Grief is our natural reaction to loss. Grief can occur after the death of a loved one, a traumatic event, breakdown of a relationship, loss of a job and loss caused by disability or ill health. Grief occurs when our life changes. One of the most important things to remember about grief is that it is very unpredictable. We may handle 1 loss with ease but another loss leaves us feeling unable to get on with our day-to-day activities.
There are 7 stages within the grief process.
Shock
Denial
Guilt
Bargaining
Anger
Depression
Acceptance
You may experience all the stages of grief or skip some stages and sometimes repeat stages. You will have your own unique grief process and that process is also dependent on the specific loss you are going through.
How do I know that I am grieving?
This is a question I get asked frequently, especially by those who are experiencing loss for the first time. Our grief can look vastly different from the grief of others around us and cause us to question if we are grieving as we should be. The truth is everyone's grief is slightly different but there are some symptoms which are common to the process.
Common grief symptoms
Intense sorrow, pain and rumination over the loss
Focus on little else but the loss
Focusing on reminders of the loss or excessive avoidance of reminders
Intense and persistent longing or pining for the loved one or how life was before the loss
Not being able to accept that the loss has happened
Numbness or detachment
Bitterness or anger about the loss
Feeling that life holds no meaning or purpose
Lack of trust in others or withdrawing from others
Inability to enjoy life or think back on positive experiences before the loss
When do I need to seek help with grief?
Grief is a natural process so often resolves without any need for professional help. A good guide to follow is that you should start to feel better within a month. If there is no marked improvement after a month, then often something has become stuck within the process. Sometimes this stuckness is due to invalidated grief (also known as disenfranchised grief) which can often happen if we must care for others impacted by the event or if the grief feels hidden or something which is not allowed to be spoken about.
How does counselling help?
Counselling helps with grief as it gives you the space to say how the loss has affected you without having to consider others. Often our grief gets stuck if we feel we need to behave in a certain way and can’t express our feelings fully. This is often the case when there are others affected by the loss. The counselling space begins the process of not only identifying your feelings around the loss but what you need to move forward from the loss. We all have our unique ways of processing loss and counselling lets you explore what these are. This process of identifying what you need to process the grief not only helps with the current loss but losses that have come before and those losses you have not experienced yet. Counselling can help create a resilience from future loss as you know yourself and your needs within the process of grief better.
Counselling can be very valuable when you are experiencing what is called complicated grief (also known as prolonged grief disorder). This is when grief symptoms are continuing 6 months after the loss. Symptoms include guilt, wishing you had done things differently, finding ordinary tasks difficult or meaningless, isolating yourself from others and ruminating about the loss. Complicated grief can occur if there have been multiple losses within a short-time frame, the loss was traumatic or sudden or you had a complicated relationship with the person who has died.
The most important thing to remember is to reach out for support when you feel ready. Grief is the most personal experience and within that experience it is important that you do only what feels helpful to you. That can be support from family and friends or a trained professional.
To find out more contact me at info@forcounselling.co.uk.
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