How do you know if you’ve experienced loss?
It may seem like a silly question, but we often discount and minimize the real impact of our losses. We’re taught to do this by society and our family.
It’s ingrained in us to get over and get on with things, which means we usually don’t give the emotional truth of our losses the time and space and daylight they need to become resolved.
There are also many more losses that cause normal feelings of grief that most of us realize. Click here to read more about them.
If you read the list below of typical responses associated with grief and find yourself nodding your head, you’re very likely grieving. That’s OK. Grief is the normal and natural response to loss.
You’re not alone. So many of us are grieving in some way. This often shows up as:
- Reduced concentration
- A sense of numbness
- Disrupted sleeping patterns
- Changes in eating habits
- Lack of energy
- Not feeling present or being out of the moment
- Overreacting
- Low grade anger and irritability
- Isolating yourself
- Engaging in behaviors you keep doing even when you want to stop (e.g. watching several hours of TV when you sat down to watch one show, having several drinks instead of just one, scrolling through Facebook for 20 minutes instead of checking in for just a couple)
- Feeling stuck
Remember, these feelings and responses are normal.
Things go wrong when the grief from your loss remains unresolved, leaving you with emotional incompleteness. This means you’re unable to truly move forward in your life and may leave you feeling stuck.
How do you know if you’re emotionally incomplete with a loss you’ve experienced?
- You’re unwilling to think about or talk about someone who’s died.
- You’re unwilling to express feelings about any of the losses you’ve experienced.
- Fond memories turn painful.
- You want to talk only about the positive aspects of the person or relationship.
- You want to talk only about the negative aspects of the person or relationship.
- You have fears associated with thoughts or feelings about a relationship.
- You’re reluctant to participate fully in new relationships or endeavors.
Unresolved grief can cause all of these things. Unfortunately, not only is unresolved grief cumulative, it’s cumulative negative. Meaning that what you don’t deal with (because you don’t have the right tools or knowledge how to), builds up and becomes worse the more losses you experience.
How unresolved grief affects your life
What does this mean for your life?
When you don’t resolve the real and natural emotions you have due to loss, you end up having more feelings of loneliness. You may find yourself guarding your life and your heart, unable or unwilling to reach out to others or let others in. You may be afraid of future relationships because you don’t want to get hurt again.
Sometimes it’s a feeling of being stuck in your life or feeling half-alive.
Is it possible to feel better? To really recover from grief and loss?
It really is. With the right tools and actions, taken with guidance and support, you really can feel good again.
Recovery from grief means feeling better. It’s finding new meaning for living, without the fear of being hurt again.
Recovery is being able to enjoy fond memories without them turning painful.
Recovering from grief also means acknowledging that it’s totally OK to feel sad from time to time and to talk about those feelings, no matter how the people around you react.
Recovery involves learning the skills you should have been taught as a child, to deal with loss directly.
Is it easy? Not exactly. You’ll do best with an open mind, the willingness to look at your life and yourself with emotional honesty, and the courage to do it. I can guide you through this process, though, with love, support and the personal experience of having done it myself.
If you’re interested in learning more, schedule an info call with me. It’s free and comes with absolutely no pressure, but a whole lot of compassion and understanding.