How To Cope With Grief And Loss

A lot of people have tried to describe what the feelings of grief and loss are like for them; it is different for everybody. For some, grief can look like a hollow feeling, an empty void inside their chests; for some, it is a continuous ache that reminds them of their loss every minute, every day. Grief is your body’s way of responding to a traumatic event like losing your loved one or close family member. Nobody can prepare themselves to face a loss like that; in that traumatic moment, you go into shock, and it becomes hard to sort through your feelings. Grieving is an essential part of the healing process; you cannot run from your grief and loss. It is necessary to face and deal with it. Grief can be pretty intense initially but does ease with time. It never goes away entirely but stays in the back of your head as more time passes. When you have had the time to come to terms with your loss and start sorting through your feeling, you learn to live with your grief.

There is no fixed time or a way in which you should grieve; you can take as long as you want to accept your loss and suffering in a way that you find comfortable. It has a way of making you shut down and switch off your emotions. You want to run away from feeling the extent of your hurt because of your loss, it can be tough even to perform simple tasks too, and that is completely okay. It would help if you cut yourself some slack. The most important thing you need when dealing with feelings of loss and grief is a healthy coping mechanism to help you deal with these feelings in a completely healthy way and help you manage your suffering so you can learn to live with it and get some semblance on everyday life back. It would not be an easy road; it might be one of the most challenging things you have ever done, but learning to live again after a loss is significant. 

The most important thing needed to overcome grief is the support from your loved ones and your family. In this article, we will talk about the symptoms of distress, its causes, and healthy coping mechanisms to manage your life after a loss. It is essential to educate yourself about these things even if you are not the one suffering from these feelings; you might need this information to help somebody who is going through this. 

Five Stages Of Grief

There is no explanation as to how grief works, or how it might affect you, it can hit you all at once or it might hit you in waves, little by little. The whole process of coming to terms with your loss can be divided into five stages of grief; knowing about these stages and the reasons behind them might help you understand your feelings better and help you healthily cope with them. Let us talk about what these stages are in more detail.
1. Denial

Denial is usually the first response whenever something traumatic happens. It is almost instinctive to reject anything traumatic happening to you; it is your body’s way of protecting you from something painful. This is the first stage of grief, completely denying any problem or rejecting the possibility of the traumatic event. 

2. Anger

Next comes anger; when you accept your reality and process the fact that you experienced something traumatic you experience irritation, sometimes at yourself, God, or the whole world. You want to rage at the entire world. Your mind is full of questions like, “why me?”.

3. Bargaining

When you are all out of anger, the self-doubt creeps in, and you start to ask yourself the ‘what if’ questions. You try to find your faults or if there was anything you could have done to prevent that loss from ever happening. You feel like bargaining with God to reverse that loss, it is unrealistic, but that is your way of starting to deal with your loss. 

4. Depression

Depression is probably the most challenging stage of grief. You experience immense feelings of loss and sadness, which makes it very difficult for you to live the way you usually do. You cannot find happiness in things you used to enjoy. 

5. Acceptance

Acceptance is the fifth and last stage of grief. In this stage, you start to accept the reality of your loss and you have dealt with your feelings of hopelessness, and can now try to start moving on again.

Symptoms Of Grief You Need To Keep A Check 

Grief presents itself in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it is tough to look out for the subtle signs, which, when left unchecked, can seriously harm your mental health. It can lead to further complications like anxiety and major depressive disorder. In many cases, people dealing with losses and traumatic events learn to deal with their grief on their own; it might take them months or years. Still, they do not require any help, but when you feel like these symptoms are out of your control and you feel like your quality of life is affected, you need to seek help from a professional mental health care worker immediately. Talking to a therapist will immensely benefit to you when you learn to deal with your grief and loss. 

Symptoms:

1. You stop feeling joy in things you used to enjoy
2. Increased outbursts of anger and irritability
3. You feel empty or numb
4. Detachment from your family and friends
5. Fixating on the traumatic event that caused your grief
6. Experiencing physical side effects like fatigue, headaches, and nausea

What Causes These Feelings Of Grief

There can be numerous causes for grief, most of which fall under the category of traumatic events. There is no science to what causes suffering; something that might seem very traumatic to one person might not affect another in the same way. Everybody is entitled to grieve in the way they deem best; no one can tell them if their loss warrants feelings of grief or not. We can look at some of the more common causes of distress. 

Causes

1. Losing a relationship
2. Losing a close loved one
3. Losing a friendship
4. Losing your child
5. Traumatic accident
6. Any traumatic event

How Do You Cope With Grief And Loss

Facing your grief is not easy; it requires strength, patience, and resilience. You need to sit with your feelings and let them hurt you to start the process of healing from your loss. To help cope with your grief, you can use specific strategies that help you battle your grief by actively resolving your issue at heart. One should use these coping mechanisms to treat the problem, not mask it. There are a lot of unhealthy coping strategies like alcohol, drugs, or irregular eating habits, which provide instant gratification. Still, they would not help you deal with your loss or distract you from it. It would help if you had healthy coping strategies to live everyday life. 

Five Tips For Healthy Coping Mechanisms For Grief

1. Finding faith

Spirituality has proven very helpful for many people when dealing with feelings of grief and sadness. If you believe in a higher power or have a sense of faith in something bigger than yourself, then it might be helpful for you in dealing with the loss of a loved one. Believing or having faith in some form of the afterlife might give you a sense of relief. 

2. Laughter

Laughter is indeed the best medicine. Nothing cures a broken heart or distressed mind better than a good dose of humor and laughter. It would help if you did things that might make you laugh or instill a feeling of happiness in you. It might help you refocus on the good memories full of laughter and warmth.

3. Positive reframing 

I know it can be extremely difficult or downright impossible to look for anything positive when you're still grieving but if you try to focus on the positive aspects of your loss which might include lessons learned or new opportunities in your life. This does not mean you are making light of your failure in any way; you are just trying to focus on the positive parts. 

4. Problem-solving

When you are coming out of a toxic relationship, you are entitled to grieve that relationship. Still, you can also look at it as an opportunity to take back control of your life and do something incredible with it. In some cases of loss, it can be a blessing in disguise. It can very well be the push you need to do something better with your life. 

5. Acceptance

Accepting that something terrible happened to you is the first step to dealing with your feelings of grief and moving on with your life. It does not mean that you are okay with what happened to you, but that you are now choosing to focus on taking a step ahead, and after learning and accepting what has happened, you are focusing on becoming a better person. 

Grief is a very tricky business. There is no one way to treat grief, no expected plan to follow to cure yourself, or a perfect timeline to get over it. Some people might take years to deal with their grief, and some cannot deal with it at all, but what we can't expect them to do is “just get over it”. You would not ask a cancer patient to get over their disease, the same way you can expect a person suffering from grief to deal with their feeling or suppress them; it's not in their hands. Nobody has the power to control their grief. What we can do is be a little more empathetic towards people suffering from a loss; we can be more kind to people in general; nobody knows what somebody’s going through in their lives. 

If you have currently suffered a loss or if you have been dealing with a loss for some time now, it is okay to take time to heal. Your healing process will always work at your pace; you cannot rush it. If you know somebody who might be dealing with feelings of grief and loss, then you need to look for subtle signs which might tell you if they're asking for help, their actions can tell you a lot because sometimes it is tough to put what you're feeling into words and express yourself that way. Support your friends and family; battling grief is always a team effort.