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Cope Naturally with Grief

how to cope with grief

When something disastrous happens in your life such as death of a loved one, a significant loss, or even just the dissolution of an important relationship, we all will turn to grief and experience it in different ways.  Some say the levels of grief, namely denial, anger, depression, and acceptance, are out dated.   Many believe that grieving is private and personal to each person, but grief can be just one of the many things you pick up in life that you could carry with through time.  You rarely have control of it, and sometimes it creeps up on you when you least expect it.  For example driving by your late grandfather’s favorite lunch spot and suddenly becoming emotional and tearing up.

Even if you can’t grasp your grief and shake it right out of your  thoughts like so many wish for, you can try to deal with it with these helpful hints:  Write about it.  have a journal for dreams or everyday thoughts but using pen and paper (or keyboard and screen) to draw out your feelings which is helpful to make your emotions tangible.   You can then go back later and understand exactly what you were dealing with on any given day.  Stress, which can be a symptom of grief, can be healed with Expressive Writing, a respected part of Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  Listen to your heart.

No one can tell you how to grieve, but do let everyone help by listening and being there for you when you need someone.  Friends, relatives, co-workers and  neighbors are going to want to help you, reminding you to eat, sleep, get up in the morning and remember that you are still alive.  Just the act of talking to those closest to you is good for owning your grief instead of keeping it inside and allowing it take over your thoughts.  An expert in grief analysis and a University of Memphis professor of psychology, Robert Neimeyer, acknowledges the unlikely thought of organizing grief and says, “When we’re confronted with emotional chaos, we yearn for clarity, and the Kubler-Ross stages of grief serve as a kind of road map…. But it’s more realistic to think about phases of adapting rather than stages of grief. And they overlay rather than fall in sequence.”  Stay on your Routine.

A few weeks of unrest is normal and no one can blame you for doing so, we all experience this in our own way, but years or months spent in grief could mean you may not return to your life as you knew it.  You could lose your job, your friends, your social attachments, even members of your family could fall away if you become unresponsive in the aftermath of disaster.   Even if it is expected, death or loss is hard on anyone, even a passing that follows a long period of sickness.  Allowing it to consume you is to become self-destructive to all the good things in your life.  Sticking to your routine can help you stay out of the grief rut.  This is not by any means a handbook for  those who have lost a loved one, because grief cannot be quickly understood, rationalized, or even contained.

Providing natural pill-free choices to the grieving process is one way to help start the healing process because no passing of time is going to make you feel better but these little tips could just save you from falling into a never ending grieving mode.  Life goes on after loss and you can go with it in a way that fits you.

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