Why Does Finishing Something Feel Like Losing Something?
The Pattern
You finished. You should be elated. You expected elation. Instead there is a flat, slightly empty feeling that has the shape of a loss. You wonder if there is something wrong with you that you cannot enjoy the finish. There is nothing wrong with you. The work has been a steady companion. Its end is the end of a relationship, and the body knows the difference between completion and celebration even when the language does not.
Origins & Context
The Jungian analyst Marion Woodman wrote about what she called the small deaths of creative life, the necessary mournings that follow the completion of any work that has held the maker in real relationship. The completed work is no longer in process, no longer needs the maker, no longer fills the space. The loss is structural.
The psychologist William Bridges, whose work on transitions distinguished the external change from the internal process, identified the neutral zone, the felt emptiness between an ending and the next beginning. The completion of a creative work drops the maker into that zone without warning. The flatness is not a sign that the work was wrong. It is the sign of an ending that has not yet been honored.
Finishing is allowed to be a grief. The flatness is honoring the weight of what was made.— Nikita Datar
How It Shows Up
You notice it the day after you finished. You notice the way the routine that organized your life dissolves and leaves you blank. You notice the small grief that arrives in the place where you expected joy.
You notice it in the way you immediately want to start the next thing, not because you are inspired but because the empty space is uncomfortable. You notice the temptation to skip the mourning by piling new work on top of the old. You notice that the mourning, refused, leaks into the new work and contaminates it.
Named in the Literature As
The pattern is named in the literature as the Small Deaths of Creative Life (Marion Woodman), the necessary grievings that follow the completion of held work. It is also named as the Neutral Zone (William Bridges), the felt emptiness between endings and beginnings that must be honored rather than skipped. The contemporary version is named as Completion Grief (Pauline Boss), a particular form of ambiguous loss that has no cultural ritual to hold it.
Related entries in this library: Complex Grief, Authentic Desire, Healing Is Direction Not Destination.
Nikita's Note
Finishing is allowed to be a grief. You can light a candle, you can mark the end, you can let the empty space stay empty for a little longer than feels comfortable. The next thing will arrive when the mourning is honored.
Do not pile new work onto the unfinished mourning. The mourning is not weakness. It is the recognition of how much the work mattered to you, and how much of you went into it. The flatness is honoring the weight of what was made.
From the work
Finishing is allowed to be a grief. The flatness is honoring the weight of what was made.From When You're Ready, This Is How You Choose Yourself by Nikita DatarAbout this book
Related Concepts
More in The Pattern Atlas
See all in The Pattern Atlas →I wrote about this in When You're Ready, This Is How You Choose Yourself — available on Amazon.