As today’s reader questions shows, working through grief is often much more painful, complex, and longer-lasting than people anticipate…
A reader asks:
I’m struggling with grief after the death of my husband. I knew it would be hard, but it’s so much more confusing and unpredictable than I imagined. And to make things worse, it seems like everyone has 20 pieces of advice—most of which seem either too superficial to be helpful, or too complex to actually do anything with. I know this is a huge topic, but any suggestions would be much appreciated.
In my own work helping people through grief, I found that three ideas were especially helpful…
1. Don’t put a timeline on your grief.
It’s a cliche that grief is a process. But not in the way most people think…
Grief is not a checklist of things you do or stages you work through like a video game and then you come out the other side content and at peace. In fact, grief never actually ends. Not really.
If you loved someone—or something—and that person or thing is gone, you will always experience some grief about that loss. Of course, the frequency and intensity of that grief typically softens with time. But one of the most unhealthy things people do in grief is to impose unrealistic expectations about what it should be like, how long it should take, and how they should feel. And unsurprisingly, unrealistic expectations only make grief harder.
Don’t make grief harder than it needs to be by trying to squeeze it into a box—no matter how appealing the fiction that there is some standard shape and size for grief.
2. Make time to grieve intentionally.
Like most painful emotional experiences, our instinct is often to avoid the feelings of grief: Not wanting to feel sad when you remember your deceased partner. Or wishing you could avoid feeling regret about how poorly your previous relationship ended.
But if you get in the habit of running away from those feelings—trying to avoid places that remind you of a loved one you lost, or distracting yourself anytime you start to feel sad—you’re teaching your brain that to feel bad is bad, which means you will feel increasingly anxious and guilty about feeling sad in the future.
Of course, you don’t need to wallow in your sadness or hurt either—after all, unhealthy rumination can disrupt healthy grief just as much as avoidance.
Instead, try this: Carve out 5-10 minutes each day to grieve intentionally….
- Maybe you sit down with pen and paper and journal about some of your favorite memories with the person or thing you lost.
- Or maybe you go for a 15-minute walk each morning where you allow yourself to fully feel and experience any memory, thought, or emotion associated with your loss.
- Maybe you do some grief counseling for a few months or join a grief support
However you choose to do it, by deliberately approaching your grief and being willing to have it, you teach your brain that—however uncomfortable—grief is healthy and safe, which in the long run will help ease the pain.
3. Make room for other emotions besides sadness.
Sadness is a core element of grief. It’s also the natural emotional response to loss of any kind, especially when that loss involves someone you’ve loved deeply.
But sadness isn’t the only emotion involved in grief…
- Healthy grieving frequently involves a lot of anger and resentment.
- It’s also normal to experience quite a bit of fear and anxiety during grief.
- Even guilt is not uncommon among many people who are grieving.
Unfortunately, because stereotypes around grief typically only involve sadness, many people mistakenly assume that’s all they should be feeling during grief. But nothing could be further from the truth…
Healthy grieving means making space for and working through all sorts of emotions, not just sadness.
Something I teach my Mood Mastery students is to practice listening for quiet emotions behind the louder, more dominant ones. This is a critical exercise when working through grief because healthy grieving is about processing your loss fully, and more than likely, that means a range of emotions, not just sadness.
So, as you work on the previous tip—make time to grieve intentionally—make sure that intentional grieving involves listening for and acknowledging all your emotions.
4. Allow grief to be a social process.
It’s not an accident that nearly every culture in the world has rituals and practices around grief.
However, one of the strange things about modern 21st Century life is that—for the first time in history—we have the ability to almost completely isolate ourselves from others and to try and go it alone with our grief. While instinctively appealing for many because we’re afraid of “burdening” others or feel awkward or shamed about “still being sad,” I’ve never seen this radically individualistic approach to grief work in any meaningful sense of the word.
Now, I’m not saying you need to compulsively talk about all the intimate details of your grief with every pizza delivery guy and grocery clerk you come across. But one of the healthiest decisions you can make when grieving is to allow it to be a social process…
- That could be calling a friend and asking them to chat for a little while because you just had a miscarriage.
- It could be taking your buddy up on his offer to go on that fishing trip after losing your job.
- It could be sharing a little bit about your grief experience in an online forum or community.
Again, I’m not saying grief should be a totally public affair. In fact, for most people I think grief is largely a private experience. But that doesn’t mean it can’t also have a social element to it.
As with most experiences in life, we often need other people more than we like to admit. Healthy grief means acknowledging and embracing this fact, even just a little.
Next Steps
If you found this helpful article helpful, here are a few more you might enjoy: