by Natalie Rothstein
Grieving is a gray process. It’s not black and white. There is no singular way to grieve, as we all have unique ways of grieving, which at times can make the grieving process feel isolating and scary. As a therapist, in my work around grief and loss, I have seen the tremendous impact of overwhelming emotions people experience in processing grief and the trauma of loss. I can relate to this, having experienced significant loss in my own life.
I’ve witnessed people deal with grief in varying ways, with varying factors contributing to each person’s process and journey to heal. These factors can be dependent on a wide range of elements, such as a person’s personality and mental health, how a person deals with emotions, past traumas, someone’s age when they experience a loss, or life circumstances at the time of a loss. Sometimes there isn’t room for people to process grief when they lose someone because of the magnitude of changes that occur in the aftermath of loss.
When I started my training as a therapist, I found myself experiencing new and different emotions related to my own experience with loss. Navigating how to cope made me wonder: Does the process of assimilating a loss ever truly end? I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, because grief certainly can evolve and heal in different ways. And that doesn’t mean the pain and sadness entirely go away, we just learn how to manage it, we learn how to be able to smile, and we learn how to let ourselves feel and cry when we need to.
With all of the pain that comes with and from loss, I have gained strength, embracing the validity of my emotions, as well as a deep sense of empathy. As humans, myself included, we’re often looking for a silver lining and wanting to “get to the other side,” which can make it difficult to sit with the pain and can lead us to shut out our pain. But as someone wise once told me, “The only way out of it, is to go through it.”
When going through grief, it’s natural for people to spend a lot of time shutting down challenging emotions. When reflecting on loss, feelings of sadness can creep up, sparking tears and it is tempting to push those feelings away because they can feel so unbearable. If we don’t let ourselves feel that pain, we won’t be able process it, painful and scary as those moments can be. It is important to feel sadness and to be able to sit with it. This is one of the many reasons why therapy can be so valuable: to have a space to sit safely with your sadness and feel supported while you’re feeling those emotions.
Processing loss is by no means an easy journey. We all deal with it uniquely. There’s no way to master grief, but I cannot overemphasize the importance of feeling the emotions that arise, along with finding support when we need it.
There are times when thinking about people we’ve lost can lead to time periods of sadness and there’s other times when thinking about them can bring a completely different emotion: anger, laughter, inspiration, loneliness – you name it. It’s also important to pay attention to triggers associated with loss, so that we can understand why certain feelings related to grief can come up for us, often unexpectedly.
If we let it, loss can teach us so much about who we are and who we want to be. We often embody the positive qualities of the people who have died. It’s one way of keeping them with us. So as you embark on your journey through grief, I encourage you to allow yourself to cry, to laugh about all of the wonderful memories, to use self-care, or to curl up in a ball if that’s what you need to do. It’s a tumultuous road but know that every moment you let yourself deal with the pain is another way of honoring your loved one and moving forward in your life.
Because grief is gray, it’s important we allow it to in fact be gray so that we can grow and continue to live in ways that allow ourselves to live authentically, experience joy, and feel gratitude, even for what we have lost.
Originally Published on www.urbanbalance.com