Seek Out The Right Kind of Social Support. The idea that you should seek out social support during grief is one of the most common pieces of advice out there for processing grief. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. The key mistake people make is that they assume social support means talking to other people specifically about your grief or loss: * Joining a support group. * Long, emotionally draining conversations with loved ones.
* Seeing a professional counselor or therapist.
While deliberately talking about and sharing your grief can be helpful for some people. at certain stages, that’s not the only way to get social support while you’re grieving. Just because you’re grieving, doesn’t mean you have to talk about your grief all the time! It’s perfectly okay to want to spend time with people and actually not talk about your grief, your loss, your feelings, etc. In fact, this is a great place to start if you’re not sure how to start the grieving process or if you feel like it’s not going well: just start spending little bits of time with people you enjoy doing activities you enjoy: * Go to the driving range with a buddy and talk about sports.
* Meet a girlfriend &/or male friend for coffee and talk about politics.
* Get back into that book club you used to enjoy.
Simply being connected is what’s important during grief. If you’re not feeling up for it, don’t put pressure on yourself to feel like you have to “process” your grief all the time. Just because you don’t feel like “talking about your feelings” doesn’t mean you’re avoiding them. Unfortunately, many people experiencing grief feel a kind of social pressure or expectation to talk about their grief with friends and family. If you feel like this pressure is leading you to avoid people or activities you would normally enjoy, simply send them an email or text and let them know that you’d love to hang out and need a break from talking about your loss and grief. Your grief process is your own. Which means how and when you choose to talk about it is up to you.
There’s More to Grief Than Sadness. A common pattern I see among people who struggle with grief is that they believe it’s somehow wrong or unnatural to feel anything other than sorrow and sadness. But these rigid demands and expectations for their emotional lives often end up magnifying their suffering. By limiting our grief exclusively to sadness, we end up invalidating the emotionally complex nature of grief. Remember, grief is a response to significant loss. And while sadness is often a large or even dominant part of our emotional reaction to loss, it’s almost never the only one.
* It’s okay to feel happy and even joyful at times during the grieving process.
* It’s okay to feel angry and disappointed, even if you feel those toward a person you’ve lost.
* It’s okay to feel afraid or anxious about your future as a result of your loss.
In short, it’s okay to feel anything when you’re grieving. And while many of the emotions we feel are difficult or even painful, it’s important to acknowledge and validate all of them as legitimate and natural. In fact, in my experience, a common factor among people who transition exceptionally well through grief is that they’re remarkably open and accepting of all their emotions and reactions during grief. They take it as it comes, without judgment or expectation. Healthy grief means embracing the full range of emotions it contains with compassion and understanding.
Take Your Self-care Seriously. An under appreciated part of healthy grieving is taking care of yourself, especially your body. When loss and grief strike, your life is understandably thrown into disarray and disorder. From legal and logistical issues to social and emotional changes, grief can be chaotic. Unfortunately, amid the chaos and confusion of grief, many people let go of healthy habits and routines they normally engage in. Ironically, this makes it harder to navigate your grief well. Changes to physical health habits are especially harmful: * Diet and nutrition. It’s easy to slip into unhelpful eating habits during times of grief. The content and quantity of how much we eat can have a profound effect on our emotional and physical wellbeing. Both overeating and under eating can make it harder to navigate the many challenges of grief and the grieving process.
* Exercise and physical activity. It’s natural to experience low levels of energy and motivation during grief. Which, of course, can make getting regular exercise challenging. But the reverse is true too — one of the best ways to gain energy, restore motivation and enthusiasm, and better regulate painful emotions is by staying physically active and exercising regularly. Even committing to a short daily walk can make all the difference.
* Sleep. For many people going through the grieving process, bedtime and sleep can be an especially difficult time. While visitors, activities, and to-dos keep the mind occupied to some extent during the day, at bedtime many people experience a flood of painful memories, thoughts, and emotions. Consequently, they end up avoiding bedtime and disrupting their sleep routines and schedules. But poor sleep makes just about everything in life harder, including managing the many challenges of grief.
It’s natural during times of grief to have our focus dominated by thoughts of the person or things we’ve lost. But try your best not to let your attention and energies be totally dominated by it. If you’re going to grieve well, you need a solid foundation of self-care, especially diet, exercise, and sleep. You can’t grieve well if you don’t take care of yourself !