Grief and Trauma are experienced by most people in very similar ways.
The most common ones experienced are:
• There are a lot of emotions.
• Most people experience confusion and disorientation.
• Your trust in the world may be shattered.
• You are likely to feel you have lost your understanding of who you are.
What Research Demonstrates About Journalling
Journalling has been shown by researchers to be a powerful approach to use in healing.
The act of putting thoughts, feeling and experiences on paper allows you to experience them differently.
How To Journal
What you put on paper doesn’t have to be coherent. Early on in the experience of grief you may find words impossible to put down.
This is when other ways of expressing yourself in the journal work effectively.
If you can find a Visual Art Diary that is a good note pad to use for journalling. The pages are blank and thicker than a writing diary. This allows you to use other media if you need to.
Drawing, even if it is just squiggles on the paper, can express what you have no words for.
Painting also is effective.
Some people use collage. They draw great comfort from cutting out pictures and words and sticking them on the paper.
Even if you write random words you can find that an effective way to express yourself.
The Benefits of Journalling
This journalling is a way to express and witness your grief. It allows you to see your experience from a different perspective. It can help you to realise things you may not have been aware of. It gives you a greater understanding of what you are experiencing.
Journalling is also a way to share your story with others, should you decide to show another person your journal.
The journal can also be a beautiful legacy of love.
Another benefit of journalling is that it allows you to put your thoughts where you can see them. Instead of having those thoughts playing over and over again in your mind, you can put them on paper. Putting those thoughts on paper is a wonderful way to release them, to allow yourself to look at them from a different perspective and maybe see them differently.
The 6 benefits of Journalling:
It helps you to process your grief.
It gives what you are feeling a structure. You may name what you are experiencing and that naming of the feeling is important for processing it. In addition it gives you permission to experience that feeling, whereas you may have pushed it aside had you not taken the time to put it on paper.
Grief and trauma happen to you and are out of your control. When you put your feelings on paper you gain control over those feelings and your life.
By putting your experience on paper you change the story. I have written before about the stories we tell ourselves in life. You get to write the story of your grief and journalling allows you to do that.
Journalling allows you to step back, even if just a little. This allow you to see the whole story of your grief. It allows you to move on from parts of your story that you may be stuck in.
Journalling helps you to acknowledge and experience your feelings. Putting your experience on paper allows you to feel seen and heard. If you show others they can understand better that you are going through. They can discover things you may struggle to put into words.
Can I Help?
Sometimes you may not have anyone to witness your grief. Or you may find that other people don’t understand. Or you may feel you are not grieving ‘properly’ and need guidance and reassurance. This is where seeing a grief trained counsellor can help.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief and/or trauma, 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
In your lifetime you are likely to know someone who is grieving.
I am often asked the question: What can I do to support them?
On the flipside, I see many people who tell me of the unhelpful experiences they have had in their grief journey from other people.
Here are 11 things you can do to support someone who is grieving:
1. People React Differently To Grief
No two people grieve the same. Some will cry. A lot.
Others will appear unaffected (believe me they are affected).
Some will keep busy.
Others will be unable to do anything and will feel very confused.
There will be some who are angry or bitter.
And there will be others who appear to be very happy.
You may find the grieving person talks and talks about their experience.
Or they may be silent and say nothing.
The list of responses is enormous.
2. Ask, Don’t Assume.
It is easy to assume the help you provide another person may be the same as the help you may have wanted in the same situation, or that you gave another person you supported. But that may not be so.
Remember, everyone grieves differently. What one person wants is not what another wants.
Things you can ask.
• What can I do to support you?
• Can I cook you a meal?
• Do you need anything from the shops?
• Do you need someone to sit with you?
• Do you need a hug?
These are just some examples of what you can do to support. There are many other things you can do. You need to ask.
And keep asking. Long after the person has died, ask about them. Always preface that with asking if it is okay to ask about them. Most people like to talk about the one they lost. That keeps their memory alive and gives them a chance to talk about them.
When my mother died, I lived on the other side of the world. No one knew my mother. It was really hard because there was no one I could talk to about her. I really appreciated the friends who asked and listened while I talked.
3. Grief Is Universal, We All Grieve At Some Points In Our Life.
If you haven’t already, it is important to remember that you will experience grief one day. Most likely you will experience more than one grief.
If you have experienced grief you will likely be more aware of the unhelpful things that can be said and done. On the flip side, you may have wanted certain types of support that the person you are now supporting doesn’t want.
Always ask.
4. Grief Never Ends
Although the acute time of grieving will pass and the pain will lessen, there will always be pain around the death of a loved one.
Always be sensitive to that when interacting with someone who has experienced grief.
5. Be With The Person Who Is Grieving
When supporting someone who is grieving, often just being there is important. You may physically be there with them, or you are elsewhere offering your support.
If you visit someone, let them talk, say little, be okay with silence.
Sometimes you may visit someone and they don’t want to talk about their loss. It is okay to talk about other things, but let them lead that conversation.
If you can’t visit the person maybe ring them, or send them messages every now and again. Just say you are thinking of them. Ask if you can do anything to help. Offer specific help.
6. No Judgements, No Platitudes, No Pumping For More Information.
One of the worst things that can happen after a loss are the comments people make.
Examples are:
• They’re in a better place
• You can always have another … (child, dog, cat etc.)
• They wouldn’t have wanted you to be this sad
• Never mentioning the person or the loss of them. They existed. Mention them.
• So what happened? This is one that you may be itching to ask after someone has died by suicide, or been killed in an accident.
• Tell your own stories of loss.
That last one is easy to do. I have been mortified to do it myself. The motivation to tell your own story is often a desire to give the message it is okay and to be worried you may be judging the other person. You may also wish to communicate you have been there and understand some of what they are going through. We all bring our own hang ups to supporting others.
If you have had those comments made to you in the past you are more likely to make them. You learn about grief from your own grief experiences. Often they start in childhood when a grandparent dies. Or more likely, a pet dies. This is where you learn how to work with grief.
Be mindful of any comments you may make. Pause before saying anything to check that what you are saying is helpful.
7. Be A Safe Place – Support, Be There, Listen, Maintain Confidentiality
When someone is grieving they need somewhere safe, someone safe. You can be a safe person by being there to offer support. Just be there. No running commentary, no rush of words, just be quiet. Listen when they want to talk. Don’t offer solutions – they don’t want one.
Most importantly – don’t talk to other people about what they have told you. They need to know they are in a safe place where they can share things that aren’t going to be spread around to other people.
Actively listen. That means you put your phone down, you look at them, if culturally appropriate you occasionally make eye contact.
When they say something respond to that. You may acknowledge what they are thinking. You may agree with something they have said. You may summarise what they have said.
Do this naturally and according to the context of the conversation.
They may say: “He loved watching the sunset with me.” You may respond: “what a lovely memory”.
8. You Can’t Fix Another Person’s Pain
It is so hard to see someone else in pain. A lot of the unhelpful comments come from the compassionate response to seeing someone you care for in pain.
Hard as it is. You can’t fix it. The best you can do is be willing to sit with it.
If you have your own pain that is brought up by another person’s pain then you may need to tell the other person you are sorry for their pain but that you need to leave. You can always explain later when both of you are more receptive.
Remember, if you need help with this then seeing a grief trained counsellor may be helpful.
9. Your Story Is Not Important Here
You may rush to share your own story here. As I mentioned earlier, you may want to share it from the purest motives. But it won’t come across that way.
Just be with the person and save your story for much, much later when it may be more appropriate to share it.
10. Give Permission To Grieve
It may seem unnecessary, but many people feel pressured by other people and their own expectations to not grieve.
Let them know it is okay to grieve.
Many people who are grieving need to be reminded of this.
11. Grief Is Normal
The final point is that grief is normal.
It is normal to feel like you are going mad. That is a common experience.
Forgetfulness, numbness, confusion, being distraught, anger, bitterness, disbelief, headaches, aches and pains, not feeling hungry, not looking after yourself, obsessively doing things, wanting to pace constantly, wanting to be busy and so on.
These are all normal grief reactions.
And there are many more.
The best support you can give is to let them know it is okay to feel that way.
Don’t rush them off to counselling, unless they ask.
These reactions will gradually abate over time. Eventually the person will start living again and will start looking for meaning in their experience.
If you are concerned about someone keep in mind that grief that is considered problematic is not diagnosed until at least 6 months after the loss.
Allow time.
If you think after 6 months the person is struggling to cope then you might ask if maybe they would find counselling helpful.
Of course, sometimes people want to talk to a counsellor in the initial days or weeks of grief. That is fine for them to do. But don’t force someone and pathologise their experience.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how you can help you with a friend’s experience, or talk about your own experience that has been triggered, or refer a friend who is struggling with 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
There is a lot to talk about in this topic, so the blog is very long. Allow several minutes to read it, or read it in stages.
All people have a major thing in common. We give meaning to everything in life.
We organise events into a narrative, or story, that allows us to form a sense of continuity and meaning in our lives.
Grief is no different.
We assign meaning to losses and these meanings impact the course of our bereavement.
Assumptions about the nature of life, love, suffering, human vulnerabilities and death inform a lot of the meaning we give to life. We source these assumptions mainly from our culture and our life experiences.
One Story: The Assumption They Were The Only One Who Loved Me
One thing I see a lot in my work is where a person loses someone they love and feels rejected by others in the period after the loss.
Maybe that has been your experience? In which case you may relate to the story that forms where the person who died is the only one who loved you.
As a result of this story you may push others away because of your hurt.
Loss Hurts
Loss hurts BUT memories and what the one you loved has left behind will continue and can help you find a meaningful, productive and hopeful path forward.
So much of loss can involve deep despair and it is impossible to express that loss in words, especially early on in your grief.
It is during this time you may find it hard for your story to be heard.
Putting Your Story Together
You may not have a story that makes sense, even to you. You may not be able to put your story into words. You may need to talk about events before you can put together a story that makes sense.
Maybe those close to you are hurting too and aren’t able to hear your story.
Maybe friends are too busy to hear your story.
Grief groups can be helpful but they only work if others in the group are able to listen and not impose their own agenda on your telling of the story.
This is where a counsellor who specialises in grief can be helpful. I am such a counsellor, and my interest is in hearing your story and allowing you to tell it. I know how important that story is.
Questions To Explore During Your Time of Grief
Some questions that can be helpful to consider are:
• What should I do with this sense of meaninglessness?
• What did my loved one’s life mean?
• What did I learn from them?
• How should I make good use of all the love they gave me?
History Of Beliefs Around Grief
At the end of the nineteenth century, when modern psychological theory was born, it was believed that grief had an end point.
The theory stated that to grieve properly you had to sever attachment to the one who died. Continuing to have an emotional bond with the person was considered pathological!
By the 1940s the time limit of 4-6 weeks was suggested as the correct length of time to grieve!
This is where the belief that you had to ‘get over’ grief and get over it quickly came about.
Many people tell me they encounter others who suggest that now the funeral is over it is time to be over the death! The harm caused by that belief is significant.
It is now known that the brain has to make major changes to its neural networks after the loss of a loved one and that takes months.
Missing My Mother
When my mother was alive she used to ring me every week. I lived overseas and was very isolated with no one to share events in my life with. My mother was that person I talked to.
Then she was dead and there were no weekly catch ups. Things happened in my life and there was no one to share those events with. I missed her.
I mentioned this to my brothers and the response was that I obviously needed to see someone because what I was experiencing wasn’t normal. Of course they were wrong, but at the time I didn’t know that.
More Recent Understanding Of Grief
By the 1980s beliefs around grief had expanded the grieving time to two years. Attachment to the dead was seen as being important. There was emotional energy in the relationship and it was believed you had to withdraw that energy and pour it into other people instead.
This slowly transformed to an understanding that memorialising the person instead of withdrawing emotional energy was actually what was needed.
It was still believed that people would “recover” and go back to normal.
How Grief Is Understood Today
There have been great advances in grief understanding since then and the word “recovery” has been replaced by words such as adaptation, re-integration, management, coping or transformation.
Recovery is considered to portray grief as something minor and fails to acknowledge the importance of loss and something that is not repairable.
The main understanding today is that you “don’t get over” grief.
Life never returns to how it was. Part of working through your grief involves learning how to adjust to the new reality without the one you love.
Ways You May React To The Death Of A Loved One
Grief reactions and responses typically involve:
• emotional distress,
• depressed mood,
• confusion,
• difficulty sleeping,
• forgetfulness,
• crying a lot,
• feeling a range of emotions, seemingly with no control over them,
• loss of interest in forming new relationships and goals,
• disruption of sense of self, worldview and life narrative.
Problems can arise when, over a long period of time:
• it is hard to accept the loss,
• there is preoccupation with the deceased,
• loss of identity and role in life
• and loss of purpose and goals for the future.
This is a situation where counselling interventions are required.
Grief Is Not Full Time
When you are grieving, you don’t spend every waking moment engaged in grief. In the initial period when you are likely to feel numb it is more likely you will be preoccupied with what has happened, but over the next few days you will start to spend time living.
You do take time away from grief. Your brain can’t manage if you don’t. You also need to live. You need to eat, drink, sleep, shower, care for others and so on.
You do need time to grieve, but you also need time to:
• learn the new reality
• develop new roles in your life
• develop a new identity without your loved one
• develop new relationships both to your loved one and those around you.
It is important to also understand that grief is not just something within you, it is also something that is between you and other people around you:
It involves:
• your world view and changes you may need to make to it,
• reconstructing meaning in your life
• forming a continuing bond with your loved one
• reconstructing your identity
• making positive changes in your life as you adjust to your grief.
Meaning Making
There are two aspects to making meaning of loss. These are:
• Assimilating the loss into the assumptions you made about life before your loss and the self narrative you had. This approach allows you to maintain a sense of continuation with your life before the one you loved died.
• Accommodate to the loss by dealing with previous assumptions about life by reorganising, expanding, or replacing them. This will often result in positive changes and personal growth that allow you to continue with life.
To do this three things need to happen:
Sense making – you need to make sense of your life now,
Benefit finding – you need to find a benefit either in the death of the person or your growth as a result of that loss. You may find you grow in your knowledge and sense of competence in your life, you gain valuable perspectives about life, develop stronger relationships with others and establish valuable connections.
Identity change – It has been known for thousands of years that pain leads to growth. After the initial disorganisation of grief you go through a long period of growth alternating with the pain of loss. As the pain of loss becomes more bearable you continue to grow.
What Grief Involves
Grief involves you allowing yourself to feel the pain and all the emotions associated with your loss. Then you will start to reorganise your life and develop a new identity. In the process you will change your worldview to incorporate your experience of grief. You will rebuild yourself and develop a new narrative (story) of your life that includes the grief experience.
This is meaning making.
The type of meaning you make will include the culture of your society and family and how these two cultures understand death. There are different ways of expressing grief, different rituals around mourning, different ideas about what is normal and how to relate to the one who has died. This will have a major impact on how you make meaning of the death of your loved one.
Your outlook on life will also have a deep influence. If you are someone who tends to see the positives in life you are more likely to look for the positives in your experience. This doesn’t mean you won’t experience any pain, but it does mean you will seek to find positive meaning in your grief.
Ultimately, how you view grief will depend on your outlook on life, how your family perceives death and how your culture conceptualises grief.
Why Meaning Making?
When your losses challenge or even shatter the meaning you have given to your life you search for new meaning. Making meaning of their loss is how you understand and make sense of their loss. During this process you will reconstruct that meaning through making sense of what has happened, seeking to find a benefit in your new reality, and identifying the way you have changed.
Strategies to Make Meaning
One of the main ways to make meaning is through storytelling. This is why it is important to have someone to tell your story to. This is where seeing a counsellor can be helpful.
As you tell your story of loss again, and again. As you remember details and share them, even adding them into the overall narrative, you start to gain a sense of the loss of that person.
Your story may be about things you would love to tell the one who is gone.
Your story may be about things that didn’t happen, but you wish had. Or it may be about things that did happen that are now causing pain.
In your story you may be able to find an understanding about the things your loved one did.
The story may involve gaining permission to grieve. This is particularly important if you were not allowed to show emotion to your loved one in their life.
It may also involve an exploration about what death is and how you and the one you loved felt about death. You may even tell a story about whether you believed the death was preventable.
It is important to remember that not all meanings are positive. Some people include a lot of regret in their story. They may believe something could have been done to prevent the death.
Over time, even those less positive meanings can be incorporated in a large, more positive meaning. That doesn’t mean all deaths are positive. It is hard to see a positive in death due to murder, or an accident for example. But it is possible to see positives in what you were able to do after death. Maybe being able to honour their life in some way can be the positive that came out of their death.
Who Am I Now The One I Love Is Dead?
When you love someone your identity includes that person. When that person dies part of your identity is challenged.
You exist as a person in a relationship. But if the other person in that relationship is dead then who are you now?
You may have been a partner, child, parent, friend to the one who died. Now they are dead, who are you? What is your identity now?
Your life had plans, hopes and dreams that included your loved one. What is your life now without them?
Telling your story, over and over helps to put your loss in order and start making sense of it. You can celebrate who they were, cherish the memories you have of them, and feel grateful for what you gained from that relationship.
You also can express the negatives about losing that person. In fact that is what you will most likely spend the early part of acute grief focusing on. As time goes on the time spent on the negatives will become less and you will switch to celebrating their life, cherishing the memories you have of them and living your life to honour them.
Over time you can learn to understand yourself better and form an understanding about who you are. This is an important aspect of grieving.
The Importance Of Your Story
Part of being human involves constructing stories about your life.
Your stories will most likely include things that were important to you. They can be negative things and positive things.
All those stories contain meanings. It may not be obvious when you construct them, but telling others can help you to identify those meanings.
The stories you tell around grieving are not simply stories about the death, they are also stories that affirm life, everlasting love and consolation. Also contained in those stories are the pain, anguish and the often daunting challenges you faced in grief.
Recognising what you have been through and survived is valuable for you in recognising who you are and assists you to make further meaning about the loss of your loved one.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, telling your story and finding meaning in your experience 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
It is a strange concept. The idea that grief matures.
Usually it is described in other ways such as time passing, or moving on from the acute grief phase and so on. But as I thought about what I was writing today the word matures popped into my head.
When you think about it, matures is a good word to describe what happens to your grief as time passes.
You do eventually find yourself learning to live with the absence of the person you loved who is gone. You start getting interested in participating in life again. The pain you felt early on transforms into something less acute, still there, just not as sharp.
It takes time. A long time.
So I Think They Aren’t Coming Back
That is bigger than you think. That moment when your head knowledge that they are not coming back is joined by that deep seated belief that they aren’t coming back.
You may not have reached that point yet. You may think it sounds crazy. But when you think about it there is a gap between knowing someone is not coming back and believing it.
Their Loss Is With Me Constantly
Many people tell me that their loss is always with them. The knowledge that this person is not with them. This is particularly obvious when doing something you may have formerly done with the person who is gone.
I remember that feeling. I also remember that over time it stopped hurting so much. And that is what other people tell me as well.
One person I saw told me that they likened their grief to a tape playing over and over in their head. Missing Fred, missing Fred, missing Fred, missing Fred. They were grieving the death of their husband of 40 years. They worked together so every moment of the day was in each other’s company. Missing Fred was the one constant in life. No matter what they did, Fred was always not there.
Why Bother With Life?
Initially many people find their biggest issues are about getting out of bed and going through the motions of the day.
Then they reach a point where they realise life goes on and they can’t make it stop. There is no choice but to move forward in life.
As each day comes, the previous day recedes into the past. What was yesterday quickly becomes last week. Last week quickly becomes last Month and so on.
Life’s forward progression is relentless. At first you were bereaved last week, then last month, then months ago, then last year, then years ago.
It is sad, but an inescapable fact of life. The one you loved becomes part of your past, not your present. Your choice is to keep going or give up. Most people find that keeping going, even when it feels hard to do, is what they do.
Question 1 Who am I, now?
The first question you are likely to grapple with is the big question of who you are now that the person who was part of your life is no longer there.
You are defined by the ones you love. You are defined by the relationships you have. When an important relationship is gone, who are you?
Question 2 What Do I Do Now?
You may continue to do the same things the two of you did or you may choose to do different things.
When making that decision you need to decide if you did something purely because the person you loved did that or you did it because you loved doing it too.
Do you still want to do that thing? Has it lost its meaning now the one you loved is not doing it with you?
Do you want to do new things? Maybe you never did them because you didn’t have time. Maybe now you decide to drop old things and do new things.
Question 3 How Do Other People Fit Into My Life Now?
Many people who lose a partner find their couple friends no longer hang out with them. You are no longer a couple. That is hard to fit in to couple friendships.
You may find you hang out more with other friends.
You may also find you work to make new friendships.
You may also decide you want a different social life. Maybe you want to do completely different things (hence new friends) or go out more or less than you used to.
All these relationships are open to you. It is a different way of being and whatever you do there will be changes.
Question 4 What Next?
What do you do now? What new future are you going to make? You can’t keep the old one with your loved one in it. So what will your new future look like?
You have an opportunity to have a whole new life. Bit first you need to stop and think about what you really want to do.
You have a new freedom. You may find that exhilarating, terrifying or a bit of both.
Allow yourself time to dream and imagine what your life could be. Try things out. If they don’t work you can just move on to try something else.
You have been given an opportunity to change your life. Don’t be frightened to take that breathe of courage and try new things.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with 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
Experiencing a traumatic event has a major impact on your emotional, physical and psychological health.
Trauma may be long term, such as being in a relationship with a narcissist or an abusive person. Trauma may be a single event, such as something painful or shocking that happens.
Trauma challenges your sense of safety in the world and the reliability of the world.
Trauma challenges your sense of self, of who you are.
Gabor Mate, a Canadian doctor and expert on trauma in his book “The Myth of Normal” writes that “trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you”.
In this quote he is talking about the impact of a traumatic event being individual. Some may walk away from an event relatively unscathed whereas others may be deeply impacted.
The age you are when you experience a trauma has an impact on how you are affected. Trauma occurring in childhood, while the child is still developing their sense of identity as well as developing their brain, has the potential to cause more damage than trauma affecting an adult.
The 24 most common signs of unhealed trauma include:
1. Being chronically exhausted
2. Finding it difficult to trust others
3. Compulsive behaviours and addictions, all about avoiding unpleasant feelings
4. Not feeling safe anywhere, at home, out of the home, inside your body
5. Experiencing emotional numbness
6. Experiencing difficulty concentrating
7. Having a heightened startle response
8. Finding it difficult to sleep or having nightmares.
9. Feeling numb and dissociated from what is going on around you
10. Skin issues such as rashes and other irritations.
11. Upset stomach, diarrhoea, bloating, nausea and so on
12. Constantly apologising
13. Constantly thinking about things
14. Gaining or losing weight.
15. Feeling emotionally dysregulated and struggling to contain feelings of rage or anger
16. Feeling Depressed
17. Self-isolating from others
18. Uncontrollably crying
19. Experiencing difficulties relating to others
20. Being frightened of being alone
21. Struggling with memory and processing information
22. Having unrealistic beliefs about other people.
23. Feeling guilty, and experiencing shame.
24. Being hypervigilant.
As you can imagine, experiencing even some of these signs is distressing and challenging to your sense of who you are.
How Do I Recover?
The biggest impact of trauma is your sense of who you are.
The good news is that you can rebuild your sense of who you are.
You can also learn how to trust the world. Part of that learning is identifying what safety for you is, right now.
You also need to allow yourself time to grieve for what you have lost. Without that healing is not possible.
This recovery will not happen overnight. It takes time. Don’t rush. Don’t think you are failing because you are not “over it” quickly. Cut yourself some slack and be patient.
What Do I Need To Do To Recover?
Sometimes, if the trauma had a smaller impact on you, you can recover with the help of supportive people. Other times you need a trauma trained counsellor to help you.
The first thing you need to do is to understand what safety looks like for you.
Once you understand what that is, you can work at rebuilding your sense of safety.
Rebuilding Your Sense of Safety
To feel safe, you need to feel safe within your body. When you suffer a trauma you may want to run away from the unpleasant feelings. You experience these feelings in your body. A major part of coping with the unpleasant feelings is ignoring what your body is experiencing.
To rebuild your sense of safety you need to learn to feel what is happening in your body. You also need to learn to be comfortable with those feelings.
For someone who experienced trauma as a child, there may never have been learning about feeling into the body. For those who learned already, it will be more about learning to feel into the body again.
Regulation Is A Major Part of Feeling Safe
When you experience uncomfortable feelings in your body you need to be able to cope with those feelings.
Many people learn unhealthy ways to do this. Addictions and compulsive behaviours are about dulling feelings. Emotional numbing is also an unhealthy strategy.
What you may need to learn is how to calm your body. Being able to calm yourself down allows you to feel you have control over the feelings in your body as well as the emotions and memories that come up. That is very empowering. When you have control and feel you have power then you can feel safe.
Internal Safety Leads Outward
Once you feel safe in yourself, you can feel more confident to start trusting those closest to you, then those less close and finally strangers and situations you encounter day to day.
When you feel safe in yourself you also can experience greater clarity around the people in your life and can make decisions about what relationship you have that are unhealthy and set boundaries around those relationships.
Boundaries may look like ending the relationship, limiting when you see the other person, or even limiting the type of contact you will have with them and the type of behaviour you will tolerate from them.
Allow Space For Grieving
When you experience trauma, whether it is recent or in the past, you have lost things that are important. The loss of sense of self and sense of safety. What way you saw the world and those around you is lost. You have also lost the life you had. There may be other losses as well.
All these losses need to be recognised and grieved over.
Grief isn’t pleasant. It hurts. You may even feel angry. The pain is deep.
It is important to learn to be okay with those unpleasant feelings. Don’t try to avoid the feelings by getting busy with activities, be they work, social life, hobbies or relationships. Those avoidance activities will only prolong the grief, they won’t solve it.
A lot of the signs of trauma are caused by trying to avoid the pain.
Counselling is helpful here too in learning how to process this grief.
Building Your Connection Back To Self
When you have grieved the losses and rebuilt your sense of safety in the world you can work on establishing a connection to yourself so you can get to know Who You Are again.
This is a wonderful opportunity to explore the things in life that help you feel who you are. The things that feed you.
This is where you learn to listen to your body as it tells you it is comfortable.
This is where you may find that trying new things will help you discover aspects of yourself you didn’t know existed.
Here is your opportunity to learn how to live in the post trauma world.
Space and Time
As you rebuild your sense of self and safety, as well as grieving for what was lost, give yourself the space to grow.
Ensuring you sleep enough hours is important. Take yourself out to the beach of the bush. Sit and feel the waves at your feet, sit under a tree and listen to the sound of wind through the leaves. See a trauma trained counsellor.
Surround yourself with people who support you and will encourage you to grow and try new things.
Most importantly give yourself time. See this as a journey that is best enjoyed and taken at a slow enjoyable pace.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with healing from your trauma, 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
How many of you have experienced grief and felt very disoriented?
In all the losses I have experienced I have definitely felt disoriented. I thought I was going mad until I went to a grief course and learned that this is the most common experience of people.
There is the here and now. There is reality. But it is new and so different.
The Loss Of The Familiar, Safe Framework
All the normal routines and things that anchor the day are not there anymore.
The day-to-day interactions with the other person, whether face to face or through telephone conversations and messaging, or online connections, have gone. What is left is very new and frightening. You no longer feel that safe framework around you.
The feelings of disorientation will eventually pass, as you learn the new routines and learn to feel safe again within the framework of those new routines.
You never forget the old routines and what they felt like, but you learn new routines that help you to feel safe again.
There Are Many Losses To Grieve.
What I have described so far has been fitted to someone close dying, or the relationship ending and them not being in your life anywhere. I will continue to write about that perspective, but there are many losses where you experience the same disorientation and learning.
This could also apply to:
• a new house,
• a new location,
• a new country,
• changes in your health that impact how you live your life,
• changes in the health of someone close to you,
• the loss of a pet (due to death or no longer owning it),
• losing your job,
• losing financial security,
• and so on.
The Role Of Adaptation In Learning
As you progress through the days after your loss, you will learn how to live in this new reality. The term used for this is adaptation.
Many people see adaptation as learning how to live the same life again.
But you can’t. Your life isn’t and never will be the same again.
There is a lot of pressure from society to get over the loss and “move on”. There are non grief trained counsellors who will work with you to move on within the old framework.
But that old framework doesn’t exist any more. Trying to fit back into it is doomed to failure.
What adaptation is about is learning to live in the world as it is now. This applies to anyone moving through life. But for you, dealing with grief, this is about adapting to the new reality, the new world in which you live. The world without the person you loved and still love.
The Brain Is An Expert At Keeping You Alive.
Your brain is designed to keep you alive.
One of the things it does is predict what will happen. This frees you to focus more on interactions with other people, which are always potentially dangerous.
Your brain will pattern much throughout your day as it predicts the routines and dangers in your world.
How Your Brain Predicts Regular Interactions
If you have had a relationship with someone that lasted many years, your brain has strong connections to the normal daily interactions you had with that person. So as you go through your day at the times where interactions normally happened, your brain will expect them. If those interactions don’t happen, that is confusing for your brain. You notice. You again experience that sense of loss.
Over time, your brain learns that those interactions won’t happen and the reminder, coupled with the fresh sense of loss, slowly abates.
It takes your brain months to learn the new reality.
That means the sense of disorientation will continue until your brain has learned and adapted.
Your Brain Works On The Assumption That Your Loved One Will Be There
Your brain is designed for connection. There are several structures within the brain that feed that connection. There are hormones within that brain that feed that connection. Your brain works hard to maintain those connections. Your safety framework is part of those connections.
Your brain seeks those connections. When someone you have a connection with is gone, then your brain seeks for the connection and can’t find it.
That is very disorienting.
Who Am I When Not Part Of That Person?
So much of your identity includes the people you love. Your brain actually has structures that connect you with the people you love.
When someone you love is no longer in your life, your brain has to remove the connections. This impacts on who you see yourself as, as well as impacting your connection to that person.
This means you define who you are in relation to the people in your life that you love and the places you go and things you do.
• Who are you if you lose your partner?
• Who are you if you lose your child?
• Who are you if your pet dies?
• Who are you if you are no longer working in a particular job?
• Who are you if you live in a different place? A different country?
• Who are you if you have lost a body part?
• Who are you if your health has changed?
This is more work that your brain has to do and it is disorienting.
Why Do I Keep Seeing, Feeling or Hearing This Person?
Many people report feeling their loved one is close to them, or think they see them in a crowd or hear their voice.
When you consider how the brain works, this is not surprising.
You are not deluded. You are not going mad.
Your brain will continue to predict the presence of that person for a long time.
After my mother died I would want to pick up the phone to tell her about something that had happened. This is part of the brain’s prediction of the person still being there.
Other people will say they still expect the person to walk through the door. They may say they feel the person is walking through the house. They may report feeling the other person touches them.
You are not going mad if that is your experience. It is your brain. Part of your brain is predicting those connections and not yet aware the person is no longer there. In time the brain will learn they are not there.
After my grandmother died I would go to the house and clean it. I often felt her presence in her old bedroom because that is where I expected to find her.
Forming Continuing Bonds With What You Have Lost
As your brain learns that the one you have lost is no longer there, it changes to allow the past memories and learn the new present. In that healthy state you will continue to feel a connection with and love for the person.
That is known as continuing bonds.
Integrating Your Grief
Another healthy way your brain will adapt is that the relationship to the one you have lost and the pain you experience will settle into a longer term response. In this place you will learn how who you are now that person is gone. You will learn how to live your life with the grief. You will learn how to remember alongside the grief.
This is know as integrated grief. You will still hurt, but it will be less acute.
You will have reached a point of learning to live and accept the new world, as it is now, and our place in it.
It Is Okay To Ask For Help
Grief is a long and continuous process. This is no smooth path. It is a long process where some days you will feel as though you have made great progress, and other days you will just want to turn your back on the world.
I liken it to a Northern Hemisphere autumn where the sun is often covered by clouds, there are winds that are no longer warm, and leaves are changing colour and falling off the trees. Everything is different and confusing. Some moments are beautiful and some moments are depressing.
You may wake up to a beautiful sunny sky and a late day of great warmth. Then you may wake up to clouds, wind and rain with a bleakness in the air.
And there is the constant flurry of emotions mirroring the multicoloured leaves as they leave the bare trees and blow around.
You may feel pressured by others or by yourself to “move on” and “get over it”. But you can’t get out of this place of swirling emotions, of good and bad days, of feeling you take a few tentative steps forward then hurtle backwards.
Navigating this time is hard. Sometimes you need help. This may be talking to a friend who understands. This may be talking to a grief trained counsellor.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with the learning in 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
This is a poem I wrote in response to grief I experienced.
In an instant it’s gone Just nothing Cloying Vacant Nothing Hanging in the space Left behind Nothing matters Not anymore.
The disbelief The horror Of the fullness of life No more.
And you stare at the empty shore And feel the emptiness The infinite emptiness.
Desolate shore Howling winds of emptiness Blow across the bleak sand The ocean of desolation cries to the hollows.
There is nothing Once there was light Laughter Joy Delight Sunshine Love Now there is only this bleakness The searing pain In an instant it was gone.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with 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
Grief is a very difficult feeling to explain. Although there are similarities in the way people grieve, there are also differences. Each person grieves in their own unique way.
How you grieve depends on your life experiences, your relationship to the person who has died, what else is happening in your life and what you have been taught about grief.
Grief Is Inescapable
The important thing to remember is that Grief is real. It is not something to be pushed away or run away from.
It is not something you can drink away, smoke away, drug away, shop away or any other activity you can devise to hide from it.
Grief is.
Grief Impacts Your Brain
Neuroscientists studying grief have found that grief activates the same areas of the brain activated by physical pain. In other words, emotional pain causes the same pain reaction in the brain as physical pain.
Grief also triggers the brain’s fight or flight defensive areas. This results in you being alert and restless. It also causes you to feel exhausted as your brain doesn’t allow you to rest.
I Can’t Get The Circumstances Out Of My Mind
People who grieve often talk about the constant churning of the events of their loved one’s death over and over in their mind.
This is something that is often reported as being unhealthy. Replaying events in the brain is something that people are often told is bad and must be stopped.
But replaying the events of a painful experience such as bereavement is essential for the brain to process what has happened.
I am not saying that you keep going over and over the events forever. But you do need to allow them to replay and be resolved.
Memories Usually Lessen Over Time
Those memories should start to lessen over time. You might not think them as often. You might find the memories are less painful. That means your brain is processing them and resolving them.
If those memories don’t lessen. If you still are troubled by the high frequency of the memories. If you feel things are not resolving then you may need help from a grief counsellor.
The Uncertainty Of The Grief World
It is important to remember that the fight or flight response in the brain is triggered by the disruption of grief. All that you knew, all that seemed certain, has been devastated. You are in the grip of uncertainty and that is scary. You will most likely feel unsafe.
In some instances you may be financially impacted by the grief. That in itself is scary.
It is really important to allow others who you feel safe with to financially support you.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with 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
A recent study in the United Kingdom and Ireland revealed that people in Ireland suffered less from prolonged grief disorder.
One of the areas of difference between the two countries was that in Ireland a wake is held around the time of the funeral. Whereas this is less common in the UK.
What is Prolonged Grief Disorder?
Prolonged Grief Disorder is a disorder where the acute phase of grief with its deep yearning for the one who has died persists beyond 6 months. 6 months being a time when research has shown people are beginning to move out of acute grief into a more manageable grief response.
What Is An Irish Wake?
A wake involves the family, friends, neighbours and work colleagues of the person coming together to share stories and memories about the person, support their family and pay their respects to the person.
Another aspect of bereavement in Ireland is the acceptance of a period of intense mourning and the honouring of the dead.
The wake is usually held some time between the person’s death and their funeral. The coffin is usually there and sometimes it is open so that people can see the person they are farewelling.
The wake usually lasts two to three days and people come and go during that time. The grief becomes a community experience and stories and memories of the person are shared by those present. People also take the time to offer comfort to the family. The grieving is very much a community event and people draw comfort from the collective grief.
Other Ways of Managing Grief.
In contrast the UK way of conducting funerals involves prayers around the grave and is often open only to family members and close friends.
This results in the death being more hidden and offers fewer opportunities for people to express their feelings and become aware of others who feel that way. It also offers fewer opportunities for support from others.
The Importance of Community When Grieving
Researchers considered the community nature of grieving, with its acknowledgement of the loss and willingness to share the experience of grief assisted people to grieve and not get stuck in the acute part of grief.
You may not have access to the support afforded by a wake. But there are other things you can do to help yourself.
Being willing to share with others is helpful. But what do you do if those around you aren’t willing to listen?
The Support a Grief Counsellor Can Give
You may be grieving the loss of one of your parents and the only person you can share with is your other parent who is also grieving. You may also be concerned about this surviving parent. If they are elderly and have been with their partner for a very long time, it may be a time when you are concerned about them. It makes it hard to share your pain when you are worried about them.
This is a situation where seeing a grief counsellor can be helpful. Being able to share your feelings with someone who is able to listen and understand what you are going through is helpful.
In the absence of a culture that supports grief the way the Irish wake does there is a need to turn to other areas of support. Often what you need after grief is a safe place to express your deep sorrow, as well a feel supported and guided.
Sometimes what you need is somewhere to talk about the way the person you loved died. Sometimes you need to talk about the what if’s and the if only’s. If you are going to be able to let those go then it is helpful to talk them out of your system.
You need somewhere where it is safe to be hurt and angry, to feel you failed your loved one. somewhere to cry and admit your weaknesses in dealing with this horrible loss. You need somewhere where there is space for you to attend to your grief, instead of having to put your needs aside to support others.
You need somewhere where you can express what you need to and know you are not going mad. You are not wrong. You are suffering a totally normal grief. You are not a burden. You are someone who is in need.
Can I Help?
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with 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
As an adult, you have an advantage in grieving. That advantage is your brain development.
All things being equal, by the time your brain is fully developed (around age 25) you have learned how to process grief. If you haven’t encountered grief before, hopefully you have learned to seek help in processing your grief.
Children’s Brains Struggle To Process Grief
For a child, the lack of brain development means that processing grief is very difficult.
For an undeveloped brain, comprehending death and the existential issues around it, is extremely difficult. Adults struggle with this. So children will struggle even more without the tools yet to be developed to help them.
Grief In Children Resurfaces At Each Developmental Stage.
The younger the child, the more undeveloped will be their ability to process their grief. It is now known that grief in children will resurface at different stages in their childhood and even into adult life.
It is important to be aware of these difficulties and be ready to support your child.
The developing brain is learning. That is how the brain develops. But without support, the brain cannot learn. The brain needs to learn how to process Grief.
Attending To The Trauma Of Grief
Grief is a trauma. It is dysregulating. A child experiencing grief will be thrown into a major fight/flight/freeze stress response. They will also lose their connection to others and feel very isolated and alone.
Many people think they just have to sit their child down and talk to them and that will help. But a dysregulated brain can’t learn or reason so talking to a child in this situation will not work.
The 3 Steps
There are 3 steps to reaching your child and helping them to learn how to process their grief.
The steps are as follows:
Step 1. Regulate
The first thing you need to do with your child is help them regulate their fight/flight/freeze response and become calmer.
One of the best ways to do this is to be as calm as you can. Research has shown that children cope well with traumatic events when their parents remain relatively calm and can maintain as much as possible regular routines. The main thing is that your child feels safe. They need to feel that you can still protect them. In a world that has just fallen apart with the loss of someone important, knowing you are still there is vital.
Do the best you can
Obviously, if you are grieving as well, it is going to be hard to regulate yourself. You are likely to be crying and finding it hard to focus.
This is the pain of parenting. There are times when you have to put your own needs aside to attend to the needs of your children. It is natural for you to do that, and it may be necessary. But don’t put off attending to your own needs for long. It is okay to be crying when you seek to regulate your child.
After all, your child needs to see you grieving to learn it is okay to be sad and cry, but life still goes on.
One of the best ways to regulate is to hold your child. That helps them to feel safe and also gives you a sense of safety as well.
Step 2. Relate
Holding your child is part of the next step as well.
You help your child to regulate, to feel safer and still cared for.
Now you help them by establishing a connection. Holding your child will help them feel connected to you. This will mean they feel less isolated and alone.
Being Attuned To Your Child
Relating also involved being attuned to your child and their needs. It means you will stop and seek to understand what your child is thinking and feeling. Depending on their age, this may involve (when appropriate) making a general statement such as:
“It is really sad and frightening that x has died.”
This would work best for a young child who may still be learning to understand their emotions. Acknowledging what you sense they are experiencing helps them to feel understood.
For an older child you may ask them what they are feeling. Or you may wonder if they are feeling sad because you are.
It is important to not hide your feelings and allow your child to see you are sad too but that your sadness won’t stop you caring for them.
Be Attuned For A Long Time
Remember that I earlier mentioned that grief in children takes longer and is revisited at each developmental stage.
It is important to keep that in mind. Even after the initial period of adjustment to death your child will continue to grieve.
Always make sure you seek to understand your child. This maintains a connection between the two of you and is also comforting for your child. An attuned parent is one who provides safety and security. Something all children need, but grieving children need it more.
Step 3. Reason
Once your child is regulated and secure in their relationship with you, you can then reason with them.
You can support your child to express their feelings should they want to. You can support your child according to their developmental stage to reflect, learn, remember, articulate and learn how to live with their loss.
How Do I Support My Child To Learn?
There are many aids you can use to help you support your child through their grief. These aids will help them to learn healthy ways of processing grief. This will serve them well now and in later life with other losses.
There are many age-appropriate books you can read to your child. Your local library is a good source of these. If you send your child to a counsellor many will have these resources as well. I have a range of books I use with younger children.
For teenagers, who are already exploring the more existential issues of life as part of their teen development, a more existential approach that emphasises philosophical discussions mixed with some helpful facts about grief and its impacts is really helpful.
Can I Help?
Sometimes you and/or your child/ren will need help from a grief trained counsellor. It can be very helpful to learn what is normal in grieving both for yourself and your child. If you need help, 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
