Grief and its Impact!!

Grieving a relationship—be it with friends, romantic partners, immediate family members and relatives, or neighbours—is a real thing.

The five stages of grief are,

?Denial: - This often manifests through self-talks like, “it must have been a mistake”, “it’s just a fleeting thought or feeling that caused them to react in an extreme way”, “he/she doesn’t intend on doing so and will call/talk it out soon”.

?Anger: - This is the next stage when you often find yourself thinking that the other is a terrible person, using curse language, feelings of extreme guilt, and more.

?Bargaining: - At this stage, you find yourself thinking that you should have worked on your behaviour or done more to adjust.

?Depression: - This is where feelings of hopelessness and disinterest continue to build up, making one unable to move on and question their self-identify or self-worth.

?Acceptance: - In the final stage, we can make peace within. For example, taking the scenario of a breakup, people may realise that they were simply not a right fit for one another. That they had good memories, and it was the different goals that were the issue and not one another.

The stages of grief can happen in any order and one can even revisit some stages. Grieving a loss is a personal experience for everyone and hence everyone’s response to the stages of grief will vary. However, reaching the acceptance stage requires conscious choice and effort to reconstruct your thought and concepts to move in a positive direction.

Being aware of the stages of grief and allowing yourself space to work is a must. To cope with grief, it is important to understand how deeply it is impacting you and the way it has changed your day-to-day functioning.

Grieving has a deteriorated impact not only on your well-being but on each aspect of your life.

· Quality of relationships with others around and self,

· Ability to grow and evolve,

· Ability to use your potential to the fullest,

· Physical well-being

Grieving at the early stages may look like staying in your head with your thoughts, and your personal struggle to combat the same. Whereas, in later stages, people who refuse to heal grief properly might look more like accepting the pain as a part of their life.

I recall an interaction with a colleague who was going through an ugly divorce. While my perception of her was that she was a headstrong and focused woman, her battles were masked up with a smile. In one interaction, she mentioned, "I lost 3 to 4 years of career growth because I could not deliver to the fullest potential. My marriage made me doubt my abilities as a person. I started questioning my accomplishments; simple tasks made me lose focus often, and I stopped exploring opportunities to grow at work and in my personal life. After five years, I still zone out at the thought of dating or giving myself a chance to be in a healthy relationship."

"In my case, work helped me to keep myself sane and in control of my vulnerability and high anxiety. It did affect the quality of the outcome - while others could not make out the difference, I could. There were days when my concentration would not last more than 5 minutes. There was a constant need for reassurance, wanting to be surrounded by people but disliking their presence. In one of the meetings with a senior person, which I expected to last for 15 minutes max extended to 1.5 hours - there was a moment I wanted to scream at the top of my voice, run and never come back."

Grieving people find the escape route that helps them to calm their minds. The question is whether being productive works as a coping or defence mechanism. Sometimes, not showing up at work is not a luxury many of us have, so what do you do? How do you get your grip back?

? Acknowledge your pain and allow yourself space to process it. Someday, one may not feel like talking to anyone, let your well-wisher be aware that you need time of your own.

? Let the emotions flow and sit with it—be it anxiety, crying spells, helplessness, feeling lost, etc. There is a fine line between allowing it to flow and getting controlled by it. So, think of it as letting the excessive thoughts and feelings flow out while retaining sense.

? Accept that grief can trigger many different and unexpected emotions. Even for those who heal well, there will be some occasion where you may get triggered and experience all or a few stages of grief.

? Support yourself emotionally by taking care of yourself physically. Take some deliberate actions on a small scale. Your grieving process will be unique to you so you will need to work out what coping mechanism would work well for you.

Choose to Heal!!