Survive The Loss

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I know firsthand about the loss of a loved one. Unfortunately, this is an event that we are not subject to. Its main content is the loss of faith that life is organized according to clear rules and can be controlled. The feelings that a person experiences during the experience of grief (as well as in a situation of psychological trauma) are commensurate in intensity with all previous experience. A person who has experienced a loss, but did not react to it, as it were, remains in the past. This event attracts him to himself and does not let him go until all the feelings, all the emotions associated with him have been lived through. “When I came to another city to bury my grandmother, I thought that I would not survive all this so painfully … But for me it turned out to be almost unbearable … In the church, in the cemetery, at the commemoration, I saw the faces of adults who did not experience it so violently, like me. I heard my mother, who hugged me with the words: "Daughter, do not cry …". I understood with my head that crying in such a situation was more than appropriate, but still sometimes I held back. And then it was over. I returned home to my family, and life went on as usual. But something broke. From a bright, optimistic girl who was always smiling, active, I turned into a person who does not want anything, apathy and lack of initiative flowed into my life. This went on for two weeks. All this time, I did not understand what was happening and what it was connected with. I tried to smile and "squeezed" a good mood out of myself, but it only got worse. And then I realized. I remembered the day of the funeral. In addition to tears, suffering from the loss of a loved one, I had other feelings. As stupid as it may sound, it was shame and guilt for their tears. I remembered that there was almost one there who was crying. And I was ashamed of it. Somewhere I suppressed something in myself … and returned home with it. Two weeks - no pleasure from life, no joy, no smiles, but only fatigue, bad mood and a feeling as if nothing is needed from life. When I realized what was happening to me, I began to say it, and the tears that were "held back" then did not take long to appear in my eyes. I cried for half an hour without stopping, having lived my grief once again. And then it let go of me. Slowly, the I, which was, began to return to my life. Such and such events, little things in life began to please, stability in the desire to do something, to be active, etc. gradually began to appear. Before I cried all the tears then, a stone in the chest and throat area sat like a heavy load in me, which squeezed all these unexpressed emotions. When I remember my grandmother, warmth spreads inside me, I am filled with gratitude to this person, for everything she has done for me."

Grief: beginning, goal, end

Grief is work to be done. And, like every work, it has a beginning, a purpose and an end. Although this job is not the easiest one. If you remember what not very pleasant work in your life you did, for example, washing dishes or floors, no matter how you put it off, you still sooner and later did what you need to do. But when the work was done, you felt relieved. Or another example: you were wrong about something in front of other people, and it may also have brought you relief when you admitted it, apologized, corrected the mistake. The main thing in the situation was for you - to gain courage, to overpower yourself, to overcome. If an event such as grief happens to you for the first time, you do not know how to deal with it, how to react to it. This means that you need to learn to experience grief as a child learns to take the first steps. You might think that if you learn to deal with grief, tragic events will appear more and more often in your life. But this is not the case. Our grief has a purpose. A difficult event knocks you out of your usual rut. And at first it may seem to you that you are paralyzed by fear, it is difficult for you to do something, feel, speak, think. In this situation, you need to continue living. The goal is not in the very fact of loss. The goal is your condition, your behavior after a tragic event. The goal is to overcome your fear, which paralyzes your life.

After what happened, many people begin to ask questions, to themselves or to others: "Why?", "Why did this happen to me?" The questions are pertinent, but here you need to understand that tragic events happen to both bad and good people and it is not your fault for them. Losses come to us because we live in an imperfect world in which life coexists with death.

Responsibility for the accommodation of the event is yours

Now I wrote that there is no fault of yours in the traumatic event, and you cannot be held responsible for it. What can we take responsibility for? You can take responsibility for the process of getting out of grief, for living it. Why you? Why can't the responsibility for the grief process be shifted onto other, stronger people? In reality it is impossible. No one can live grief for you, grieve for you, feel for you and cry for you. This is an essential part of experiencing grief. If you do not do this, you will cease to be responsible for this event in relation to yourself and for how it affected your life. You must take responsibility for getting the job done.

Asking for help is not a sign of weakness

Dealing with grief is not working alone. For you to be able to talk about your feelings and experiences, you must reach out to other people. A person feels less lonely and calmer when he knows that there are people who will listen, support, understand. Don't be afraid to ask for help.

Don't rush things

We can understand a person who wants to finish work on grief as soon as possible. It is difficult for him to be with his emotions and deep feelings, and he is in a hurry to get rid of them. But work on the grief cannot be accelerated, it cannot be rushed. I suggest that you do the following exercise in your work on grief.

Exercise for dealing with grief. "Letters". If you have a loved one dying, this exercise is useful for the first three months after the tragic event. You should write two letters. The first letter from you is in grief. First, ask yourself, "If I could talk to grief, what would I tell him about the impact it has on my life." It is important to be extremely sincere.

The second letter is the opposite. After 1 day, write a response letter, out of grief - to you. Before writing your second letter, ask yourself, “What can grief tell me? What does it want from me?"

Grief testing makes it possible to understand yourself deeper. A person can characterize himself by analyzing his skills, feelings and thoughts, as well as depending on how he lives his life and what exactly he expects from himself in the future. Therefore, if you feel that you cannot cope alone, contact your loved ones and a psychologist!