Death is the most significant cause of grief:

• It is final

• It confronts our own mortality

Some points to consider:

• Grieving is important for healing the wound of separation.

• There is no consolation in hearing that there is always someone worse off than you. Pain is a relative experience - if I have a migraine then it does not make me feel better to imagine that someone might have a worse one.

• Other people may feel discomfort with your grief. They may try and offer platitudes and cliches such as “it must have been God’s will”. This is just their attempt at dealing with their discomfort around not knowing how to help you.

• Some well-meaning people believe that it is bad to be upset and will do their best to cheer you up. This will get in the way of you expressing your feelings which need to be expressed.

• Find some other outlet to express your feelings in a way that works for you. It is normal and healthy to express intense and painful emotions relating to loss.

• The feelings you have are your feelings - they are normal and an essential part of the healing process. Some of these may be shock, sadness, anger, guilt, depression and despair, as well as relief, hope and acceptance.

• By not expressing your feelings there is a risk of more intense reactions later on. These may include muscle tension, physical illness and other emotional difficulties created by energy blocks in the body.

• The painful feelings will diminish with time. If they remain intense and prolonged, then professional help may be required.

• A total absence of grief - when a person carries on as if nothing has happened - is not a healthy sign and may also indicate the need for professional help.

WHAT IS NORMAL GRIEF?

THE FIRST DAY:

• Shock

• Feelings of numbness - both emotional and physical

• Denial

• May last from several minutes, several hours or even days

• It is important that you are in the company of someone who is able to understand your responses and allow you to do whatever you need.

• This initial period eventually gives way to overwhelming feelings.

• The best way for a healthy outcome is to give way to emotion. Forget about self control.

• It is not advisable to take drugs or indulge in alcohol at this time. The use of sedatives etc suppresses reactions and leads to greater difficulty later.

• In the first couple of hours and days, you may experience numbness, intense sadness, anger, guilt, disbelief, and confusion.

• Physical reactions may also occur - loss of appetite, nausea, restlessness, agitation, sleeplessness. All of these are normal though devastating.

THE THIRD DAY:

• Reality starts to set in and often coincides with the funeral.

• Numbness may start to wear off and pain may increase.

THE SEVENTH DAY:

• Loneliness, isolation and despair often appear at this time.

• One moment you may feel reasonable and then, all of a sudden, a black cloud may descend. This often happens without warning.

FOUR TO SIX WEEKS LATER

• The defence mechanisms, the body’s protective devices, start to wear off and feelings may be more free to come to the surface. Reactions that did not occur earlier are possible at this stage.

• Once again - talking about the feelings helps.

A Summary from: Mal McKissock, Coping with Grief (Sydney: The Austalian Broadcasting Corporation, 1992).

“I’M FINE” AND OTHER NONSENSE

Much of the incorrect information we learned and practised may have convinced us not to show our REAL feelings at any cost. We were taught to bury any feelings that dealt with sadness. We were taught: "Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone." This and hundreds of other clichés about dealing with sad feelings taught us to lie about how we felt. And even the lying was protected under other mis-information like: "don't burden others with your feelings."

How often have you lied about your feelings when asked the question, “How are you?”
How often have you said “Fine thanks!” when you were not fine at all?

Every time we lie to others we lie to ourselves. Our subconscious mind hears the lie and continues to bury the feelings generated by the initial event. Unresolved losses are cumulative, and cumulatively negative. Time does not heal the pain caused by loss and neither does lying about our feelings.

A major key to recovery is to process every feeling in the moment you have it. It does not require any special skills to tell the truth about what you are feeling.

For example: "How are you?" ... "I'm having a tough day, thanks for asking." Notice that the answer is truthful but does not invite any help or advice. It also has the capacity of serving notice that you are not on your game and the other party can respond accordingly.

When you say "I'm fine," but you're not, you have sent a very confusing message.

QUESTION: Sometimes I tell people "I'm fine" and they don't believe me. Why not?ANSWER: Approximately 20% of your ability to communicate is verbal, leaving about 80% as non-verbal. Non-verbal communication includes tone of voice as well as facial and body signals. When our verbal and non-verbal signals do not match, most people will respond to the non-verbal. So when you lie, most people can SEE it!

KILLER CLICHES ABOUT LOSS

"Time heals all wounds."

• While recovery from loss does take some time, it need not take as much time as you might imagine.

• Recovery is totally individual, there is no absolute time frame. Sometimes in an attempt to conform to other people's time frames, we do ourselves great harm.

"You should be over it by now."

• It is bad enough that well-meaning, well intentioned friends attack us with killer clichés, but then we start picking on ourselves. We start believing that we are defective or somehow deficient because we haven't recovered yet.

• Both these clichés imply that non-action will have some therapeutic or recovery value. That by waiting, and letting some time pass, we will heal.
"You have to keep busy."

• Many people experiencing loss follow this incorrect advice and work harder than ever. They fill their time with endless tasks and chores. At the end of any given day, asked how they feel, invariably they report that their heart still feels broken; that all they accomplished by staying busy was to get exhausted.

• Although recovery from loss does take some time, it is the actions within time that lead to successful recovery.

Information summarised from website: http://www.grief-recovery.com/ArticleIndex.html

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