It is human nature to grieve, but not everyone knows just how to grieve. When you lose someone, your natural response is to grieve. The emotional pain that you feel at the point in time is what grief is all about. Most of us associate grief with the loss of a loved one’s life, but that’s not necessarily always the case. Grief can be caused by anything from losing a job, to failing a test, etc.
It is true though that losing a loved one is probably the most intense kind of grief you can feel. It’s time like these that you will feel overcome with emotion. You just don’t know when the pain will stop, or how to make it stop. The grief seems to be on its way to consume you.
The good news is that this is a normal reaction to loss. But you need to know how to grieve so that you can deal with the pain in a healthy way and come out on top of it. Knowing how to grieve could well be the key to allowing you to get back up, put the loss behind you and move on with your life.
So just how to grieve? Everyone grieves and copes with the pain differently depending on who they are as a person. Remember, grieving is a highly personal experience that requires space. It is not something that can be forced and as such needs time. Here are a few tips that can help you grieve:
- Remember you are not alone
Most of us have the habit of retreating into our shells while we grieve. We tend to withdraw from the world. But this is not the right thing to do. The most important aspect for grieving is not to do it alone. Get the support of other people, share your pain. You may not be the most open person in the world, but at times of grieving, it is essential that you open up. Sharing your feelings will allow you to share your burden and enable you to heal faster.
- Face your feelings
Often, we don’t let our feelings of grief come to fore. We suppress and bottle them up leading to longer term health and mental problems like depression and addiction, etc. To grieve successfully, you need to learn to face your feelings. If you are in pain, you need to feel the pain, understand what is causing the pain. Then only can you overcome grief and move on.
- Let it out
When you grieve, there is a range of emotion that you go through. It becomes very difficult to process these emotions and sometimes keeping it in just makes it worse. Let it out. Talk to someone and share your pain. Write about it in a diary, or a letter. Go out on your roof and scream if you have to. But don’t keep the emotions bottled in.
- Take care of yourself
One of the effects of grief is that it tends to leave you down in the dumps, drained of energy, drained of your will to live. But this is the time when you need to make a conscious effort of looking after yourself. You need to pick yourself up by taking care of your physical as well as mental self. Remind yourself that your mind and body are connected. If you look after you physical self, the chances are that you’ll feel better emotionally as well.
- Be ready to be reminded of your loss
It serves you well to be prepared for things that can remind you of your loss. Maybe it’s a place that you visited with a loved one, a picture or a birthday. It’s completely normal to feel emotionally overwhelmed when confronted by such things, but they can have an adverse effect on your grieving process too. It would be best to be mentally prepared for such events.
