How To Best Navigate Grief
In this helpful guide to navigating grief, I'll cover several important topics: How to Hold a Compassionate Perspective as You Support Another Who Is Grieving, How the Brain Changes With Grief. How the Body is Impacted By Grief. What is 'Complicated Grief'? What is The Purpose of Grief ~ and Is There a Purpose? I'll also share with you The Most Important Wisdom and Guidance You Will Need if You Are Grieving, What is Compassion and Empathy? and How to Nurture a Continued Connection With Your Loved One. I'll also suggest How We Can Best Support Each Other Through Deep and Profound Loss. All profoundly important if you or someone you know experiencing loss and grief. Please keep an eye out for my weekly 'live' sessions! We cover such a wealth of topics including self-love, personal autonomy, self-empowerment, and the very best therapeutic practices for personal growth + of course Guided Meditations... Do join us! ~Namaste and love
Transcript
I'm going to be talking about how to navigate grief.
It is a universal experience and yet it can be so difficult for each one of us as we experience a loss.
I'm going to be talking about how to hold a compassionate perspective,
Especially if you are supporting others.
The purpose of grief.
Is there a purpose?
The best practices,
Of course,
To navigate grief without it being debilitating and how to do that and also how we can best support each other.
Let's dive into this.
A little while back I was leading a session for a management team as one of their team members was mourning the sudden and inexplicable death of his two-year-old.
The child had died during a scheduled surgery in which to repair medical condition.
The management team and the rest of the staff were all devastated.
This was a privately owned business in which the work culture was really that of an extended family.
Everyone was close and all of the management team were connected to each other's lives including that of their families.
Grief is a deep and poignant sadness and distress.
It is the response to loss,
Particularly to the loss of a living being that has died,
To which one has held a deep and loving bond.
While the terms are often used interchangeably,
Bereavement,
That is mourning,
Sadness and sorrow,
Refer to the state of loss while grief is the reaction to that loss.
Our reactions and experience of grief are varied and complex and of course the expression of bereavement differs from one person to the next.
Although the focus in the literature has conventionally been on the emotional response to loss,
Grief also has physical,
Cognitive,
Behavioral,
Social,
Cultural,
Spiritual and philosophical dimensions.
If you are listening because you yourself have recently experienced a significant loss,
As you consider your own reactions and the impact of this current situation,
Grief can and does affect us far more than we may realize.
What we do know is that grief causes the brain to send a cascade of stress hormones and other signals to the cardiovascular and immune systems that can ultimately change how those systems function.
Science is not yet able to explain exactly how these systems interact to create the risks of disease and even death as a result of grieving.
When someone you love dies,
Experts have a pretty good sense of the path that grief takes through the mind,
But only a general sense of how it progresses through the rest of the body.
First is the shock,
Of course,
In which you feel numb or intensely sad.
You may also have feelings of anger,
Guilt,
Anxiety,
A sense of being scattered in thinking and not being able to sleep or eat,
Or any combination of these.
During those first weeks,
People have increased heart rates,
Higher blood pressure,
And may be more likely to have a heart attack.
Over their lifetimes,
According to studies done primarily on bereaved spouses,
The grieving partners may have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease,
Infections,
Cancer,
And chronic diseases such as diabetes.
According to a study in the New York Times,
Within the first three months,
Research on bereaved parents and spouses show that they are nearly two times more likely to die than those not bereaved,
And after a year,
Still 10% more likely to die.
With time,
Most people stabilize.
They begin to learn gradually and on their own timeline how to more or less continue with their lives and function in society.
Yet studies suggest that after six to twelve months,
About 10% of bereaved people have not begun to function better.
They get stuck in what is called complicated grief.
It's also in part due to a lack of acceptance.
These bereaved people stay completely preoccupied with loss and persistent yearning and remain socially withdrawn.
Next,
I share with you what I believe to be the most important wisdom and guidance that you will need if you are grieving,
And to offer a perspective that helps to raise your consciousness and I believe will enlighten you about how you think about and experience grief,
And your ability to heal from your loss.
In listening,
You'll also gather what resources will help you to supportively hold the space for others to grieve in a way that comforts and heals them,
And of which is kind and of which honors you.
If it is you that is experiencing grief,
I ask you to consider the purpose of grief for you as a part of your inner journey of introspection and healing.
Like all of the experiences of our life,
The life events that cause us to grieve have the ability to change our perspective,
Our approach to how we live,
And even our fundamental beliefs.
Grief can also influence a strong sense of appreciation for the precious nature of life,
And so much more.
Grief can be a path to a spiritual awakening and a positive change in how we live the rest of our life.
If you consider that everything holds purpose if you choose to see this as so,
Then as you go through your own experiences of grief and bereavement,
Contemplating the question not of what has happened,
For that is unchangeable,
Rather what is the purpose of my grief,
And what am I being called to understand,
To accept,
To be at peace with?
As a part of life,
We all experience the inevitability of loss.
Grief is a universal experience and a natural response to loss and to the depth of love that we feel for another.
It may help you to consider that the degree to which you love is correlated to the amount of pain and sorrow you feel in the loss of that living being.
This is not to suggest that you love any less deeply and completely,
Rather it is to help make sense of the profound sadness that you feel.
Adjusting to the fact that you will never again be with your loved one can be painful.
It takes time and involves changes in the brain.
What we see in science is if you have a grief experience and you have support and time to navigate this profound change and to learn because of this experience,
As well as confidence and support from the people around you,
That you will in fact adapt.
Clinical psychologist Mary Frances O'Connor,
An Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona,
Studies what happens in our brains when we experience grief.
One approach to navigating grief that O'Connor suggests is to approach grief as a form of learning,
Specifically one that teaches us how to be in the world without someone we love in it.
In O'Connor's book,
The Grieving Brain,
She explores what scientists know about how our minds grapple with the loss of a loved one and says we should not avoid or try to hide our feelings.
If you are grieving for the loss that another is experiencing,
Just as in the case of the earlier example,
My session I was holding for this management team who was also grieving the unexpected and tragic death of their colleague's young child,
If you are grieving for the loss that another is experiencing,
It is because of your empathy and compassion.
Empathy is the action of understanding,
Being aware of,
Being sensitive to,
And vicariously experiencing the feelings,
Thoughts,
And the implicit experience of another without having the feelings,
Thoughts,
And experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
It's like the ability to step into another's shoes of their life and to implicitly understand how they are feeling.
Compassion for another is a sympathetic consciousness of another's distress together with a desire to alleviate that distress.
We can feel compassion and empathy so deeply that we also feel sadness and grief even if we are far removed from another's situation of loss.
The interesting aspect of the element of time and how memory naturally fades as it is altered,
As it is less intense,
Is actually a biological construct that helps us to go on.
And of course,
Another's grief can re-trigger our own simply because we are prompted,
We are triggered to think of,
To remember our own loss.
One way to think about grieving,
According to some of the most current scientific studies on bereavement,
Is to feel a connection to the person who died,
Moving from a preoccupation in the mind to a sense of connection residing in the heart.
It's interesting that research is showing this as it's a way that I teach my grieving clients to heal,
To cope,
To feel a continued and real connection with their loved one.
I encourage those who are grieving to think of it as the most pure and beautiful aspect of who you are.
Let's say the purest aspect of you that is love and to feel that love in your heart and to think about your loved one as also existing in that pure,
Beautiful aspect of love that exists within you.
It can be,
And it is for so many,
A way for people to feel the connection to their loved one who has passed,
To communicate with them through their heart center and definitely to feel their presence with them.
Other best practices for how to navigate grief without it being debilitating is through using cognitive behavioral therapy strategies to learn how the brain works in engaging our emotions of sadness and what we can do to help ourselves feel better with factual thoughts that allow us to focus on what is true,
To feel the emotions of sadness and yet as much as possible to remain as present in the here and now.
A best practice to help support each other is to validate and acknowledge another's bereavement.
Even if we don't always have the right words or the words we think are best,
To hold the space for another to acknowledge their suffering is greatly helpful.
And of course,
Talking to a professional about grief can be more helpful and indeed different from talking to our loved ones who may also be experiencing grief if it is a loss of the same loved one because we can stay mired in our grief as we continue to talk about it rather than focusing on how we want to feel and to feel love without it overtaking us in grief each time we think about our loved one.
It's also helpful to have an open and sacred space to share thoughts and feelings and to ask questions.
It's important to honor our feelings and to remember our loved one in a way that feels natural and significant to us.
When emotions and memories come up,
It's important to be able to share how you're feeling in that moment if you choose to without needing someone to fix it or take away your grief,
Simply to hold that space for you to communicate how you're feeling in that moment.
And how does it get better?
Grief gets better because of how you choose to think about the situation.
The glass half-full perspective is a place to initiate the dialogue first in your mind.
You are suffering and it is going to be okay.
The experience of suffering is not intended to be with you forever.
It is to imagine your life in a future moment where you can feel happiness when you can exist in the present moment because in the present there is no sadness.
You are simply here and of this moment.
Any thoughts of the future or past will move you out of the comfort of the present.
So this in and of itself is a helpful strategy to experience the moments of your life with greater ease and comfort and without the pain of thinking of your loss.
Yes,
You're going to think about your loss and then you can choose to shift your focus back into the present moment where you can simply be.
The way in which you live present in more of your waking moments is to hold your attention in now in what is in front of you and to refocus the mind here and of the present again and again.
I also reminded the team that I was working with in our session that they can be supportive and exuding love and kindness by letting their colleague know that they are available and also by gently mirroring the colleague who is grieving the death of their child by not hiding their own emotions because there is great comfort to know that another is also feeling compassion and empathy for your loss.
And most of all to remember that there is no right or wrong timeline for the persistence of grieving symptoms and that to lose a loved one changes you forever.
And yet it is also up to you for how you will be changed by the circumstances of loss.
I listen to my clients who have experienced great loss and how they are more thoughtful,
More present,
More grateful,
More compassionate,
How their lives have greater meaning and in cases purpose.
We have many examples of how tragedy and loss have indeed created a situation of a deep sense of purpose and in some cases a sense of rebirth to what becomes a very meaningful new path for living life.
If you or someone you know has been struggling in their experience of grief and loss,
If they are having difficulty finding their way,
Please encourage them to speak with someone.
And of course if I can help you,
Please reach out to me.
Thank you so much for listening.
Sending you great love.
This is Dorothy Sanori Juna.
Namaste.
