Why is GRIEF So Hard?

Bereavement is one of the greater challenges for all of us.

In this podcast:

• How bereavement, grief and loss affect you emotionally.
• Will the pain of a bereavement go away faster if I ignore it?
• What to do and what not to do in grief.
• What happens to the body in grief?
• How to release grief from the body.

Your next podcast: Whiskers and Tears – Healing from Pet Bereavement

Citations
Coping with Memories of Grief and Loss at Christmas - Lyn Reed
It’s OK that you’re not OK - Megan Devine

Chapters

• 1:59 Coping with grief & bereavement

Transcript

Why is Grief So Hard?

 
Hi, I’m Shelley Treacher from the Stress and Anxiety Podcast.

Today I'll be talking about how to cope with grief.


A tiny tip on dealing with cravings

But first, I want to deal with a very common question that I receive.  As you can imagine, one of the questions I get more often is how to stop eating when in a craving.  It's good to educate yourself on what a craving is. You can hear about that in one of my last podcasts.

But to answer that question this week, as there are many answers to this question, again, you can see all of those in all of my podcasts. Here's a recording of a tip I gave a couple of weeks ago in my Facebook group and on my Instagram page about becoming aware of the tone of voice of your craving.  I want to tell you something I've just noticed,  in case it's helpful.

So, you know that I have a bit of a chocolate addiction.  And, so I've just done a bar exercise class, I'm feeling really good. I'm like, yeah, I've got the rest of the weekend to do whatever I want.  And then I suddenly thought, I've got a little bit of that no sugar chocolate left.  And then, the thing I want to tell you about is the voice that I heard in my head.

And it's not just what it said, but it's the actual tone of the voice. So in my head, I heard, "Shall we have it?"  It was really like, "Let's have it, let's have the chocolate, we could just have it!" It was really like that.

And I thought, That's really interesting. I've never noticed that it has that tone of voice. And I wondered if that's useful for you to think about the tone of voice that your childish demands have.  Because once I'd noticed that, I thought,
"Well,  I'm not responding to that!"

I hope that's helpful.



2:00 - Why is Grief So Hard?
Grief is one of the greater challenges for so many of us.

Grief is one of the emotional side effects of the pandemic

Since the pandemic, there have been so many losses. From the everyday losses in our lives and livelihood to the shocking loss and often horrific death of loved ones related or unrelated to the pandemic. We’ve all got stories of loss from 2020. These are the ones that stick in my mind the most:

The first one is my best friend who lost her husband to cancer just before the pandemic. As you can imagine, she was already traumatised and devastated, and then the pandemic happened. It’s not been easy for her and I know that she’s still struggling. So I’m going to dedicate today’s podcast to her in the hope, (oh I’m getting slightly emotional), that some of this might help her, and help you if you’re in the same position.

The second story that sticks in my mind happened quite early on. You know that I’m a salsa dancer… One of my salsa teachers lost his brother and his father within a short space of time, at the beginning of the pandemic. That was horrifically shocking to me and brought home the fact that this was a deadly virus.

I’m sure you have similar stories. And I would love to hear them. I’m going to be putting a post out on Facebook for you to express how you feel and to tell your stories. Check out my posts on grief here.



How does grief affect you emotionally?

The difficult thing about grief is that in our stiff-upper-lip patriarchal society culture, at least in the UK, we don’t talk about grief. We don’t know how to. But loss is a part of each of our lives. It’s another thing that we cannot escape.

It’s natural and normal to feel pain when someone we love dies, for a long, long time. But society tries to offer us solutions to ‘fix’ this unfixable pain.

Grief is this overwhelming experience that tends to put everything else in perspective. I remember when my mother died, one of the things that I had to cope with (among so many) was telling other relatives and other friends that she died. This was a horrible task that I didn’t want to face, but I did it without anxiety. I just did it.

I also faced some previous conflict with relatives. I have a great aunt who has always been quite critical of me. Somehow, with her,  I became an adult who was more powerful than I had previously felt. I felt like a child with her before. But in this conversation, I could see her vulnerability. She was upset by my mother dying. I could suddenly see all the ways that she acted out and her patterns of behaviour. This just put any anxiety and childish inner insecurity to rest for me. So loss can be very surprising.

I remember this weird experience of feeling I’d joined a new level of existence when my mother died. It’s like I joined a club of people who understood,  and realised that there are some who don’t. It’s palpable, the experience of a close death. Because your world suddenly and irrevocably changes. You can see that in other people. You can see, or I could see, that other people experienced this too, and some didn’t. Not yet, anyway.



Will the pain of a bereavement go away faster if I ignore it?

We often feel shame in grief. It’s ingrained that we think we should be over this after a couple of months. We’ve all heard of Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of grief. These were meant to validate any feelings, but we assume they are a format for grief. However, it’s just not like that.

Grief is a process that may be exhausting. Grief is pain that comes in waves, most likely bigger and longer lasting waves the closer to the death and the closer the person who died was to us.

What’s needed is to create the space to handle or not handle it. It’s something that needs to be nurtured and allowed, whatever it may throw up.

I know to many people listening this will either sound like a relief or completely impossible.  I’m not suggesting that you need to go straight into feeling the pain as soon as your loved one dies. Lord knows I didn’t! I sat and watched TV, ate crisps, and drank wine for three weeks while I didn’t work. I had three weeks off work.

Then I felt a little bit too toxic in my body. My body can’t handle too much of this stuff. So, (and because of my profession) I knew I had to make space for my pain. It was so tough.

The timing when you do this is completely personal.

I moved from feeling that there was no meaning to life, to finding a reason to get up out of bed each day. This might have been the toughest thing that I’ve ever been through. There was a point when I realised that I just didn’t feel like there was a reason to get up.

Rather than try and find ways or reasons to get up, because of my training I knew I had to just go with that and see what happened. There was a tiny part of me that trusted I would find a way through, and that something would change.

And it did. I did. I changed.

One day. I realised that I felt that my reason to get up was having a connection and love with other people. That’s what gave me meaning in life and that’s still what gives me meaning in life! It’s something that I develop every day.

My point here is that I went with it or through it, rather than tried to get out of it or fix it.

How we each cope is unique to all of us.

Generally, we find it difficult to listen to grief, or to know how to cope with bereavement because it’s painful to hear about it.

I’ve spent decades listening to people’s pain and allowing that in my body and experience. I enjoy doing that. It might sound sadistic, but it is something that I get a lot of pleasure from because I know how rewarding it is for me and the other person.

But there are times when even I can’t hear it, and when I find it so painful. Likefor example, if someone I love, like my goddaughter,  if she’s going through something excruciating, I want to just hold her and squash it! That’s an instinct. But it’s not going to help her.



How to release grief from the body

What happens when we try to think about grief or to cope with grief is we go into our brains looking for a solution for how to fix it, how to move beyond it. But we need our limbic system or our peripheral nervous system.

We need to experience it without stopping it or holding it back. Grief is visceral. We need to allow the experience because it’s real. This is the kindest thing that you can do. Not because you’ll get over it or make it better, but because denying it isn’t really what we want either.

I often hear my clients say that it’s infuriating when people deny or won’t talk about the person who has died. My experience is that people often welcome the opportunity to talk about that person. Not by being forced to talk about them, but by having the offer.

So tell your stories of grief. If not to others, to yourself in writing. It’s not that you move through it. It’s more that you learn to hold it, and to be kind enough to yourself that you can hold it.



How long does it take the average person to stop grieving?
 
In bereavement, you don’t have to move on. You can hold the love and grief and still exist in the world. You don’t have to choose between them. Allowing this changes everything. You might see the world differently. Your relationships might be different. They might become more open or unfold.
 
When you feel you can’t let go, let that be okay. People will tell you to let go. I had an experience when I lost a cat once. I was so sad about losing my cat. She was my very dear companion for a long time. I had a shiatsu to try and balance how I felt about it. The first thing the shiatsu woman said was,
 

You’ve got to let go. You’re holding on to the cat’s spirit.

 
I’m not sure whether I believe that, but it infuriated me to hear it. I knew that I couldn’t let go. And then I felt guilty and anxious that I was holding on to my cat and causing her distress! So my advice is not to let go until you’re ready. Let go when you’re ready. It’s unique and up to you when that is.
 
No one can tell you when the right time to let go is. I held on to my Mum’s possessions for over a year. I had quite a large space in my kitchen which wasn’t doing anything. I had all this bric-a-brac and stuff on the floor! My excuse was that I was pretending to think about selling it or making it useful to somebody, but I just couldn’t let it go. I needed to have those pieces of my Mother because it’s all I felt I had of her.
 
So, let go when you’re ready. It takes time.
 
 

What should you do when grieving?

Firstly, there is no ‘should’. Your grieving will be unique to you.

If you’re in early grief; if it hasn’t been long since you lost someone dear to you, you may not be able to focus on the pain or the feelings that you have. So perhaps focus on the mundane. Turn your attention to the everyday tasks that I know you don’t want to do.

If you can’t do anything, focus on your physical self-care. You may not want to do this either. So be realistic with yourself and permit yourself to have small wins. It’s like time is slowed down when you lose someone important to you. So if you manage to wash that day, that’s a win. If you manage to eat a meal, that’s a win. Any small win is progress.

That’s all you have to do. Take it one step at a time, much more slowly than you would expect yourself to do, or than you think everybody else wants you to do.



Feeling alone after a bereavement

Often lying behind some of the grief and the pain of grief is the fear of not coping alone. I know I hear from a lot of clients that they’re afraid of what will happen when they lose their parents. Some talk about what would happen if they lost their partner. I know that behind this might be a fear of coping alone.

My profession helped me because I knew I had to go through feelings. But it would have been very different if I’d been younger. I was 40 when my mother died. Some say that’s quite young, and SHE was quite young. She was 73, (I think that’s young). But 40 was also old enough for me to be able to cope. I knew I had to go through those feelings. I knew I had that coping skill. Ten years earlier, I’m not sure I would have done it.  I would have been much more of a mess for much longer.



What not to do when grieving
 
Often we feel self-blame or guilt towards the one who died.
 
But you could not have done life any differently!
 
I found out that my family had a saying, at 2 am after my mother’s death. My aunt said,
 

Don’t blame yourself. We’ve all got a PhD in hindsight.

 
It’s true. You don’t know that this is going to happen. So you’re not going to behave any differently to how you normally would. You have to learn to forgive yourself for anything that you did or didn’t do. When you feel bad about what or who you are and what you’ve done, that’s where the real depression comes.
 
Another thing that often happens around death is conflict. This often happens in families or friendships. Sometimes relationships change a lot as a result of a death. Mainly because we come into contact with and remind each other of our pain, which we don’t necessarily have the skills to cope with. So, we might be acting out our worst behaviours.
 
Blame is a way to avoid pain. Whether that’s blaming yourself or other people.
 
Irritation is also a sign that you need self-care. So assess which situations make you feel better and which ones make you feel worse. It’s okay to cherry-pick.
 
 

What does grief do to your body?

Other things you might experience are insomnia, agoraphobia, memory loss, or anxiety.

Your food and nutrition intake; your nourishment may be affected. Some people stop eating altogether. In this case it’s a good idea to have quick easy things that are healthy for you lying around the house or in the kitchen, like protein shakes. I found those much more palatable than actual food when I couldn’t eat when my mother died.

You might overeat at this time. You might comfort eat because of all those difficult, painful waves of feeling.

I did eat junk food. Once I got over the initial period of not eating, I ate a lot of junk food. I think this has to be okay; or at least, much more OK than usual. But all the more reason to introduce self-care and kindness, slowly. Gradually begin to question and understand what’s behind your comfort eating.

Another thing that we often have to deal with is occasions and anniversaries. I’m going to give you a quote here from Lynn Reid.
 

Because grief is hidden and we carry it within us, it is tempting to become reclusive and stay in bed over the holiday season. A lot of evidence shows that exercise can stave off sadness or depression. It’s good to get out for a walk, if only for 10 minutes. Then it may be possible to go to the pictures or visit a friend. If we can stick to a plan, there may be a few glimmers of enjoyment during this painful season. Some light in the darkness.

 
I know that sounds impossible to some of you, but the point is that one small win, one small doing something different that might be good for you, often leads you to be able to cope with more and build up slowly.
 
For me, after my mum died, I needed to spend time with other people on Christmas Day. And luckily I had friends who offered a Christmas place for me. Then there was a time, about three or four years later, when I wanted to stay home on my own. I wanted to honour the memory of my mother and to think about spending Christmas with her.
 
Christmas was amazing with my mother. She was so much fun. She used to make me laugh, and we had such a lovely, relaxed day, just me and her. So, I love to remember this. That particular day was one of my best Christmases ever. By a few years in, I was able to remember the good memories, rather than just have shocking waves of pain. I still had pain, but it felt like an honour to remember her.
 
 
Traumatic loss or anxiety

I want to mention trauma and anxiety here, because often, grief and loss happen in a traumatic way and cause you a lot of stress. So, the consequence might be feeling stressed for a long time. In this case, I’d advise you to go back and look at some of the podcasts I’ve done around trauma and anxiety to do some polyvagal exercises to bring your nervous system down. That’s what it needs. It needs to come out of being hyper-vigilant.
 
For example, if something tragic happened, you might now be on the lookout for something else tragic happening. Your brain might be wired to see this wherever you go. Your brain might think it’s protecting you by being aware of what might happen, but the opposite is true. It’s not protecting you at all, it’s just keeping you in a stress state, and possibly making you ill eventually.
 
So breathing, polyvagal exercises and anything that calms your nervous system are important practices to have. But also know that you’re normal for having this experience. Our sense of safety is internal.
 
Grief brings up other grief. So even if you’re listening to this and you haven’t experienced a big loss in the last couple of years, you might feel triggered into remembering the grief that you carry. There are many losses.
 
 

 


 A post shared by Shelley Treacher (@shelleytreacher)

 
 

 

 

Is it normal to grieve being single?

I just want to mention here the grief of being single. If you’ve been single for a while now, what you might be experiencing is grief. The grief of not having a partner to share your life with, the grief of not being seen or heard at the end of each day, or the grief of not being able to practice all these new relationship skills that you’re learning.

Here, I just wanted to normalise that for you, if this is you. Yes, some of what you’re feeling might be reliving trauma of abandonment and rejection, but it’s also normal to feel sad about being single. Part of how you feel about this might be your self-critic. You might be giving yourself a hard time for feeling sad about being single.

So be kind. This grief is every bit as valid as losing someone special to you. Grief is love, and love can be so hard in life, whether we’re in a partnership or on our own. Some of us have nowhere to put that love when we’re in grief.

Loving means losing each other. So understanding, compassion, and validation are a way through the pain.



Finding a way to live with grief

I went through meaninglessness, and stayed with it, and found meaning. My life changed entirely as a result of that. Life may change entirely as a result of grief! It doesn’t have to be better, as is often implied by society, but grief can help us re-evaluate our lives. For me, I re-evaluated my career entirely when my mother died, and that’s actually what led me to the path I’m on today. I was doing too many jobs at once when my mother died. I didn’t believe that I could be a successful therapist. When my mother died, I changed my mind! It was important to me. I wanted to be a successful therapist. I enjoyed the connections that I made through being a therapist. So I put my heart and soul into becoming successful. And I did. So I’m grateful for that.

I can’t say I’ll ever be grateful for losing my mother, but something interesting came out of it, and I know my mother would be so proud of me.



An exercise to release grief
 
Here I’m going to lead you through an exercise. I’m stealing this from a client. I have the absolute privilege of working with some gorgeous therapists and one of them recommended this.
 
Light a candle for yourself or imagine that you’re lighting a candle for yourself. Take your time over lighting and ceremoniously seeing that light come on. This light is for you. This light is for your pain. This light is for your grief.
 
Say to yourself,
 

I light this candle for my grief.

 
This is purely for the sake of holding your grief and honouring it.
 
If this feels impossibly frightening, ask your pain, what would it need to feel safe enough to come out?
 
 

 

I’m going to end on a brief quote by Megan Devine, whose book, It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay, I’d highly recommend. I’ve used this book for this podcast. It’s a beautiful book.
 
She says,
 

I want you to be heard. Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

 
Thank you for listening today. If you have experienced a loss and need grief therapy or bereavement counselling in Bristol or online, please contact Shelley today.

This is Shelley Treacher from the Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast. I’ll see you on Wednesday.



How do you cope with the loss of a pet?

If you have experienced a pet loss listen to my podcast: Whiskers and Tears – Healing from Pet Bereavement