DEALING WITH LOSS AND GRIEF

Grief is a natural response to loss and intense sorrow, it is the emotional suffering you feel when something or someone you love is taken away. The pain of loss may occur in many ways like anger, guilt, aggression, or sadness. Grief may be due to the death of a loved one, job loss, the ending of an important relationship, or any significant loss.

Grief has five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

DENIAL

Denial is the stage that can initially help you survive the loss. You might think life makes no sense, has no meaning, and is too overwhelming. You start to deny the news and, in effect, go numb.

It's common in this stage to wonder how life will go on in this different state you are in a state of shock because life as you once knew it has changed in an instant. If you were diagnosed with a deadly disease, you might believe the news is incorrect a mistake must have occurred somewhere in the lab; they mixed up your blood work with someone else's. If you receive news of the death of a loved one, perhaps you cling to a false hope that they identified the wrong person. In the denial stage, you are not living in "actual reality," instead, you are living in a "preferable" reality.

Interestingly, it is denial and shock that help you cope and survive the grief event. Denial aids in pacing your feelings of grief. Instead of becoming completely overwhelmed with grief, we deny it, do not accept it, and stagger its full impact on us. Think of it as your body's natural defense mechanism, saying "Hey, there's only so much I can handle at once."

Once the denial and shock start to fade, the healing process begins. At this point, those feelings that you were once suppressing start surfacing.

ANGER

Once you start to live in "actual" reality again, anger might start to set in. This is a common stage to think "Why me?" and "Life's not fair!" You might look to blame others for the cause of your grief and may redirect your anger to close friends and family. You find it incomprehensible how something like this could happen to you. If you are strong in faith, you might start to question your belief in God:?Where is God? Why didn't he protect me?

Researchers and mental health professionals agree that this anger is a necessary stage of grief. And encourage anger. It's important to truly feel the anger. Even though it might seem like you are in an endless cycle of anger, it will dissipate—and the more you truly feel anger, the more quickly it will dissipate, and the more quickly you will heal. It is not healthy to suppress your feelings of anger—it is a natural response—and perhaps, arguably, a necessary one.

(However, while suppressing anger is not advised, neither is letting it control you. It's essential to seek help from a trained counselor or therapist if you are struggling with processing your anger.)

In everyday life, we are normally told to control our anger toward situations and toward others. When you experience a loss, you might feel disconnected from reality, that you have no grounding anymore. Your life has shattered and there's nothing solid to hold onto. Think of anger as a strength to bind you to reality. You might feel deserted or abandoned during a grief event. That no one is there. You are alone in this world. The direction of anger toward something or somebody is what might bridge you back to reality and connect you to people again. It is a "thing." It's something to grasp onto, a natural step in healing.

BARGAINING

When something bad happens, have you ever found yourself making a deal with God? "Please God, if you heal my husband, I will strive to be the best wife I can ever be, and never complain again." This is bargaining.

In a way, this stage is false hope. You might falsely make yourself believe that you can avoid grief through this type of negotiation. If you change this, I'll change that. You are so desperate to get your life back to how it was before the loss, you are willing to make a major life change in an attempt toward normality.

Guilt is a common wingman of bargaining. This is when you can experience a seemingly endless string of "what ifs":?What if I had left the house 5 minutes sooner? The accident would have never happened. What if I encouraged him to go to the doctor six months ago like I first thought? The cancer could have been found sooner and he could have been saved.

DEPRESSION

Depression is commonly associated with grief. It can be a reaction to the emptiness we feel when we are living and realize the person or situation is gone or over. In this stage, you might withdraw from life, feel numb, live in a fog, and not want to get out of bed. The world might seem too much and too overwhelming for you to face. You might not want to be around others or feel like talking, and you might feel hopeless. You might even experience suicidal thoughts, thinking "What's the point of going on?"

ACCEPTANCE

The last stage of grief is acceptance. Not in the sense that "it's ok my husband died" but rather, "my husband died, but I'm going to be ok."

In this stage, your emotions may begin to stabilize. You re-enter reality. You come to terms with the fact that the "new" reality is your partner is never coming back, or that you are going to succumb to your illness. It's not a "good" thing, but it's something you can move forward from.

It is a time of adjustment and readjustment. There are good days, there are bad days, and then there are good days again. In this stage, it does not mean you'll never have another bad day, where you are uncontrollably sad. But the good days tend to outnumber the bad days.

In this stage, you may lift from your fog, start to engage with friends again, and might even make new relationships as time goes on. You understand your loved one can never be replaced, but you move, grow, and evolve into your new reality.

The stages of grief are not necessarily linear, you may find yourself going through different stages at different times and returning to them, especially on triggering days such as anniversaries and birthdays. Slowly by slowly, we let go of loss, but we never let go of love. Grit your teeth and let it hurt. Don’t deny it, don’t be overwhelmed by it. It will not last forever.

How to overcome grief

Remember and celebrate the life of your loved one.

Acknowledge your feelings.

Take care of yourself.

Maintain a healthy diet.

Get moving.

Find reasons to be grateful.

Understand that grief is unpredictable.

Be patient with yourself.

Reach out to others dealing with loss.

Seek out support.

Accept your new reality.