5 Unspoken Truths About Grief
There comes a time when grief finds you and it feels like a tornado whirling inside of you. You find yourself not only feeling the sorrow, but also feeling utterly confused about the whole experience. You haven’t felt this way before. You have no idea what’s going on inside of you. All this grief is making it hard to function and you don’t know what you’re supposed to do.
Welcome to the world of grief. A land where lying in bed might be the only place you want to be. A land where tears flow like mountain streams. A land where loneliness makes you question so many things about life and the purpose of living.
I’m sorry you’re here. My sincere condolences for your loss. My intention for this message is to help you understand what to expect. I want to provide a few insights about what grief may feel like. I want to give you some tips to help navigate this journey that feels so alone and isolating.
To begin, I want to share something that may be hard to read. Believe it or not, you’re grieving in the right way.
You’ve experienced something deeply impactful that it can feel like the world is now an unfamiliar place. When everything looks and feels unfamiliar, it can be easy to feel like you don’t belong or that you’re invisible to everyone else around you. When you feel this way, it’s easy to judge your grieving process, telling yourself something like “nobody else looks like they’re grieving so I must be doing this wrong.”
This thought of doing grief wrong often comes up when you find yourself crying all day and feeling exhausted from all the tears. It’s also common when you realize some time has passed but you continue to feel the same way.
And that leads me to my next tip.
If you feel stuck, please know that you’re not.
Oh, how interesting it is that people in this world love to track progress. Linear projections, analyzing data, and visual representations showing the path from point A to point B are so valued in today’s world. It’s easy to think that grief should be of a similar sort.
But grief is different. It’s not linear. Nor is it consistent. You just can’t measure it in the sense that you’re able to track it to a point where you can predict or control its outcome. This inability to do so can make you think and feel stuck.
When you’re grieving, what’s important to remember is the subtle things that happen throughout the journey. What I mean by that is to recognize small things that create shifts in your experience. For example, getting out of the house for the first time or making your first meal after significant loss. These activities are so expected as adults but become difficult to do when in deep grief. When you’re able to do them again, you may not remember how challenging it’s been because they’re just adult things that everyone does.
Another thing about thinking you’re stuck in grief is that it’s easy to expect or anticipate big events to happen that will change the way you feel. For example, if you have been crying for a long time, you might expect yourself to stop crying altogether within a certain amount of time.
I wish it worked that way. It would be easier on everyone. Yet, it doesn’t and grief will likely stay with you for the rest of your life. The longer it’s around, it will hurt less, but it will become a part of you that may influence your life 5, 15, or 50 years from now. What will help you feel a sense of flow in your grief is to appreciate yourself for small, subtle things that grief made difficult but are no longer so.
Another tip to support you in the grieving process is to ask the people in your life to treat you with compassion. I know it sounds weird but if anyone were to respond to you with cruelty or denunciation, rather than honesty and sincerity, it might be in your best interest to seek grief support from someone else.
I like to describe compassion as gentleness and kindness that honor your grief. Most people don’t know how to do that. However, if you just ask people in your life to treat you with compassion, hopefully, they will do their best to be sensitive to your needs in whatever way they know how.
It may sound like a silly request, but trust me, it’s all right to ask. I haven’t heard someone tell me that they’ve asked their loved ones to treat them with compassion when they’re grieving yet, so I hope you will be the first. Grief is not only painful, it’s delicate. It needs compassion to feel cared for.
Before I share the next tip, I want to say one more thing about compassion. You will feel more compassion from others when you treat yourself with compassion. The Universe can be a mirror to what you feel and think on the inside. If you treat your grief with compassion, there will be people that you will meet along your grief journey who will reflect even more compassion to you. It’s a beautiful experience and I hope that these words resonate enough to help you be more compassionate to yourself.
The next tip is more of an awareness than anything else. Your brain will try to control your grief. Your brain is a powerful command center that controls the other functions of your body. It’s in control and it calls the shots.
I think the mind is somewhere in the brain and the way I see it, the mind is hanging out in it’s penthouse, either being aware of what the rest of you is doing or it’s taking a break and you’re on automatic pilot. The mind needs to rest a lot so when you’re grieving, things will feel like utter confusion and exhaustion in addition to the many other feelings you’re experiencing.
The exhaustion and confusion is, what I think, the inner automated conflict between your brain working hard to control everything and your grief retaliating with the need to feel emotion. This is a theory of mine and I do want to preface that I don’t have the science to fully back it up, but time and time again, I hear the clients I support speak to this energy draining phenomenon. To me, this is a very common experience for grieving hearts and souls.
I hope that makes sense and I get that if this is your first time feeling deep grief, it’s not an easy thing to understand. If there’s any take away from this tip, it’s that when you feel the fog of grief, understand that your brain is working so hard to control it and that if you take refuge in a safe space and allow the feelings to flow, you may feel temporary relief from the exhaustion and or confusion.
The final tip I want to share is to tell your story.
Many people seek grief support groups because they want to know they’re not alone. I highly recommend you do the same. However, I find it funny because I rarely hear someone say they want to join a grief support group to tell their story. Yet, when I learn more about their experience within a support group, what I hear is that they feel so much support in being witnessed for the telling of their story.
One of the best ways to tell your story (and be witnessed by people who are less likely to judge) is within a grief support group. I highly recommend contacting a local hospice, hospital, church, or funeral home in your community to find a group. Within a grief support group, you will have the opportunity to share your story and go deeper into what pains you and brings you comfort. It can be a powerful and transformative experience.
Groups may be uncomfortable for some people, and that’s very okay. If a group is uncomfortable for you, there are opportunities to share your story with a grief counselor or companion. I’m a grief companion and I know many people don’t know what that means so one of the ways I work is to focus on witnessing your story and letting it be your guide for healing. In my work, my intention is to nurture what feels authentic to you through holding sacred space, keeping soft eyes, a closed mouth, and ears and heart open.
So if you’ve had thoughts that no one wants to hear your story, I would gently challenge you in that there are people who do. They may not be in the next room, but they may just be a call or message away. They’re out there and they are available to listen and hold sacred space for your grief process.
Thank you so much for reading these 5 unspoken truths about grief. As a recap, if your grief hurts immensely and/or this feels new to you, please know:
- You’re doing grief right.
- You may feel stuck but you’re really not.
- Ask others to treat you with compassion.
- Your brain will try to control your grief.
- Telling your grief story helps.
Reid Peterson is the Creator of the Grief Refuge app. Grief Refuge is a daily companion to help support people on the grief journey. Download for free on iOS or Android to get daily support.
