You May Want It To Be But There Are No Stages To Grief

I understand the persistence of this belief. I remember Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s model of the emotional journey of the dying being applied to grief and taught everywhere that this was what grief looked like.

I remember people 30 years later telling me I was in this stage or that stage when my mother died. All of it was rubbish. But I didn’t know that then.

20 odd years later I still have people enter my consulting room convinced that there is something wrong with them because they are still in pain and the denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance formula just isn’t working.

The Truth About Grief

The reality is that grief is different for everyone. There may be some similarities in emotions experienced by some people, but there is no formula to work through.

The biggest learning in grief is to be okay with the pain you experience. To be able to learn to be okay with those times when you can’t disguise your pain and you feel embarrassed because “you are not supposed to feel that way”.

Grief is painful. And it is messy. You are unlikely to experience anything worse than this in your lifetime.

What The Experts Have Discovered

Grief never ends. It stays with you for the rest of your life. What happens is that you learn how to live with that pain, how to grow your life around it.

The metaphor of you being a passenger on your grief vehicle is a good one. This vehicle continues down the road and never stops. There is no timetable, destination and no end point.

Grief Is Not The Enemy

It is important to realise grief is not your enemy. It is the understandable and very normal reaction to the loss of something or someone in your life that you were deeply connected to.

Grief is your reaction to the loss of that attachment in your life and of its importance to you.

The Social And Not Social Aspects of Grief

There will be days when you crave human contact.

And there will be days when that is the last thing you want.

There will be days when close friends are what you want. And at those times you may want to talk about what you have lost and share your memories.

On those days you seek understanding Not Fixing.

You just want to be heard, and that may entail being heard again and again.

You Will Use Subconscious Strategies To Cope With Your Emotions

People have different strategies to help them cope.

Some will keep busy working, performing tasks, doing hobbies.

Others will seek the support and comfort of others experiencing grief.

Supporting the first person may involve helping them find tasks that bring fulfilment.

The second person may benefit from receiving support to attend a grief group.

The Solitary Path of Grief

No matter how you grieve you will find it is a solitary path with you the only one on that path. People who’s grief overlaps with yours may walk with you for a while where your grieving style overlaps, but will eventually walk on another path.

Others may accompany you for a while. Friends and others who can offer support. In time your journey may take you along more frequented routes where you can share your path with many other people. This is how grief works its way into being part of your life. It never goes, but it gets easier.

In short, Grief is a journey, not some destination at the end of several stages.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief journey, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

Grief Is A Change You Didn’t Want

Heartbreak is there in grief.

This is because when a person you love dies you are heartbroken.

When a person you love leaves you and rejects you and continues to reject you, then you are heartbroken.

Which pain is worse?

The worst pain is the pain you are experiencing.

Heartbreak

Heartbreak is always present in grief. It is heartbreak at the loss of the future with that person, whether they are alive or dead. Now you must face a future you did not plan and may not even like.

Heartbreak can occur through other life events. Losing a job, not getting the job you really wanted, not getting into the university course you wanted, not getting the marks in an exam you wanted, losing out on the house you wanted to buy, losing the house you can no longer afford to pay the loan on, your car being stolen, your house broken into, the end of a relationship, losing your pet, losing your country.

The really important thing to remember is your pain is always worse for you. There is no comparison. Just because someone else is hurting, it doesn’t mean their pain is worse. Comparisons just can’t be made when it comes to grief.

Heartbreak is not logical

It is always important to remember that the act of making a comparison is one that uses your mind. But when you are heartbroken and suffering grief, those are emotions you are feeling. They are not logical, they are not of the mind. They are the emotions of heartbreak.

Be careful, because grief that isn’t attended to doesn’t just go away. It stays there, unattended, and trips you up when something reminds you of it.

Questions to ask yourself

Ask yourself the question. What heartbreak, what grief, what disappointments in your life have you not attended to?

Once you have the answer ask yourself. Why don’t you attend to it?

The answer is most likely that it is difficult, painful even, to confront that pain.

It is so easy to run from pain. Pain hurts.

The realness of emotional pain

Did you know that physical pain and emotional pain are registered in the same part of the brain?

All these years people’s emotional pain has been dismissed as being nothing, yet it is as painful as physical pain.

The metaphor of the Buffalo

Grief expert David Kessler uses the metaphor of a buffalo turning to face a storm and walk into it. The buffalo knows it will get through the storm faster if it does this. But humans try to stay away from the storm. They try to keep a metre or so away. This way they remain in the storm a long time.

Instead of facing the storm, humans stay close to it and try to numb themselves, try to move away, but not far away, or try to avoid any triggering memories. Humans may even run away.

Substituting One Emotion For Another

One way of avoiding the storm is to go to another emotion that feels more comfortable.

What emotions might that be?

The most common one to go after is anger.

If you explore what is under your anger you will often find it is sadness, grief or fear.

There is a very real fear that once you give in to the pain of grief you will never be able to stop crying.

But you will stop crying in time.

Self Compassion Is The Best Treatment

When you allow yourself to enter the storm and feel your emotions deeply. When you allow yourself to engage with the emotions, then you are caring for yourself. You are showing up for yourself. Allowing yourself to feel these emotions is the way you can be there for you. It is an opportunity to show self compassion.

Self compassion only works if you pay attention to your emotions.

To show self compassion you have to be able to accept that this horrible thing happened. You have to be allowed to feel sorry for yourself, for the pain you are experiencing and have experienced.

Our society tells us it is wrong to feel sorry for yourself. But that is wrong. It is not wrong to feel sorry for yourself. It is not wrong to feel for what you have been through. To acknowledge that what you have been through was horrible.

When others try to shut you down over this it is because they feel uncomfortable and don’t want to be exposed to that discomfort.

Beware The Failure To Own Your Problems

Refusing to be accountable for what you have done in your life and refusing to own your problems causes difficulties around feeling sorry for yourself.

If you feel sorry for yourself and get stuck in that place, constantly seeking those who will affirm your pain but never doing anything to get out of that pain, then you are failing to understand your own problems and find ways to resolve them.

The Importance of Being Seen

It is important to feel seen, to have your pain acknowledged. But sometimes you are the one who is going to see you, who will acknowledge your pain.

Being seen is empowering. Seeing yourself is as empowering as being seen by someone else.

Tara Brach PhD, a leading western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening, talks about the importance of putting your hand over your heart centre and saying “Ouch, that hurts” as a way to acknowledge the pain you are feeling and give yourself self compassion. Try it sometime, you will most likely find it helps a lot.

In Summary

The worst abandonment is when you abandon yourself

In your pain do not fail to acknowledge to yourself the pain you are in.

Don’t fail to show compassion to yourself.

Stop judging yourself, shaming yourself, criticising yourself, telling yourself you are bad or unworthy, failing to defend yourself.

Make sure you recognise your own pain. Remember “Ouch it hurts” is very important.

Sit with your pain and acknowledge it. Comfort yourself.

Advice To The Recently Bereaved

I often have recently bereaved people visit me. Their bereavement is so recent they haven’t even had the funeral yet. One of the things I tell them in that first session is to be kind to themselves, to be okay to not look after other people at the funeral. To let others care for them. To absent themselves from the post funeral get together if they need to. To cry, be unstable, not want to talk, not want to socialise, not look after others are all permissible and necessary self care actions.

Grief Forces Change

I model for the recently bereaved how to speak kindly to yourself, how to be caring and compassionate to yourself, how to be there for yourself.

It is scary to be placed in the position where you have to grow and change. But grief puts you there and there is only one way out and that is to walk through the storm.

You are going to have to learn the new way to be. You will not know it immediately, but you will learn over time and self compassion is your best ally in this learning.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief and heartbreak please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

Surfing Your Emotions

Did you know that emotions rise up and then fade within 90 seconds if you can identify your internal experience, give the emotions a name and allow them to flow?

If you try to suppress your emotions, or pretend they are not happening then they last longer and feel a lot more powerful.

When you feel an emotion you need to go surfing.

Just as a surfer rides a wave you need to allow yourself to rise up on the crest of the emotion. You need to get uncomfortable. You need to listen to what that discomfort is telling you. If you try to fight it then it will get worse.

If you listen to that discomfort and follow that discomfort to find the need under the feelings you are experiencing then you will ride that wave to the end and emerge with the emotion in the past.

Sometimes it can be hard to sit with that discomfort. Maybe you have never learned to feel safe with the discomfort. Maybe you don’t know how to search for the need that underlies the emotions.

If you come to see me about emotions you are experiencing, I will always help you sit with those emotions and listen to the discomfort that is there. You can learn to do this and sometimes you need help to learn.

Anger, frustration and resentment are emotions that frequently trouble people. These emotions however are secondary emotions. They come on top of another emotion.

You could liken those emotions to an iceberg. What you see on the surface is the emotion of anger, frustration or resentment.

What is underneath the water is often sadness, pain, fear, disappointment and loss. These emotions have often been laid down in childhood when things happened that you couldn’t process properly either because you didn’t understand what had happened, or because you didn’t have the skills to process them.

Once you learn how to explore and identify your secondary emotions, you can start healing the primary emotions that you have carried around since childhood.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with managing your emotions, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

5 Actions to Help Process Your Grief

If you have been following my blogs for any length of time, you will have read that there is no right way to process your grief.

All people grieve differently. Yes, there are similarities in people’s experiences and I often write about them, but you still grieve differently to other people.

What To Do To Help Process Your Grief

Despite their being no right way to grieve, there are 5 things that are important to do to assist you with your grieving.

  1. Name and feel your loss
    It is important that you acknowledge your loss. You do this my naming it. After naming it you acknowledge it by allowing yourself to feel any emotions that come up because of that grief.
    Be aware that, particularly in the early time of grief, you may not have any feelings. Feelings will come in time.
    When they do, name them and allow yourself to experience them, even if that means you “fall apart”.
  2. Seek the support of others
    This is important. Friends and family can be a great support at this time. If you don’t have friends and family able to support you then a grief counselling can be helpful to engage with.
    At some point in your grief, you may find it helpful to join a group of people who are grieving.
  3. Don’t bottle up your emotions, allow yourself to express them.
    There are many ways you can express your emotions. These include:
    *Talking to others
    *Writing
    *Art – painting, drawing, collage, clay work and so on
    *Journalling
    *Finding activities that help give meaning to your grief
  4. Look after yourself
    You must give self care a high priority. If you don’t look after yourself, you will not be able to care for others. So make self care a priority – you deserve it.
    Self care includes getting adequate rest, eating nutritionally balanced food, exercise, taking time out to go out with friends if you want, or to spend time alone. Having a massage may be your go to for self care. Or you may want to go fishing, watch a movie, walk in the park.
    There are myriad ways to care for you.
    Remember also that some says will be harder than others. When that happens, don’t despair, there will be good days too. In the meantime, give yourself extra care on those bad days.
  5. Be patient
    Grief is not something you get over in a matter of days. It takes time to grieve. A lot of time. Don’t be hard on yourself when things continue to upset you months or even years later. That is all perfectly normal.

A Final Action

One important thing I stress to people is that it is okay to be happy again. It is okay to have fun. It is okay to go out and enjoy yourself. It is okay for live to move on.

Moving on in life does not mean you did not love the one who your lost, you will always love and grieve for them, but you will do it as part of the life you continue to live.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with processing your grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

10 ways to fit self-care into your day

Self-care is something you often hear people talking about. A whole industry has arisen around self-care. There is no shortage of retreats, classes, books, podcasts, YouTube videos and so on to help with that.

Self-care is important. It is not an option. Without self-care you are at risk of burnout and overwhelm. Self-care is essential for you to be able to function day to day, manage your work, and cope with unexpected crises.

Yet self-care remains something that many people know they need, but just can’t find the time, or money, to do.

But self-care does not have to involve large chunks of your time. It doesn’t have to look like a retreat, yoga class, hour at the gym, hour of anything.

Self-care also does not require money. You don’t have to go to retreats, classes, the gym. Self-care can be done without any expenditure.

Self-care can be small chunks of time. All those small chunks of time can build up and amount to a powerful amount of self-care. And that self-care can give you strength, resilience and confidence that equips you to resolve the challenges in life more easily.

When I teach mindfulness, a great self-care practice, I teach to spend 5 minutes a day being mindful.

I suggest that during the day, when waiting for things, you can also practice mindfulness. When at traffic lights, when waiting in a queue, while waiting for the kettle to boil, when waiting to pick your children up from school, these are all times you can fit in micro moments of self-care in the form of mindfulness.

Those tiny moments of self-care – time for yourself – can reset your mental state, boost your energy, alleviate stress and promote happiness.

10 things you can do for micro moments of self-care:

• 5 minute mindfulness. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Sit comfortably, allow your eyes to close or soften your focus. Breathe in deeply and slowly and let your breath out gently. Focus on the in and out breath. If any thoughts come into your mind, just acknowledge them and let them go. It is like someone coming into a waiting room, you notice they are there then you go back to what you were doing when they came in. At the end of the 5 minutes return to normal activities.
Practice this every day so that it becomes something you easily do.

• Make yourself a cup of tea/coffee/other warm drink. Sit somewhere away from your desk, somewhere where you will not be interrupted. Hold the cup in your hands. Feel its warmth. Breathe in the steam. Smell the drink. Take gentle sips. Savour them. When you are finished go back to your normal activities.

• Stand outside in the fresh air, preferably where you can see vegetation. If you can lean against a tree it is even better. Research has shown the calming effect of vegetation lowers blood pressure and helps regulate emotions.
If you can’t see vegetation then look up at the sky. Notice if there are clouds, birds, colours in the sky.
Doing this allows you to reset your mind and inject some calm into your day.

• On the way to work/doing chores take the time to notice the sky, to notice bird sounds, wind through the trees, water lapping, and so on. Look for things around you that are pleasing to look at and take a moment to acknowledge them. Even watching a happy dog smiling at its owner on its morning walk is pleasing for many people. Or seeing a small child excitedly skip along a footpath. There are myriad things you can notice if you look for them.

• Spend 5 minutes doing star jumps, running on the spot, stretches – any physical activity that you enjoy.

• Dance to a song you hear on the radio.

• Laugh at things you find funny.

• Hug a friend.

• Say hello to the person you buy your coffee from, or the cashier at the supermarket, or someone waiting for the bus with you. Admire a cute dog or a happy baby in a pram. Look for opportunities to interact with another person.

• Take the time to sit down and eat a meal. No rushing, no running off to attend to something. Just you and the meal. If you eat it with others enjoy their company. Just be there with your meal.

Set reminders on your phone and in your calendar to make those micro moments and make them count.

Self-care is about loving and honouring yourself. Remember, if you don’t take the time to care for yourself you are not going to be able to care for others.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with reducing your stress and improving your self-care, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz