Grief information: Grief Basics

"I'm worried I'm doing this wrong."  "It seems like everyone else in my family is grieving differently than I am."  "Maybe I'm failing at grief."  

Many people fear grieving differently than others, or think they are grieving incorrectly. These worries compound grief, complicate recovery, and inhibit or ability to best care for ourselves during our grieving time. It's unfortunate how much bad information there is about grief. 

This overview provides basic grief information and clears up the most common misunderstandings about grieving. It also provides a template for self care during early grief.  

Many people think, or they've been told, there is a right and a wrong way to grieve. Because of that, people worry they're grieving incorrectly. But here's the thing about grief: there is no way to do it wrongly. There is only your way of grieving, today. And that might, in fact, probably will, change tomorrow. 

The first, best thing to do when you are grieving is to dump expectations. How you grieved a different loss or how somebody else you know grieved a loss they experienced, is not going to predict how, or how long, you will grieve this loss. Approaching the grieving process as if it is a school project that you have to get right or you fail, is a terrible idea. Unfortunately, our culture's competitive instinct has leached into our understanding of grief. Grief isn't even graded on a Pass/Fail. It isn't graded at all, because everybody passes (through). 

There is no single healthy way to grieve or to cope with grief, though there are ways of grief can negatively impact your mental or physical health.  If, for example, you are clinically depressed while grieving, getting the appropriate medications or counseling support will help you be more healthy while grieving.  If your physical health is suffering during a grieving time, then it's essential to address that with your health providers, and take recommended steps to remedy the problem.  During a grieving time, it can be tough to muster the energy to address physical or mental health issues, but please, prioritize you.  Addressing your physical and mental health will help you navigate your grieving time.

Each of us is unique, in life and in grief. How we grieve is intimately connected with who we are and what our relationship was to the deceased. Even the same person will grieve the death of different people differently.

Grief, like love, is relationship based. For some of us, the death of a mother is a time of excruciating sorrow, while the death of a father is not. (Or vise versa.) The death of a spouse can be soul wrenching for many, but for some, depending on the relationship, it is an occasion of complicated grief. Complicated grief, like complicated relationships, can need additional help to work through, even, and sometimes especially, after a person has died.
 

Grief can be like an earthquake, with a huge, sudden, unexpected (or expected) shock, unsettling your whole world, with feelings-related aftershocks coming regularly for months, and sometimes years. Grief can shake us up, sometimes for a long time. For many people, the experience of intense grief can be physically, psychologically, and spiritually shocking. It can send tremors through every part of our lives.
 

For other people, grief isn't a soul quake at all, but is more akin to an intermittent breeze or strong headwind. These people can feel guilty for not grieving a significant loss in all-encompassing way they see others grieve. They worry: "Is something wrong with me that I can't grieve Mom's death like my siblings do?" The answer is no. This grief, too, is normal. Everyone grieves in their own way. 

Some people are inside grievers: they process grief in accord to their personality and established means of coping. For these people, information such as this article, grief letters or support groups may or may not be helpful. "Talking it out" may not be their thing. Still, allotting some time for grieving is a good idea. Inside-grievers might do well to establish a "time to remember," when they can recollect memories of a loved one.
 

Many wonder whether an intense grief is "normal" and worry about "going crazy." The range of grief-related emotions and physical symptoms is deep and the breadth of "normal," wide. Emotions can be intense and the physical response to grief significant. 

Knowing what you don't know about grief is also important. Too many people think they should proceed through Elizabeth Kubler Ross's Stages of Grief like clockwork and should progress through the checklist of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, in lockstep. This is incorrect.
 

There is no "correct" way to grieve. That idea is false. Period. No quick and direct path into and out of grief exists. No progression of stages we must march lockstep through exists, nor is there a "do it right and in order" check list comprised of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. 

People who are grieving do experience many of these, but not in check-list fashion. For example, it is common in early grief to feel numb, to have a sense that the death "can't really be real."  This is normal, as is feeling mad, or angry.  Wondering how things could have gone differently, "if only," is also normal, as is feeling sad.  Eventually, accepting, or integrating the loss into our "new normal" is part of the grieving process.  For more info about these processes and how they show up during our grief, please see GRIEF PROCESS/HOW WE GRIEVE. 

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross never, ever, intended for anyone to take her Stages of Grief and imagine once they or a loved one has "been through a linier progression" of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, they're done and finished with grief. 

Rather, she was trying to teach us that grief is a process through which we must pass, a journey during which we learn to healthily integrate our loss into our lives. Most grief experts concur grief is complex and personal. Some of us experience all of the above at some point in our grieving process, and others do not. That's OK. 

Give yourself permission to grieve in your own way. Choose to move forward, slowly. Implement self care, mercifully. Here is a brief summary of First Steps Forward in Grief.