Grief

So many things in our life cause grief, and a lot of it goes unacknowledged and untreated.

When we examine times in our life that we associate with feelings of grief, it is important to consider our first exposure to grief. Often, this is experienced in childhood when we are quite young and usually involves losing someone close to us, such as a grandparent or a pet we loved. Because this first exposure frames our future experience of grief, we must examine closely what we felt and experienced at the time. Questions we usually recommend we ask ourselves are:

1. Was the loss expected or sudden? Many times, because we were young, we weren't expecting the loss, many times because the adults around us wanted to shield us from loss and in an effort to protect us, actually increased trauma experienced by the event by causing the event to be sudden and unexplained. When we allow children into the dying process, they resolve the grief surprisingly quickly and have less reported instances of anxiety, fear, and bouts of crying.

2. How did we process this loss? During the processing of loss and grief, did we allow ourselves to feel our feelings? Were we in a family or environment that allowed us to express our feelings? Almost every client I have talked to has detailed stories of instances in their life when they experienced loss but felt it was inappropriate to talk about it or express how they felt about it. For example, if a grandmother died, the client felt that they didn't "have the right" to be sad about the loss because their parent was grieving the loss of a parent. Feelings are attention seekers...they demand to be felt and acknowledged. When we stuff those feelings, they turn into spoiled children, surfacing at the worst possible time and creating absolute chaos in our lives.

So how do we undo what has been done?

We start to feel. Go back to the beginning and start to feel what it was you forced yourself not to feel. There are many ways to do this. You can attend therapy sessions to resolve many of these feelings, or you can do some of the work at home on your own time. I would recommend a combination of therapy and homework, but you can do the work yourself at home. The point is, you have to do the work.

Beginning the process of unpacking these feelings of grief can be very raw and scary. It is a vulnerable experience that many people find difficult. It will bring up feelings that you didn't know were there and that can be strange and difficult, not to mention, anxiety inducing. Finding a good grief therapist can help you with this process.

However you choose to do it, the freedom can be invigorating. I have had clients return to school, go into business, repair broken relationships, and many other amazing things that they were holding themselves back from by not addressing unresolved grief issues. Of course for you, it may just be that you sleep better at night, or feel less anxiety about your own mortality, but each change in our life begins with one step.