transition

smoothly through it.

But if you stop and ask people when

they've just lost somebody or a dog or

something, and ask them, what

specifically is it that you are missing?

And they'll start to say, well, everything

about them. And I'll say Everything?

So you missed their arguments? Well,

no. You missed their yelling? No.

You missed when they were

late to go places? No.

The dirty sink and dirty

dishes and dirty this and? No.

So you didn't miss everything. So let's

find out what you actually did miss.

And when we actually

outlined what they missed,

I found out that every one of the

things that you think you miss,

that you're grieving the loss of are all

the things that you were a bit attached

to infatuated with,

admiring and looked up to.

In other words, the idea that somebody,

let's say you're in a marriage

and somebody had an affair,

you don't miss that part. maybe.

But you might miss their affection and

their hugging and their special attention

to you.

So the first thing I realized is that

everything that we're missing is only the

parts that we were subjectively

biasing, interpreting as positive,

more than negative. So we didn't

miss all of them. In fact,

when I actually looked carefully the

things that they didn't like about the

person, 'cause if you are

actually married to somebody,

initially when you meet them,

you may be infatuated with them and

see only the positives and upsides and

conscious of those. And then eventually

you discover there's other sides,

other aspects.

But I find that there's actually a relief

of the loss of the parts you didn't

like. And there's a grief of

the loss of the parts you liked.

And that was a really

interesting realization.

So that meant that you're really

judging somebody if you're grieving.

And you're dividing the individual

up into parts you liked and disliked.

And because of our amygdala,

our subcortical amygdala,

which wants to avoid

predator and seek prey,

wants to avoid challenge and seek support,

wants to avoid negatives

and seek positives,

we go into our amygdala upon the death

process, which is a survival response,

and we tend to concentrate on

the things that are positive,

and then we fear the loss of the things

that we attach to that is positive,

and we fear the gain or the things

that we resent about a person.

So that means we have grief over

the loss of the parts we admire,

and we have relief over the

parts we despised. Let me

give you an example again.

When Donald Trump was involved somehow,

directly or indirectly with the military,

and they took care of a

particular individual in Iran,

a general in Iran, and they basically

killed this general in Iran.

Now he was classified as a

terrorist in America. But in Iran,

when he was killed,

I believe it was 5 million people

came out and mourned his death.

He was a hero there and

a villain in America.

So the people that saw him as a hero

that admired him, they were grieving.

And the people that saw him as a villain,

they were relieving and celebrating.

They literally celebrated.

We got him. Now,

I'm sure that if we looked honestly at

this general, that he was a hero villain.

He had things that you liked and disliked.

It just so happened that

some of the things that he

did one culture disliked and

another culture liked. If somebody

was to look at me, they would easily,

if they videotape me and had a drone

watching me for a period of two,

three months and they

videotaped 24 hours a day,

they could find and easily edit out with

yellow journalism, a hero or a villain,

a saint or a sinner. I'm both nice

and mean. You support my values,

I'm nice as a pussycat. You challenge

my values I can be mean as a tiger.

So it's easy to see that if you're in

your life, if you're honest with yourself,

you've got two sides. And when

you're married to somebody,

you get to know those two sides, and

you really learn to love both sides.

That's what you're loving. You're

admiring one, you're despising the other,

but that's what goes with the package.

So when somebody's grieving

the loss of somebody,

they're grieving the loss of the parts

that they were infatuated with. Now,

when you infatuate with some

part and admire some part,

like some part and attach to

it, you're activating oxytocin,

which is a bonding compound.

Vasopressin is a bonding compound.

You're getting dopamine,

you're getting enkephalins,

you're associating pleasures with

it and the withdrawal symptoms,

like a drug addiction

if you have withdrawal,

the withdrawal symptoms of drug

addiction when you don't have the drug,

is similar to grief.

So you're having a withdrawal of those

neurochemistries in the brain when you're

having a perception, a perception

of loss of that which you admired.

So I developed, starting in 1976,

a methodology designed to help

people dissolve the grief.

And I've been using it since. Every time

I teach the Breakthrough Experience,

I would say not every week,

but most weeks out of the year,

I do the process. And now I'm

doing that with everybody there,

everybody that's having any form

of grief in any degree or capacity,

we show them how to dissolve it.

And I haven't seen any grief that's

not dissolvable. And people go,

what do you mean dissolve grief?

You're supposed to grieve.

Prolonged grief syndrome has got

problems. Cardiovascular, digestive,

dermatitis, I mean, there

are health immune responses,

cancers are a lot associated with

prolonged grief. We did a study in Tokyo,

actually, a few years ago,

five or six years ago now,

where we took a group of

prolonged grief syndrome people,

and we did before and after,

they did an evaluation before

and they found that these people

were grieving and having difficulties

functioning and not even able to work

everything else for at least six months or

longer.

And we took them through a process with

an average of two hours and 17 minutes

and dissolved it. And they followed

them for a week, a month, a quarter,

a quarter, a quarter, a quarter, a

quarter, a quarter, a quarter, a quarter,

a quarter. And they followed

him for 18 months, and no grief.

And that was something they never

seen before. And so there's,

there is a way to help people

rebalance out their perceptions

and therefore their chemistry.

Pardon me. And dissolve the grief.

Because if you look very carefully,

every trait that you perceive

in somebody that you admire,

it also has a downside, but you're

unconscious of it. For instance,

you meet a guy, let's say you're a

woman, you meet this guy and you think,

oh my God, he's so

intelligent, I like that,

that's an aphrodisiac and it turns me on.

And then you end up dating him and you

find out that that intelligence is also

their argumentative, they want to be

right, they don't want to listen, they

outwit you, they try

to manipulate you, they

are sometimes condescending

'cause they think they know.

There's downsides to that.

And you think, oh my God,

they're so attractive.

But there's downsides to that because

they're sometimes preoccupied with their

beauty. They're not

focused on other things.

Sometimes they're focused

on themselves more than you.

Sometimes everybody

else is focused on them,

and they're used to the social

things. They're sometimes entitled.

There'sre's downsides to every

trait and upsides to every trait.

Really no trait is positive or negative

unless you limit it to being so.

So if you see a trait that

you are admiring and you're

still infatuated with it,

you're unconscious of the downsides,

and all of a sudden you ask a new

set of questions to help you see the

downsides, and you change

the neurochemistry in there,

you can change the grief because

you only fear the loss of that which

you are infatuated with.

Just like you only fear the

gain of that which you resent.

But when somehow you're infatuated

with somebody and you gain it,

you get relief.

If you're hungry and you're really

wanting food and they finally bring it to

you, oh, what a relief I can eat.

And if somebody is a real irritating

individual and they're hanging around with

you and they finally leave,

you go, oh, what a relief.

So these are all perceptions.

I can take the person that you despise

that's now leaving and you're relieved

of,

and I can go in and ask questions to

help you see the upsides and benefits of

them. And then I can

actually help you see, oh,

there was two sides to that individual.

And then the perception of relief

or grief when they come or go is

dissolved.

So we have the power with our perceptions

to change our chemistry and change our

neuro physiology and even our

epigenetics and our symptoms.

'Cause I've been doing it

I developed a methodology that's

very concise, guarantee it,

I've done it in every imaginable thing

from television to be on spot with a

university study. I've not

had it fail yet. It works.

And if for some reason you want

to grieve, the question is,

prolonged grief syndrome

causes health problems,

and it's associated with various

illnesses. So the question is, is why?

Is it only because the culture

says you need to grieve?

Remember El Salvador didn't

show that you had to grieve,

but Greece does . So are you

wanting to subordinate to a culture?

Is that why we're doing it?

Are we doing it because we think that's

going to show more affection and more

respect? I ask the question, I've asked

thousands of people this question,

if you were to die,

would you want your loved ones to be

mourning and grieving and affected and,

you know,

altered in a depressive way for

any period of time? They go, no,

I want my loved ones to go on and live

their life to the fullest. Well, to me,

it's more respectful to actually

honor that and when somebody passes

honor their life while they're

alive and honor their passing.

We sometimes compare the passing or

the loss with a comparison of what

we thought it should have been.

They should have died later,

or they should have disappeared later,

or they should have gone later. Well,

who's to say? We don't know that.

Nobody knows those questions.

But if we compare what's happening to

a fantasy about how what we think it

should be,

then we're going to end up being angry

and depressed and have this grief.

So I developed a methodology,

I teach it every time I do

the Breakthrough Experience.

I do it in the afternoon on Sunday

in the Breakthrough Experience,

the second day.

And we find out individuals that are

grieving or everybody we find the most

grieving thing that they have a

loss of, and it could be money,

it doesn't matter what

the grief process is,

you can follow the process and clear it.

And we go through there and

we clear it and I ask people,

I demonstrate when they're done,

there's no grief. And people go,

their mind is blown sometimes, they

don't believe that's possible, I mean,

I've had all kind of people

be skeptical and I said,

you can be skeptical all you want,

but come through the process

and watch what happens.

So if you have somebody that's

grieving, if you have grief yourself,

and that might be economic grief,

it may be a loss of a boyfriend that

just dumped you, it could be, you know,

somebody that's died, a cat that

died, a dog that died, a pet,

anything that you perceive a loss

of, there's a way of dissolving it

so you're not intrusive with

your thoughts and preoccupied,

'cause anything you infatuate or resent,

occupies space and time in your mind

and runs you. So if you're infatuated,

the fear of loss of that will run

your life. And if you're resentful,

the fear of gain of

that will run your life.

That's why if you're highly infatuated

or resentful, you can't sleep at night.

So anything that has intrusive thoughts

and it's running your mind and keeping

you from being present

and poised and empowered,

and you're fearing the loss of it or

have lost it and you're feeling grief of

it, everything else, all

of that is dissolvable.

And it's just the quality of your life's

based on the quality of the questions

you ask and in the Demartini Method,

which is a method I developed,

I have very precise

questions that dissolve it.

And I've been doing it for, you

know, many decades now, 76,

really formally since 1984.

And I haven't had it not work.

It's a science and it's hard to

comprehend because for thousands of years,

we just assume that's normal.

Animals do it, well, that's true.

We have an animal nature in our brain,

our subcortical area of our brain,

the amygdala that is involved in that.

But that doesn't mean we have to.

We also have a super cortical area that's,

that's the executive center that can

govern those and transform those by

changing perceptions with a

more reasonable perspective.

So if you would like a fresh

perspective on the concept of grief,

please come to the

Breakthrough Experience. I'm

certain, and I mean certain,

that that can be dissolved and I've

proven that over and over again

for thousands of people

and there's no reason.

So if you don't have it and you

want to have grief, that's fine,

that's your business.

But just know you are affecting your

physiology and you are possibly putting

burden on other people by

hanging in there with that,

unless you're using it as

a strategy to get things.

Sometimes there's unconscious

motives to stay grieving.

I had a female that her son was

killed and she was grieving,

but found out why she stayed with the

grieving is that she was afraid that her

husband and their parents were going to

now want to divorce her since she didn't

have a child. Is a very interesting thing.

There was a lot of tension between

the family, his family and her,

and they didn't want her in his

life. And they, when the baby died,

their only child,

their pressure on for them to now let

him divorce her and get out of there.

And so she didn't want to not grieve

because that means that that might happen.

So she didn't want to lose the

positioning, it was a wealthy family.

So there's sometimes unconscious motives

why we stay staying in the grief.

But anyway, all that I show people

how to dissolve and work with.

And so if you are in any way burdened

by that, just know there's a solution.

And I love sharing it with people and

watching the transformation right in

front. You do it, you get to

experience it, it's right there.

You can't argue with your own experience.

And if that's of interest to you,

then please come to the

Breakthrough Experience.

I keep telling people whenever

I do these programs about it,

because it's a life

trajectory change. It's,

your perspective on life changes.

It's not just a little self-help

program that's, you know, entertaining,

you know, jump up and down on

chairs and all that stuff. No,

this is a deep exploration on

how life works on human behavior.

I've been doing it, you know,

teaching it for 35 years.

I've been teaching for 51 years.

I've been focused on any information I

can to help people master their lives and

maximize their human

potential and awareness.

And I know that this tool that I've

been blessed to develop is going to be a

value to you the rest of your life,

'cause you're going to have possibly

when you're 50, 60s and 70s,

you're going to have more people passing

and you're going to have more probably,

you know, perceptions

of loss along the way.

If you don't know how to handle them well,

then you've added more

burden to your life.

If you'd like to have a tool

you can use when you need it,

please come to the Breakthrough Experience

so I can show you how to do that,

it's eye-opening, it's

life-changing, you leave it there.

I got letters from this last weekend

doing it already two letters of people

about the grief process saying

I'm not grieving. I said, no,

you won't be grieving. And they go, I

can't believe it. I've been doing that.

It's been lasting for months, and

then now it's gone. I said, exactly.

So if you would like to be able to

have a change in perspective and

see that there's a new

alternative out there,

please come to the

Breakthrough Experience.

I really love watching transformations

and seeing people's lives change.

So this is the presentation

about a new perspective on grief

and hopefully that

stimulated some thinking.

And if you know somebody that's in that

situation or you in that situation,

please take advantage of the opportunity

and I look forward to seeing you at the

Breakthrough Experience.