Feelings of sudden grief can be reignited by almost anything, sometimes memories, sounds, and places can bring up these emotions.
Understanding the natural grief process and stages of grief can help you figure out how to get through grief and guide your healing journey.
In our guide below, we’ve discussed more about the grief process, ways to cope with grief, and how online grief therapy can play an important part in your healing journey.
The Grief Process
Grief can overwhelm you with intense waves of emotions that can be challenging to manage in the moment.
An important aspect of managing grief is recognizing where it comes from.
Different types of grief don’t always deal with the loss of life. For example, people can also grieve the futures they’d hoped for or relationships they thought they had after a breakup.
The experience of loss can leave you with various layers of grief to work through and heal — all of which must be acknowledged, this is where online grief therapy can be useful to help you work through each stage.
Grief Stages Are Not Necessarily Linear
Kübler-Ross’s five stages represent the common range of emotions you may feel, remember, grief is never a straightforward road.
These stages can be beneficial for understanding your reactions.
Kübler-Ross’s five stages of the grief process include:
- Denial: This stage can make people feel confused about reality. Their minds may suppress many emotions and memories until they’re ready to heal and move to the next stage.
- Anger: Feeling frustrated and anxious are among the most common responses to loss. People in this stage may experience intense feelings, which can lead to harsh reactions.
- Bargaining: This stage may cause people to question their decisions, relationships, and spirituality in search of false hope.
- Depression: People in this stage of grief may feel numb to their grieving waves, impacting their daily lives. Unfortunately, this stage can be difficult to identify because individuals may mask or deny their emotions rather than accept them.
- Acceptance: The “final” stage isn’t just about acknowledging what happened but accepting that life can continue positively despite it. This is arguably the most crucial stage of grief and essential to the healing process.
4 Ways To Cope With Grief (How To Get Through Grief)
Be Kind to Yourself and Remember That It Will Pass
It’s essential that you are kind and respectful to yourself during this time to maintain your mental health and aid your grieving process.
For some people, this may mean taking time off work and other responsibilities to give yourself the proper time, space, and focus to heal, there are many ways to cope with grief.
Depression and other feelings of grief can last throughout your entire life, though the primary stages of grief may only last six months.
Reminding yourself that you’re enduring a natural part of the human experience may help you better understand and manage your pain and keep yourself looking forward.
Don’t Repress Your Emotions and Share Your Loss
Accepting and embracing your emotions is one of the most important aspects of your healing process.
Giving yourself an outlet to express your emotions can help you manage your sadness waves and understand where your feelings stem from. Practices and resources include:
Journaling
Meditation
Grief counselling online
Support groups
Social engagement
We have many online grief therapy classes at Plentiful to help with expressing your emotions as well as meditation breathwork classes.
Seek Your Faith and Spirituality for Comfort
Religion, spirituality, and other belief systems can be instrumental to your grieving process.
Though every person is different, spiritual practices, such as prayers and ceremonies, may help you channel your intense feelings into something positive.
They can also help you connect with others so you can share your emotions, support, and lots of love.
Try Online Grief Therapy To Process Your Loss and Heal
Different types of grief come in waves and can be challenging to get through alone.
At Plentiful, we are devoted to finding mindfulness, wellness, and spiritual solutions that can help people heal and become their best selves.
We have many grief healing practices available for beginners to try that can help you along the way.
Trying grief counselling online can be a transformative experience since you have a safe place where you can talk about your feelings and have someone objectively try to help you navigate them.
As we mentioned, healing from grief is a very unique and personal journey too, so having a dedicated practitioner to understand your specific grief is important.
Why Does Grief Keep Coming Back?
It can be frustrating to think you are over your grief, only for something to trigger these feelings and bring them back again.
This is why we think of grief as waves. Learning the tools to cope with grief will help you along your journey.
Memory Influences Grief Waves
Recalling memories, plans, or other aspects of difficult times can cause grief to burst back up, even years or decades later.
This often makes it challenging to identify grief triggers, as you never know what could remind you of a fond memory.
However, grief can also naturally cause your brain to forget details, both temporarily and permanently.
Repressing these memories helps you “survive” in the moment and keeps you from feeling further overwhelmed. However, it can also prolong your grief process as you gradually remember what you repressed.
How Do You Not Let Grief Consume You?
Grief can be very overwhelming and an isolating feeling to have, it can cause you to feel withdrawn, resulting in you becoming less social and taking over your life.
To avoid grief consuming you, it may be ideal to reach out and speak to a professional through online grief therapy like here on Plentiful, or someone who you trust.
It’s important to try and maintain a daily routine when suffering from grief, try to ensure you are exercising, getting outside, and eating healthy.
Why Does Grief Not Go Away?
Grief is a natural response to loss that can feel intense and erratic. For many people, grief comes in waves throughout their lives and can leave them with lots of scars beyond the initial wound.
Because of this, it’s often challenging to set healthy expectations of grief and when it will leave.
Rather than getting frustrated with your healing process, it’s better to accept that it’s a journey that will have good and bad days.
Time is a great healer.
What Is Recurrent Grief Syndrome?
Recurring grief syndrome is also known as prolonged grief disorder. It’s when you are suffering from intense and persistent grief. These symptoms will affect your daily life.
Most people can get back to their daily life after 6 months of grief, longer than this then you will likely be suffering from recurrent grief syndrome.
It’s best to seek advice from a professional in this instance.
What Is The Hardest Stage Of Grief?
There is no universal single stage of grief which is the hardest, it differs for every individual. For some, it can be the depression stage, while for others it may be the acceptance stage.
Each stage may need different coping methods to help, for example, for acceptance, journaling might be a good outlet for the depression stage seeking online grief therapy may be helpful.
What Is The Best Advice For Coping With Grief?
Coping with grief is difficult and a very individual experience. The best advice may not apply to everyone, but the most important thing someone can do is be patient with yourself.
Grief is a slow process and a long journey, getting frustrated with yourself for not feeling better will only make things worse.
Take care of yourself, try to see loved ones, and get professional help if you are struggling.
How Grief Counseling Online Can Help
Trying to deal with each stage of grief on your own can be very difficult.
If you’re wondering how to get through grief, grief counseling online can help you work and move through each stage with support and exercises to help you cope with your feelings.
In our Grief support session at Plentiful, our practitioner will encourage you to be open and honest with your feelings about the grief you are going through and help you process your emotions.
If you found that interesting, read our latest article about how to begin meditation.
