Grief
John Steinbeck
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
When we lose a loved one, the pain we experience can feel unbearable. Understandably, grief is complicated and we sometimes wonder if the pain will ever end. We go through a variety of emotional experiences such as anger, confusion, and sadness.
Most of us can relate to a friend losing a sibling, spouse, or parent. When it happens to us personally, it takes on a different dimension.
For some, grieving is a process which does not improve over time; it may even become worse. If this is the case for you, then you may experience continued feelings of emptiness, hopelessness, anger and blame, frequent intrusive thoughts about the person you have lost and about their death, preoccupation with your grief, or find that almost everyone and everything is a reminder of your loss. You may be unable to go about your daily routine or function normally.
Your pain is unique to you, your relationship to the person you lost is unique, and the emotional processing can feel different to each person. It is acceptable for you to take the time you need and remove any expectation of how you should be performing as you process your grief.
How can hypnotherapy help with grief?
Hypnotherapy helps you to begin to move on. For some people, the grieving process doesn’t end or get easier with time; in fact, in some cases, it might even get worse. This is when help through Hypnotherapy is ideal because it works deep within the subconscious mind, where our belief systems are embedded, and help people understand loss differently.
You can live your life again and to learn to enjoy yourself once more without feeling guilty. It allows you to find ways to remember the person you have lost, and to still feel that they are part of you and part of your life.
Our mind, and the feelings it generates, are powerful. Changing the way you think about losing someone from feelings of sadness and emptiness to beautiful, loving memories can go a long way and help speed up the healing process.
It can help you look after yourself in a time of mourning
When you’re mourning the loss of a loved one, you can often neglect yourself. Hypnosis can help you develop a feeling of compassion and kindness for yourself, so that you don’t lose your own sense of self while you grieve.
Hypnotherapy can help process grief
It can take a long time to grieve. That being said, you must realize that grief is not a permanent state of mind, but rather it’s a process that everyone goes through. With the help of hypnotherapy, the process will become less troubled with tension and stress and transformed into a time full of love and appreciation.
You might have heard the different stages or phases of grief, something that the mourner must pass through; however, it doesn’t have to be passive. There are helps you can get and there is something you can actively do to adapt to the death of a loved one. Mourning is a process and not a state.
Further Reading
The 5 Stages of Grief
A theory developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross suggests that we go through five distinct stages of grief after the loss of a loved one: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.1
Denial
The first stage in this theory, denial helps us minimize the overwhelming pain of loss. As we process the reality of our loss, we are also trying to survive emotional pain. It can be hard to believe we have lost an important person in our lives, especially when we may have just spoken with this person the previous week or even the previous day.
Our reality has shifted completely in this moment of loss. It can take our minds some time to adjust to this new reality. We are reflecting on the experiences we have shared with the person we lost, and we might find ourselves wondering how to move forward in life without this person.
Anger
It is common to experience anger after the loss of a loved one. We are trying to adjust to a new reality and we are likely experiencing extreme emotional discomfort. There is so much to process that anger may feel like it allows us an emotional outlet.
Unfortunately, anger tends to be the first thing we feel when we start to release emotions related to loss. This can leave you feeling isolated in your experience and perceived as unapproachable by others in moments when we could benefit from comfort, connection, and reassurance.
Bargaining
When coping with loss, it isn’t unusual to feel so desperate that you are willing to do almost anything to alleviate or minimize the pain. Losing a loved one can cause us to consider any way we can avoid the current pain or the pain we are anticipating from loss. There are many ways we may try to bargain.
- “God, if you can heal this person I will turn my life around.”
- “I promise to be better if you will let this person live.”
- “I’ll never get angry again if you can stop him/her from dying or leaving me.”
This feeling of helplessness can cause us to react in protest by bargaining, which gives us a perceived sense of control over something that feels so out of control. While bargaining we also tend to focus on our personal faults or regrets. We might look back at our interactions with the person we are losing and note all of the times we felt disconnected or may have caused them pain.
It is common to recall times when we may have said things we did not mean, and wish we could go back and behave differently. We also tend to make the drastic assumption that if things had played out differently, we would not be in such an emotionally painful place in our lives.
Depression
During our experience of processing grief, there comes a time when our imaginations calm down and we slowly start to look at the reality of our present situation. Bargaining no longer feels like an option and we are faced with what is happening.
We start to feel the loss of our loved one more abundantly. As our panic begins to subside, the emotional fog begins to clear and the loss feels more present and unavoidable.
In those moments, we tend to pull inward as the sadness grows. We might find ourselves retreating, being less sociable, and reaching out less to others about what we are going through. Although this is a very natural stage of grief, dealing with depression after the loss of a loved one can be extremely isolating.
Acceptance
When we come to a place of acceptance, it is not that we no longer feel the pain of loss. However, we are no longer resisting the reality of our situation, and we are not struggling to make it something different.
Sadness and regret can still be present in this phase, but the emotional survival tactics of denial, bargaining, and anger are less likely to be present.
Tips to help yourself in time of grief
Grief is a journey you must endure after the loss of a loved one. It’s easy to become overwhelmed as you work through the phases and tasks of grief so it’s important to remember to care for yourself.
Here are 10 tips, collected from people who have traveled this road before you, to help you along this journey.
- Seek and Accept Support: You cannot travel this path alone. You need the support and care of others. Call on a trusted family member or friend, church clergy, or professional counselors. Call your local hospice agency or community grief center for advice to get you started.
- Accept Your Grief: Don’t try to run and hide from your grief. You need to experience the pain and sorrow to be able to move past it and on toward healing.
- Find Role Models: You are not the first to travel the road of grief. Discover how others have coped with loss before you. This will provide you with a model to base your own healing on and remind you that you are not alone. Read books on grief and meet others who have worked through grief at support groups.
- Learn About Grief. The more you know about grief and dispel the myths surrounding it, the more you will realize that your grief is normal. You also might discover warning signs that your grief is complicated and that you need more help to cope. Either way, knowledge is power.
- Express Your Grief: Grief cannot stay hidden deep within you. The best way to work through grief is to let it out. Cry, scream, and yell if you need to. Express your feelings through music, art, poetry, or journaling. Whether you express your grief with a safe person you trust or let it out in complete privacy, expressing your feelings is the only true way to honor your grief and begin to work through it.
- Accept Your Feelings: Grief can bring many different feelings to the surface—some very intense. Acknowledge these feelings and accept them as part of the natural grieving process. Don’t hold in anger, sadness, or longing. These are important feelings that, once expressed, help you heal.
- Pace Yourself: Grief can be exhausting. It takes a lot of energy to feel so intensely. Allow yourself plenty of time to do everyday activities and don’t over-schedule yourself. Rest when you need to and offer yourself some grace.
- Get Involved in Something: Getting involved in work or some other activity you enjoy can keep you focused and offer a welcome distraction from your grief. If that activity is especially meaningful or helpful to others, you might find it also raises your spirits.
- Have a Little Fun: Sometimes grieving people won’t allow themselves to have any fun—as if sharing a laugh with someone is somehow dishonoring the memory of their loved one. The truth is, laughter is excellent medicine. A great way to have some genuine fun is to surround yourself with children or animals.
- Keep the Faith: Remember that intense grief doesn’t last forever. One of my favorite sayings goes, “Faith is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to go on when fear is present.” Keep the faith that you will one day heal and be whole again.