Coping with grief

[BadHero]

How do you cope with grief? I realise that it's a very personal thing and people have their own ways of dealing with it and that no 2 ways may be the same.

I have lost 7 people this year. May, July, September, November and December have all taken 1 or 2 people from my life and it seems that as soon as I accept the loss of one person, another one has gone.

I tried doing the family time thing but it didn't work. I tried the drinking socially and unloading my emotions when drunk... Didn't work. I have tried talking to friends, family, colleagues... Anyone who is willing to listen really.

I think I should find a therapist but I don't want someone who is going to push pills on me. I'm not depressed. I'm grieving.

Before I seek therapy from a professional, how do you guys cope with grief? Any advice, tips, tricks?

 

[Ninae]

Acceptance, release, and letting go is what works best. Suppression or denial only makes it worse. Constantly replaying it over in your mind also doesn't work.

 

[swilow]

There does exist grief counselors. Any one worthy of their stripes will know that meds don't help grief. Only time.

I don't have much input or insight. I've experienced grief and it really only fades- it doesn't really pass or diminish.. But it can be lived with.

Much love to you

 

[-=SS=-]

Each person deals with their emotional component in their own way.. it's kind of unique to you, so only you can navigate that tunnel. However, I definitely feel that adopting a different perspective on death/life can help you from taking the emotional component too seriously that it hinders your own life. Some points:

1. Death is a release from the torment of life. Instead of seeing it as the end for person X, see it as "At last.. it's finally over!".
2. If they are still around in some capacity, do you really think they would want you to waste time hindering your own life over lamenting the end of theirs, if they're not actually zero?
3. Even if they are now zero, why waste time lamenting this fact?
4. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
5. Make a conscious effort to remember the positive emotional moments you had with person X. When you laughed or shared a deep moment together. And smile. Don't focus on the fact they are no longer there to make more great moments.. instead focus on the great moments you did have together and hold them close.

In the immediate weeks/months after losing someone close, it's going to hurt. You're going to be muddled and feel something is wrong. It will pass. Cut yourself some slack here.. death of people close to you is one/the strongest emotional moment/s of your entire life.. it's incredibly stressing.

I've had to witness my auntie and uncle lose their son recently. Early twenties, tragic accident.. absolutely nothing could be done to prevent it, no one could have foreseen it. I doubt what I've said here would help them, at all. What they need right now is support and time, until they level out a bit and can begin to function again. Sometimes that is all you can do.. just keep going forward until the heat of the emotion cools off a bit and you can begin to function again.

I do believe that the perspective a person has in regards to death does affect the grieving process, in the sense you do have a choice in how greatly the emotion captures your attention.

Wishing you well at this time. You'll come through

 

[herbavore]

I think that everyone knows how to deal with grief when it strikes. Grief takes your body, every single cell of it, and says, "I am here. We are going to share this body for some time now. You will learn to know me and I will learn you." And so probably one of the most intensely raw and honest relationships begins.

But others on the outside of this personal transformation do not know how to deal with a grieving person. I do not say this with judgment. Despite my own ongoing relationship with grief I still suffer the same impulses to comfort, to cheer or to fix. It takes an effort to undo the cultural conditioning as well as just the simple human desire to help, to be of use. To simply bring quiet companionship to a grieving person is the greatest gift. To ask rather than tell. To allow pain to howl in another person in front of you, knowing that in the howl lies a truth that must be heard.

OP, you lost a lot of people in a very short time. I imagine that you feel overwhelmed and the world must seem chaotic. I can offer what was necessary for me but it may be very different for you. My best advice is to understand that grief lives in the body as well as in the mind. Hearts really do break. Healing is not so much an overcoming as it is an acceptance of the full breadth of your loss.Trust all your instincts. Ask for what you need. Be patient with your own mind as it struggles to comprehend the scope of what has changed. Drink long big gulps of life in every day. Cry as much as you need whenever the need arises. If you never cry, maybe you don't need to. But do ask yourself if this is true.

For me, I needed to cry almost non-stop for a very long time. Even now, I cry probably twice every day when thinking of my son.

I needed to leave everyone and everything I knew. I did this in order to not have to respond to all the loving attempts coming from friends and family and colleagues to "help me heal". My grief, which needed my full attention, was being diverted to making others feel better in my obviously miserable presence. I took my misery and walked around South America by myself for 4 months. That helped more than I can say.

I wrote and I still write: I write down thoughts when they won't let me go, the angry thoughts and the remorseful thoughts. I write about the feelings, the immeasurable missing that I feel everyday in some now familiar ways as well as in new and surprising ways. It helps me to write. It can be revelatory.

I respect this equation: the depth of grief is equal to the depth of love, of the bond. Grief, I truly believe is the way through back into that bond, that love. It is a way to traverse the invisible divide. Our bodies will be brief. Love, when you really allow yourself to become it, feels eternal.

Much love to you as you explore and seek new ways to know what you need.