Moving beyond grief and loss

In my work as a mental health professional, I have see many clients dealing with losses of all kinds.

Loss includes: love ones through death and divorce, job loss, loss of good health, loss of a good friend, loss of everything familiar when you move away, and loss of a body part through accident or surgery.

These experiences are difficult for everyone.

Each kind of loss affects each person in a different way, but the recovery process usually follows Kubler-Ross’s five stages.

These are: shock and denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Shock and denial (the inability to feel anything) is the first reaction to loss.

Anger is blaming yourself or others (doctors) and the departed for leaving. Bargaining takes the form as “If you just let him live, I promise to go to church every Sunday.”

Depression is the feeling of deep sadness, reflected by disturbed eating and sleeping patterns, thoughts of suicide and excessive crying.

Acceptance is finding some sort of comfort and beginning to look for the lessons of the experience.

Recovering From Loss: Some Key Points

1. You are responsible for your own grief process. No one can tell you how to grieve, and no one will do your grieving for you. It is hard work and you must manage the process by yourself.

2. The grief process has a purpose. It is to help you learn to accept the reality of the loss and to learn from the experience.

3. Remind yourself your grief will end. You will not feel this way forever. You will heal.

4. Take care of your health. Grief is extremely stressful, and it requires energy to manage the stress.

5. Be careful with food and drink. While it may be tempting to numb the pain with food and drink, this can lead to additional problems of alcohol dependence and overweight. Also, numbing the pain means you are prolonging denial. This will make your grieving process longer.

6. Talk about the person who is no longer in your life. People sometimes avoid talking about the loss as a denial mechanism. However, this also prolongs denial and the grieving process.

7. Take time to be alone. In the days and weeks following the loss of a loved one, there is often a flurry of activity with many visitors and phone calls. Added to the stress of your loss, this can be completely exhausting.

8. Maintain a normal routine if you can. Yo have enough changes in your life right now. Try to get up in the morning, go to bed at night, and take your meals at the same time as you usually do.

9. Ask for help and let people help you. People want to help because it gives the person a way to express their feelings. Staying connected with people is especially important now, and accepting help is a way of staying connected.

10. Keep a journal of your feelings and experiences during the grief process. Writing about your feelings helps express them, rather than keeping the inside. It also gives you something to remember and review in the future.

11. Avoid making extreme life changes after a major loss. Don’t make any important decisions until your life feels more balanced. It can be tempting to make major changes right after a loss as an effort to feel more in control.

12. Don’t hurry your grief process. Sometimes people want to put their feelings and memories behind them because they are painful. But grieving takes time, and there are no shortcuts.

13. Remind yourself although grief is painful, you will survive and even grow from the experience.

14. Expect to regress in your recovery process from time to time. This is normal. It may happen unexpectedly, but it probably won’t last long.

15. Acknowledge the anniversary of your loss by taking the day off or doing something special. Have supportive people ready to be with you. It could be a difficult day and it is better not to be alone.

How To Help Someone Who Is Grieving

1. Do not try to get them to feel or be anything but what they are.

2. Do not reward them for acting cheerful or “like your old self.” This teaches them to suppress their feelings around you.

3. Do not avoid them. They need your support.

4. Let them tell about the loss again and again, if they need to.

Dr. Leta A. Livoti Ph.D., LCSW, LCPC is a psychotherapist in Thompson Falls. She can be contacted at 827-0700.