Coping with grief
Grief is a difficult thing. It overcomes up and feels like it will never end. It’s hard to give into the tears for many reasons be it your gender, where you are or your inability to let go.
Grief is a natural and essential process. Whether you have lost someone you love, something bad has happened to you, you’ve been hurt by a friend or you are letting an old part of you die, grieving is not easy.
Usually grief is related to very intense feelings of loss combined with sadness and it feels like it’s a bottomless pit that if you fall into it you will never get out so. When we feel overwhelmed like that the only choice is to stuff it back down. You swallow hard trying to push the tears down and distract yourself with something else. Doesn’t really work though does it.
Grief when it comes up comes in waves and if you remember back to a previous sad experience you’ll probably recall that. You’ll have a good cry and then it subsides and you feel ok and part of you says yippee I’ve over, wow that was easy I feel great. Then oh oh it comes back and you go into the grief again.
The best way to deal with grief is to be unattached to how long it lasts for and what it means. If you’ve lost someone you love then give yourself the time to let the grief come up. Grieving the death of a loved one takes years in some cases and although the grief is less and less as time goes by it’s not unusual that something could remind you of them and bring you to tears.
The same as if you are grieving a break up. Allow yourself to feel the grief, to feel your broken heart. Doing this doesn’t mean it will be broken forever or that you are weak, it just means that you are allowing yourself the space and time to acknowledge that it hurt, that your heart was broken.
When we take the time to acknowledge grief and pain it allows it to leave our system and complete its cycle. By not feeling the grief and stuffing it down it forces it into a cycle that means it will continuously raise its head at various moments in life trying to be resolved. Would you rather have a good couple of cries or cry for a few years!
Plus a good cry feels great. Most people will tell you that after a good cry they may feel exhausted but they also feel renewed somehow. This is because grief is held tightly and deeply in the body and a decent cry from the belly releases it at a very deep level. I experienced this on the weekend watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. That movie makes me ball my eyes out. Actually the first time I saw it I couldn’t even talk about it or I’d start crying again it affected me so profoundly.
The thing about grief and most other feelings is if you just take the moment to be still and be with yourself and acknowledge how you are feeling and not wish it to be any different … it goes away. It’s when you wish you didn’t feel like this that it becomes a longer process as it ends up being stuffed down as you are denying that feeling existence.
And if the grief and pain feels like too much then get some help. Lean on a girlfriend or boyfriend, parent, sibling, anyone who you trust and feel comfortable with (even an old teddy bear or pet). We all need help to get us through the hard times.
