Managing Bereavement II

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

Managing Bereavement

by Maurice Turmel PhD

Bereavement has a definite beginning but no predictable end. How you manage your bereavement recovery will determine how long it takes to regain your former composure. Avoiding, or repressing the feelings of sadness and the need to cry will sabotage your recovery efforts.

A good recovery program for bereavement requires that you face and accept uncomfortable feelings. Following such a plan will shorten the bereavement time period. What we mean here is that a well laid out approach will net results in weeks, or just a few short months. In this day and age, bereavement recovery should never be measured in years.

I instructed my clients to read specified material and journal about their feelings as we proceeded with their bereavement recovery. These assignments were to be completed between meetings because the importance of work done outside the consulting room needed to be emphasized. Clients would complete their homework and report at the next session. Taking responsibility for their feelings grew in proportion to this work and was spurred on by a noticeable diminishment in pain.

My bereavement recovery program came out of these experiences. After hundreds of cases of grief, loss and bereavement, I noticed a particular group of strategies began to emerge as essential to the recovery process. Taking these lessons and adapting them to mythical stories and poetry, along with the more literal instructions, helped drive the lessons home.

Supporting the written word with audio narration puts feeling into the words and helps reinforce many important points for bereavement sufferers. Most good books that aim to help individuals navigate this thorny emotional experience emerge this way. The writer's training and consulting experience helps extract the important themes from the client's experiences and turn them into a recovery program. Adding a poetic flair strengthens the impact of the narration and provides even better results.

Today we know more about grief recovery and bereavement than at any other time in our human evolution. Generations ago mythology served the purpose of guiding individuals through important life lessons by couching them into stories that were passed along verbatim. Every culture had them and every period of our human history reveals their presence. Todays psychology was yesterdays mythology and actually rests on that foundation.

Even in mythology, it becomes clear that a feeling based approach to bereavement recovery is the treatment of choice. With today's understanding of emotional dynamics, defense mechanisms and other survival strategies the point is driven home. A heart-centered and feeling based approach will deliver the best results in the shortest amount of time. The debilitating effects of grieving and bereavement can be turned around in a few short weeks.

Stories, poems, reflections and music selections are designed to put you in touch with your feelings. As each piece is read, listened to and digested, you are ready to start journaling and put those feelings down on paper. This is where grief recovery begins in earnest.

Your heart, your feelings, and your growing self-awareness are the keys to helping you heal your broken heart. You will travel this path with significantly less stress as a result of this detailed approach. No, it's not easy, but it is a journey that can be won. Many have done so using these strategies and so can You!

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

Working Through Your Grief Recovery

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

Working through your grief recovery is a fairly straightforward process once you understand the process involved. There are specific actions you can take to counteract the physical and emotional upheaval you are experiencing as a result of your losing a loved one. A variety of grief recovery methods are available and worthy of consideration.

Shock and disorientation are the first experiences we encounter upon hearing about the death of a loved one. This is the way our body and mind typically react to news of a personal tragedy. We find it difficult at first to absorb and accept the reality of this tragic news.

A sense of disorganization may persist until the reality of this tragic situation sinks in. We proceed in a dreamlike state through the funeral arrangements, the influx of family and friends, and the inevitable post burial let down. Our feelings and emotions are kept at bay until we complete these practical necessities.

Grief recovery begins after the family has left and we've made significant headway with our acceptance of the loss. Anxiety, depression and similar raw emotions that we previously contained are now allowed to surface. Once we are alone with our thoughts, feelings and reactions our grief recovery looms as a necessity.

Thoughts and feelings associated with losing a loved one make their way into awareness and begin pressing for attention. If we have some experience dealing with feelings, then the experience we are being exposed to may be easier to navigate. If this is our first tragedy then our grief recovery will be complicated by the confusion and disorientation that struck us at first and is now laden with these powerful emotions.

Medical help is a good option for our grief recovery in the short term. The effects of sleep deprivation, overwhelming anxiety or deep depression can be mitigated by physician prescribed medications. Your mind, body and emotions have received a severe shock and will benefit from this intervention and help you settle down.

Over the long term, additional grief recovery options worth considering may include joing a support group, seeing a therapist and acquiring helpful books and audio resources. If you feel strong enough in the face of this tragedy then a good book resource may be all that is required.

Books and audio resources usually include a description of the grieving process and an outline of the stages you are likely to encounter. The better resources provide a step by step program for dealing with your emotions which always reveal the strongest effects due to a recent loss. A grief recovery program that focuses on your emotions and feelings will deliver the greatest benefit in the shortest amount of time.

Grieving individuals often appreciate poetry and music as an accompaniment to their grieving process and healing measures. A good grief recovery resource will address all of these dimensions while helping you focus on your feelings and emotions. With the right tools and your determination to heal your grief recovery can proceed in short order, by which we mean weeks, or a few short months - but not years.

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

Grief Counseling

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

When I was in private practice I saw a lot of individuals who were grieving the loss of a loved one, whether that was a child, a spouse, a parent or a close friend. On a few occasions I saw couples where one of them had been diagnosed with a terminal condition and had less than 6 months to live. These situations were particularly traumatic for the persons involved, especially for the spouse who was not ill.

With these couples, we would discuss what was happening and how each of them was dealing with their feelings. The diagnosed partner seemed to have the easier time, having accepted their illness and the eventual fatal consequence. I saw this in my own family with my now departed brother-in-law and my sister. It was always the surviving partner who had the most difficulty.

With counselling of any sort, the goal is to LISTEN! Not just the hear the words an individual was speaking, but to identify the Feelings behind them. When I would reflecte back to the individual I always began with “sounds like you’re feeling – sad, angry, scared, anxious, depressed – whatever it was they were conveying. I would then ask them to check “in” to see if what I said was accurate. It usually was.

Then I would instruct them to pay attention to that particular feeling and tell me more about it. They would then describe their feelings in detail along with whatever physical reactions might be attached to it. Tears would begin to flow as they related the physical and emotional reactions they were experiencing.

This was the essence of my counselling approach for persons in grief, no matter what the precipitating circumstances. Sometimes they would want to know about “Stages” and other catch phrases associated with grief and loss, and I would just steer them back to their feelings. Once they realized that this was more important, it became easier for them to go there themselves and accept that crying and sharing were in their best interest.

For some individuals it would take a few sessions to get them acquainted with this feeling approach, but eventually they got it. And working with their feelings through their period of grief became OK. Many of these individuals would later report that keeping in touch with their feelings had many advantages and helped them with other aspects of their life. Lesson learned! Being in touch with your feelings is essential to a healthy life.

Our society is geared toward Externals, like stages, graphs, charts, outlines and theories. Good counselling focuses on Internals – feelings, emotions and physical reactions. In other words, counselling focuses on “The Heart” where we feel our life and where emotional healing takes place. Once an individual is properly focused they can take it from there. A few tools like Journaling, Writing Letters to your lost loved one, listening to favourite music and poetry will put you in touch with Your Heart. You can now heal because you are listening to YOUR HEART!

"When Angels Call" is a counselling companion designed to put you in touch with your feelings. Since the experience of grief and bereavement is so intense, you’re almost already there. Just a little push and the right resource book and you’re on your way. For most of us, all we need is Permission to Feel. Our heart and soul will take it from there because we have engaged the body and heart’s own innate healing process.

Trying to apply Externals to an internal problem is futile. It only serves to distract us from the real issue which our feelings will gladly tell us about. Thankfully, counselling and audio ebooks like How to Cope with Grief and Loss will re-acquaint you with your feeling nature and guide you through the process of grief recovery.

You now have what you need to heal your grief. You will recover from this tragedy and great loss. You will become intimately acquainted with your Heart and Feeling Centre. You will come to a point where you can think about your loved one and smile. Because when the hurt is finally healed, what remains with you forever is the love you carry in your heart. To quote Martha Stewart “And that’s a good thing.”

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

Bereavement Help I

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

Bereavement Help I

The experience of bereavement is where you come to after the loss of a loved one has begun to work its way through your emotional landscape. Bereavement Help is about choosing resources to help you heal and recover from this emotional trauma.

You will feel lost for a time. This person who has passed on and left your world represented something important to you. You not only lost them, but a part of yourself as well. Bereavement Help is what you need now to assist you in facing these difficulties, this being essential to your healing.

Bereavement Help in the form of counseling focuses on this aspect of loss where your emotions are in a heightened state and your mental acuity is low. Depression emerges here, because it is the main consequence associated with loss. But so can anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings. The initial stages often include trauma and confusion which are completely normal given the circumstances. Depression, anxiety and feelings of loss come along later and they will be the focus of your grief recovery.

If you need medication, see your family doctor and she or he will help you with that. There is no shame in utilizing this type of help. The loss of a loved one is such a shock that initially at least, medication for sleeping and calming you becomes quite necessary. Bereavement Help includes medications as part of an overall strategy to help you recover. All of these emotional and feeling reactions are part of the grieving process and you need to be kind to yourself right now. Give yourself whatever Bereavement Help you require.

The Bereavement Process is like an illness. It has an onset, middle period and end. When you're first thrust into it, you can't fight back, much as you'd like to try. Your mind reels with possibilities but cannot control your emotional reactions. Bereavement Help is required to calm you down and help you heal the hurt that accompanies a major loss.

In bereavement, circumstances beyond your control surround you with their dark eerie glow and keep you stuck in that traumatized emotional state. No amount of willpower or mental acuity will undo that. And you'll only beat yourself up every time you try and repeatedly fail.

After the Bereavement Process starts to wind down, you'll come back to yourself in better form. All of the Bereavement Help Resources that you have utilized will bring you there. Trying to tough this experience out will only keep you stuck and that can last for years. Use books like "How to Cope with Grief and Loss" as a guide and see to it that you get all the bereavement help that you need.

Bereavement Help and Counseling, in whatever forms you choose, will assist you throughout this process. Think of Bereavement Help as Medication for your Soul. Just add Love and you'll be on your way again. Here are some links to help you focus on specific types of grief and loss.

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

4 Reasons for You to deal with Grief and Loss Now!

1

When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss

   1) You will feel better

knowing you are not alone with this experience of grief as a result of losing a loved one. Many individuals have traveled this path successfully and, those of us who study these processes, have been hard at work creating the tools and strategies necessary to help you safely negotiate the recovery experience.

2) You will feel better 

as you become aware of how manageable the healing experience can be while you grow accustomed to using tools that will help you get in touch with your feelings. Once aware of what you are feeling, you will be encouraged you to express those feelings and see for yourself how your stress level will begin to recede. Strategies of denial, anger, withdrawal and repression will be abandoned as they should because you are now aware of what’s necessary to safely manage your recovery experience.

3) You will feel better 

realizing that you no longer have to tough this out, or engage in practices that would deny you the genuineness of your loss. Your heart knows where it’s going and it knows what it needs to help you safely negotiate this path. Open yourself to the possibility that you can have what you want in terms of help and self-awareness, and about the process that will set the stage for your emotional recovery.

4) You will feel better knowing that no one travels this path alone and nor should you. Helpful resources are readily available. The old ways of denial, repression and toughing it out are done. They belong to another era. Today, we are allowed to feel what we feel and express those feelings in a safe and genuine manner. What we do today when facing tragedy is our choice. If we choose the path of recovery, then that’s what we will have. Do not deny yourself the opportunity to heal. Never choose suffering over healing. The spirit of recovery is in the air. Alcoholics recover. Drug addicts recover. Abused children recover. Persons with broken hearts, for whatever reason, can do so as well.

     So start your recovery now and learn how you can not only cope with this experience, but actually heal your broken heart.

    

    When Angels Call - Coping with Grief and Loss