Grief – A Process of Gaining Perspective and Coping

Grief is what it is. Grief is a part of life. Grief is a process that unfolds whenever we suffer, experience, or feel loss. Some reasons for grief are obvious – the death of a loved one, loss of a job or relationship, for example. Reasons for grief can be subtle – unfinished emotional baggage from childhood interfering with goal identification and achievement in the here and now, for example. Life Coach, A.J. Mahari outlines 7 keys that help the grief process and 7 keys that hinder the process of grieving.

It is a paradox, but what we so ache at the loss of we also long to hold on to in ways that can prolong the pain and suffering of grief. Grief is a process that we must fully engage through radical acceptance from a thoughtful mindfulness that can sustain us through the pain that we need to feel in order to heal.

Grief is the process and expression of the pain of loss and sadness. It is a process that needs to be honored, sooner or later. Everyone does grieve in their own time and in their own ways. It is important to understand that grief, is natural, and necessary when you experience loss of any kind and that even though it may feel like it will last forever, it won’t.

Often when we’ve lost someone we’ve loved, person or pet, grief, as profound and distressing as it can feel, can be clung to at a point to avoid what will feel like an even greater loss. When we are actively grieving for someone or for a pet or a lost relationship the grief, while it hurts, is company. The grief keeps us connected to the person, pet, or relationship (or whatever the loss was) longer. It keeps us feeling close. It hurts, but it reminds us also of happier times, of what we’d hoped for rather than what we have come to have to feel, face, and live with.

Radical acceptance is a way of saying yes to each and every moment mindfully. Mindfulness, among other things, is surrendering to all that we cannot control in or about each and every moment. Radical acceptance of each moment without judging it good or bad can make the pain of grief more manageable.

7 Keys That Help the Grieving Process

• Accept your loss and let it sink in
• Accept however you are feeling without judging your feelings or yourself
• Journal about your feelings – this helps to release feelings and gain perspective
• Seek the support of a friend, family member, life coach, or therapist
• Accept and nurture your need to grieve, to cry, to rest, to re-live memories
• Do not feel guilty when you are able to laugh or smile when remembering someone or better times
• Seek out a support group to be with others who have experienced similar loss and are grieving or seek life coaching or professional help if the grieving process is too overwhelming

There comes a time in the process of grief where there is a paradoxical struggle of trying to hold on while actually emotionally healing to the point of needing to let go. The holding on feels like a way to not be without the person, the pet, the relationship or whatever has been lost in a more complete and lasting way. Holding on to our grief keeps us feeling close.

In the case of holding on to grief that relates back to needs not met in childhood, to relationships that ruptured in childhood, to loss that you might have endured to having been abandoned, rejected, invalidated and/or abused,  that holding on means that you missing out on what could be you’re here and now. Holding on to past childhood baggage -having not grieved it, resolved it and let it go – means that you can not know fully who you are , or who you could be and are meant to be, in the here and now. You are not only carrying with you your losses of childhood but the losses accruing in your life daily as you are missing out on life currently unfolding. Holding on to the unresolved grief of childhood keeps people feeling close to all that hurt them in ways that often means they are blocking healthier and happier choices and as a result are also blocking more positive experience in life and of self.

After a while it is the grief we feel, itself, that is all we have that is actually on-going with the person or pet or relationship, job, etc, that we lost. To release the feelings and turn outward to face the turning of a corner and the moving forward of healing and recovery from loss can feel like a betrayal of the pet or person lost. It isn’t. It is important to realize that. It is important to give yourself permission to feel better, when you begin to feel better. It is a vital part of the grieving process to give yourself permission to laugh again, to enjoy what you enjoy in your life.

We need to accept the point in time where we know that we need to move. We need to know that we can move on, not forgetting, but remembering and surrendering to the loss, to a life that will not ever bet the same. Also, though, to a life with new promise and purpose that awaits us.

Each and every person and even situation in our life where we experience a loss that we must grieve is a person (or pet) or situation that will, if we let it, teach us more about who we are and what our un-folding journey in this life is all about. Everything has purpose. Reasons and understanding that purpose come at different times for different people in their process of and recovery from loss and its grief.

Grief is a process. It must be taken seriously – revered. At the same time, paradoxically, grief in some ways can teach us lighthearted lessons that strengthen our connection to Self in ways that help us make some sense out of our losses. It can be as important to revere your loss and subsequent grief as it is to not take it as seriously for moments a time and to appreciate that it too, like so many other profound experiences in our lives, can be and is, goofy.

Grief is made much more difficult to cope with if think that we can, in any way, control what we can’t control. Whether or not you did anything to hasten your loss (of a relationship, job, and so forth) feelings of guilt and thoughts of “what if” or “if-only” will only keep you bound to any shame that may exist with regard to certain types of loss.

7 Keys That Hinder the Grieving Process

• Ignoring your  feelings
• Self medicating with drugs, alcohol, or any other addictive distraction
• Working too much or rushing into other relationships
• Not giving yourself time to be with you feelings, feeling them, and expressing your grief
• Allowing yourself to be critical of what you feel, think about, do or don’t do
• Denying the importance of your loss or minimizing your loss
• Over-distracting to the point that you do not nurture your need to rest, feel, and sit with the pain

In life, we do the best we can. No one is perfect. We do our best based upon what we are actually aware of. When we become more aware, we learn more, we know more, and then we can do “better”. It is important, in the throes of grief, to not hold yourself to some retroactive illusionary all-powerful state of supposed perfection or understanding that you may just now be becoming more aware of. There really are no do-overs in life. 

Through radically accepting your loss, engaging it mindfully, as open as you can possibly be to its lessons, you will achieve a balanced perspective that will enhance your ability to cope with grief’s pain. A healthy balanced perspective about your loss needs to be understood in grief’s journey to be able to, in time, move forward. Grief is a process and so too is learning to radically accept your loss mindfully within that process.

© A.J. Mahari, November 22, 2009 – All rights reserved.

 

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