You lost someone and the grief is like the ocean. Maybe it was the death of a parent, friend, or partner. Vicki Harrison once described the experience of grief like this:
“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”
Vicki Harrison
When you think of it like that, suddenly the waves of grief and the random pain you’ll experience from something as small as the smell of a cup of coffee make sense. Grief and pain can often feel like they make no sense, and that’s true sometimes.
But, luckily, lots of research has been done to better to grief. Researchers like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross have done the kind of work that helps us make sense of grief when it feels like nothing will ever make sense again. These 8 tips won’t take away your grief, but they may help you approach it in different ways.
This post is all about grief is like the ocean.
GRIEF IS LIKE THE OCEAN:
1. Have heartfelt discussions with the people in your life
Your instinct may be to shut down when your loved one is brought up. Or maybe you can talk endlessly about them but never about how you’re feeling. Naturally, we want to avoid incredibly difficult conversations about the person we lost.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make, as human beings, is believing that we have to go through pain alone. We might even believe that no one else can understand our pain because we had a unique connection to the person we lost.
This is true to an extent. Everyone experiences a unique form of grief. However, we often lose the possibility to connect and lighten our emotional load when we assume that other people can’t relate to our experience.
It’s scary to be vulnerable, especially when you’re feeling vulnerable constantly because of the pain you’re feeling. So, do your best to choose people you trust and value to start meaningful conversations.
2. Recognize that the grief process is unavoidable
There’s no good way to experience grief. It hurts no matter how we approach it and there’s no way to process our grief without going through the stages of grief outlined by Kubler-Ross. A lot of the time, by wanting to avoid the grieving process, we inadvertently go through the stages.
Since the first stage is denial, it’s natural to want to deny that there’s even a reason to grieve. Depending on your loss, you may think the person is still with you or maybe that the loss wasn’t big enough to merit grieving when it was.
From there, the grieving process will probably flow naturally without clear divisions or a timeline. In other words, it’s a process you’ll probably go through for the rest of your life and that’s okay.
You grow around your grief rather than overcoming it and it will change you.
Accept this change as a natural part of the process and as a way for you to handle going through the rest of your life without this person. You’ll never forget them, but you might get to the point of feeling okay without them.
3. Let yourself feel the pain from empty space
Empty space is hard to handle when you’ve lost someone. Some part of you doesn’t understand why that person isn’t there on the couch in the living room, at the kitchen table, or in the car.
When we start acknowledging death as the trauma that it is, whether that comes in forms of childhood grief left unresolved or the eloquent use of metaphors, our thinking changes.
Death is indeed a normal part of the lifecycle and we all will experience it in some form throughout our lives. However, we also have to acknowledge that it changes the way our brains are wired. Grief is the way our brains handle the trauma that comes from death.
So, give yourself the time and patience to grieve the empty space where your loved one used to be. Avoid telling yourself that it’s silly or that you to move on. Let yourself stay in the grief as long as it takes for you to grow around it.
4. Work through difficult emotions of abandonment that come up
It’s strange to think of abandonment in the context of loss. In some scenarios, like the difficult concept of suicide, it feels like the person chose to leave us, though death, pain, and depression are never that simple.
Even in cases where the person died of natural causes or premature causes outside of their control, we’re alone. They left us and that feels horrible. Maybe they didn’t choose it, but we’re the ones who are left alone without them and we definitely didn’t choose that.
So, it’s okay to feel abandoned by your loved one. You can get angry at them. Make sure that, when you get angry, you let yourself feel it and breathe through it. Eventually, the anger will subside and you’ll feel the pain. The pain is what you need to process.
5. Consider working with mental health professionals
You don’t have to navigate your grief on your own. Talking to loved ones can help, but they’re not trained. They can give you emotional support and listen. However, they may not be able to walk you through the grief.
Maybe they haven’t experienced it. Maybe they weren’t as close to the person you lost as you were. Or maybe they were too close and they have the energy to help you and help them.
Mental health professionals can give you clinical guidance and help you develop coping mechanisms for the moments that feel unbearable and give you the tools you need to put them out of a job. The grieving process will likely happen for the rest of your life.
A therapist can help you through it, so you don’t feel alone, you’re given the proper tools, and you can even get to a place of happiness and gratitude. This takes effort and time, which is almost impossible to accomplish when you’re going at it alone.
Therapy can be inaccessible for many reasons, so take care of yourself if you can’t attend therapy. Remember that you deserve self-care no matter how much it hurts right now.
6. Notice that grief is a physical thing that causes physical pain
It’s normal to notice grief in your body. You may think it’s psychosomatic or “all in your head.” But, the body and the mind are connected in so many ways that it’d be impossible for you not to feel physical pain from your grief.
The brain releases stress hormones, which can lead to muscle tension, headaches, stomachaches, and even changes in appetite and sleep patterns. It’s like your emotions are sounding the alarm bells, and your body is responding.
So, it makes sense that, when you are going through so much stress and anxiety around the trauma of someone’s death, your body would feel it too.
If the pain becomes overwhelming or difficult to manage, consider reaching out to a physician for help with the physical pain or a therapist to help you work through the mental pain that is causing the physical pain.
7. Let yourself enjoy a happy memory
Feeling happiness while you go through grief does not negate your grief. You’re allowed to feel a moment of relief or reprieve when you’re grieving. Some people believe that feeling happiness or joy does a disservice to the person they lost because they should be in complete mourning.
However, in most cases, the person you lost would never want that to be true. They would want you to experience joy and happiness. Plus, your brain is going through a traumatic experience that is rewiring it.
So, be intentional about how you train your brain to think during this difficult time. Yes, you’re going through the grief process like you should be and this is not your first thought.
But, over time, you hurt yourself by not allowing yourself to experience joy when it happens to you or to be happy about a beautiful memory. Your brain will remember that you are choosing negative feelings over positive ones.
In the long run, this will make it harder for you to experience joy again and maintain a positive mindset.
8. Remember you can handle the waves of grief as they come
Whether you’re handling grief for the first time or you’ve experienced loss before, you can handle it. It will hurt and you will experience deep grief before you get through to the other side. But, you can handle every wave of grief that comes upon you.
They may take you by surprise and hit you when you least expect it. They may even sweep you out into the deep ocean and make you feel like you’re drowning under these shifting waves and the metaphor of the ocean.
You’ll get through to the other side, likely with lots of scars and you’ll be scared of the next wave hitting you. But, you’ll be in a better place mentally and you’ll understand why grief work is so crucial to finding the life raft that keeps the crashing waves from drowning you.
