3 Steps to Take When You Are Embraced by Grief

Marla (not her real name) was sobbing, again. After holding in her feelings for two days, she could not contain her sadness any longer. Within the last two years she has attended three funerals. First to die was her mother. Marla had been her main caretaker for over a month before she died from cancer. It seemed as though she had no time to grieve before her close friend died suddenly several months later. Her grandfather’s death six months ago was the most recent. While she was not the primary caretaker of her grandfather, she visited him daily. The loss of three people close to her left her wondering who she was. So much had changed so quickly.

When Marla came to me she was struggling to hold on. Her boss was threatening to fire her because she could not focus at work because she was always tired. She constantly worried that something would happen to her children and they would be gone just like the others. Her social life had come to a halt. Rather than enjoying the company of friends during a card game, she stayed at home; she rarely laughed anymore. Her sense of security was crumbling.

Three Steps to Keep Loss from Becoming a Traumatic Event

Whether you expected someone to die or if it happened suddenly or whether you were young or old when you lost your loved one (person or animal) there are three steps you can take to help you move through the grieving process. To not move through the loss can feel like a traumatic event to the nervous system. When this happens you freeze and life stops. You feel hopeless, helpless and totally overwhelmed by the smallest changes and losses. By following three steps you can minimize the chance that the normal process of grieving will leave you feeling traumatized.

Step One: Understand The Grieving Process Stages of Grief

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross outlined five stages of grief. These include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In the denial stage, you may be numb and think that what happened could not be real. In the angry stage you want to find blame or you feel resentful of those who seem to be enjoying life. When you are bargaining you want to make a deal; for example, you think of all the ways you would be a better person if the pain were to go away. With depression may come the thought, “Why should I go on now that my friend is dead?” You know acceptance happens when you feel more peaceful about the loss and you give up struggling to make things be different.

Your Process is Unique

How you move through these stages will be unique to you. You may skip some stages; cycle through some of them repeatedly including moving in and out of acceptance or spend longer in one stage compared to the others. One minute you may be fine then feel crummy the next. It may seem as though time stopped. There is no right way to grieve or no right length of time. The grieving process, however, will most likely affect you on all levels.

Expect that your natural response to loss to affect your emotions, physical health and the way you think about things. Grief affects the brain and you don’t function the same. A personality trait such as joking easily may seem to be a thing of the past. You may feel ashamed that you can’t function and appear in control. Every cold or flu virus may seem to be earmarked with your name. An unfamiliar sense of pessimism may infiltrate everything you think about. The person you knew yourself to be before the loss may seem to have disappeared.

The Past Reappears

The grieving process may stimulate the memory of other losses. For example, losing a pet may remind your nervous system of the loss of a good friend when you were young. Often the memory of these other losses can sneak in through your unconsciousness and make the grieving process more intense.

If your relationship with the person who died was strained, you may find yourself obsessively thinking about what went wrong in the relationship or how you wish you had done things differently. In addition, you may avoid doing things that remind you of the deceased or lose interest in personal activities that remind you of prior losses. Finding ways to cope can be challenging.

Step Two: Ask for Support

One of the biggest risk factors for prolonged and complicated grief is isolation. You may think that grieving is not meant for others to see or that you feel too vulnerable when others see you crying. Perhaps you do not want to burden others with your grief when they have been affected by the same loss. Not reaching out to others during this transition in your life can put you at risk of major illness like heart disease, depression, anxiety and suicide.

Recognizing that grief is normal and healing and that you are doing exactly what nature designed you to do may help you to take the first step to reaching out. The emotional pain will not go away through continuous isolation. The brain is wired to connect with others in time of stress.

If you have difficulty with the chores of daily living, consider asking for help with what is usually a short-term problem. Interacting with them as helpers can ease the isolation. You may be surprised how helpful friends and family can be when they are given specific tasks.

The degree to which you want to socialize with others most likely will increase over time. Initially, you may feel comfortable seeking support by simply engaging in light conversation with a cashier at the grocery store or spending time with a pet. Later, you may want to share an activity like seeing a movie with a friend when you know you won’t have to talk about the deceased.

As you become more accustomed to the process of grieving you may feel ready to talk directly about the loss with someone you know who will not judge you or press you to be “done with it”. Keeping a journal of all the ways you connect with others can help you track if you are returning to your former level of socialization or whether you are becoming even more isolated.

Step Three: Say Goodbye

Saying goodbye, letting go of the deceased, may be the most difficult step to take. This is true for several reasons.

One is that it may require you to become at peace with your relationship with the person who died. This may involve taking an honest look at how you hurt each other.

Two, the loss may cause you to examine your spiritual and religious beliefs about death. Questions such as, “Where did the deceased go?” “Is there life after death?” and “What do I think my death will be like?” can interrupt your attempts to return to your “normal” life.

Finally, you may think that if you said goodbye then you will be left totally alone. Being alone could be terrifying especially if you have memories of being abandoned at a young age or if you have always found ways though compulsive work or addictions that allowed you to escape feeling lonely.

While these reasons may at times seem compelling to hold on to the deceased, to not let go can debilitate you and cause you to stop living as well.

One effective way to say goodbye is to have an imaginary conversation with the deceased. You can write it as a dialog or say the words out loud; experiment with what is most satisfying. Speak honestly about what the deceased meant to you. What did you like and dislike about him?. Take on the role of the deceased and imagine what he might have to say to you. Does he have any advice or consolation to offer?

But Wait…

No one in my family seemed to show any emotion when our grandparent died. They will say I’m weak if I cry.

This is a common message that many received from their families. At one time being stoic was thought to be the best way to quickly recover from a loss. This is rarely the case; the sadness, fear and anger go underground where they may erupt at inappropriate times.

With these feelings living underground, you may find yourself reacting to current relationships out of the pain from the past loss. Because the reaction is unconscious, you are left with the sense of your life spinning out of control. The body may appear to contain the grief for a while, but it cannot do this forever without weakening the immune system and becoming prone to injury. Feeling the emotions of grief, however, can help the loss from turning into a traumatic event.

Friends say I should be over my wife’s death by now, but I’m not.

How long it takes to grieve the loss of your wife cannot be predicted by anyone. There are many factors that influence the grieving process. These include how the death occurred, the quality of your relationship with your wife, how much support you have following her death, your age, and how well in the past you have been able to bounce back from other overwhelming experiences.

If you notice that you are often isolated, not enjoying any of your former activities or are continuously depressed or suicidal, professional support may be helpful. Counseling or short-term use of medication may help to bring you out of the danger zone of intense grief.

How Marla Said Goodbye

When Marla, whom I mentioned above, came to me for therapy, she had not been able to say goodbye to her best friend. Unlike her experience with her mother and grandfather with whom she had had time to say goodbye, Marla had no time to prepare herself for her friend’s death or to tell him what he had meant to her.

In therapy, we focused on giving Marla and her friend a chance over a couple of sessions to “talk” to one another. Marla began by imagining her friend sitting in an adjacent chair. She told him what she had liked about him and what still troubled her about their friendship. She concluded with two questions, “Are you ok?” and “ Is there anything you want me to know?”

To hear the responses, Marla moved into the seat previously “occupied” by her friend. She took on her friend’s tone of voice and mannerisms and let herself momentarily imagine herself as her friend. In response to the first question, the friend reassured Marla that she was ok. To the second, he told Marla that she was doing a good job as a mother, that she should seriously consider following her dream to return to school and that he would ALWAYS be near by.

Hearing this, Marla cried with relief. Something shifted inside Marla. She exhaled deeply and even smiled as she described the sensation of a huge weight being lifted off her shoulders. She had frequently relied on her friend for council about her children and now she believed she could call on his guidance through prayer.

When Marla finished therapy, she noticed that she was starting to have dreams of being back in school again. Her concluding comment was, “I am beginning to feel like myself again.”

Summary

Three steps to take if you are grieving:

· Understand the grieving process
o There are 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
o How you move through these stages will be unique to you.
o Be aware that losses from the past may compound your grieving process.
· Ask for support to cope
o Make requests for help for specific tasks.
o Talk to people who will not judge you or tell you to “get over it.”
· Say goodbye
o Your past history with the deceased and fear of being alone can make this step challenging.
o Experiment with having an imaginary conversation with the deceased.

What Next?

If you are concerned that you are not able to handle the intensity or duration of the grief, consider getting professional support. There are many chapters of Hospice throughout the country. They often offer support groups for different kinds of losses and for different age groups. Many are open to all who have experienced a loss, whether the deceased used hospice services or not. Contact Hospice at www.hospicenet.org

Some counselors specialize in the grieving process that follows the loss of a pet. They can be contacted at The Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement at www.aplb.org

If you are unsure if you need professional support and would like to discuss if this could be helpful, I can be reached at 720-635-7943 or Maggie@HealingAfterTrauma in Westminster, Colorado