| FINDING SUPPORT AFTER A BEREAVEMENT | |
| Friends | Let people who care about you take care of you, even if you pride yourself on being strong and self-sufficient. Especially if you live away from family, true friends will have the shoulders you cry on until you begin to recover. |
| Family | The death of a relative can be a path for reunion, even reconciliation, among surviving relatives. (It can also tear families apart, especially in the case of sudden or violent death, so it’s important to be sensitive to one another’s approach to grief and to refrain from accusation.) Sharing a loss can make the burden of grief easier to carry, and having people with whom you can reminisce about the person all of you lost might help you recover. If you’ve lost a friend or spouse, family members can be a caring community. |
| Your faith community | If you follow a religious tradition, take all the comfort you can from its mourning rituals, and let the people of the institution give you emotional support. If you’re estranged from your faith community or have none, this may be a good time to reconnect or to explore alternatives. |
| Support groups | There are many support groups for people who are grieving, including specialized groups (examples: people who have lost children, survivors of suicides). |
| Therapists and other professionals | Talking with a psychotherapist or grief counselor might be a good idea if the intensity of your grief doesn’t diminish over time; that is, months go by and you still have physical symptoms, such as trouble with eating or sleeping, or your emotional state impairs your ability to go about your daily routine. |
Grief and Near Death Experiences
Getting Help
What will help you heal after a devastating loss?
Having the support of other people is the single most important factor in healing from a loss. Even if you aren’t comfortable talking about your feelings under normal circumstances, it’s important to talk about them when you’re grieving. Knowing that others know and understand your grief will make you feel better, less alone with your pain, and will help you heal.
Support can come from a number of different sources:
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No matter where the support comes from, accept it and do not grieve alone. One of the key elements of healthy grieving is allowing your emotions to surface in order to work through them. In the long run, trying to suppress your feelings in the hope that they’ll fade with time won’t work. Blocking the grief process will just block your eventual recovery from grief.
If people don’t know what they can do to help, tell them, whether it’s to go with you to a movie, cook you a meal, or just hold you as you cry. If someone is uncomfortable with your displays of emotion or need to talk about the person you lost, gently let him or her know that talking out your grief is part of your healing process.
Other things you can do to help yourself at a time of grief
- Express your feelings in a tangible or creative way. Write about your loved one in a journal, or write the person a letter saying the things you never got to say. Create a scrapbook or artwork about the person; create an appropriate memorial in his or her honor (for example, if the person loved flowers, plant or fund a garden); get involved in a cause or organization that was important to him or her.
- Take care of yourself physically. Get enough sleep, eat sensibly, and get regular exercise. Do not use alcohol or drugs to numb the pain of grief or lift your mood artificially. (That may even apply to antidepressants meant to ease the sadness of grief; because grief, unlike depression, is not a disorder, masking the pain with meds may be less productive than working through the sadness.) Healthy habits will help you recover from grief, but substance use will impede recovery and can lead to long-term dependence
- Don’t let other people tell you how to feel, and don’t tell yourself how to feel, either. Your grief is your own, and no one else can tell you when it’s time to “move on” or “get over it.” At the same time, it’s okay to be angry at the person who died, to cry every day if you need to, to yell at the heavens without being embarrassed. Conversely, it’s okay to laugh, too. If watching the entire oeuvre of the Marx Brothers helps you heal, no one has to right to tell you it’s inappropriate.
- Plan ahead. Anniversaries, holidays, and milestones in life bring particular challenges. Be prepared for an emotional wallop, and know it’s completely normal. If you’re sharing a holiday or lifecycle event with other relatives, talk to them to find out what their expectations are and come up with strategies together to honor the person you loved and meet the challenge.