Response to loss & overcoming Grief

Grief is a natural response to loss. It is the emotional suffering you feel when something or someone you love is taken away. The more significant the loss, the more intense the grief will be. You may associate grief with the death of a loved one—which is often the cause of the most intense type of grief—but any loss can cause grief, including:

• Divorce or relationship breakup: Grief for children and entire family – thought of parents not together anymore
• Loss of health: People suffer bodily and emotionally & the feeling of dependency.
• Losing a job & loss of financial stability: This is a tough situation for entire family if there is no enough savings. Situation may be a short period but expectation is stability need to come back soon.
• A miscarriage: Especially for mother who goes through emotional changes.
• Death of a pet: Grief on entire family.
• A loved one’s serious illness or death: A tough and long process that everyone need to realize
• Loss of a friendship: Friends moving away, or betrayal
• Loss of safety after a trauma: This can be any trauma where people develop insecurity and not at all safe feelings.

Myths and Facts About Grief

MYTH: The pain will go away faster if you ignore it.
Fact: Trying to ignore your pain or keep it from surfacing will only make it worse in the long run. For real healing it is necessary to face your grief and actively deal with it.

MYTH: It’s important to be “be strong” in the face of loss.
Fact: Feeling sad, frightened, or lonely is a normal reaction to loss. Crying doesn’t mean you are weak. You don’t need to “protect” your family or friends by putting on a brave front. Showing your true feelings can help them and you.

MYTH: If you don’t cry, it means you aren’t sorry about the loss.
Fact: Crying is a normal response to sadness, but it’s not the only one. Those who don’t cry may feel the pain just as deeply as others. They may simply have other ways of showing it.

MYTH: Grief should last about a year.
Fact: There is no right or wrong time frame for grieving. How long it takes can differ from person to person.

How to face situations and how to overcome the grief?

Grieving is a personal and highly individual experience. How you grieve depends on many factors, including your personality and coping style, your life experience, your faith, and the nature of the loss. The grieving process takes time. Healing happens gradually; it can’t be forced or hurried—and there is no “normal” timetable for grieving. Some people start to feel better in weeks or months. For others, the grieving process is measured in years.

1. Be Patient with Yourself : Give yourself time to accept what has happened, give yourself a chance. There is no schedule for when you should feel certain emotions, or be over others. Choose to stand up for you and the rest of your life, and choose to move on. You do not have to figure out how you are going to get through the rest of your life. Just focus on staying in the game and moving forward now. It is normal to cry and be depressed, but you need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

2. Adjust Your Expectations: Accept that your emotions are a natural part of the grieving process. Experiencing death, divorce or other loss that makes you feel rejected and alone is not a life sentence of grief. You will emerge. However, do not put generic expectations on yourself and do not let others do so either. You will feel an array of emotions. Remember that grief from any loss is not a linear process. You will begin to move on in your own time; just be sure to move forward before you totally lose your way.

3. Accept What You Cannot Change : One of the most frequent struggles you may face when you lose someone is a sense of being out of control because you are not able to control when someone leaves you. Even though we cannot even almost have that control, we are not victims. There is a point in this process where you can and must choose to take a stand for how you are going to react to this hard hit. You must actively, consciously choose to focus on what you can change, and accept what you cannot change. Start accepting the changes that is surrounding you.

4. Find Strength In Others: Although it may feel like you are all alone in your experience, try talking to someone who has experienced a similar loss or someone whose presence is a source of comfort. Sometimes, a compassionate person may be a great help, even though they have not been through a similar loss.

5. Don’t Get Stuck: It is easy to be stuck in this negative experience and all the emotions of it, so you need to work to prevent being stuck in anger or bitterness. Do what you need to do to help you get unstuck. This can be different for everyone. You may find help in taking up a new hobby, getting counseling or talking to your doctor about treatment options like antidepressants. Grief may cause you to be biochemically unbalanced, and medication  may be the short-term jump-start that you need to move forward. If you have had an addiction in the past, make sure you do not turn to that narcotic as a source of soothing.

6. Recognize That Time Is Infinite, nothing is permanent: There is wisdom in that old saying about living every day as though it were your last. That does not mean you should go out and be reckless, but rather recognize that the unexpected can happen to you. Nurture the relationships with the ones you love. You have to see time as a currency that you need to spend now, not wait for a day that may never come. You are not here forever, and neither is anybody you love. Nothing is permanent in this earth.

References:
1) Center for Grief and Healing
2) www.huffingtonpost.com
3) http://www.joycemeyer.org/
4) https://www.psychologytoday.com

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