The silver-lining inside our grief

All grief comes with suffering, but it comes with transformation too.

by: E.B. Johnson

Grief, comes in many different forms and strikes for many different reasons. Whether we’re mourning the loss of a parent, a partner, a friend or a dream — loss is a terribly serious state of being that can only be overcome by being addressed with compassion and understanding. Though your grief might have you convinced that life can’t go on, it can, and it will with time and a little gentle healing.

When you get proactive about being happy, you can find a silver-lining in your loss, but it’s a journey. By digging into the meat of your grief, and coming face to face with it, you can work through it and learn how to embrace the new and beautiful life that is waiting for you. Write a new narrative for yourself and learn to see the beauty behind the pain. Over time, you’ll uncover a new and beautiful tomorrow that you didn’t even know was waiting for you.

What is grief?

Grief is a normal and natural reaction to loss or change of any kind. It is not pathological and it is not a personality defect. It does not occur only when we lose a spouse, a child or a parent and it most definitely does not make us weak or less worthy for experiencing it.

You should think of your grief as a natural response whose purpose is to lead you to healing. Without grief, we would not be able to appreciate the beauty in our lives and without grief we would not be able to learn the lessons that help us to grow.

Grief is a double-edged sword in its simplest state and a powerful tool to those who know how to wield it. The trick, though, is understanding grief and knowing when a setback in your life is causing more of a disturbance than you realize. Mastering our grief allows us to see the better side of things and envision and a new and brighter future. The trick, however, is realizing just how grief works and how it effects us.

The types of grief.

Though we think of grief as being most intimately associated with death, it can also come as a result of an array of experiences that challenge us and the way we see ourselves in the world. Whether we’ve lost a parent or a career dream — loss is loss and it’s hard to overcome no matter who you are.

1. The shattering of unfulfilled hopes and dreams

This type of grief occurs when your dreams or goals are wrenched from you painfully or unexpectedly, be those romantic, professional or personal. Characterized by a deep sense of disorientation, this grief can cause you to walk around in a fog, experiencing a deep sense of grief and unfairness.

Examples:

• An overachieving student who struggles to find a place or success in the “real world”.
• Someone on a career trajectory who finds themselves fired or “laid off” unexpectedly.
• Those living in communities with sudden and dramatic political shifts.
• A person or couple struggling with infertility.

Those who struggle with the loss of their hopes struggle to make their way in the world because their sense of failure compounds with their grief to create an impermeable sense of hopelessness. They can often find themselves making unfair comparisons and comparing their process to the process of others (somehow always finding themselves falling short.)

2. The loss of identity through role or affiliation

When we lose a core piece of our identity, it can cause us to fall into mourning for our lost sense of self. Those who lose out on who they are (through firing or any other kind of social severance) are given the monumental task of not only grieving who they thought they were, but also setting up a new story for themselves in one fell swoop.

Examples:

• A person who leaves a religious group.
• Someone going through the break down of a long-term relationship.
• Empty nesters who suddenly find themselves looking for a “purpose”.
• An individual who loses their job or switches careers suddenly.
• Breast cancer survivors who grieve a lost sense of femininity after a double mastectomy.

Some of these individuals make the choice to leave their religious community or their career. Though this might sound easier, it can actually compound the grief even further. Because the individual made the choice to end that stage of their life, they can often feel as though they don’t have a “right” to grieve or feel a sense of loss.

3. A loss of physical, emotional or mental safety

On a very primitive level, we expect to feel safe in our homes, our communities and our relationships. When we lose that sense of safety, it can have some serious consequences for our sense of self as well as our mental and emotional wellbeing. Aside from the sense of personal violation that comes along with such a breakdown, it can also result in a sense of hyper-vigilance that causes the person to feel distinctly unsafe no matter what.

Examples:

• Survivors of physical, sexual or emotional trauma.
• A partner who has just learned their loved one is having an affair.
• Families experiencing eviction or housing instability.
• Children of divorce who lose the sense of safety they had in their “intact” family.
• Communities that encountered regular violence and destabilization.

Many of those dealing with this type of grief also suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which causes an array of other issues aside from the regular feelings of hyper-vigilance and numbness.

Those who survive trauma and violence often lose their sense of internal safety and it becomes nearly impossible for them to restore it — even when circumstances stabilize. Alongside dealing with their own feelings of constant insecurity, they are also tasked with grieving this loss while struggling to rebuild their lives.

4. Losing the ability to manage one’s own life and affairs

Losing your personal autonomy is a type of grief that can cut you to the core. We all have a need to manage our own lives and when we lose that, it can trigger a very real and very permeating sense of grief.

Examples:

• Someone who has experiences prolonged financial setbacks.
• Those who suffer from degenerative illnesses.
• Elderly or aging family members that can no longer care for themselves.

Being unable to control our own lives causes us to lose touch with who we are at our most basic and intimate level. Finding ourselves struck down with severe illness or disability causes a profound setback that marks every step we take. New forms of decline add up, and over time we find ourselves grieving for lost independence and the ability to live life actively. This is because a loss of autonomy results in not only a sense of failure and despair, but it also requires the afflicted to reconceptualize who they are while they face their new limitations.

How grief takes its toll.

Because grief is so nuanced and often subtle, the signs of it in our lives can often be overlooked, which can lead to a stalling or breakdown in the grieving process. Grief occurs naturally in stages, but those stages can commonly be interrupted or sidetracked, creating some severe emotional consequences for the sufferer. Some of the most common signs of unresolved grief are:

Irritability and anger

Grief is unpleasant and uncomfortable. As such, we often push the feelings it elicits in us deep, deep down, doing our best to bury them and forget about them entirely. The problem is, though, that this just isn’t how emotions work. Try as you might to bury the feelings of injustice and anger, they will have their day in the sun. Pushing your emotions to the side in order to get past them only leads to an out-of-the-blue explosion and a steady irritability that is corrosive to our closest relationships.

Apathy and low-grade depression

Suffering grief feels akin to having a heavy, wet blanket thrown over you. It’s not only pervasive, it’s leaves us paralyzed and feeling so weak that we start to believe we cannot go on. The result of this kind of perpetual heaviness is often an emotional numbness, as well as a low-grade but persistent depression that can zap your energy drive and motivation.

Hyper-alertness or obsession with loss

Those grieving a trauma often find that they are not only hyper-alert at all times, but they are also obsessed with the idea of loss and the idea that the world is out to harm them. Suffering trauma causes life to look considerably more fragile and causes us to respond to the world in way that perpetuates anxiety and disappointment. When you’re the victim of trauma, the world becomes an unsafe place and — feeling unsafe in your own skin — you start to expect the worst and suffer with side-effects like insomnia and a collapse of mental wellbeing.

Self-harming or addictive behaviors

Incomplete grief festers within us like a sore, poisoning who we are and killing our dreams in one fell swoop. In order to avoid the misery that grief causes us, we often push our emotions to the side and keep them at bay by engaging in self-harming or addictive behaviors like drug and alcohol abuse or overeating.

Overreaction

When we are dealing with the effects of grief in our lives, there are often certain cognitive-behavioral responses that we develop. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we develop a number of behaviors that are meant to help us avoid suffering a similar loss in future. Add incomplete grief to that mix and you get an overreaction cocktail, which can transform your grief from a temporary state to a long-term patterns that are hard to overcome.

Finding the silver-lining inside your grief.

If you’re lost in grief, the good news is that you can bounce back and find happiness again. Though our pain can feel like a life-sentence, it’s only a brief moment in time and one that can provide powerful learning experiences when we know how to reshape and retrain the way we think.

1. Weather the storm

Grief is one of the most intense and unpleasant emotions we ever experience in this life. It seeps right down into our souls and has the power to change us at our very core. Because these feelings are so strong, we often want to do something — anything — to dull or stop the pain. When this happens we turn to harmful behaviors like internet overuse, wanton promiscuity or drug use, that can leave us vulnerable to further pain and suffering.

You cannot heal until you learn how to confront your pain and embrace it like the part of you that it is. Ignoring the pain inflicted by loss only works for so long and overtake is inevitable. Allow yourself to grief in whatever way feels natural and don’t be afraid to let your emotions wash over you in their entirety, no matter how unpleasant they may be.

Weather your grief, instead of avoiding it. When a loss is fresh in your memory, give it your full attention and allow it to be as it is in that moment. Draw a line on the grieving processes, however, and give yourself a set period of time to complete your grieving. This could be a couple of days or a week or a month. Burying your grief is dangerous, but so is wallowing in it for all of time. Don’t stay stuck in your sense of loss, but allow the wound to have the time it needs to open up and heal.

2. Re-focus on what matters

If you’re dealing with a particularly gut-wrenching loss, try to remember the good times and the moments or memories that made you happiest. When we focus on only the negative, we generate more of that in our emotions. Your thoughts won’t change what happened, but they will change your future. Instead of making yourself feel worse, shift your focus and rewrite the ending into one that allows you to heal.

A mindful journaling practice is one of the best ways we can shift our focus from negative to positive. Each time you feel tempted to be come upset, angry or just self-pitying, reach for your journal and write down all the good things you can remember about whatever it is that’s making you blue. Then, in future moments of sadness, return to this journal for a burst of happiness and positivity.

Shifting our focus in this way allows us to retrain the connections in our brains, so that we can establish new emotions and memories around where we’re at. Though we might be moving forward without someone or something that was once important to us, it’s impossible to find happiness again by zeroing back in on new things that can bring us joy and possibility. After you’ve embraced the storm, try to center yourself around whatever shreds of happiness you can still find.

3. Stop second-guessing your joy

When we suffer a major loss or setback, it can cause us to second-guess our happiness in those rare in-between moments where we find a smile on our face, despite the chaos around us. Being happy when we think we should be sad can lead to great feelings of guilt, but those feelings are both self-defeating and delusional in their nature.

Don’t feel bad for feeling good. Grief is a funny thing and its nature transforms from person-to-person, day-to-day. One day you might be feeling like you can’t go on. But the next? Well the next day, who knows? You might find yourself smiling from ear to ear with an unbridled sense of optimism you thought you had lost.

There’s no set length of time when it comes to recovering from a loss. Our happiness will return to us sooner or later, so don’t feel guilty or think that you “haven’t grieved enough”. If you feel like you’re recovered from a loss, chances are you have. Trust yourself and know how to spot happiness knocking on your door. It’s okay to smile again, and it’s okay to find joy in something else or someone else. Let yourself look for happiness, but also let yourself find it.

4. Write a new narrative for yourself

Heartbreak can create a narrative, and one that dramatically changes the course of our lives — for better and for worse. When we’re haunted by the hurt of painful experiences, we can start to align our lives to a repeating pattern of self-destruction, creating a private and enclosed and internalized hatred. Part of recovering from that shame is to write a new story, one in which you alone are the hero and the star; dictating your own future according to the wishes of your authentic self.

Write yourself a new story. Branch out and burst forth, letting your true self shine. Pursue those things which make your heart sing, and stop making excuses for other people (or yourself) based on the whims of other people.

Let go of the heartbroken narrative you’re stuck in, and start telling a new story. Recovery is slow, and can often feel like walking in quicksand, but it’s easy to take control of your destiny once you get the hang of it. Start living for you, and learn how to reframe the bad in your life in a way that serves the greater good. Reach out to someone you trust if you need support.

5. Be a little selfish

If you’ve ever been on a commercial flight, then you know the saying “Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others.” The same goes for life. It is impossible to help others or be a contributing member of any friend / family unit when you are unable to take care of yourself. Being unable to define your own value and self worth makes it impossible for you to communicate that value with the world.

Try as you might, if you’re broke-down and unhappy on the inside, you’ll have nothing to offer others on the outside. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. Allow yourself to fall in love with you, just as deeply and unabashedly as you fall in love with others. When you love yourself, you can spread that love to others, but not before.

Cultivate love for yourself by celebrating your strengths and developing a mindful journaling or exercising practice that helps you to feel confident and fulfilled. There’s no one cut-and-dry way to take care of yourself, just follow the things that give your mental and physical wellbeing the food they need to thrive.

6. Be positive and grateful

A lot can be said for positive thinking and the benefits it can bring to our lives, and that’s especially true when it comes to learning to be happy on our own. If we’re looking to truly transform our longterm solo happiness, we have to retrain our brains to look on the brighter side, and learn how to move away from focusing only on the negative. When we move from a negative mindset to a more positive one, it unlocks some really surprising opportunities.

Spend some time each day considering three things that are constructive or positive in your life. They can be big things, or small, and should exclude obligations like work or school (unless those things are exceptionally great for your sense of self). Do this 3x a day for 28 days to turn it into a habit that your brain can start doing automatically. Over time, you’ll get better at recognizing the silver linings in life.

Another way to retrain your brain is to use a positive mantra throughout the day. These mantras can be simple or complex, but it’s best to start with something like, “Today is wonderful,” or “I’m grateful for all the good things in my life.” When you find yourself in a stressful moment, quickly find a quiet space, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Repeat your mantra to yourself a couple of times and try to see the situation from a positive light. Is there a lesson to be learned here? There’s always an upside when we give ourselves a chance to look honestly.

Putting it all together…

It doesn’t take the death of a loved one for us to experience suffering. Suffering can come from sexual or emotional trauma, the loss of identity, the loss of autonomy and the shattering of our hopes and dreams. Expectations are at the center of who we are and when they are interrupted — in any format — they can cause us to grieve for the perceived future that was lost. Learning how to deal with your grief means learning how to identify and understand it. Trust yourself and trust your emotions. Let your feelings out and give yourself the time you need to heal.

Weather the storm of your pain, and stop looking for ways to avoid the hurt. Confront your heartbreak and embrace it like the old and helpful friend that is. Our pain serves a purpose, but grief can make it hard to see that. Re-focus on what matters and plug yourself in to the people and experieness that help you to see the beauty in your loss — even if only for a second. If you find a sliver of joy in the midst of your darkness, embrace it, and stop letting yourself be held back by the hurt your loss has caused. Write a new narrative for yourself and start getting a little selfish by making sure you take care of yourself before you take care of others. Our pain has a point, but that resolution is only reached after a long and perilous journey. Stay positive and be grateful for the other things in your life that are going well. Life can be a hard and ugly thing, but it can be a beautiful one as well. Make the decision to step out of your grief and start living a better life today.