The things people say……

If you have experienced grief or know someone else who has, you know about the things people can say with good intentions, but the result is to cause more pain. Often times people feel like they have to say something profound to make things better. Sometimes people think their job is to make our suffering go away so they give advice. Those sentences usually begin with the words, “You should….” Other times, people are uncomfortable with their own feelings about your grief, so they will tell you something that makes themselves feel better. Some of the comments you may have heard are, “Everything happens for a reason”, “God needed another angel in heaven”, “It will pass in time”, “Grief is temporary”. Again, people usually have good intentions, but they don’t know what to say. This may cause us to become further disengaged from others.

Another barrier to healing can be the “elephant in the room” syndrome. Your friends and loved ones don’t want to mention your loss because they fear causing you more pain. You don’t bring up your grief because you assume they are sick of hearing about it and you don’t want to drag them down with you. Sometimes it can help to talk about the elephant in the room directly and set some ground rules. As a rule of thumb, it can be a good idea to give those close to you permission to ask how you are doing at any given time, with the caveat that they respect your right to answer however you choose, without taking it personally if you don’t respond how they had expected or wanted.

I encourage you to listen to the Shelby Forsythia Podcast - E3: How to Comfort Someone Who's Grieving, beginning at 16:00 through 32:00. In it, Shelby Forsythia discusses the lost art of how to comfort others. Encourage loved ones to listen to it as well, so they become more skilled at comforting you and others in their lives.

Here are three additional concepts you may find helpful in your grief journey.

• Self-compassion—simply put, self-compassion is the act of treating yourself like you would a good friend. If you had a friend who was suffering like you are, how would you treat them? What would you say? What would you do to support them? Can you begin to think about how you would apply this in how you treat yourself? Watch the self-compassion video by a self-compassion expert, Kristin Neff below.  

• Acceptance—I am not talking here about accepting your loss so that it doesn’t distress you anymore. I am talking about accepting what is happening at any given moment in the grief journey. This kind of acceptance is counter-intuitive. If I accept my pain, isn’t that the same as giving in to it? Fair question. Actually, acceptance allows us to interact with pain in a different way. We develop the ability to observe it, noticing how it ebbs and flows. Acceptance doesn’t mean we have to like our pain and grief. That wouldn’t be realistic. It does mean that we say, “this really is what is happening right now—I don’t like it but I won’t run from it or numb myself.”  Have you ever noticed that the more you try not to have something, the more you have of it? That’s what happens when we try to ignore or deny our pain—in the end, it is still there and we have more suffering because we tried to numb ourselves or run away from it. Ultimately, pain is part of the human condition and part of us. If we reject the pain, we reject a part of ourselves.
• Post-traumatic Growth—we have all heard about post-traumatic stress and what it is like for individuals who have experienced trauma. Perhaps part of our own grief and loss experience involved trauma of one kind or another. Trauma can have devastating impacts on someone’s life. Interestingly, something has emerged as we learn more about trauma. We are learning that there is something called post-traumatic growth. For some individuals, the end result of trauma and grief has been new growth as a person. Human beings are resilient creatures, and in the face of personal trauma, there exists the possibility of personal growth into a more caring, loving, and compassionate person. Oddly enough, sometimes the thing that wounds us the most becomes the source of greatest growth. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is something to be curious about as your own journey unfolds (Tedeshi and Calhoun, 2004).

Healing Step:

After viewing the video on self-compassion, identify what it would mean to become more compassionate towards yourself. Pick at least two ways you are going to experiment with self-compassion this week.

A note from Les:

I hope you have found these modules to be helpful, but they only scratch the surface of something that is so deep and personal. I invite you to consider joining the Grief and Loss Group at the Counseling Center which we hold every Fall and Winter. If these modules have piqued your interest, call the Counseling Center at (616) 331-3266 and set up an initial triage appointment to see if you might benefit from the group.

References: 

Tedeshi, R.G., & Calhoun, L.G. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundation and Empirical Evidence. Philadelphia, PA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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