220: 6 Reasons You Might be stuck in grief
Welcome to another episode of Grieving Moms Podcast. Today we're going to talk about six reasons grieving moms get stuck inside of grief. I am excited about this episode because I think all of these reasons are things that stop moms from truly getting the help that they need. And my mission is to help encourage you to get that help, to get that support, to not do this alone, and to give you tools and resources to do that because this is the hardest thing you'll ever, ever walk through in.
Here are a few beliefs that come up over and over and over again;
Thinking that time will make things better.
This is like a huge one and people will tell you, you just give it time. You just need time. I bet you know someone who lost their child 20 years ago, and you can see how affected they are still in their life. You can see the bitterness, the exhaustion, the way their life has fallen apart. So no, time passing does nothing. It’s what you do with the time that counts. Maybe you’ve also seen people who had a loss just a few years or months ago, and they are getting their feet under themselves, learning how to live and flow with the grief.
2. Thinking that they can only stay in survival mode and just go through each day
When you bring in other guidance or tools, resources, and support outside of yourself, like grieving Moms Haven. You can step out of survival mode and be in the process and moving through grief mode. And the thing with survival mode is like you're on a hamster wheel. You just can't get off. You're just going through the next thing, you have no room, no space. There's nothing else to do besides do the next thing, and your body is in survival mode. Your body is starting to fall apart because it's so stressed out. You have no room for anything in your life.
And so when you step out in survival mode, it's almost even more critical that you get outside guidance and support so that you can get off that hamster wheel, having somebody help you off the hamster. And when you get out of survival mode, you have more space, and more room to do what you need to do because you have that support and space that helps you move forward.
3. Thinking that talk therapy is the only thing that can help them
I've talked a lot about how to stop talking and start feeling. You need to learn how to feel your emotions. That talking will only get you so far. And I love using tools and resources and getting help and not doing this by yourself has become a lot more mainstream and common. but there is just a lot about talk therapy that I don't think is helpful or useful in always.
You probably know someone who has gone to therapy for 20 years, and they still seem to not be any better. Maybe it’s what they want, but also, is it the thing that’s helping them move forward in their life? Or keeping them stuck with all the pain and horror of what they’ve experienced? If you’ve hit a plateau in your grief experience, maybe it’s time to do something different than talking about your story over and over again and learning to feel it.
4. Using medication without dealing with the root issue.
A lot of doctors treat grief as an illness or disorder, and you can't just keep putting a bandaid on. While there's nothing wrong with using medication to be able to function every day. The bottom line is grief is not a disorder or a disease. You cannot medicate away grief. You have to feel it. You have to process it and move through it. Using medication for grief is a way of numbing it and just kicking the can down the road.
If you're using medication to support you right now, great. Then you can combine it with tools and resources like Grieving Moms Haven to assist you in functioning without medication in the future. So there's a time and a place for it, but when it becomes the, the thing that, that's the only thing you do without trying to support your body or your mind in other ways, um, it just becomes this, again, another hamster wheel of like, you can't get off this, this thing with, with medication.
5. Just thinking they need to learn how to live with it as it is.
I experienced deep grief in my life when my daughter died. It was devastating. And yet, I believed that things could get better, and I didn’t have to just accept panic attacks, daily anxiety, depression, triggers, and sleepless nights, as something that is forever a part of my life. Grief does not have to equal any sleep, panic attacks, etc. When you have the right tools to support you, you can get sleep, you can not experience panic attacks, and you can be free of anxiety. Believing that trauma can’t be healed I can give many examples of how my trauma doesn’t show up anymore. For example, I used to not be able to let my babies out of my sight for sleeping. I needed a monitor on them, I checked on them every 5 minutes, I panicked when they were out of my sight for 5 minutes, and I couldn’t drive home from somewhere without stopping every couple minutes to make sure everyone was still okay. Now? None of that. It doesn’t even cross my mind. It doesn’t exist for me.
Trauma can be healed, and the triggers and panic attacks and flashbacks are not something you need to continue to suffer. I hope you hear this the most because trauma is horrific to live with, and it truly can be healed. It truly can be cleared and processed so that it's not even a thing, which I know sounds crazy because you're like, I can't imagine anything different because this is what my life is. But it can be.
6. Grief will never get better
People say grief never gets better, but here’s what my life after Aria died looked like not sleeping, being disconnected from my husband, panic attacks, constant anxiety, and being unable to take care of anything necessary, and now, my life is, I can sleep easily at night, I have a very deep relationship with my husband, I haven’t had a panic attack in years, I have very minimal anxiety, I am doing so many other things in my life, including helping others with grief. Would you agree with me, that my now is better than before? So yes, I believe that it can get better.
As always, feel free to message me on Instagram, cultivated family, and reach out. And you can go watch that video on anxiety and grief at https://www.meganhillukka.com/.
As always, I intend to assist you on your grief journey, to hold a light in the darkness, and show you it’s possible to live a trigger-free existence, and a life filled with joy after your child dies.
I’m always holding on to hope for you until you are ready to hold it for yourself!
See you next week!
Have you felt anxiety after your child died?
The racing mind, unable to sleep, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, unable to breathe, panicky kind of anxiety, whole body riddled with anxiety?
Watch my free video on anxiety and grief below!
So that you can think clearly, feel calm in your body, and live your life without the chains of anxiety.
