There is no right or wrong way to grieve. Grief can take many forms, but there are healthier ways to move through the grieving process. By following these tips you should notice a difference right away.
What is grief? Grief is the natural way of responding to loss. It’s the emotional distress you feel when someone or something you love has been taken away. At times, grief can feel overwhelming and hard to manage. Grief can also hurt your physical well being. If you notice having a lower appetite or even overeating, difficulty falling and staying asleep, foggy mind, and headaches, these can all be side effects. It’s important to note that these are all normal reactions to being in emotional pain. And the bigger the loss, the more pain associated with it.
Learning how to cope with the loss of someone you love is one of the hardest challenges in life. For most people, they associate grief with the loss of a loved one. That grief is typically the most painful and hardest to overcome, however, there are many forms of grief.
Some of those include:
- Break up
- Health conditions
- Loss of a child
- Losing a job
- Losing a close friend
- Pet passing away
- No longer being financially independent
- Retiring from your lifelong career
Just because something feels insignificant doesn’t mean you can’t grieve it. these can include, the first time you move out of your childhood home, changing your career field, or even graduating from school. No matter what it might be, it means something to you and it’s important for you to not be ashamed of it. In time you may find the purpose in it, allowing it to be easier to overcome and move forward in life.
Grieving is a very individual experience. There is no wrong emotion, or experience that you can grieve from. Find what works best for you. It might be a spa day to relax your body of the tension it’s been holding on to. It might even be to scream it out and not stop until you feel calm.
In any grief, you will experience the 5 steps of grief. They may come in a different order, but they should all be expected. Those steps are
- Denial and isolation “This never happens to me”
- anger “Whose fault is this? “
- bargaining “Ill go to church again if I can get my way”
- depression “I’m so exhausted of being sad, I don’t want to do anything”
- acceptance “I understand why this happened and I’m ready to move forward”
“Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”
~Vicki Harrison
Due to the fact that grief ranges and is individual, it’s important to treat the source of it. By working through those painful emotions and releasing them in a natural, healthy way you will feel the weight lifted off your shoulders.
When I felt alone and afraid, I found great relief after receiving emotional healing work. However, it wasn’t one session and done. Just like the grief that took years to build, I had to slowly learn that those emotions weren’t mine to carry. That it was okay to let go of them. I had grief from many experiences in my life that had been bottled up inside me. Some I had even forgotten about. That later we found were still affecting me in ways I never pieced together.
You don’t have to carry your grief any longer. You are strong. You have been through storms in life that don’t need to weigh you down any longer. You can overcome the stress caused by grief. And I can help you release it for good.