M
Maybe this might help, it’s a free download I came across a while back.
How to grieve
While there’s no right or wrong way to grieve - whether
it's the loss of someone or something important to you -
there are healthy ways to deal with some of the emotions you
may be feeling.
Step 1: Acknowledge your feelings
When you've suffered a loss - for example the death
of someone close to you, the end of a relationship
or the loss of a job - you need to acknowledge the
pain you’re feeling and allow yourself to grieve.
Feeling sad, angry, lonely or frightened are all normal
reactions, so allow yourself to feel them. You don’t
have to keep up a brave face for others.
After the death of her son, Liz felt that she had to ‘hold
things together for my parents who weren’t coping at all
well, I didn’t allow myself to feel what was going on’.
She believes this made things harder for her.
If you try to ignore your feelings or bottle them up, they
won’t go away. They may even become worse and trigger
other emotional health problems, such anxiety and depression.
Step 2: Get support
Support from others is one of the most important factors
in healthy grieving. Sharing your grief will make it easier
to bear; being isolated can make it unbearable. It’s not
weak to need support.
When Charlie’s mother died, ‘So many people kept telling
me how brave I was, how well I was coping, but what if
I’ d been in bits? I feared they might walk away if I asked for help’.
Don’t be frightened, ask for support, from friends, relatives,
others in a similar situation or, if you feel you need it, a
professional counsellor or therapist.
Some people want to help, but don’t know what to do or
say. Even if they’re close to you, they may find it hard
to know what you need. Give them a hand and try and
let them know how they can help you.
Step 3: Let it out
Talk about the loss you’ve suffered, your thoughts,
memories and emotions, with friends and family.
In the case of bereavement, talking might help family
and friends too if you’re all suffering the same loss.
Try to think of the good times you’ve had rather than
dwell on the things you can’t change. If you don’t feel
comfortable talking to people close to you, try other routes.
You could contact your GP or a bereavement counsellor.
Some people find it helpful to write down their thoughts
and feelings. Liz kept a journal or diary, ‘there were things
I just I couldn’t say to anyone else but I needed to get them out’.
It can also help to write a letter to the person you've lost
containing all the things you never got to say. Barbara
found this helpful after her long term partner suddenly
left her for someone he'd just met. 'I wrote letters to
him pouring out all the hurt and anger - then I tore them
up and put them in the bin. It helped get it out of my system'.
If you’re struggling to find the right words, try expressing
your feelings visually by drawing, painting or putting together a collage.
Step 4: Letting go
Grieving is a natural process, but problems can arise if
you get stuck at one stage, for example refusing or find
it hard to accept your loss. If someone close to you
has died and you find yourself keeping the person’s
room exactly as it was, or laying the table as if that
person is still there - creating a 'living memorial' to
that person - you are in denial and will find hard to get
on with your life. Similarly if you can't accept that a
relationship is over. To deal with your loss in a healthy
way, you need to find ways of letting go.
It’s not about forgetting or betraying the person you loved,
or discounting the time you spent together, you can still
keep their memory alive if you want to. Rather it’s about
finding good ways to say goodbye. One way of doing
this is to think of a commemorative or ‘goodbye’ ritual
that will be meaningful to you.
If it's a person you've lost, writing a goodbye letter to
that person can help. If it’s a broken relationship, this
may be the letter you never send, but just writing it
may help you reach closure.Or you could think of another
'goodbye ritual' such as releasing balloons with messages
tied to them or sailing paper boats with candles in them
down a river. There's no fixed way of saying goodbye,
it's a matter of finding something you feel comfortable with.
Step 5: Prepare for difficult times
The anniversary of when you met, birthdays, the
anniversary of a death or break up, the date when
a baby would have been born, if you had an
abortion – these can all be difficult occasions to get
through. Try and prepare ahead for these. Arrange
for other people to be with you if you don’t want to
be alone. It might help to commemorate them in
some way, either on your own or with friends and family.
Likewise if you’re grieving for the baby you’ll never have,
you may find it hard to see people with children,
so you might want to put these meetings off until
you’re feeling a little more robust.
Step 6: Don't cut yourself off
If you can, try not to hide yourself away all the time,
but keep up with some of your usual activities. Gabe,
when he was made redundant, kept up with his tennis.
‘I made myself play each week even though it was an
effort to get myself there in the first place. I forgot
everything for a little while and I felt better for it’.
Keeping social and active will also help in the slow
process of rebuilding your life. When you feel up to it
think of new activities you could try, things you might
never have done before your loss. Doing new things
can help replace that bit of yourself you feel you have lost.
After the breakup of her long term relationship, Barbara's
world was shattered. 'I got through it by pouring my heart
out to friends, and when I'd been through the worst I
started to think of new things socially I could do that
would enable me to move on. I joined a film club and
made some new friends - it enabled me look forward
instead of back'.
Step 7: Look after yourself
You might not feel much like eating or looking after
yourself when you’re grieving, but it’s really important
to make sure you do. As well as keeping up your strength,
there are foods that are good for mood such as omega 3
found in oily fish, flax seeds and walnuts. Sleep can be
disrupted when you’re grieving, but try not to let it worry
you, just make sure you lie down and get some rest even
if you aren't actually sleeping. Try and keep physically active,
exercising if you can, as the endorphins your brain produces
can help you feel better.
Alcohol and non-prescription drugs can sometimes seem
like a good way of numbing the pain. They may give you
a temporary boost, but they can actually make things
worse by interfering with the natural process of grief,
so 'drowning your sorrows' isn't going to help.
If it’s difficult to focus at work or college, tell your
manager or supervisor what has happened. It might help
to organise short days for a while, or reschedule deadlines.
Go with the flow
Take your time, feel it when it’s right for you. Don’t listen
to others who tell you it’s time to ‘move on’ – or worry
yourself that you should be ‘over it by now’. Your
feelings will go up and down – but as long as you
are noticing some improvement as time goes on,
you are doing OK. Don’t feel guilty if you find
yourself laughing or feeling happy – that’s OK too.
Step 8: Making sense of things
Perhaps you don’t think of yourself as a religious or
spiritual person – though even people who aren’t
religious can sometimes find solace in prayer or
being in a religious place when they suffer a loss.
Conversely, you may feel that your faith or your
beliefs have been shattered as a result of what's happened.
If religion and spirituality don’t help, or are not for you,
communing with nature, reading an inspirational book
or some poetry, looking at art or listening to music can
all be helpful – if nothing else because they can give
us that feeling of connection and meaning.
When grief feels too much to bear
Over time, your intense feelings and emotions should
lessen. If they don’t or they’re getting worse then
you may need outside help. if you constantly feel like
life’s not worth living, feel increasingly disconnected from
others or find it impossible to carry out normal, everyday
activities, then it may be time to contact a professional
counsellor who can help you work through your emotions
and feelings.
Step 9: Dealing with feelings of anger and guilt
It’s common to feel anger and guilt after suffering a loss.
You may feel angry with yourself for not doing enough,
at the person who’s gone for leaving you or the manager
whose job it was to sack you - or blame someone else
in some way. Or you may suffer unbearable feelings of
guilt or regret about things you did, or didn’t do but
which are too late to do anything about. In most cases
these feelings will pass, but there are things you can
do to help yourself.
Managing guilt and regret is about looking at the situation
in a different way. Your natural response is to blame
yourself, but try and find at least four other possible
ways of looking at the situation. For example, you rowed
with your mum the night before she died. Does that
cancel out all the loving times you had together? Was
there any way you could have predicted what was going to happen?
Or perhaps you regret being such a conscientious worker,
when it seems your only thanks was redundancy. Would you
really feel better about yourself if you hadn't given it your
best? Think of what you achieved while you were there,
how it has increased your skills and how it might help you find
another job.
Bereavement - lift the burden of guilt
Guilt is one of the more painful and sometimes unexpected
aspects of bereavement. Perhaps you blame yourself for
all the things you should or shouldn't have done before
or after the person's death. Or feel their death is somehow
your fault or even a punishment for being a bad person'.
Then there's survivor's guit ('It should have been me
that died') or feeling bad about moving forward with your life.
Although feeling guilty is a natural part of grief, looking at
it through fresh eyes can help you put it in perspective.
Imagine looking at it from someone else's point of view –
those of a friend or an objective observer. Or what you
might say to a friend in the same situation. If you feel
responsible for the death of someone you were close to,
imagine what that person might say to you now.
Comfort yourself with the thought that someone you
cared about, and who cared about you, would not want
to see you suffer all your life or be unhappy. We all have
things we wish we had or hadn't done. Write down your
regrets and your need to be forgiven by that person.
You could even write it in a letter to that person. Write
down too what you have learned from the experience and
how you will use it to move forward.
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