Don’t Let Your Grief or Loss Hold You Back from the Feelings You Once Knew
The suffering we feel from grief and loss isn’t something that we can always just push through. Understanding your emotional journey can help you through your recovery process.
With the right support, you can move past this crippling phase of your life.
Dealing with Grief & Loss
We don’t “move on” from grief. We move forward with it. Grief does not happen in a vacuum, it happens alongside of and mixed in with a variety of emotions. Chapters in life – rather than leaving something behind – grief is part of your life and your experience and your future
“Grief is like one of those things – falling in love or having a baby – you don’t get it until you get it, until you do it”
You understand what you are experiencing and it’s not a moment in time, it’s not a bone that will reset, but you have been touched by something chronic. Something incurable. It’s not fatal, but sometimes grief feels like it could be. If we can’t prevent it, what can we do?
We can try to remind one another that some things can’t be fixed, and not all wounds are meant to heal. We NEED each other to remember, to HELP each other remember that grief is this multitasking emotion. You can and will be sad and happy; you’ll be grieving and able to love, in the same year or week, the same breath.
We need to remember that a grieving person is going to laugh again and smile again and even find love again. And yes, that means that they can move forward, but it doesn’t mean that they have moved on.
Grief and loss aren’t things we can just suck up and move on with. Conquering your grief and overcoming the loss that is weighing you down is most effectively done by understanding the cause of your pain and processing it. With the right counselling services for grief and loss, we can help you successfully navigate this difficult journey.

The Symptoms of Dealing with Loss & Grief

Separation distress involving intrusive, distressing preoccupation with the person or thing that was lost. Grief impacts us holistically.

The Many Ways Grief Impacts Us
Helpful Ways to Overcome Your Grief
Pendulation
Lean into the emotion and let you feel them and then you swing out too, to ground yourself, to get comfort, to take a break and rest. So some distraction is OK as long as you face your pain in regular, tiny doses. With as much support and resources as possible. So a healthy nervous system can do both. It can swing in and feel, and then it can swing out and rest. Where an avoidant nervous system just clenches more tightly to avoidance.
As we move into and out of those emotions, we eventually integrate those experiences and our capability to handle them. Take some time to face your intense grief, to ugly cry, to scream, yell, shake, sob and then you take some time to wrap up in a blanket and curl up with your spouse or your dog and spend time doing something you enjoy.
It doesn’t mean that to process grief you have to be sad all the time or let your emotions run your life. Pendulation means that you can just address them in these small chunks and then swing back out.
Resourcing
Adding support to yourself while you face your pain. Instead of avoiding thinking about your loss or avoiding visiting the grave, you consider bringing someone with you to support you while you visit the grave. Or after you have a hard anniversary, maybe you find something that’s really soothing for your body, like a hot bath, or massage or an exercise that feels good. So we’re just adding resources to help strengthen you as you face this painful experience.
Titration
Just means doing things in small doses. For example, if you need to work through some old memories or papers, set yourself a time lime to face your pain, and then take a break and come back to it after a rest. You can just try to face your pain in small doses.

Overcoming Grief Takes Time
Whole first year is one loss after another e.g. a year where they experience first times without that person. Beware of special occasions and holidays all year
- Uncomplicated mourning is normally 2-3 years
- Complicated mourning may be a 5–7-year process
There is no timeline for this stuff. There’s no simple magical process that you can just work through, that will magically make your grief go away. The difference between people who start to heal and those who avoid their grief, is do you lean in? Or do you lean out? When big emotions come up, do you desperately seek to avoid, numb, suppress or distract? Or do you face them even if in little doses. That doesn’t mean that you have to just drown in your grief.
Being compassionate and patient with yourself is critical as you go through your process.