Loss: Validating the Grief Response & a Guide to Finding Peace
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The responses coming from a loss. And it’s complicated.
What is considered a “loss” - While a loss can be a literal death, it can also be losing a job or business, losing a friend or partner, losing the identity of being a professional athlete, losing your faith, a life changing injury or illness. It can be grieving over the parent that will never be the supportive or approving of you, or over the type of marriage you believed you had but don’t. Loss could even be metaphorical - losing your innocence or youth due to trauma you endured at a young age.
The Stages - Originally introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, the grief stages can go in any order, can be skipped, be experienced at the same time, and even repeated. These stages can manifest differently for people, but in general:
Denial: not believing this is the end or denying the facts of the situation. It could be a state of numbness, meaning, you’re not feeling any kind of emotion…yet.
Anger: being mad at others, yourself, at God, the world, an institution, the stranger walking across the street, the mailbox for not closing correctly. Get my drift?
Bargaining: there is more to this than you realize. Yes, it certainly can be the “I promise to change my ways if this thing isn’t taken away from me”, but it can also be trying to make sense of the loss, “if only I had done xyz differently”, “it’s all my fault”, “I could have prevented it”, etc.
Depression: this stage can look very different. For some it is a very internal, silent process for some. For others, it is more overtly expressed through tears, wearing black, putting life on hold, having no motivation. It can also involve not eating, eating too much, not sleeping, sleeping too much.
Acceptance: you suddenly feel peace. You’re still sad, you still feel the void, but it just feels different, more calming. Almost as if you can breathe and see what is around you for the first time in a long time. You accept that what you lost is no longer, and it feels safe to move around again knowing what you lost will alway be a part of you.
Grief can also involve dreaming about or even seeing or hearing the person (this is embraced in certain cultures or religion), wanting to avoid anything that reminds you of the loss, feeling relieved because the struggle that may have been involved is no longer. It can also involve a lot of confusion, and feeling more vulnerable. Grief can also be a two-part series - grieving over losing the person to Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and then grieving over them when they have actually passed.
The biggest myth I see is peoples’ expectations that they start at denial, move linearly through the next stages, and once they arrive into acceptance, they’re done. NOPE. Not how it works. For some it may, but it is usually a bit more complex than that. You may go immediately to anger, bypassing denial all together, depression may come up at the same time you are bargaining, you may go back to anger, then gain acceptance but once triggered, you go right back into depression. Take for example, anniversaries. Years can go by after you have reached acceptance, but upon approaching an anniversary or even just being reminded of what you lost, it can feel as if the grief response is back with a vengeance. This is absolutely normal. This is why holidays, birthdays, seeing people or places that remind you of the loss, and loss anniversaries can be so difficult because they re-open old wounds. Embrace this. Know that this level of intensity will NOT last, you are NOT starting all over again with the healing process. You WILL return back to your baseline shortly after these triggers pass. Also, keep in mind that new loss brings up old loss. Painful losses from the past that seem to have healed can absolutely resurface when experiencing a new loss. You’re not only feeling the new loss but also holding the old loss as well.
Some helpful tips that I hope can provide you with some relief:
Hand select your social support - people can get super weird about loss and at times seem straight up hurtful.. It’s usually not their intention and instead because they don’t understand. People deal with grief in their own ways, have their own opinions, their own spiritual and cultural beliefs, or don’t know what your individual needs are for support, but are likely just coming from a place to try to help. However, this is YOUR journey and I encourage you to give yourself permission to choose who you feel most comfortable to have in your inner grief support circle. I like to categorize people in this situation in three ways: constructive people, neutral people, and destructive people.
Constructive folks are those that listen to your needs, respect your process, are patient and flexible with where you are at in a given moment and on your journey, give you space when you need it and are there in the capacity you have asked them to be. Let me emphasize this - you HAVE to assert your needs to people, educate them on how they can specifically help you, “when I start to cry, I just need you to sit next to me, not say anything and hold my emotion with me”, or, “when you say things like I need to get over it, it just makes me frustrated with myself because I’m just not there yet”, or educate them with, “if I’m coming across more irritable, it’s not because of you, it is because I am deeply hurting internally and don’t have much of a threshold right now in my world”. Educating your inner circle about how they can help not only improves your odds to get your needs met, but also strengthens these relationships. They WANT to help, so, as Jerry Maguire nailed it - help them help you.
Those who are in the neutral category aren’t “good” or “bad” people per se, they just don’t know how to best help you. They may just be in a different place of dealing with grief and don’t have the capacity to know or want to make those shifts your needing of them. A common reason for people to be placed in the neutral category is that they themselves may have their own “stuff” going on and do not have the space to help you right now because of the stress and pain they too are in. Again, the Neutrals aren’t bad people, can still be great folks to have in your life, but maybe just not in your grief world. However, it is worth mentioning that it can be a fine line in determining whether they are genuinely neutral or if it is deemed they have turned their back on you. Unfortunately people do show their true colors during difficult storms, you may need to grieve this as well, which brings us to the last category.
The destructive category of people are those who are unsupportive of your grief process in that they judge you, put you down or criticize you, don’t listen to your feedback and needs, instead force their opinions on how to “properly” grieve, or like aforementioned turn their backs. It is ultimately up to you to decide what makes the most sense in how to proceed with these folks. Your grief response and self care take priority, I encourage you to protect yourself and create some space. Take some time to focus your energy on your grief and then reassess, know your worth, and act upon it when it feels ready.
Take as much time as you need - one of my biggest pet peeves about the grief process is the pressure that is placed on individuals to “hurry up” and “get over it already”. How long is an appropriate time to grieve? When will this get easier? These are such difficult questions to answer because it just depends on the person, on the type of loss, and other factors associated. So, my go-to response is usually - take as much time as you need. It’s absolutely ok if you’re in a great amount of pain years later. I will say the first year can be especially rough because of the “firsts” of holidays, birthdays, shared places, and unpredictable/unidentified triggers occurring during the full year after the loss. Each of these milestones can be upsetting, so again, embrace it and remind yourself this intensity will decrease. Give yourself some compassion. A word on “does this get any easier?” - depending on the loss, I will use losing a child or parent as an example, the pain will never go away. But, it changes, you learn to hold it in a different way, and things you gain from walking forward grow around it.
Take in and embrace every emotion or thought that comes to you - I promise, it’s all ok. As I fondly like to say, “don’t should on yourself”. With loving kindness just observe whatever it is that you are feeling or thinking and embrace it. You’re in pain because you have lost something important to you. The fact that you are hurting this badly indicates how much that person/thing meant to you in your life. In this way, you are honoring what that person/thing. To get through these intense moments and to prevent yourself from getting too stuck or going too deep down the rabbit hole, find the balance for yourself in honoring your feelings and also taking small steps forward. Go back and forth. Give yourself those moments to fall apart, to cry, to yell, to be depressed, to not be productive. And then, when you feel a small spark, put it to the side, pick yourself up, meet yourself where you are at and accomplish something small for yourself that day.
The only wrong way to grieve is to not grieve at all - feel it. I know it’s shitty, but feel it. Otherwise, I promise that it will continue haunting you (pun intended) throughout your life. It will manifest in ways you didn’t realize (panic attacks or other physical ailments, chronic pain, chronic depression or anxiety, not having close relationships with others, not making advancements in your life, etc). Western society can make grief seem like such a taboo. Men also have it a little harder in this culture because of all the masculinity bullshit, and can thus feel judged for not “going there” with their emotions. Readers, tell society to respectfully fuck off, and then feel as much as you need to. All the feels.
Give yourself permission to move on - often people have the stuck point that if they move on it says:
the person/thing is going to be forgotten - not true, they/it will always be a part of you and consider honoring them throughout your life in whatever way gives you somecomfort.
what happened to you isn’t important - it absolutely is important and will help shape the person you will continue to grow into. But it doesn’t need to keep you stuck. Give yourself permission to break free from your pain, trauma, hurtful situations, etc and move forward.
it can seem terrifying to wake up and recognize that you are not the same person you were prior to this loss. So, who are you now? Terrifying, right? This loss WILL always be a part of you, but it’s not the whole thing. Use your values to help guide who else you are aside from being a widow, a former friend, a former athlete, or a trauma survivor. When I teach my PTSD class I always conduct an exercise that involves having everyone go around the room specifying different identities they currently see themselves as: a gardener, a boxer, an animal lover, a mom, a nurse, a music lover, etc. This can be an incredibly difficult exercise because their loss has taken over who they are. Begin to find yourself again, start with your values, what’s important in your life, and use your social support.
May this provide you with validation, some peace, and normalizes your individualized and sacred grief experience. You are not alone in your hurt, you have every right to feel everything you are feeling.
~ You’ve got this!