Grief: 5 practical ways to support meaningful change
When you have experienced a bereavement or significant loss, the grief can feel overwhelming. It can consume your thoughts, challenge you emotionally and impact you physically. But how, I hear you ask, do I move forward and start to make meaning from my grief? Here are five practical suggestions to help make such a change.
1. Tell your story
It sounds so simple, but one of the most important aspects of working through grief is being able to tell your story. This can be particularly difficult for some cultures where being open about grief is not commonplace. However, many find simply telling their story to someone who will listen can be cathartic. At first, this story may be focused on the day they died, what happened and the events leading up to their death. You may wish to talk about the impact of the death and your relationship with the person who has died. Later, you may want to talk about your memories of the deceased with others who knew them. What's most important is that you tell your story to people who will listen quietly, without interrupting or offering advice. This will help you make sense of what has happened and start to find some form of meaning in your loss.
2. Draw on friends, family, faith or neighbours for support
This often feels like the hardest thing to do when you've lost someone. Many people I speak to are inclined to keep themselves to themselves. They do not want to feel like a burden to others and worry about their emotions overwhelming them. That is often despite friends, family members and neighbours offering support at every turn. It can often feel hard to be around people after a loss, but turning to others or, for those with faith, seeking out a spiritual connection can help you to feel less alone and isolated in your grief. You may find you learn things that offer new insight into the role your loved one played in someone else's life. Importantly, connecting with others can also help provide a distraction from your grief and help you reintegrate into the world with your new identity (3).
3. Find support in the experience of collective grief
Sometimes it can feel as though you are alone and consumed by your grief. This is particularly true where death or loss is unexpected or sudden. Under these circumstances, it can feel as if the world is unjust, unpredictable and unfair (4). The world may no longer feel like a safe place and the loss can be hard to make sense of. Finding support in a community of kindred spirits can provide some comfort. While their experiences are unlikely to be identical to yours, having a community that understands your pain can help you to unravel some of the complicated feelings and emotions associated with your loss, and allow you to develop a shared sense of meaning as a group.
4. Create a new type of connection with the person you have lost
Clients have often expressed distress at the idea of moving on from and forgetting the relationship they had with the person they've lost. However, just because your loved one is no longer physically present, that does not mean you cannot maintain an ongoing connection with them in a different way (1). This idea of a transformed connection with the person you've lost can provide solace and comfort in a time of intense emotional upheaval. Indeed, in many eastern cultures working through grief involves reconnecting with and continuing the relationship with the deceased after their death (2). Consider ways in which you might continue to maintain a bond with your loved one such as attending their grave or a place that may have been particularly special to them. Take up an activity or hobby that the deceased may have enjoyed, create a box of special memories or communicate with them through talking, writing or prayer. Some of my past clients have found comfort in having a physical reminder of their loved one with them: a piece of jewellery, a photograph, or even getting a tattoo that holds a special meaning, while others have developed anniversary traditions to commemorate them.
5. Find ways to use your loss for good
For some, finding meaning in death is about finding something positive to take from a horrendous experience. It propels them to pay something forward, to use their experience for a greater good and, in some way, to honour the person they have lost. In thinking about some of my past clients, they have done this in a multitude of ways: whether that be giving money to charity or raising money through the creation of memorial events, such as football matches, or through involvement in charitable events. Others have given their time by deciding to become a Bereavement Volunteer themselves through one of the many bereavement charities, or volunteer at a charity that holds a special connection to their loved one. Others have decided to pour their grief into creative pursuits, writing poems or creating works of art in the deceased's memory.
Whatever you decide to do, it's important to remember that every loss is individual. Every loss takes time to process and some may be much more difficult than others. Making meaning from a bereavement or loss does not happen overnight and, in some cases, it may never happen. However, you do not have to be alone in your grief. Whether it's reaching out to friends, family, others in similar situations both online and in-person or speaking with a counsellor, talking really can help you make sense of what has happened.
If you'd like to explore whether therapy might be the next step in helping you to process your loss, please feel free to pop me an email. In the meantime, take care.
References
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., Nickman, S. L., & Nickman, S. L. (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief (D. Klass, P. R. Silverman, S. Nickman, & S. L. Nickman (eds.)). https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Lee, W-L., Hou, Y-C., & Lin, Y-S. (2017). Revisiting the continuing bonds theory: The cultural uniqueness of the Bei Dao phenomenon in Taiwanese widows/widowers. Qualitative Health Research, 27(12), 1892-1904.
Pressman, D. L., & Bonanno, G. A. (2007). With whom do we grieve? Social and cultural determinants of grief processing in the United States and China. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 24(5), 729–746. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407507081458
Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions. The Free Press.