Grief is a strange, strange thing and I've learned a thing or two about it in grieving over the past few months after losing my mom in February. Whether you’ve lost someone you love or you’re grieving a lost job, a failed relationship, a missed opportunity, whatever it may be, this is for you.
The last week and a half have been really rough for me. I’m really missing my Mom and having a lot of feelings of discouragement and frustration in several different aspects of my life. People talk a lot about the stages of grief, but in my experience the roller coaster of emotions doesn’t happen in a neat and tidy succession. Some days I feel great, I’m thinking about happy memories and I’m generally keepin’ on keepin’ on. The very next day, I could be completely paralyzed with sadness and anger and get absolutely nothing done, only to feel even worse about myself.
And I have found one of the most frustrating things about grief to be other people. People move on, and fast. And you can’t really blame them - the World is still spinning and we can’t just all stop when something terrible happens. Obviously. Otherwise we’d be permanently stopped, because shit happens, like, all the time. It’d be the never ending game of freeze tag, foot cramps and charlie horses galore.
But back to you, and your grief. There’s a general feeling in the immediate aftermath of any trauma, that people will be there for you. That they’ll have your back, that they’ll get you through. And what I’ve learned is that to rely on this is to hold yourself in a pattern some type of self torture indeed. Because they won’t. People will stop calling, they’ll stop asking, they’ll stop talking about it, they’ll start treating you as they normally would again and generally assuming that if you’re not spending your days sobbing, hey, you must be doing pretty good, and coping pretty well.
They don’t do this because they’re trying to. They don’t do it because they want to, or because they don’t care. This is human nature in a go go go society and when it comes down to it, there’s only so much time in a day and we all only have so much energy.
As a side note, if you’re lucky in terms of support system, there will hopefully be a couple or maybe a few people in your life who break the norm. They’ll be there for the long haul, they’ll be proactive and do things without you needing to ask - because of course you don’t even truly know what you need, so hopefully you have some people who will just try. And maybe they’ll make you feel better some days and some days they won’t, but at least their effort will make you feel like they’re truly there.
But unfortunately, even with these people, the fact is everyone experiences grief in their own unique way that no other person will ever truly understand no matter how hard they try, and so, you need to be willing to trust yourself. Trust yourself to trust your gut, and do what you need to do to make it through, whether you think what you’re doing will make sense to other people or not. Because grief is not a thing that has a beginning, middle and an end, especially when it comes to grieving someone you’ve lost. It’s now an element of your life that you will cope with forever, so you need to make sure you take care of yourself and figure out a way to find feelings of acceptance, and adjustment and happiness with your new normal.
It’s really strange that I just happened to read two books in perfect timing, one I finished and one I’m still working on. I’ve had both these books on my Kindle for like 6 months and never read them and all of the sudden during my rough patch this past week I decided to pick them back up and give them another shot.
One is called “The Body Keeps the Score.” Now this book is based around a lot of science and research that has evolved surrounding clinically diagnosed post traumatic stress disorder, but many of the findings can be applied to the way people respond to trauma whether or not they’ve been affected to the point of being diagnosed with PTSD. I’m not finished with this book yet - it’s a slow read for me. But it’s really interesting to read about the body’s physical response to emotions that follow trauma. And it’s so crazy that the very same week I really started getting into this book, I had some of these experiences myself.
Last week I went for my normal Wednesday evening workout and I had to stop halfway through. I felt weak like I was going to pass out or throw up. Everyone’s normal reaction is to ask if you have eaten, and I had eaten completely normally that day, same as always. What it was, was the beginning of my body telling me I just needed to stop. My face broke out, I had all sorts of symptoms of illness, I felt completely exhausted. I proceeded to spend the next 3 days pretty much doing nothing but staring off into space, crying or sleeping - and, reading. And attempting to “nurse” myself back to health. If you don’t consciously remind yourself that sometimes you need to take a step back, your body will do it for you, and it was just insane to experience this as I was reading the science behind it. The book is really interesting and is supposed to move from the scientific aspects into all sorts of research about different coping mechanisms and ways to take care of yourself, so I’m looking forward to that, and from what I’ve read so far, I’d highly recommend it to pretty much anyone. It’s a practical read for life. You can find it here: http://amzn.to/2twPT92
The other book I just finished is one that I tried to start multiple times over the past 6 months and just couldn’t get into to be honest. I found the writing slow and repetitive, maybe that’s just the writer in me but I found it incredibly hard to get past the fact that I kept thinking, “did I just read in 7 pages what could have been said in 1?” But, in my days last week where I was a non-functioning human, the only thing I could seem to do was read, and I read “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz in about 4 days. The book is based on Toltec teachings, and essentially says you should life by four agreements; those agreements being be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions and always do your best.
He of course in the book goes into more detail about exactly what he means and how to accomplish those things. But I have found that almost immediately after reading the book and attempting to look at certain situations that were really taking a toll on me, through the lens the book suggests, I started feeling almost immediate relief. Like don’t take things personally for example and what I was talking about earlier with regard to other people and how they will treat your grief as time goes on. This one principle has helped me look at this whole experience in a whole new light and I would really recommend it - again to pretty much everyone, but especially anyone who is currently coping with grief, because I found it to be incredibly enlightening and comforting when not much else was doing the trick. You can find that one here: http://amzn.to/2txhVB8
Do some reading, and don’t be afraid to take care of yourself, because no one can do a better job of that than you, and know that your best is only whatever you can do in a given day.
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I also did a YouTube video on this topic if you're interested in checking it out, it can be found here:
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