Dealing with grief comes in everyone’s life at some point. When confronted with the loss of a loved one, whether a close family member, animal or friend. dealing with the ensuing grief can then dominate your life.
Everyone will have a period of grieving, but this will be different for each individual. For some, you will move through it reasonably quickly. For others, you can become stuck there, the grief dominating your life for years.
Some have intense feelings that cause physical symptoms such as sleepless nights or lack of appetite. Others will find their symptoms fairly mild, with just the occasional ‘attack’.
The intensity of the feelings and the time taken to grieve has nothing to do with how close you were. It has more to do with how healthy and balanced you are on the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical planes.
Most long standing or intensely felt grief stems from unresolved grief in the past. It becomes a repeating pattern. It’s as if you are being given repeated opportunities to heal your grief, in the hope that one day you will ‘get it’.
The grief comes more from a sense of loss, a feeling of emptiness that the familiar loved one filled in your life. The unfamiliarity of this can make you sad and lonely.
Grief generally has five stages:
- Shock and denial are the common first stage.
- This is usually replaced by anger – perhaps against the loved one for abandoning you, or perhaps against an unjust world for making you suffer.
- The third stage can be bargaining.
- Then follows deep sadness or depression.
- And finally acceptance.
These stages are by no means linear and people will often back track then move forward.
Grief is a way of letting go. It allows you to go deeper into yourself to find your core. But for some, they can’t let go of the pain, they can’t be disloyal to the memory of the dear departed, they fear letting go.
Dealing with grief then becomes a never ending block to moving forward. Society as a whole, at least in the west, does not support the holistic and healthy allowance and acceptance of grief. Friends and family members, while meaning well, become impatient with you and want you to ‘get a quick fix’.
Quick fixes are generally not quick at all, and certainly don’t help you deal with the core issue. Which means it festers and grows, albeit hidden under the veil of the quick fix. Ultimately the grief will appear in the body, in a desperate attempt to release the pressure building up. Common physical symptoms of unexpressed or blocked grief over time include: oedemas, headaches, migraines, allergies, back pain, gastric disturbances, diabetes, thyroid issues, insomnia, grave’s disease, nephritis, malaria, vertigo, to mention just a few. (Please note, these symptoms are not exclusive to grief.)
The emotions shut down leading to flat, emotionless, closed people (or animals). They can find it hard to respond to a new loving relationship or to enjoy the intimate side of a healthy relationship.
When dealing with grief in a healthy and curative way, it is best to allow, to accept, to know that it is a process (rather than a permanent state) and that you will come through it. But you can help the process along in a healthy, holistic way by getting good, homeopathic treatment. This in no way detracts from your body’s best efforts; rather it enhances it.