Grief — Transcription
Hi everyone – so today’s topic is going to be about grief. The reason I wanted to do this is I know that a lot of people are experiencing grief in multiple different ways. A lot of people think that grief is just losing someone who passes away, but we are experiencing actually a lot of losses right now – whether it’s a loss of a job, a loss of safety, loss of security, a loss of a person, pet, or whatever that might be. We’re experiencing a lot of losses and in today’s world, unfortunately. So I wanted to just go over a few tips about grief for everyone. So the first thing to remember is I know you’ve all heard of the stages of grief and while these stages are great to kind of have it as a guide we are getting kind of away from the idea of these stages that you go through.
There’s five stages and it kind of gives you the notion that you go through these stages in order. And then once you get to acceptance, you’re good to go. And, you know, grief is somewhat over and people have that in their head that they have to get through that fifth stage and then their grief will be gone. So we’re trying to get away from that because you can go from the fourth stage to the first stage again, or the fourth to the third and then back to the fifth. So it fluctuates with everyone and everyone’s grieving process is so different from each others that it’s really not fair to kind of put a label that everyone goes through these five stages of grief and that, you know, again, once they’re over, then you’re good to go. So what I like to tell people is that you may go through these stages and again, you may alternate between stages and get to acceptance, and then all of a sudden you feel anger two months later – that’s totally normal.
The important thing to do with grief is to make sure that you’re processing it. And when I say that, it just means if you’re having a tough day and you’re sad – be sad, it’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to go through those feelings. Just don’t sweep them under the rug. I mean you can compartmentalize them and put them in a place where you say, you know, I can’t grieve right now because I’m at work. But later tonight, maybe I’m going to journal about it. Or maybe I’m going to think about why I was feeling this grief. So just make sure you’re going through those motions of processing it. And there’s also a really great picture out there. If you search ball in a box and grief, you’ll find it. And it’s an amazing picture. I usually draw it for clients and I’m a terrible drawer.
So people are like, but regardless it’s basically showing you that there’s these three stages of this ball in the box. And the first one shows that the ball is taking up the entire box and there’s a pain button on the bottom. So the ball is so big that it is constantly pressing on that pain button because when you lose someone or something, you feel that pain pretty immensely. And it’s, it’s pretty tough to feel. And it’s pretty constant in the beginning. As you move to the next stage, it’s the ball gets smaller. So it’s bouncing around in the box. So you can imagine that the pain button stays the same because your pain, when you feel grief typically is the same as when you feel it the first time from the last time or years later. So the pain button stays the same and the ball bounces around.
So it’s not hitting the pain button consistently, but every once in a while, it might hit that pain button. And you might feel the same way you felt when you first felt that grief come to the last stage and the ball is much smaller. I think of it as like a bouncy ball and the pain button again and the bouncy ball is going throughout the box and it’s not hitting it nearly as much as it was before. So, you know, you can go months or years without really feeling that pain button. But every once in a while, that ball is going to hit that pain button. And you’re probably going to feel that same amount of grief that you did in the beginning. It’ll get easier to manage as time passes and you kind of learn how to process it better and manage it and kind of accept those feelings, but it still hits it.
So think of like a trigger that you have an anniversary of a death or a song that reminds you of a person that had past things like that will bring up and cause you to hit that pain button again. So the whole goal of this is that the bouncy ball or the ball never goes away, your grief never completely disappears. That’s very normal. But it does become a little bit easier to manage over time and you learn different coping skills and ways to grieve that help you. So again, Google it, it’s going to be a great picture. And there’s a lot of explanations that probably explain a little better than I did. But when you see that visual, like you’re going to, it’s going to kind of click for you. So again, ball in the box with grief that you’ll find it. And just remember that we’re all experiencing grief right now in multiple ways. So be patient with yourself, be kind to your friends and your family. And again, just process that grief as much as possible, have a good rest of your week and I will see you next week!