By Kate Harveston | Posted: November 06, 2019
Grief is like an oily snake. One moment, you feel like you have a grip on your emotions. The next? Despair washes over you like a tsunami.
How can you weather the storm gracefully? You must allow yourself to work through the healing process. Don't rush yourself—you’ll never forget, but you will learn to manage your thoughts and emotions in time.
1. Understand That Grief Isn't Only for Death
Sometimes, you might feel embarrassed about mourning. If you break up with your significant other, you might feel shattered. However, if you only dated for a short period, you might think, “I have no right to feel this devastated. I should be able to move on with my life.”
Yes, the death of a loved one is one of the most challenging life events to handle. However, it isn't the only event that traumatizes people. Maybe you received a diagnosis of a chronic illness, and now you need to accept new physical limitations. It's natural to need time to adjust to your new reality. Or maybe you’ve lost a beloved pet—if you need to take a day or two off to grieve for them, that's okay.
2. Permit Yourself to Feel
As many as 60% of adults in the United States report having experienced a traumatic event during their childhood years. When you experience loss or abuse when you're young, you learn to suppress your emotions. They build up inside you until you reach a boiling point — and then you blow your top like a teakettle.
Let yourself have a good cry if you need to. Go for a drive and scream in the privacy of your car. Label your emotions — "I feel lonely. I feel furious." Permitting yourself to feel helps you process trauma and loss.
3. Work Through the Grieving Process
Grief has five distinct stages, and you need to work through each step. Remember, don't rush yourself — everyone has a different timetable for healing.
Denial: In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. To cope with the shock, you might deny the loss at first. The pause gives your nervous system time to process the immediate trauma.
Anger: You might feel mad at the world after suffering a loss. It's normal to feel angry whether you've experienced a layoff or moved away from friends. Anger can even create a bridge between you and a deceased loved one — if you're raging at them, you're holding on to them in spirit.
Bargaining: Your neurologist tells you that no cure exists for your condition. Even though you haven't attended church services in years, you hit your knees. "Please, God," you plead, "Heal me, and I'll never disbelieve again." Bargaining gives you a false sense of power — it makes you feel like you can do something about your loss.
Depression: When you realize the person isn't coming back, you burst into helpless tears. You withdraw to your bedroom and lie around with the curtains drawn. Sometimes, you feel guilty, even if there was nothing you could do. You may experience despair in waves — some days, you feel healthy, but others, you feel terrible.
Acceptance: Understand that this stage isn't about feeling like everything is okay. Your world changed. Reaching this stage does mean you found peace with what happened and have decided to move forward regardless.
4. Write Your Feelings Down
Journaling helps you to label your feelings. It also helps you to reframe negative thoughts more positively. Blank pages don't judge the words you scribble upon them.
Invest in a beautiful journal you love to write in. Start by using a stream-of-consciousness technique — write your thoughts down freely as they arise. Then, examine your thoughts. How could you rephrase them in a more positive light? "I can't live without my mother," becomes, "She would want me to thrive and make her proud."
5. Nurture Your Mind-Body Health
Meditation, yoga, and breathwork can be incredibly powerful tools for dealing with grief. These tools can help you increase your emotional resilience and regulate your emotions, so that you can weather the ups and downs of your grief process with grace. Additionally, meditation and yoga don’t only address the emotional aspect of grief, but the physical as well: they can help you sleep better and ease tension in your body.
6. Find a Trusted Confidante
You might prefer to deal with your grief in private. However, talking out your problems with a trusted confidante can promote self-healing through emotional disclosure. A true friend will listen without judgment. If they've been through similar circumstances, they can offer advice that helps you on your journey.
If you're dealing with the death of someone you love, talking with others who knew and loved the deceased helps you keep their memory alive. You can reminisce about the good times and laugh at silly memories.
7. Join a Support Group
Sometimes, trauma isolates you. If you've survived a sexual assault, you may feel like no one understands how you feel. If you're coping with chronic pain, you may find little empathy among the non-disabled.
Support groups connect you with other people dealing with similar situations. They remind you that you are not alone.
8. Seek Professional Care
Finally, if your grief threatens to ruin your career or damage other personal relationships, reach out for professional help. Cognitive-behavioral therapy can help you to change self-destructive behavioral patterns and regain confidence in your abilities to overcome challenges. Medications can take the worst edge off powerful negative emotions.
Dealing with Grief Gracefully
There's no timetable for healing from a traumatic event. But by exercising reliable coping techniques like the processes above, you can overcome your grief gracefully.
Kate Harveston writes about wellness and mental health. If you enjoy her work, you can visit her women’s health blog, So Well, So Woman. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
