Understanding Grief, Living Grief
I enjoy being a therapist. I get to see people work hard and see the transformation in real time. I love working with grief. I think that grief is something that makes many people uneasy. The awkward silence of not knowing what to say is loud and uncomfortable.
Grief doesn’t always look how we expect. You may feel sadness, anger, guilt, fear, or numb. Most people associate grief with the death of a person, but there are other kinds of grief that go overlooked – loss of a pet, a breakup, divorce, moving, changing jobs, and empty nesters are other kinds of losses too. Big changes cause us to feel lost and uncertain because our routine is different. It’s okay to be sad about these changes, but often people feel silly talking about them.
Many think that others will judge them if they feel a certain way about something that “shouldn’t” be a big deal, so we push the feeling off to the side and move on. But the thing with grief is that is doesn’t go away just because you don’t want to think about it. It stays in the corner, watching and waiting to show itself when you are feeling down. The way to work through grief is to move through it, which is hard. Talking about our loss and sadness helps to organize our thoughts and make sense of what we are feeling. Sometimes we just want others to hear us and witness our sadness because it makes us feel seen and understood.
With the birth of a child or the launching of young adults, there is a loss of identity that can cause grief. Having a baby changes our sense of identity and “I” becomes “we.” That can be a difficult transition for people and take time. The same for launching young adults off to college or out of the house because our roles as parents changes again and “we” becomes “me”. We aren’t needed in the same way and that can cause sadness and fear. The fear is not knowing who we are without being needed in the same way or how to shift our perspective. This kind of grief is one we know about yet are never prepared for until it happens. Discussing our changing roles can help us gain a new sense of purpose outside of a parental role and can help us feel safer and more secure.
Breakups and divorce bring grief that stems from shifting from a couple to a single person. It is hard to get used to doing things alone and it brings sadness – especially if we were not the ones who wanted to be single. Although it is scary, relearning how to be independent can bring a sense of freedom too. Grief highlights what we are insecure about – not having someone to keep us company, share experiences with or reassure us when we are uncertain.
Grief affects us because it changes our expectation of our future. What we thought we were going to do or who we were going to do it with shifts and it can be debilitating. We feel safe when we feel secure and any instability can cause fear. Fear and grief are closely connected because of the uncertainty of what happens next. It changes our ability to trust ourselves. Talking about our sadness lets us vent our frustration and fears, which can help us feel lighter and less burdened.
I have seen all kinds of losses in my practice. Grief is pain and pain is relatable. My work from an attachment-based perspective connects how a person’s sense of security is easily disrupted with loss. Relationships provide a sense of safety and emotional security, so if we lose that relationship either from a breakup, divorce or death, it causes anxiety and uncertainty of what to do next.
Vulnerability is one area that many struggle with and is connected with grief. When we talk about our loss, we must admit how much it mattered to us. We also have to talk about how little control we had over losing it. This is unnerving for people. Somehow, we convince ourselves that if we don’t talk about it, it is somehow less real. Talking about the loss can make it less scary that we imagine it to be and help us gain a path forward.
In therapy, we won’t rush your grief or ask you to revisit painful experiences before you are ready. I won’t tell you how you should be feeling because there is no right way to feel. We will start wherever you are in your experience. We will make space for the experiences that might feel hard to put into words. We will explore how your loss has affected your sense of self. Through our work, we’ll start to understand the ways you’ve learned to cope and how your fears and vulnerabilities contribute to how you feel. Over time, we will work toward helping you reconnect with yourself and rediscover yourself.
Grief is hard. I want to help normalize the grief experience. Your reaction to your loss makes sense – even when those reactions confuse or scare you. I often hear clients feel like they should be further along in their grief healing. There is no timeline with grief because everyone is affected differently based off their personal history and experiences.
A bit about my own personal grief journey – I lost my father at 6 years old and grief wasn’t something we talked about. It was very confusing and I couldn’t relate to other kids concerning my loss. I remember a neighbor kid making fun of me for not having a dad and it crushed me. Luckily, my mother was a great role model and raised me to be independent and thoughtful. It wasn’t until I was older that I could understand and appreciate her encouragement despite her own struggle.
I would follow in her footsteps years later when I suddenly lost my own husband. I found myself experiencing my own devastating loss while having 12-year-old twins to care for. It felt like a nightmare becoming a widow like my mother had. It also felt familiar watching my children struggle with making sense of their grief. It is easy to get stuck in grief. I remember desperately seeking counseling for my kids knowing I wanted them to have an outlet to talk about their loss. I made sure that we talked about what they were feeling and that they knew they could talk about him anytime they needed.
Through my own grief journey, I sought counseling which led me to choose to go into the field myself. My own experience has helped me gain insight to help others with their own unique experience. Grief isn’t something that is comfortable for people to talk about, but it should be. I want to normalize it because it is an experience that we each will go through one day. All loss is different. I feel my own journey helps me support others as they go through their own worst days. Grief is just a part of my story, and I continue to grow and become better because of it.
Whatever you are feeling concerning your grief, therapy is a place to begin to understand it. You do not have to see a path forward or imagine how to feel better, you just need to reach out to talk to someone. Unload the heaviness you have been carrying alone with someone who can help. Come talk to me and we can make sense of your feelings and your next step forward so that you begin to feel better.
