Ok- today I want to read the chapter on the Emotions of Grief.
There are many crazy emotions that come up with grief. They are so unfamiliar and scary that many times they scare the person who is grieving. They feel like they are going crazy. These emotions can also scare you, as the supporter. You don’t know how to help, and maybe you think your friend should be acting or responding differently. I want to talk about a few emotions that come up with loss:I hope to normalize them, and give you the tools to help your friend be validated and process these emotions. I’ve found that telling someone to “get over it”, or to not feel that way doesn’t help them not feel that way. These emotions are so strong and so deep that the only way out of them is through them.
The only way to let go is to process in the way that works best for them- be it talking, exercising, silence, art, processing alone, whatever it is for them. There is a common misconception that grief comes in five stages. This is known as the “5 stages of grief”. This concept was made by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, but it was created for someone who was dying, not for someone who was grieving. These stages imply so many things that harm someone who is trying to learn how to live with their new reality.
Grief does not come in stages. There are no step by step instructions, no linear path to follow. It is a rollercoaster, a hurricane that consumes and rips apart someone's thoughts and life. As a supporter, we would love if it could be wrapped up in this neat little bow, and have a beginning and an ending. This is not the way with grief.
Grief is messy. Grief is scary. Grief is so uncomfortable to be around that you might think it is better to stay away. It’s scary to be supporting someone grieving, but you know what? If you leave them now because it makes you uncomfortable, you are abandoning your friend in their deepest hour of need. Would you like that if it was your situation?
So- onto the emotions that can come. It’s important to recognize that not everyone feels all these emotions, and everyone responds differently to them. There is no box that you can put your friend in, and there is no right or wrong way to experience them. Your job as a supportive friend is just to be there, validate, and support. Not to tell them what to do, or how to feel.
Anger: This is a particularly scary emotion because no one likes to be angry. Shortly after Aria died, I had someone tell me that they were glad I haven’t been angry. They have seen other people become angry and thought maybe I wouldn’t get there. I told them that I have just started down this road, and I don’t know what lies ahead of me. I don’t know if anger will come down the road. It did come eventually for me. Anger can come immediately or not until months or years later. It’s scary to be so angry, and it can be directed at God, a loved one, the child who died, or nothing in particular. This anger can come out in many ways, and it’s so important to work through. When I felt anger, it was so deep I couldn’t even describe it to anyone. There was no way I could just “let go” of it without working through it. There were people around me who were uncomfortable with this anger. They thought I should never feel anger. I had learned that anger was normal in grief and sometimes part of what you need to go through. I’m so thankful I learned that, because then I could let those other people's opinions go. They didn’t understand and I was able to work through the anger in time. Don’t be scared of your friend’s anger, remember it’s normal with grief. It does not mean their anger is justified or they have a right to treat people horribly, but the emotion of anger is real and valid and needs to be processed.
Guilt: I have yet to meet a mother who has not felt guilt over their child’s death. There might be deeper levels and layers of guilt that come to each experience, but we all have our own guilt to work through. From an outsider’s perspective, you might think that they have no reason to feel guilty, so your instinct is to tell them they are not at fault, they are not guilty. But do you think that really takes away the guilt? It’s important to express that you don’t believe it’s their fault, but to also support and help them talk about their feelings and work them out. I’ve talked to mothers who thought they must have done something to trigger early labor for their stillborn. I have talked to a mother who thought it was her fault she lost her son to addiction, that she had not done enough. For myself, Aria died in her sleep, and I heard her crying in the night. I waited for a little while to see if she would stop crying and she did. So I didn’t go check on her. Was she dying in that moment? Could I, as her mother, have saved her by doing the simple thing of checking on her to make sure she was okay? This guilt that I didn’t go check on her ate me up for a long time, but it was so important that I found ways to work through it and talk about it. Give space for your friend to voice these thoughts and feelings.
Depression: It’s hard and heavy to be with someone grieving. For a long time, they might not have any strength or reason to find any joy in their life. Child loss affects life on such a deep level, and depression is a very real experience. Allow your friend to have space when they need space, but try to be there when they need someone to listen. This can change rapidly from day to day, but communication and checking in with them often is so helpful to try to get a feel of how they are doing. It’s hard to be in this state. For a long time, I would get frustrated with being so sad and so depressed. I wanted to have joy and I wanted to be happy, but my heart just couldn’t. I learned that it was a part of my grief that I could embrace, and just let myself have slower days without a lot of company.
Grief Tip: Ask them the question: what do you want today, a listener? A hug? A distraction?
4. Shock/Denial: This is part of the “5 stages of grief”, and it is a very real part of grief. It can take a long time to talk about your child in the past tense, and maybe your friend never will. It can be a long time before they stop waiting for the phone to ring, or to see their child walk in the door. Your friend is not crazy nor do they have something wrong with them. I believe our brains do not allow us to fully understand the finality and the depth of our loss right away, because we would just shut down. Instead, over time we start to realize what it means to truly live without our child. We realize that our old life is over, and we are now walking in a life with child loss. This can be any time frame: weeks, months, or years. This shock and slow learning about really living without their child can mean it gets harder and harder as time goes on. Most people who are supporting have moved on with their lives, and they don’t realize their friend’s grief is just getting heavier and heavier.
5. Acceptance: This is what you want for your friend. This is what someone on the outside looking in wants, because then they know their friend will be okay. This is very personal and different for each person. Some might never come to accept and acknowledge this as their life. For others, acceptance means they have learned to carry their grief. I want to set something straight. Acceptance and becoming comfortable with our grief does not mean that we have forgotten our child. Acceptance doesn’t mean we are over it, it means that we have accepted child loss as a part of life, not as something that is done. With acceptance comes a comfortable acknowledgement that grief will be there the rest of our lives. The pain will ebb and flow, and we can have happy moments as well. But we are still changed, and we still grieve. Don’t push your friend to think they need to accept and “move on”. Acceptance is a feeling inside of them that will come on their own time, if it comes. It’s not something you can or should push for. There are so many other emotions that are possible with grief, and I always say that just about any emotion is fair game. It’s important to recognize and validate our grief experience. These are all new emotions most of the time for us as well, and when you feel alone, you feel crazy. I know it can be so hard to be in a supporting role when there are extreme and deep emotions running strong. It’s hard to know how to support, and how to help, when all you want to do is just take a little bit of their pain away. Please, please, just be there for your friend. Allow them to feel their emotions, and if you are allowed to, offer ideas of ways they could process these emotions.
6. Anxiety: This is not really an emotion, but a very common experience after child loss. When your worst nightmare happens, it’s very common to wait on edge for the other shoe to drop. When something happens that “only happens to other people” you realize on a very different level that you are not exempt from more loss. Your other children are not safe. Your family is not safe. It’s a difficult thing to grasp, but even if you believe in God and that He is in control, it’s very hard to let go, because this anxiety takes over. I had bad anxiety mixed with PTSD, so it’s hard for me to separate the two. They both create a feeling of chaos and crazy within your body and mind. It’s hard when others in your life do not understand how anxiety impacts your life, and they do not understand that anxiety is not a choice.
There are ways to manage and help it, and to work through it, but again that’s your friends choice to do those things. Justin, my husband, did not understand my severe anxiety after Aria died. He questioned me every time I asked him to go check on our sleeping kids in the middle of the night. He told me they were fine and just go to bed. Then, he grumbled his way to go check on them. This caused my anxiety to get worse: I was already anxious, and then I had to fight with him to go check on them, which made me feel horrible. It was a bad cycle.
When he talked to my therapist, she told him to just listen to me. She said that hopefully I wouldn’t have it this bad forever, and for right now he just needed to listen to me. He did, and it was an amazing difference. I still had horrible anxiety, but he would do whatever I asked without question, and that helped release the tension of misunderstanding and frustration. It’s safe to say, he has learned a lot more about anxiety through these experiences.
Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD): This is a brain injury, not an emotion. It’s such a huge part of my story because I was diagnosed with PTSD, so I want to talk about it. PTSD can happen to anyone, it’s not just for soldiers. It’s a brain injury that results from a traumatic event, and losing a child in any circumstances is a very traumatic event. Symptoms of PTSD -nightmares/flashbacks -hypervigilance -self-destructive behavior -social isolation -emotional detachment -loss of interest or pleasure in activities -mistrust, fear, severe anxiety -avoidance - fight or flight responses out of their control -anger/outbursts There are so many more symptoms, and it’s important to go in to get diagnosed, but as a friend you could mention it to them that it could be a possibility.
I had no idea I had PTSD until I went to my therapist and she thought I might have it. When I looked it up, I was so relieved that there was a name to what I was experiencing. I just thought I was going crazy. I think of PTSD as your brain not being able to file away the traumatic event as an event that happened in the past. In your brain, the trauma is stuck in the present and ever happening. It’s happening to your friend over and over in what feels like a very real experience. They live constantly in that terror and fear, and they cannot file that experience as a one time event that has happened in the past.
There is hope and help for PTSD, but it is up to your friend to make that decision to get the help they need. I hope by learning a little bit about it, you can have some compassion for your friend. I also know how difficult it is to live with and be with someone who has it. I know what I was like in the height of my PTSD, and I’m thankful my husband made the commitment to stay with me. It’s not easy for the people around them, and it’s certainly not easy for your friend.
This is part of a 3 part series where I’m reading from the ebook I had written called How to Help Your Grieving Friend. Not only can it help you feel more understood, but you can share it with the loved ones in your life who might not understand what it’s like to lose a child and why you are not just jumping back into life and being yourself like they think you should.
Listen in for next week's part 2! Make sure you subscribe to Grieving Moms Podcast so you don’t miss it!
If you like this podcast, and found it helpful, I want to invite you come check out Grieving Moms Haven, my monthly community for Grieving moms, where you can learn positive coping mechanisms, find a safe space with others who understand, and learn life long skills that support you as you learn how to carry this weight of grief in your life.
There are group coaching calls where we do guided meditations, tapping meditations, breathwork, and just talk, knowing that everyone in the group is also walking the path of child loss
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