Grief – Page 5 – Andrea Arthur Owan

Incomplete Grief: Part II

HAS ANYONE ever said to you that you don’t seem as though you’ve finished grieving yet? Have you ever felt that way years after a loss?

Perhaps what they really mean to say is that you’re experiencing incomplete grief.

What is the real goal of grieving?

Many of us think the goal of grieving is to experience deep, painful emotions and finally arrive at the point where they aren’t as noticeable or don’t bother us as much as they did when the loss was fresh. A point where we feel as though we can get back to some kind of normal life.

But is that really the point of grieving?

It is. And it isn’t.

The point and task of grieving are to first grieve, feel all those emotions, and then complete the relationship with all the unfinished emotions you had when the relationship ended or the loss occurred.

You can think of it as unfinished business that niggles your brain and causes frustration or regret.

While grieving occurs automatically, completing the grief—or grief completion—results from specific actions you take to make that happen.

Well-meaning but bad grief advice—

You’ve probably heard someone say, “It’s best not to dwell on the past.” Or “Better let bygones be bygones.”

They sound like good practices, but in the long run they can be dangerous.

Why?

Because the human mind functions in a very different and specific way than the human heart. And vice versa.

The human mind tends to hang onto and replay what ifs—what could or should have been different, better or more. And those different, better and more thoughts can devour us emotionally, year after year after year.

It’s natural for us to do this. And where grief is concerned, it’s better to go along with that persistent brain, answer those questions, and take some steps to complete the thought and the revelations that come with it.

Incomplete grief can be about good things too—

As the experts at The Grief Recovery Institute note:

“Incomplete grief exists when there are any undelivered communications of an emotional nature.”

With that definition, you can easily see how incomplete grief can come from both good and bad events. They can be positive or negative.

For example: Let’s say you received a gift from a special friend and written and mailed a thank you note. But the morning after mailing the card, you learn your friend has died of a stroke. Besides the pain of losing a good friend, what feelings would you have about the loss?

One thought probably replaying over and over in your mind is that you wish your friend had known just how much you appreciated her gift. And now she’ll never know. Something has been left unfinished. And it hurts.

What if the last thing your spouse heard before driving off to work and getting killed in an auto accident was your snippy comment about something he did that morning that irked you? You would likely chastise yourself repeatedly over your unloving last words. Replay what you should have said to him; wish you could have apologized.

As Grief Recovery Institute experts point out:

“As a generality, undelivered emotional communications are going to be about things that we wish we had said or done, or about things we wish we had not said or done.”

And they’re also about something else, like the things we wish the other person had said or done, or not said or done.

But they can be about good things too. And it’s important to replay those.

Consider the happy scenario, where you share a kiss and a long hug with your spouse before you both depart for work. Later that day you learn he’s been killed in a freak work accident. Along with your heartache, you replay in your mind your last embrace, your loving goodbye, his joyful wave to you as he drives down the driveway. Those thoughts make you smile and bring gladness to your broken heart.

The reality of life is that we never know when our last encounters with someone will occur, and it’s more than likely that every loss brings with it unfinished details—words you wanted or planned to say, discussions you wanted to have, plans you were in the midst of making. Not procrastination but planned for events and get-togethers.

These types of things can leave you with a feeling of incompleteness in a relationship loss.

When others hinder your grief completion journey—

You may experience incomplete grieving when others cause or exaggerate your incompleteness.

Ever know someone who won’t allow you to express meaningful things to them? Your communication with them remains shallow or frustrating. We can’t force anyone to listen to us, and their refusal to hear or listen can leave us with incomplete feelings about them and the relationship.

Sometimes we’re fearful of being honest and saying things we know are emotionally loaded. We fear another person’s reaction, or their misunderstanding of your intentions.

We want to wait for the right time, but it never comes. And death ends the possibility of it ever coming.

We lose our nerve and never say what we need to say to the other person.

These events can leave us with incomplete emotions.

I can give you a personal example in my life that I still find frustrating. An event that left me with incomplete emotions.

For a reason I don’t understand, someone I considered a precious friend and loved like a sister decided “the season of our friendship had come to an end.”

That’s how she put it in the email she sent me. Not in person. Not in a phone call. She wouldn’t talk to me about why, explain her reasons, or tell me what I might have done to hurt her to cause that decision. I even asked her so I could apologize for how I might have hurt her.

She did tell me that we hadn’t communicated that much since she moved across the country, so I did get an inkling that she felt that, to remain good friends, I didn’t meet her frequent communication expectations.

It’s been a year since that happened, and I still experience incomplete grieving over it. My heart still cries about it. I miss her. But I feel as though she tied my hands and made my grieving difficult. I don’t think she acted loving or fair toward me.

And that makes me angry.

I feel as though her actions robbed me of the opportunity to be complete.

But her actions do not need to become the final say in this friendship ending. I need to heal, completely. So I’m going through the actions I need to take to complete that grieving, the actions I’m going to teach you in this incomplete grieving series. Actions I’ve taken before that helped me complete the grieving process and close open, festering wounds that took their toll on not only my mind but my body.

Goal of complete grieving—

Your goal is to discover those undelivered emotional communications occurring in both minor and major life events.

It’s the uncovering of all the undelivered communications, both large and small, that have emotional consequences for you. And it’s likely there is a heap of these undelivered communications that need unearthing and examination.

Where my former friend is concerned, I’m going to be exploring all of the unfinished communications and feelings I had when the relationship ended. I’m going to detail how the way she ended it makes me feel.

In the process I’m going to take into account the numerous overwhelming burdens in her life: the recent and unexpected death of a loved one; the illness of a beloved relative; the serious accident she incurred a year earlier that seemed to leave her mentally foggy and fearful of life.

In this specific instance, it’s a combination of juggling truth with love and mercy.

And in the process, I can’t tell myself I shouldn’t feel the way I feel. I already feel a certain way, have experienced certain feelings. Telling myself I shouldn’t feel them isn’t going to make them go away. Examining them, figuring out what to do with them, and then doing it will ease the burden and complete my grief.

And that’s the end goal.

Invitation—

Can you identify any relationships that ended by separation or death that still feel incomplete? If so, start jotting down those happy, sad, or unfinished events you wanted to continue, wanted to fix, or wanted to finish. You’ll use those in a future post to be able to complete your grieving.

NEXT WEEK we’ll dig deeper into incomplete grieving: how holding onto feelings may be stifling the grief completion process, and learning to express the feelings that will help us heal.

Until then, don’t be afraid to feel those feelings, and don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t have them.

Blessings,

Andrea

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Incomplete Grief: An Introduction

A LOT of people ask how long grief will last, when will it finally be over.

When will the pain end?

How we answer those questions depends upon how we approach grief and the recovery process caused by the grieving experience. The recovery process should lead to completion of grief.

How we handle the fallout of loss and the accompanying pain is what’s important.

Because if we don’t handle the loss well, it can lead to incomplete grief.

And that’s the important subject we’ll be exploring for the next few weeks.

What’s really behind all that grief pain?

When you’re deep into grief, unspeakable pain is your constant companion. No matter what you do, it seldom lets up. You just know the pain is never going to go away; you’re going to have to live with this the rest of your life.

If someone tries to tell you things will eventually get better, you don’t see how that’s possible. You don’t believe them. And you may be angered that they even made the comment.

It’s true, though. Things do and will get better—if you can identify the sources of emotional energy contributing to all that pain.

While there are some deaths—like grandparents, friends, and even siblings—that we can rebound better and more quickly from, other deaths leave us paralyzed and stuck.

The key is asking the right questions to identify what’s causing the emotions and then providing answers to those questions.

Key grief recovery questions—

We all look back over relationships and ask ourselves internal questions about them. The answers can help us complete the grief healing process.

One key question to ask yourself is:

What makes this death or loss different from others?

Was there something about the relationship that made it special? Was there “unfinished business” that will never be completed?

And we can go further with other important questions, like:

Are there things you wished would have been different about the relationship?
What could have been better?
Was there something more you would have liked to see fulfilled?

In my case, in the death of my daughter during an emergency delivery in the fifth month of pregnancy, I had a lot of emotions.

I’d spent five months with my daughter as she grew in my body, feeling her move. And I was seriously ill with morning sickness soon after the beginning of the pregnancy—so ill I couldn’t keep food down and had to undergo home IV therapy and intra-muscular anti-nausea treatment shots.

But I recovered from that and was just starting to enjoy the second trimester when tragedy struck, and our precious Victoria had to be taken too soon to survive outside my womb.

For a little over five months, I’d focused on my growing baby, wondering about what the baby would be like. Wondering if the little one was a boy or girl. Dreaming. Making plans. Mentally designing the nursery.

Then one night it all abruptly ended. My dreams and hopes were snatched away.

One of the things I wrote on the death announcements I sent out was: “Our dreams are certainly going to miss her—“

And that’s where I could have started the grief recovery process, writing down what I wished had been different, better or more.

Of course, I wish it didn’t turn out the way it did. That Victoria wouldn’t have died, or I would have been able to carry her further into the pregnancy and given her a better chance at life.

I wish I had better medical care. That the doctors would have responded to my concerns and to the concern of the ultrasound technician who picked up the problem during an examination. I wish they had been more concerned about the baby and me than the money they were trying to make and save.

I wish I could have had more time with her after her birth.

Victoria’s death had abruptly ended my hopes, dreams and expectations for our life together, as mother and daughter, and for our family’s life as a foursome. It killed my dreams of having a little girl to dress in frilly dresses and hair pinned into pigtails.

It’s important to remember that all these questions are critical to explore because hopes, dreams, and expectations happen in all relationships—even relationships that struggled or fell short; the ones that weren’t so great.

When we speak of grief, and grief recovery, we need to use these grief recovery terms:

“different, better, more;” and

“broken hopes, dreams, and expectations.”

They need to become part of our grief recovery language.

Communicating your grief—

When you’re first thrown into the grieving process, the emotions and myriad of them seem overwhelming and suffocating. You don’t know what to do with all the painful, sometimes incoherent thoughts.

In order to heal and recover, we need to be able to identify and communicate what’s going on within us. What the source is behind those complex feelings and thoughts.

When we do that, we gain control and reclaim a sense of purpose in life.

We can say to ourselves: I know how I feel. Now what do I need to do about it?

And that’s what we’ll be exploring in the next several weeks of posts.

What we can do about those feelings.

Invitation—

Is there any grief you feel you haven’t worked through or fully recovered from? Would it help to ask these questions we’ve covered today:

What feelings am I experiencing about this grief and why?

What makes this loss different from others I’ve experienced?

What do I wish would have been different?

What could have been better?

What did I want more of?

I encourage you to start exploring those questions and jotting down answers to them. You might be surprised at what you learn, and what relief you gain from the process and learning.

I encourage you to explore and ask yourself these questions. To become actively engaged in moving forward into grief recovery.

NEXT WEEK we’ll look at incomplete grief, what it is and how to avoid living with it.

Until then, remember that the grief process is normal, and that there can be a full life on the other side of it.

Blessings,

Andrea

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Does Time Heal All Wounds?

I’M WILLING TO BET you’ve heard this saying before: Time heals all wounds.

But does it, really?

And does time heal grief, or the pain that accompanies it?

Or your question might be: how long does grief last?

While time does, eventually, alter the wound, we must be careful not to confuse time healing a wound with a wound healing within time.

Time alone and on its own does not heal a wound, or grief.

So what does time do?

While time does reduce the immediate pain associated with a loss, we can’t expect all pain to subside when a certain amount of time—a certain, pre-set number of days—passes.

But before we go deeper, let’s back up and get a quick overview of grief.

Anatomy of a grief—

A loss, especially a divorce or death of a loved one—can produce an overwhelming amount of pain—both emotional and physical—that causes an extreme amount of emotional energy.

This kind of loss causes a traumatic effect on the body—physically, emotionally and spiritually. And when it occurs, all components of our bodies are affected, and they need healing. Healing that can occur at different rates.

As the shock and its numbness start to wear off, they’re replaced by a reality of the loss. While that might seem, on the grief continuum, a lesser stress to the body, it can be just as traumatic.

Fear often sets in. The fear of never having the same family structure, of never being able to see the deceased person again, of all your dreams being shattered, of this new reality being permanent.

And fear puts a lot of stress on the body.

After the reality of my dad’s death set in, I started experiencing fear that evolved into panic attacks. When my mind realized the finality of his passing—that he was really gone and never coming back—it rebelled and panicked. It took a lot of meditation, breathing exercises and down time to heal from that stage.

But my sadness did not necessarily lessen because of the passage of time. And trying to keep busy enough so that more time would pass and I would heal more would not have been a good prescription.

Ten years later I still think of things I’d love to share with him, decisions and questions I’d like to have his input in. I’d love to hear his laugh, his corny jokes (he thought he was pretty funny), and watch him do crafts with my husband and boys.

The fact that those things won’t ever happen saddens me. But the acute pain is no longer there. Just the melancholy of the reality. And there is some lightheartedness at the joyful memories of those corny jokes and crafty gatherings.

A stark view of our society and grief—

It’s very telling, and depressing, that companies are likely to give you more time off for a broken bone or surgery recovery than they would for bereavement. Six weeks versus three days, usually.

What does that say about our priorities?

Six weeks to heal a broken bone.

Three days to heal a broken heart.

Just how, following the death of a loved one, do you regain your equilibrium in three days?

Why do we expect grieving people to instantly recover from such devastating blows, such injury to their hearts and every aspect of their lives?

What does it mean to “get over” a death?

You may have seen the list put out my psychological or sociology associations putting time limit expectations on certain stressors and losses.

Often they’ll say that the death of a relative or friend takes two years to get over, and the death of a parent or spouse takes a year. And for the parents who’ve lost children?

They might tell you that you never really do recover from the death of a child.

But what do “recover” and “get over” mean?

Getting over seems to imply “forgetting.” Which we all know we could never do about anyone close to us dying. Especially a child.

And just because someone may still feel sadness, (I know I still do twenty-seven years later about the death of my daughter, Victoria), does not mean that person “hasn’t gotten over” the loss.

Like feeling happy, sadness is a normal part of life. Being sad years later shouldn’t be used as an indictment against someone who expresses it.

And when you feel as though society has put an arbitrary number—time limit—on grieving, you start feeling abnormal if you haven’t met that standard.

Time is not an active force with the power to heal. Time itself doesn’t have the power to do anything.

We’ve got to bury the notion that if you just wait long enough that you’ll be fixed.

The danger behind thinking you’ll never get over it—

There is a danger in thinking or believing you’ll never get over someone or something. Why?

Because when you believe you’ll never get over the death of a loved one, you convince yourself to stop trying to recover. You may even stop living. After all, why bother going on if you’re never going to feel better than you do today, drowning in this horrible gutting pain?

Using different words and descriptions to bring healing—

Instead of telling ourselves, and others, that we or they won’t ever get over something, we need to change our language.

We won’t ever forget our loved one, but if we take an active role in our grief recovery, we will be able to hang on to our fond memories without having to worry about those memories turning painful over and over again.

After our recovery and healing completion, we’ll be able to return to a fruitful life of meaning. And although our life will be much different, it can—and will—be good and enjoyable.

It won’t look like it immediately after the loss, but when you take active steps to recover—just as you would after letting a broken bone set and heal—you will be able to move forward.

Yet even with a broken bone you don’t return to “normal” as soon as the splint or cast is removed. You’re likely fatigued throughout the healing process. The body requires extra nutrients and sleep to heal properly. Disuse causes the muscle under the cast to atrophy. When the cast or splint is removed, you need to recondition the limb or joint, regain the muscle strength and coordination that was lost.

That process can take a long time and progress in fits and starts—two feet forward and then one foot backward. It’s a day-by-day re-assessment. And other factors can hamper your healing.

The same is true for the emotional and spiritual damage and recovery we face after a loss. We shouldn’t expect ourselves to jump right back into life. If we do, we’re likely to re-injure ourselves, or set our recovery back. In my exuberance to return to physical activity, I’ve been guilty of pushing the physical limits too soon and setting myself back.

And I was guilty of doing the same thing when trying to “recover” from Victoria’s death. It didn’t work out too well.

I thought if I stayed busy enough, and enough time passed, I’d “get over it,” and life would resume without me having to work on healing.

If I’d only been more patient with myself, more understanding. More in tune with my emotions. I would have healed better and more fully.

Don’t rank your relationships when grieving—

Since every relationship is unique, it’s impossible—and unwise—to try to rank their importance and attach a grief-meter to them.

I’ve heard stories of young people who had nannies while they were growing up and became more emotionally attached to their nannies than their busy parents. When the nanny dies, they’re devastated—more devastated than when their parents die.

The nannies weren’t blood relation, but they might as well have been.

Blood is not always thicker than water, nor does it always mean a closer, more significant and meaningful relationship.

When we grieve, we grieve our special and unique relationship with the person who died.

You set a trap for yourself when you try to compare or rank your loss.

Every loss is different. Every loss is individual. Every loss needs its own healing prescription.

Wrap up—

Try to resist the urge to think you have to recover from grief in a certain amount of time; that time will heal all your wounds.

Doing so leaves you vulnerable to not completing your grief process, of expecting more. Of getting burned out and depressed over your perceived timeframe failure.

Everyone’s different. Every grief is different. Every loss requires unique healing and an individual road to recovery.

Don’t try to follow or adhere to someone else’s road.

Additional Resources—

For more information on grief and the healing and timetable process and fallacy, see these helpful sites:

Grief Recovery Institute

Sue Ryder

WebMD

Invitation—

Is there a grief you’re struggling with right now that you’ve put a healing timeframe on? What can you do to change your view or the limitations and expectations you’ve put on yourself. Or others?
Is there a grief from your past you haven’t fully healed from, that someone rushed you through?
Are you still experiencing sadness from memories of a loved one who passed on years ago and thought those feelings were “abnormal” or indicative of a grief not completed? Can you now recognize those emotions as normal and good, for the memory of your loved one?

NEXT WEEK we’ll start the process of moving from grief into recovery. You won’t want to miss this series. I know you’ll find it helpful for any grief you still need to recover from, grief that didn’t recover well, and for anyone near you struggling with grief.

See you then!

Andrea

*Some material in this post was found in Grief Recovery Institute resources.

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, award-winning inspirational writer and senior-ordained chaplain. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

COVID Grieving: Emotions, Anticipatory Grief, Myths and Healing

What’s tailgating on your COVID-19 fear? Fear of infection? Fear of the future and unknown? Fear of loss and business failure? Maybe it’s vaccine fear and the government making it mandatory.

Whatever fear you’re feeling, it may not actually be fear.

It may be grief.

Grief may be the real villain lurking behind your emotions and uncertainty. And it may be accompanied by classic grief symptoms of numbness, sadness, anger, and loneliness. Not just the natural loneliness that accompanies extended lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, but the loneliness that tells you no one in the world has ever experienced what you’re going through and doesn’t have a clue what you’re suffering.

Tune in to your emotions—

Why is it so important to recognize your feelings and mine deeply into your heart and soul to discover what’s causing them?

Because if you don’t, you risk doing yourself physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual harm.

Without recognition and proper healing completion, you can be left with lifelong emotional and physical side effects.

The side effects of trauma.

Have you ever considered that what you’ve been experiencing for the last several months is trauma?

It is.

And most of us have experienced it to a certain degree.

Digging deeper into grief—

There’s no way around it. Grief is uncomfortable, even physically painful.

And it encompasses three elements in your life: emotions, spirituality, and intellect, in that order.

First, you’re drenched with emotions, some of which may come and go.

Then your spirit is affected. The part of you that holds your emotions and character. The deepest part of you feels the grief. The pain you feel in the pit of your gut and heart.

And finally your intellect comes around to recognition and dealing with all of it. Confronting the reality of it and figuring out how to adjust.

In the beginning, because it craves a nice familiar balance, the brain will naturally rebel. It feels the discord and fights against it. The more you rehearse something new and make it “normal” the more normal and familiar it becomes to the brain.

What grief can look like in a life-changing pandemic—

According to David Kessler, co-author with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross on the book: On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss, and author of the new book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, it’s important to acknowledge your grief so you can manage it.

He also believes you can find meaning in it.

Let’s look at what’s been happening in most states around the country during this coronavirus crisis and how it’s affected you.

You’re likely feeling a number of different griefs.

The world around you has changed, maybe dramatically. There are things you feel you’ve lost.

Even though you know this restricted living is temporarily, it probably doesn’t feel like it. You wonder how long it’s going to go on. Worse yet, what if it never stops?

You know things will change—maybe like having to mask up on every airplane flight from now on and having to submit to temperature checks before being allowed to enter a terminal—but at this point you really don’t know all the changes, or how they’ll affect you.

Then there’s that loss of “normal,” and the economic toll—to you, your city, state and country—and the loss of close contact, the connection you enjoyed with others at your weekly girlfriends’ night out or worship service, where you hugged and chatted and sang—loudly.

You might be feeling a loss of safety—what if the guy that accidentally bumped into you at the grocery store breathed COVID-19 viruses on you, after he coughed? You run home and anxiously hunker down through 14 days of self-quarantine. Every day you wake up making an internal assessment of how you feel—feverish, chills, sore throat, body aches, cough, breathing.

And that loss of safety seems to be universal, or collective—people staying six feet away from others and looking suspiciously at anyone who missteps that distance. Or maybe spitting on someone who does, as one shopper did to another in a store recently. Nice. That makes everyone feel safer, doesn’t it?

As Mr. Kessler pointed out for a recent Harvard Business Review article , the stages of grief he and Ms. Kubler-Ross arrived at aren’t linear and may not happen in order. And you may go through your grief process without experiencing all of them.

He also gives a great parallel construction of the grief stages to this pandemic:

“There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us.
There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities.
There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks, everything will be better, right?
There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end.
And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.”

When you arrive at the acceptance stage, you can take steps to manage your response and feel as though you have more control than you thought you did over the situation. Well, at least over your life.

This, Kessler says, is where your power lies. This is where you can gain some control.

But there is another grief you need to be on the lookout for. A grief that can blow this situation out of proportion for your brain and emotions.

It’s called anticipatory grief.

What is anticipatory grief?

Several of my friends have experienced what we call anticipatory grief. It’s really anxiety, an unhealthy state of grief where you imagine the most horrible things that could happen. It’s where we see the worst-case scenarios and allow those scenarios to overwhelm our minds and bodies.

Kessler believes anticipatory grief is when our minds are being protective, and he gives some advice on how to manage that kind of grief.

“Our goal is not to ignore those images or try to make them go away — your mind won’t let you do that and it can be painful to try [to] force it. The goal is to find balance in the things you’re thinking. If you feel the worst image taking shape, make yourself think of the best image. We all get a little sick and the world continues. Not everyone I love dies. Maybe no one does because we’re all taking the right steps. Neither scenario should be ignored but neither should dominate, either.”

So it’s not a matter of trying to ignore these worst-case scenario thoughts, but to ask your brain some questions about what the reality is and the odds that those horrible things will really come to pass.

Bring yourself from the future back into the reality of the present.

Because that’s what you have control over.

As we’ve talked about in the last several posts, note your emotions, don’t get carried away in them. Note why you think you’re feeling them. Breathe and meditate. Use your senses to re-stabilize yourself—your surroundings, your present reality. Lean into what you do know.

Take control over what you can control. What others do or don’t do is out of your control. Don’t expend precious energy on thinking about it.

And practice compassion, on yourself and others. Frustrations are long, and tempers are short. People can overreact. Life is hard. We’re depleted of energy. Now is a time for all of us to extend great compassion and mercy toward one another.

And while we’re recognizing and honoring our emotions and tuning into our grief, we need to remember there are myths about grief we want to be aware of, and avoid getting caught up in.

Grief Myths—

As we talked about last week, from an early age we learn myths about grief. We learn those myths by watching others mishandle their grief, or we are taught those myths by parents, family members, friends and spiritual counselors who also learned them while growing up and believe they’re the right way to respond.

But these myths can stunt grief healing and grief completion.

Last week we looked at the three myths: Don’t Feel Bad, Replace the Loss, and Grieve Alone.

Today we’ll look at Be Strong and Keep Busy. In two weeks, we’ll cover the most well known myth:

Time Heals All Wounds.

Be Strong Myth (#4)—

Ever heard anyone say, “You have to be strong for her”? It’s especially true if there’s a death in the family, or a grave illness.

Or maybe you’ve heard someone say it to a child when a parent dies: “You have to be strong for your mom.”

When we say things like that, or try to act strong when we’re not feeling it, we teach others that it’s best to tough something out rather than be realistic and honoring of our emotions and reality.

And we teach children habits that will hinder them in life.

When we encourage children to become the family caretaker, they feel as though they need to be the responsible “strong” one, and save everyone else in the family.

Overnight, they try to transform themselves from children into adults.

The experts at the Grief Recovery Institute claim this is probably the most damaging myth, and behavior, of all.

“In all our years of working with grieving people, one of the most common and difficult-to-overcome problems is the child who was cast in or adopted the role of taking care of everyone else. It is one of the most heart-wrenching examples of loss-of-childhood experiences. While we are able to help people get their hearts back, we cannot give them their childhoods back.”

How many of you feel as though you lost your childhood because you felt you had to be strong for the family, because no one else in the clan was behaving like an adult, so you had to?

I know I felt as though much of my childhood was robbed because of these underlying reasons.

I was taught to be tough, to be strong, to never display emotion. And because of my parents’ relationship with one another, I constantly felt like the intermediary, the fixer. For so many years (decades) I was angry, and I didn’t know why. A couple of years ago the light bulb in my brain went on, and I knew why.

I’d been forced to grow up before my time.

So what does real strength look like?

The Grief Recovery Institute explains:

“Real strength looks like this:

The natural demonstration of emotions.

Saying and doing what is emotionally accurate.”

What kinds of results does having and demonstrating real strength give you?

“[It] teaches…how to communicate feelings, not to bury them.

[It] sustains energy for other tasks.”

Proper expressions of emotions free up energy to deal with life.

When you cling to and bury feelings and don’t express them properly, they get improperly expressed through explosive behavior or implosive destructive actions.

Myth # 5: Keep Busy

Have you ever asked anyone recovering from the death of a loved one how they’re doing and receive the response: “I’m keeping busy”?

You might nod your heading knowingly and say, “I suppose that’s a good thing.”

But is it?

Keeping busy can be emotionally and physically exhausting.

After my daughter’s death, I either couldn’t stay busy enough or sleep enough. Either way I didn’t have to face my pain, think about my sorrow, or address the future.

I thought I was doing pretty well with my grief, being and doing constructive things.

I wasn’t.

Instead, I was avoiding the unfinished emotions attached to her physical death and the death of my hopes and dreams.

I distracted myself from pain and buried my emotions deep within my soul.

My husband did the same thing, immediately returning to work and distracting himself in it.

But grief emotions are powerful forces that don’t retreat or disappear quietly or without a fight.

When I lay down at night, the memories, emotions and physical pain swamped me like a tidal wave. And when they did, I put myself to sleep with the post-op painkillers my doctor prescribed. Until I ran out and he wouldn’t prescribe anymore of them.

Ever hear anyone talk about an emotional event they had that occurred twenty, thirty, forty or more years ago, and it sounds as though it happened yesterday?

Those people are the ones that haven’t really recovered from the event. They’re still reliving it.

As I’ve counseled before, please don’t rush yourself back into “normal” life after a traumatic event—like a death. And don’t let others try to rush you back there. There’s no “back there” to return to. You’re facing a new reality. You’re mind and body reel from it and reject it.

That numb feeling is normal. And it’s good for the overall recovery you need to go through. It protects us from dying of broken hearts, which some people do following the death of a spouse. Our brains, hearts, spirits and bodies need to adjust. And they need time to do that.

And each loss is unique to the individual. What’s helpful for one person may not be for another. And as much as time is a consideration, there is no recovery timeline a grieving person needs to be put on.

Above all, make sure a grieving person is allowed to share what they’re feeling. They need to be heard, and we need to listen.

If you or others are not heard in grief, then you risk burying emotions and developing behavior problems to combat the energy those emotions need to express and displace.

Then it winds up resembling a behavior problem rather than the grief problem it really is.

At this point a grieving person doesn’t need intellectual answers (those will come later, and they’ll figure them out), they need to heal their broken heart.

And that requires a lot of things.

Time isn’t necessarily one of them.

We’ll cover the time myth two weeks from now, on June 15.

Next week I’ll be providing a special COVID-break post.

I think we all need it.

Invitation:

Continue to keep an emotions journal, noting what emotions you’re feeling and what triggers them. Again, don’t judge them. Just note them.
How are you doing with COVID grief right now? At what grief “stage” would you say you’re functioning at—denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance? Or are you moving between them?
What do you need to do to move through the process and come to terms with your losses and life changes? What are you doing to keep yourself physically healthy in the process?
Have you experienced anticipatory grief, or are you in the middle of it, letting it cause you anxiety and paralyzing fear? How can you balance that kind of grief with reality and recognizing the control you do have over your life?
What grief myths have you learned that have stifled your healing? What myths do you need to let go of in order to complete your grief healing process?

Until next week, journal your emotions, identify any anticipatory grief you’re experiencing, control what you can control (and rejoice over it!), and allow yourself to heal—without needing to be strong or keeping busy.

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, chaplain, and award-winning inspirational writer. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Coping with COVID: Emotions and Grief Relief

Do you feel as though you’re being overwhelmed by your emotions and are barely able to cope with the COVID crisis that’s unhinged your world?

If you answer “yes” you’re not alone. Even the most “together” of us are experiencing a whirlwind of emotions. Emotions we don’t understand and are struggling to handle.

Do any of these feel familiar?

Anger
Fear
Isolation
Disillusionment
Anxiety
Sadness
Self-blame
Guilt
Apprehension
Suspicion
Hyper-vigilance
Scared
Separation
Depression
Pain (physical)
Numbness
Doubt
Dread

All of the above are classically categorized as “negative” emotions.

What about any “positive” emotions you might be feeling? Like:

Joy
Peace
Gratitude
Understanding
Compassion
Motivation (to help others)
Trust (in faith, family, friends)
Deepening faith
Generosity
Empathy
Conviction
Patience
Kindness

Importance of validating Emotions—

You’ve likely heard when you were a child that there are “good” emotions and “bad” emotions, or at least gotten that impression based on something a parent or family member said or implied.

As a grief recovery chaplain, I’m going to tell you that it’s a travesty and healing hindrance to label them that way.

Why?

Because emotions just are. They’re feelings. And feelings aren’t good or bad. They are normal reactions to outside or internal stimuli—like death, loss, change, trauma, physical illness or injury, and shock.

When we label emotions good or bad, we often try to dismiss them or accentuate them. Other people may help us in that dismissing or accentuating (playing into) process; and they may shut us down from sharing or expressing them. But I’m going to encourage you!

Validate your feelings even if no one else will.

When you validate your feelings, you’re better able to identify those emotions and the root cause for them, evaluate them, and avoid being hampered by them or stuck in them.

We validate our emotions without letting them rule our lives.

Emotions are innocent. We must try to avoid making value statements about them, and thinking or making value statements about the emotions others experience.

Because that’s where things tend to go wrong—when we either demean our emotion or get stuck in an emotion and can’t let go of it.

Your varying emotions will come and go. That’s normal. Having an emotion doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.

But they can overtake you in a variety of ways.

And dismissing or hanging on to them can cause short and long-term problems.

Emotions and Physical Symptoms—

Emotions, and the mind-body neurochemical reaction to them, often trigger physical symptoms—headaches, backaches, stomach issues, sleep disturbances, inability to concentrate, allergies, asthma, and a host of other ailments.

The mind and body are really interconnected, and rarely does something happen in one system that doesn’t cause a chain reaction in the other. Perceived external or internal threats can take over every cell in our body.

Who hasn’t experienced a situation where abrupt fear hasn’t caused our heart rate to skyrocket, our blood pressure to sore, and our breathing to race?

It’s the old term many of you are familiar with: psychosomatic. Brain and body.

And many of the stresses we’re experiencing right now in this COVID19 crisis can dredge up emotions from old wounds and events we thought we’d healed from or moved past.

The purpose of validating our emotions—

As Dr. James Gordon, author of the book The Transformation, points out, there is a process to validating and understanding our emotions and dealing with them.

The first step is to pay attention to your emotions.
Then clearly see the messages they’re bringing to you.
Work with what the emotions can teach or reveal to you.
See what ways you can grow through and beyond the emotion to heal.

As I noted above, it’s not a good idea to try to suppress your emotions. When we do that, we usually end up creating more physical and psychological problems for ourselves.

What we can do is use our imaginations and creativities to discover what to do with these emotions. Keeping a journal helps in this process.

So how can we best identify, validate and respond to these wild emotions?

At the end of this post, I’ll give you several tips for validating and releasing your emotions and the stress they can cause. I’ll give you several tips today and more in the following weeks.

To keep you from getting stuck in your emotions.

What does validating emotions have to do with grief?

Many of us are experiencing grief right now, and we don’t know it.

We can recognize grief by identifying and validating our emotions.

How do we know it’s grief?

To understand the answer to that question, let’s look at the definition of grief The Grief Recovery Institute experts provide us:

Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior.

Changes in living arrangements—lockdowns, quarantines, new environments.
Loss of familiarity—schedule changes, loss of daily or weekly gatherings
Tangible or intangible losses, obvious or hidden—family members, friendships, belongings, jobs.

As C.S. Lewis so poignantly noted in his book A Grief Observed:

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

Do any of these emotions and sensations sound familiar to you?

We have a sense of numbness, a decreased ability to concentrate. Maybe a decreased ability to care about anything going on around us. A struggle to get up, maintain a schedule and slog through our boring, same-old, same-old day.

Maybe our eating habits have gone awry. We have no appetite, or too much of one. We nibble and snack and indulge out of fear or boredom. Because we have nothing to do, no more reason to maintain a healthy weight. Or no motivation to do it.

I’ve noticed on some of my ZOOM calls that people aren’t paying as much attention to their appearances. They can’t get their hair cut. They’re not interested in showering. For weeks makeup has languished in a bathroom drawer. They’re living in underwear or clothes they haven’t changed or washed in days.

But they’re washing their hands raw and sanitizing every surface in their homes several times a day.

They’re overwhelmed by their emotions and their bodies’ responses.

Something unordinary occurred, and the body responded to the “conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior.”

We’re responding to painful—sometimes overwhelmingly so—information and a pandemic that no action could have fully or properly prepared us for.

Even though countries have experienced pandemics before, little can prepare us for the emotional reactions we each have to this particular pandemic, and how it’s being handled.

It’s important to remember that these responses are normal.

It’s okay to have them. It’s when we don’t have them that we should worry.

Dealing with emotions and grief: focusing on small, correction actions—

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to give you some tips to help you uncover, validate and deal with emotions and your changes and losses. Confront your grief and heal.

But before we delve into this arena, we need to cover several bases.

First, please don’t ever compare your loss with someone else’s; and don’t allow someone to compare her grief to yours.

Everyone handles her loss in her way. There is no “larger” loss to make yours seem small; no “smaller” loss to make yours feel larger or more significant.

A loss is a loss. Depending upon our ages, life experiences and faith, each of us handles our losses differently. Don’t ignore them and don’t grade them.

Don’t expect time to heal you, or others. It’s not time that heals (a common statement and fallacy). It’s actions that bring healing.

The Grief Recovery Institute experts say,

“The false belief that time heals is probably the single largest impediment to recovery from loss of any kind.”

Instead, remember that:

“Recovery from grief or loss is achieved by a series of small and correct action choices made by the griever.”

For me, seeing a baby girl reminds me of my precious baby Victoria, and that memory still brings stabbing pain to my heart. The brain remembers, and it doesn’t ask permission before releasing memory chemicals of and pain response into my system. Sadness, remorse and regret automatically overtake me. If I allow those emotions to overwhelm me, depression will drip through my system until I’m overwhelmed by it.

But if I don’t try to stuff it and, instead, acknowledge it, note it, validate it and remind myself that sadness is a perfectly reasonable reaction to still have to my daughter’s death—and the trauma surrounding it—I’m okay.

I’m acknowledging I’m normal.

Like that event, I think many of us are going to be taking small, correct—healing—actions after this pandemic is long gone and parsed out in the history books.

Understand that grief is a normal and natural reaction to any loss. It’s not a “pathological condition nor a personality disorder.”

But in the heat of a crisis, don’t be surprised if you find yourself having odds thoughts, performing odd behaviors, having odd dreams, or saying unusual things.

A couple of weeks into our quarantine, I had a PTSD nightmare I thought I’d never have again. It had been years since my last one. But there it was again. Not as intense. And, actually, it provided a happier ending.

And the funny thing about it was that I was in a light sleep and knew I was having it. And this time I didn’t seem to want to run away from it.

Most of us have grown up with a multitude of myths that only hamper our emotions and grief responses.

In the following weeks, we’ll look at those and see how we can correct them. Further help for validating our emotions and healing.

Facing realities—

Normal isn’t normal anymore. And that may be part of the bigger emotional problem.

For better or worse, any kind of change is stressful, and our brains react accordingly. Stress hormones get dumped into our body systems, and our bodies respond. Adrenaline pumps. So much adrenaline that we might get wiped out from system overload.

For most of us this pandemic and the resulting lockdowns, job losses, massive schedule and life upheavals have been traumatic. And our brains (and bodies) are trying to process all of it, at one time. It’s not healthy or productive to try to ignore it or wish it away.

We may be looking at a new paradigm that will take time to become familiar and comfortable with.

I want to provide the tools and resources you need to survive this storm and thrive!

Invitation—

I invite and encourage you to use the following tools to identify and validate your emotions and not allow yourself to get stuck in them.

Keep an emotions journal—

One way of validating and responding is by keeping an emotions journal.

There are big benefits to jotting down your emotions on paper, even if your emotions flip flop wildly throughout the day.

And now’s a perfect time to start keeping one.

Seeing them written down in a journal helps validate them. It makes them real and manageable. And it tells you a lot about you and your present needs.

Many of us don’t have any place we can vacate to—alone—right now to assess and decompress. To blow off steam. To weep over losses and unknown futures. Although locking yourself in a bathroom and turning the radio up REALLY loudly might suffice.

Having a journal, or even loose paper you can keep together as a journal, is effective in noting how your emotions change throughout the day, and how you can validate and respond to them.

Learn to breathe and release—

Learning meditation-type breathing techniques is invaluable for allowing the release of emotions. It allows us to be more fully aware, moment-by-moment, of how our what emotions might be lurking just below the surface and affecting us physically or psychologically.

Breathing can also tune you in to just how quickly emotions can come and go. And we can use our imaginations and creativity to learn what to do with our emotions.

You can find a lot of meditative breathing techniques on line. I’ve included some here for you. They can be done lying down, sitting or standing. The process generally involves breathing in slowly, deeply through your nose and exhaling slowly and completely through your mouth, making sure you are using your diaphragm to fill your lungs and allowing your stomach muscles to relax, or soften.

Try to put away any distractions, like ringing phones, when you do these exercises, although when you get good, you will be able to perform them in a busy environment.

Once learned and frequently practiced, they can be very effective at slowing your breathing and dropping your heart rate and blood pressure.

Rather than thinking of breathing exercises as emptying your mind, I like to have my clients and patience just become aware of the emotions they are feeling, without casting any judgments on them. And becoming aware of how these emotions affect your body: tension, stress, and shallow breathing are frequent side effects of out-of-control emotions.

Five to ten minutes should be adequate. If this type of breathing is new to you, just starting with a couple of minutes can be enough.

After your breathing, note what emotions emerged and any accompanying thoughts you had with them. Don’t dwell on them. Just note them. You can spend time analyzing them later.

In the first video, Dr. Andrew Weil gives a great, brief presentation on the benefits of breathing modulation and its effects on illnesses. He says it’s the constancy—regularity—of doing these exercises that result in dramatic changes.

In this next video, Dr. Weil teaches yoga breathing.

This City of Hope video provides a little more in depth breathing and imagery. The video below is longer and includes a guide imagery technique too. Just doing the breathing exercises for several minutes is enough for now.

And now we can move on to another tool.

Draw your emotions—

Any kind of drawing—putting pen or pencil to paper—can stimulate the brain and creativity.

And emotions can be expressed through drawings. Even childlike ones. So don’t think that you have to be an artist to utilize this tool.

Grab several pieces of paper and crayons or markers.

Do the drawings quickly, with no more than several minutes spent on each. The drawings are simply about self-discovery.

Drawing #1: Draw a picture of you right now, the emotions you feel. Stick figures. Representative symbols. These aren’t complicated or necessarily detailed.

Drawing #2: Draw yourself and your biggest problem. The problem might be represented by a shape, a color, a word. What kind of emotions trigger this drawing?

Drawing #3: Draw yourself with your problem solved. How does the solving make you feel? Those are the emotions your want to recognize.

Dancing or shaking—

Free dancing and body shaking are wonderful ways to identify emotions and express them.

When I was using movement gymnastics with my elementary school classes, I’d give each student a colorful scarf to dance to music with, run around the gym with. Dance with. Because they were less inhibited or self-aware, the kindergarten students were a joy to watch.

They stopped watching each other and just went with the movements their little bodies were dying to exhibit. They choreographed their emotions, their joys, their delights, their inhabitations. Their creativity. They danced and moved to their emotions.

They loosened up and released. They laughed and shouted.

Shaking can do the same thing.

This video offers a great teaching.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful.

NEXT WEEK: we’ll look at the myths of grief that hamper our long-term healing, and I’ll give you more tools to release and validate your emotions.

Until then,

keep breathing, dancing, and drawing. And remember that in any situation, we can make our life better and more fulfilling.

See you back here next week!

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, chaplain, and award-winning inspirational writer. She works and writes to help people recover from trauma, grief and loss and to live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.