Healing & Growing Through Grief    

Copyright, 1993, Revised 2005. Donna O'Toole

Understanding & Normalizing Grief Reactions Helps

To experience a loss is to experience the absence of someone or something that gives meaning, personal identity, purpose or continuity in your life. In the midst of absence you may feel many intense feelings, including feeling lost, shaken, sad, angry or confused. You may feel abandoned or uncared for. Your sadness may turn to anguish or despair as the natural process of grief moves through you. Grief is an experience that affects us in all aspects of our being. Besides intense emotional manifestations, grief is experienced physically, behaviorally, socially, intellectually, and spiritually.

Healing and Growing Through Grief we share with you this information about the grief process. Healing and Growing Through Grief is a visually beautiful book which is published in large easy to read text. You can see more about this booklet by going to the pages of books for adults on this website.

Some Common Reactions to Grief

"An affliction of the heart may be physical as well as spiritual. Always it is the whole person who must be healed. For what hurts one part hurts the whole."
Alla Bozarth Campbell

Physical Reactions

• Deep sighing
• Weakness and fatigue
• Rapid heartbeat
• Dry mouth
• Increased blood pressure
• Increase or decrease in activity
• Muscular tension
• Sleep disturbances
• Decreased resistance to illness
• Weight and appetite changes - more or less
• Neglect of self
• Heightened or decreased sensory awareness

Emotional Reactions

• Numbness
• Confusion
• Euphoria
• Sadness
• Guilt
• Yearning
• Despair
• Hopelessness
• Helplessness
• Feeling Lost
• Bitterness and/or vengefulness

Behavioral and Social Reactions

• You search for the sight, touch or smell of that which is lost
• Detached
• Disorientation to time and place
• Withdrawn from friends/activities
• Unable to concentrate
• Forgetful
• Blameful of others
• Preoccupied
• Seeking solitude
• Attention seeking behaviors

Intellectual or Cognitive Reactions

• Impaired self esteem
• Impaired ability to concentrate
• Disbelief/denying or avoiding the reality of the loss
• Increased or decreased dreams
• Hyperactivity and/or hypervigilence
• Suicidal thoughts

Spiritual Reactions

• Emptiness/reason to live is challenged
• Depletion or destruction of ideals/beliefs
• You search for meaning/ways to reconnect
• Search for acceptance and forgiveness
• Compassion is deeply felt
• You have unexplainable experiences of presence and sound

Are These Reactions Normal?

All of the experiences listed above are common and normal experiences that may occur during the process of grief. It is natural for a grieving person to think they will never again be happy or satisfied and to feel guilty-like they should have been able to stop the loss from happening or that they should have done more. Whether these reactions are problematic is more a matter of their duration and intensity than of actuality. If you are concerned that grief is causing you to become ill or is seriously compromising activities of daily living you will want to consult with a mental health professional, a trusted friend or a spiritual advisor.

10 THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW

1. Recognize a Loss Has Happened - Accept Your grief. It helps to name the loss and to recognize the meaning of the loss to you.
2. Seek and Accept Support. Grief is hard work. It helps to have another person believe in you through acceptance or by understanding.
3. Find Models. It helps you hold hope to have evidence of others who have survived a loss that is similar to yours.
4. Learn About Grief. Grief is a process much like a roller coaster. It has both highs and lows. The grief of any other person may not be the same territory as yours-but it can serve as a general road map helping you feel you are at least on a road somewhere.
5. Express Your Grief. Some ideas for this are talking, walking, song or poetry writing, a memorial project. Try crying, dancing, singing or hitting pillows to release pent up energy.
6. Accept Your Feelings. Being benevolent with yourself about the feelings you have can help you learn about yourself and about the meaning of your loss.
7. Pace Yourself. Grief takes Energy. You may tire easily. Good nutrition alternated with some diversion and exercise helps your body maintain health.
8. Involve Yourself In Work or Meaningful Activity. This can help you maintain control and purpose and helps occupy your mind.
9. Don’t Be Afraid or Ashamed To Have Fun. Laughter is good medicine. Plan opportunities for diversions and freshness-even silly movies help.
10. Hitch Your Wagon To a Star. Hope is needed for the challenges faced in grief. Faith and hope are not the absence of fear, but the willingness to go forward when fear is present. Healing is like a distant star on a cloudy night. It is there in the dark waiting for its chance to be fully known.