What is Grief?

The experts will give you lots of descriptions about it and tell you how you should handle it, but when it comes down to it, they can't tell you how you alone feel and what will work for you personally and that's because grief is different for everyone.

There is a tendancy for people to label every emotion not attached to being happy as the person being depressed. Depression and grief are not the same thing and should not be treated as such.

How do I know? - Well because I've had both and anti-depressants where shoved at me after the death of my friend and low and behold, they didn't do a thing because I wasn't depressed, I was grieving.

Like I said everyone is different and for each type of grief it can be different. I'll explain.

Grief is a feeling of your loss of something or someone, yes I included 'something' in that. That might be a ridiculous thing to do, but you have to understand that for someone who has never lost a loved one, their only experience of loss might be the loss of something very dear to them, like a family photo album lost in a flood, or their home lost in a fire or simply a special gift given to them that they lose on an outing.

Surprisingly, a lot of the same emotions are gone through when you lose something as when you lose someone, the difference being the 'strength' of the emotions and the follow up recovery time.

Exercise

• Try to remember the first real loss you had.
• Was it an item of special value or was it a family pet?
• What did you feel?
• How did it affect you?
• How did you get over it?

This little exercise is to start to try to train your brain in how to start dealing with greater losses, like a friend, grandparent, parent, sibling or child. It doesn't matter the size of the emotional loss, the steps to recovery are the same, it's just that with the larger losses, they take longer to get through each set of emotions.

Don't ever think you have to stick to a recovery timetable. It will take as long as it takes. Equally though don't fall into the poor me trap, which is very easy to do, and not do the work required on yourself to get better. No-one will come and wave a magic wand and make you better, they can't. You really have to want to move on past the sadness of the loss to the place where you can accept you have had a loss, but that you are ok with it now. There will always be sad days, that's acceptable too.

Give yourself permission to be sad but give yourself permission to be happy too :o).

There are between 5 and 7 stages of grief depending on which expert you talk to

1. Shock or Disbelief
2. Denial
3. Anger
4. Bargaining
5. Guilt
6. Depression
7. Acceptance & Hope

You may or may not recognise each of these stages, you may or may not go through each stage or even in that order. We're all different remember.

I'll cover each of these in later posts.

The 7 Stages of Grief - Shock or Disbelief

There are between 5 and 7 stages of grief depending on which expert you talk to and personally I would lump a few of the different stages together and sometimes they are all interspersed as one. You will not go through each stage the same way every time. You will not necessarily go through all the stages every time and you might not even admit that you are in any one of the stages - ever!

Shock or Disbelief
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Guilt
Depression
Acceptance & Hope

Shock or Disbelief

I have lost count of the amount of times that I've been told someone has died and my response has been 'Oh my God! or No way, you're joking - I was only talking to them last week'. It's a normal response. Of course you know the person isn't joking, that would be a pretty sick joke, but it takes a few moments, seconds or sometimes even minutes for the news to sink in.

I remember very clearly the moment my sister and I found my brother and I looked at him and realised he was dead. There was no question about it, the colour of him made it quite clear he'd been dead for some hours, however if you add 'Denial' into the Shock and Disbelief stage then you will see why my first reaction was to go and get help. We didn't need someone else to help to revive him, we were both fully trained in CPR. In truth looking back, I wasn't getting help for him, but was making sure there was someone in the house to help us, but you don't realise that is what you are doing at the time.

In the case of my Mum when my brother died, it actually took days till the reality hit home. You can honestly think you have been having a nightmare and that at any moment you are going to wake up and realise that it was just a dream.

We've all seen the mother (even if just on telly) who sits and stares into the yonder, not able to function, talk or cry properly. That was my mum until she saw my brother 5 days after he died. Now this might shock you, but the relief of finally seeing him and getting confirmation by sight that her son was dead brought a smile to her face. Then she started to grieve.

The 7 Stages of Grief - Denial

Denial


We all suffer denial in different ways too. Some of us vocally, some by thinking if I don't talk about it, it hasn't happened and some subconsciously through our dreams.

You see someone in the street and for a split second your brain is telling you that it is the person you lost, just because they have a similar style, height or gait, but however much you want this to be true, the reality hits home in the following seconds. This is a natural reaction and you are not going mad. If this continues for an extended period after your loss, then maybe thats the time you need to think about talking it through with someone, if nothing else, just to confirm you are going through the grieving process.

Dreaming is where a lot of us come unstuck. I had extremely vivid dreams about doing things with my brother that were so clear that I could be up and washed and dressed before the reality collided with the dream head. I could be convinced in those waking moments that the reality had been the nightmare and he was fine. I'd waken up happy it had all been a big mistake before remembering I'd just been asleep and it had been a dream. The sorrow and sadness was sometimes totally engulfing and it was like day 1 again.

On the other hand sometimes it was major nightmares I had, where he was dying in all different ways and I felt helpless in the dream to help him. What my head was doing was correlating everything in my sleep and showing me what my emotional state was. The helplessness in the dream was how I felt in my wake state whether I was able to recognise it at the time or not.

You too might be dealing with these exact emotions just now or maybe none of this has happened to you. There is no straight path of this will or won't happen to you. There will be a path you are on though and you have to recognise it as being your method of grief and ask for help if you can't or don't feel that you can cope with it alone.

First Post - A General Note

It's very difficult to know where to start on this with so many things I'd like to cover, so I thought I'd start on a general note.

No matter how bad it feels now or at the time, if you are just at the beggining of dealing with a loss - you will feel better come time, the sun will shine again and it's not a sin to laugh. If you have been through a period of grief and quite some time has already passed then you know life goes on.

I'm not saying you'll forget, you won't, you will never forget those you love, so don't feel that you are ever doing them an injustice by getting on with your life and living it the way you should.

Throughout my postings you will come to learn that I'm a straight talker. This will be a warts and all type of site. You have been warned.....lol.

So with the above in mind, here's lesson 1:

• Whether you believe in God and life after death or you have no beliefs and therefore death is death , either way the person you have lost is no longer in pain, so stop worrying about them. Right now you're the one alive and therefore the important one. Give yourself permission to get on with your life.

Losing someone is sometimes your first opportunity to look at what you believe in and that can be quite a positive experience for you too and set you off on a new path of discovery about yourself.

For me, certainly, I have morphed several times and the most common phrase I've heard from friends to me in recent years has been - "Thanks Elizabeth, you're such a good listener, I feel like I can talk about anything with you and not be judged"

That makes me laugh, 'cause I'm such a yapper ( I could talk the hind legs off a donkey) that I didn't realise I was a good listener and I quite frankly see myself as quite judgemental, so it just goes to show, what you project is not always how others view you.

In all honesty with you there are some days that I feel so sorry for myself that life has dealt me this hand to play and I'm sad and lonely, but over the years I've learnt the tools and lessons of how to get out of that state quite quickly while accepting that I'm allowed to be sad sometimes.

Other people don't want you to show your continued sadness much as they murmer what they perceive to be 'the right things to say'. You're sadness makes them feel really uncomfortable once they have got over your loss, which could just be days or weeks.

What I often laugh about is that the majority of people who have tried to tell me the most about how to deal with my grief are the one's who have no idea what on earth they are talking about. They are often the one's who's worst experience was losing a cat or a dog when they were little. That is not to say that their grief at that time is a lessor experience and not to say that they don't care or are not being loving towards you, it's just that it is a different experience and they therefore don't really know what to say or how to help you. I'll cover difference types of losses in another post.

The people who just give you a hug or put a hand on your arm, say nothing and just let you talk, and don't cross the street to avoid you - they are the one's who usually have lost someone close and know how you feel and what you need.

With either of the above 2 experiences, whatever their approach, thank them and give them a smile even if you feel lousy. They just gave you a little love.