Grieving a major loss is a process with a beginning, long middle, and an end phase.
When you lose someone or experience a huge intangible loss, it’s a major shock to your system. Events coerce your mind to wrap itself around the fact of the loss. It’s as if you have been airlifted to a foreign country where you don’t know the language.
Losses can be obvious and in your face like when a loved one dies. Losses can also be intangible like when something happens that signals the death of a dream you have for the future. And there’s the kind of losses that creep up on you like when you go through a worldwide pandemic.
Are their losses that you are grieving related to the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions?
The mind must reprocess everything it has ever known around the new reality of the loss. The universe has been replaced with a darker one. The world going on as usual seems strange. How can the birds dare to sing this morning?
Anyone who has just heard the news that a loved one has died suddenly knows the sickening feeling that comes with that first realization that life is about to change in a monstrous way. The finality, the helplessness, and the inevitability are overwhelming and throw many who face it into immediate turmoil or denial.
But the grief process cannot be dodged.
Grief is like a very wide, dark tunnel that you can’t avoid going through.
Those who try to avoid the tunnel fail. Those who try to take the long way around the mountain to avoid the tunnel get stuck in years of sorrow and cynicism. Those who pretend that the tunnel doesn’t exist simply prolong their misery and the start of the healing journey.
The tunnel of grief is a series of tasks that the mind and emotions must complete. Those who accept this can move through the tunnel into the light on the other side
The smartest way to grieve is to use an experienced guide to get through the tunnel faster.
The tunnel is both dark and wide. There are sharp rocks hidden in the shadows. People without a guide can spend a long time walking sideways in the wide tunnel. It wastes time. More importantly, it adds to your anguish. Of course, people make it through the tunnel without a guide. But, in my experience, they wander in the tunnel much longer than necessary.
If you want to learn how to accept the process of grief and find the confidence to speed up your journey, contact me. If you want a guide to help you get through it with the shortest and most direct route, then let’s discuss it. Let’s talk for a few minutes on the phone about how therapy can make a difference and get you through the tunnel to a brighter place where you enjoy life again.
Grief is like depression in some ways, but different in other ways.
Grieving often feels identical to depression. But they are fundamentally different. When grief is handled well, it eventually lifts. But clinical depression involves the brain changing to a sad or agitated set point. The brain languishes inside the hardening concrete of clinical depression.
Are you wondering if you might be depressed? Do you know that you are depressed, but don’t know what to do about it?
Contact me if you would like to see what a promising turnaround might look like in your situation.