Dealing with Grief as Adult

Dealing with Grief as Adult

There is no correct way to go through the grieving process, though there are recognizable stages that many people will experience.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, whose life work was the study of death and dying, wrote that grief was often divided into stages. She identified likely stages as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance.

However Kubler-Ross cautioned that bereavement is a unique and deeply personal experience. How we handle grief may be affected by many things: how our loved one died, whether the death was sudden or long expected, whether we had a chance for closure, whether we have other loved people in our life, and whether we have ever experienced grief before.

You may feel a jumble of emotions. The first feelings are sharp and extraordinarily painful. They can literally knock you out. This is a time when you most need to rely on friends and family to help you cope. You may feel that your grief is a chasm which isolates you from others. You may shut yourself away, unable to relate to other people, unless they share your same grief. However, the presence of others can be helpful and comforting at this time, even at a distance. While you may stay in bed, consumed with sorrow, you are still aware of soft voices from another room. You can feel the concern, the empathy, and the support. Though you may not be able to process it, those supporting you are keeping you safe, emotionally and physically, while you are unable to do so for yourself.

Their presence allows you abandon yourself to grief, with a safety net of caring people who take care of whatever needs tending, whether phone calls, care of pets, or making arrangements.

You may need help from your practitioner to get through the earliest days of grief. A prescription may allow you to get some sleep, which is deeply healing. Some may choose to use other substances, such as alcohol, to achieve the same effect. Alcohol, however, while eventually numbing us, can also amplify grief, making it even more overwhelming.

As you come to term with your loss, you may crave reminders of your loved one. You may go through their belongings, or spend hours with their photographs. You may want to speak about them, and remember how they were. It is fine to speak of them, and keep your loved one’s belongings close as much as you like to. This is one way that people heal.

Others, however, find it too painful to have conversations about the deceased. They may avoid looking at treasured photographs until a later time, when they feel better able to withstand the pain. If you choose to avoid memories and reminders, you may be trying to anesthetize yourself by shutting yourself off from painful thoughts. If this is what you need in the short term that is fine. You might find however, that shutting emotions off does not get rid of them. Instead, it simply delays the process of working through pain.

Listen closely to your own heart and the signals of your body. There is no right or wrong way to process a devastating loss. It is fine to give in to grief entirely, and equally fine to try to get yourself functioning again quickly. Be alert to depression, which can often follow on the heels of grief. You may make it through the most painful stages of grieving, only to slide into a lengthy depression, in which you lose any concern for yourself, and any hope for your future.

Do not hesitate to ask for help, particularly if you have self-destructive thoughts. It is common to believe that you will never get through the process of grief, particularly if you have not experienced it before. You may also feel guilty about wanting to heal, feeling that you are betraying your loved one by going on without them. You must understand that anyone who loves you, including the deceased, would always want the best for you. They would want you to heal. Don’t give up on yourself. The worst of your grief will eventually pass, and you will find a way to go on.