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Tag: coping

How to overcome waves of grief

How to overcome waves of grief

Grief often hits me in waves of sadness, and it can be difficult riding the waves of grief… Here’s a little technique that I found to be really useful in the grieving process.This week I have been knocked sideways by finding a “Dream Catcher” life goal planner that Claire wrote, she’d set goals for 1,5,10 &20 years hence – in career, fun, family, friends, romance, location, money and health…I never knew she’d written it…Imagine how I felt as I read it!

Here’s a coping strategy I’ve just started using, please do let me know what you think…

Transcript – 4 steps to cope with a wave of grief

We very often have these huge waves of grief that come over us in our horrible situation. What I want to address in this little video is a technique that I have used to overcome those waves of grief.

This is what happened to me this week. I was looking through some photographs and I found the little book that Claire wrote and she’s called it her dream catcher. And in her dream catcher book, she has written what will be happening to her in one year, five years, 10 years and 20 years from the day she wrote this book on the 17th of March, 2009. And she died almost to the day, four years later.

And in this book, she’d written what she wants to be doing with her career, with fun, family, friends, environment, romance, money and health. And when I read what Claire wanted to be doing in her life, what her dreams were, boy, can I tell you that thumped me in the heart. That got me. An overwhelming wave of grief hit me, even though it’s eight years ago that she died.

I want to share with you four little steps that I’ve started to use when I feel these waves of grief. Give these a go.

Step number one is to notice it’s a feeling. Wow, I’ve had a feeling. Notice it’s a feeling.

Step number two, this is the tricky one. Don’t label the feeling. When we label things of “oh, that was grief” or “oh, that was a bad one” or “that was something else”. That’s when we go off on a story. We label it as something and then we say, “Oh yeah, well when I’ve experienced that, I should be doing this or feeling this and that’s not fair.” And we’re off, we’re off on a story. And all of that happens in our head. If we just feel it and do not label it, don’t label it. It’s a feeling, that’s it? That’s where it stops. No labeling, no stories. It’s a feeling.

Step 3 is to self sooth. If we’d experienced this and we were telling a friend how horrible this wave of grief was, they probably put their arms around us and laid to soothe us and we can do the same. And we can say to ourselves, “That is horrible. It’s horrible you have to go through that. That’s so unfair that you have to go through that. What a horrible thing to have to go through. You poor thing.” And self sooth because it’s important that we can do that for ourselves.

And step 4 is to notice that we’re suffering and that suffering is a human condition and it’s the one thing that draws all humans together. And because we’ve not labeled our suffering, we’ve just noticed it’s a feeling, we’re not comparing it with anybody else because that will be a label and then we’re often a story. We’re not judging it against anybody else because that will be a label and then we’re often a story. We’re just noticing it’s a feeling, we’re self soothing and we’re recognizing that this is what makes us human. We are not alone. I’m not alone. This is what humans do. We suffer. And that’s a feeling and I can self sooth.

Just try those four steps the next time you have that feeling of overwhelming grief. Notice it, don’t label it, self sooth and recognize that this is what makes you human and you are not alone.

“I’m getting there!” – really?

“I’m getting there!” – really?

Do you use the phrase “I’m getting there”?

Really?

Here’s another video to challenge you!

If we’re getting there, how will we know when we are ‘there’?

What will we see, hear and feel when we are there?

And even if you knew what you will see, hear and feel to know that you have arrived ‘there’… There will be more shit to deal with once more!

 

Getting enough help and support is a great way for coping with bereavement. Sometimes the best way is to get self-help for dealing with grief after losing a loved one is understanding more about the strange stories we tell ourselves about the way our mind works and living truly in the now!

How to support someone that is grieving

How to support someone that is grieving

How to support someone that is grieving

If we know someone that is grieving and want to offer them support, what can we say?

You may feel that the person you know is doing really well and want to offer them encouragement, however just saying to someone they are doing really well is not ‘seeing’ them.

As a human being we all want to be ‘seen’, we all want to be noticed and understood, sometimes when we grieving it can feel extremely lonely. If someone just says, “hey, you are doing really well”, it can feel like we’re not really being noticed, we can feel like “Oh no I’m not, I am struggling enormously and feel terrible”.

Acknowledging how a grieving person feels can help them feel ‘seen’, noticed, and understood and can help them with their grief and loss, particularly coping with grief very soon after the death. Rather than just say our grieving friend is doing well, if we ‘see’ them and notice their pain also this can help them through their difficult times.

Try saying something like, “I see how much you are struggling, I see how much pain you are in, I see how difficult this is for you and yet at the same time I see how well you are doing”, this time our grieving friend has the support and encouragement that they are doing well and we have also noticed the difficulties they are going through – they may now feel ‘seen’ , more understood and better supported.

Good luck…

Climbing the mountain of grief

Climbing the mountain of grief

Sometimes, when we begin our journey into grief and loss we see the huge mountain of this life we need to live rising up in front of us… massive, craggy, insurmountable.

But if we stand there long enough, surveying the surroundings we may notice there is another way up, we reach the same destination but the journey is simpler, easier and more beautiful than we could ever have imagined.

I'm in a climbing the mountain of grief

Day Zero

Day Zero

For the year after Claire died I wrote so many blog posts and every one of those contained so much pain. In recent times the blog posts have been more positive and uplifting… But sometimes the pain returns.

It’s my youngest daughter’s 18th birthday today.

Claire and I had 4 kids, all close together, 4 under 4 years old at one point!

It was really tough with no time to think or do anything for ourselves… All there was were the kids.

About 10 years ago Claire started to count down the years, months and days to when she considered herself ‘free of parental responsibility’ when the youngest was 18.

Every time the kids kicked off, she’d smile at me and say through gritted teeth “7 years, 3 months and 2 days to go”. We laughed. Sometimes.

She told all of the kids (and me) that when she was free of parental responsibility that she was having a year sabbatical. No cooking, no washing, no cleaning, only doing things that she wanted to do.

When she died the countdown was at 3 years 11 months.

Today it’s at zero.

The one thing that I’ve discovered over this past four years is that whenever there is pain this can be helped by taking a ‘learning’ from the situation.

When we learn something it’s a positive, we can either learn something that we should do or learn something that we shouldn’t do… Either way we can improve our lives  for the future.

So what have I learnt this time?

I’ve learned that:

  • This pain will never go away, it’s part of me, it’s part of [my] life.
  • What happened to us as a family will continue to impact us when we least want it to,  birthdays and anniversaries are no exception.
  • Putting life on hold isn’t worth it..
  • Be clear about why we are delaying doing things we want to do and ask ourselves the question “What does this thing I want to do in the future get for me? And how can I have that, at least in part, now?”, That thing we are putting off may get us freedom, enjoyment, fulfilment, excitement or something else… Why delay those feelings, let’s look for other ways  to enjoy them now, whilst we can.

Today is a day of very mixed emotions. I’m totally excited for my daughter, happy in so many ways and yet, at the same time so desperately sad that Claire never saw her day zero.

Or perhaps she did…

 

Making time to grieve

Making time to grieve

Do you make time for grief? If you give yourself time and space… and by that I mean a specific time and space. I’ve found that it helps soooooo much in the grieving process!

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Swimming

Swimming

The journey I am on is a journey with a very distinct beginning, yet it is a journey without an end. Imagine walking down the beach towards the sea, taking the first tentative step as the waves break around your feet and walking out deeper and deeper into the ocean. As the water surrounds you you realise at some point you need to start swimming and so you just swim, further and further away from the shoreline. The further you get from where you were the more lost you become until eventually the shoreline, and everything you know disappears completely from view. As you lose sight of where you were, you have no idea which direction to go in, and so you have only one option, keep swimming, keep swimming.

And whilst that analogy holds true we wouldn’t really do that would we, we wouldn’t just walk out into the sea and begin swimming. If we wanted to swim the English Channel we would have a support vessel, we’d cover our bodies in a protective layer to keep us warm, we would inform the Coast Guard of where we were going, we would avoid all the large ships which crossed our path and eventually, with the aid of everything around us we would reach the other side.

And yet, even with all this help, I’m sure that when the sight of land disappears behind us and has yet to appear in front of us, it could seem as though we are in the middle of the channel with nothing but pain and torture in front of us. It’s only the sheer determination to keep going that would keep us on our path to the other side.

The difference with grief is that there isn’t another side, there isn’t a destination. There is only the journey. And yet, with the support of those around us, our own internal resources and the sheer determination that we all possess. We can just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.

And as I keep on swimming it becomes easier to accept that this is my life now, it becomes easier to accept that I can no longer see the shoreline from where I started. It was a lovely shoreline, I spent many happy years relaxing on it and enjoying being there, but it’s gone, it has disappeared from sight and will never return.

I’ve no idea which way to go on this journey, I’m just going to pick a direction and keep tenaciously swimming, accepting the help of those around me to act as my support vessel and just keep on going until the glorious day that grief turns in to love and I sight land head.

Dealing with Grief

Dealing with Grief

I thought in this post I would share some of my own experiences of dealing with grief, and I mean dealing with grief, not living with it, not ignoring it, not pushing it to one side as if it doesn’t exist, but actually dealing with it on a day-to-day basis, or even a minute-to-minute basis.

I guess it comes from spending two years developing myself that I know we all experience significant emotional events in our life at some point, these can have huge impacts on the way we view things in the future. We all know that we have beliefs about ourselves and some of those beliefs are empowering (I am good enough, I am strong) and some of those beliefs are disempowering (I don’t deserve it, I’m not worth it). From the moment the consultant came into that little room and told me that Claire had died I knew this was a significant emotional event where one of those limiting and damaging beliefs could easily have been adopted.

“I don’t deserve this”, “why did it happen to me”, “I’m worth more than this”, “she’s worth more than this”, “she doesn’t deserve it”… All would be easy thoughts to adopt yet all are dis-empowering decisions and beliefs.

I knew that from the moment I was told that I no longer had a wife any decision I made had to be empowering. I had to continue with life and I knew that from the second the consultant told me.

Not one single day, and I mean not one single day has passed without me working on myself. Every thought, every emotion, every single nagging idea that has dared to enter my brain has been dealt with. I’m working on the way I think 24 hours a day (and yes, I believe that my unconscious mind is also working on it whilst I am asleep).

The decision I made when Claire died was that I had to deal with it and I had to continue to live my life in a way that respected the 28 wonderful years I spent with Claire. Pushing those thoughts, emotions and nagging ideas to one side and not dealing with them has never been an option for me. I have faced them all head on and at the beginning they were hitting me literally every minute. Every minute of every day I was being pummelled with these thoughts, but because I have dealt with them as they have arrived things are much quieter now. My program of self development with NLP and Hypnosis gave me a toolbox of techniques, ideas and thinking patterns that have allowed me to work on those thought processes – no longer do I fill up that great big dustbin of negativity that so many people carry around on their backs all day, getting heavier and heavier as the years go by – in fact I went in to this whole process with a dustbin that had had a hand grenade chucked in it to completely clean it out, and as the days go by I refuse to fill that dustbin up again… it remains as clean today as it has ever been.

I genuinely feel at peace, those negative emotions and thoughts have almost stopped. Instead, they have been replaced by love. Love for everything that Claire was, everything that she did for me, everything that she did for the children and indeed immense love for her as my wife and best friend. I would much rather welcome those thoughts and emotions into my mind and allow them to live there rather than all of the negative ones.

If we are to make room for all of the positivity then we need to deal with the negativity. I continue to do so and will continue for the rest of my life.

… I can’t…

… I can’t…

When I first thought about it I thought “I can’t…”

But I’m now at a place where “I can begin to consider the possibility and imagine the options of what it would bring when I can” – and that is a far better place to be.

A change of perspective

A change of perspective

When I feel low I write. Writing helps me make sense of everything, it helps me put things in order.

Perspective 1

It’s the loneliness that is truly getting to me at the moment, I’m not talking about being alone, I’m talking about being lonely. When I married Claire I meant every single word of our vows, I completely and utterly gave myself to her and I know she did to me also. From that moment, when the Rev David Pytches joined our hands together and raised them high, two people became one. And that was how we lived.

Claire has been gone eight months and I still talk about ‘we’. “WE moved to Dorset because…”, “WE bought this house because…” – it is just ingrained into my every thought and my every action that we do this together.

The result of living like this for 22 years is that I still want to share everything with her. When I see the waves crashing against the shoreline in the middle of the storm it only seems to have significance because I could talk about it with Claire. When I taste a glorious bottle of the finest red wine, it tastes so good because I could share that experience with Claire. Without sharing there seems to be no significance.

What’s the point of seeing a beautiful sunset if there’s no one to share it with?

What’s the point of enjoying a lovely meal if there’s no one to share it with?

Sharing is me, sharing digs to the root of who I am and without the ability to do that it seems to rock my identity. I don’t know who I am any more.

I can’t see any immediate resolution to it.

I guess time will find a way.

Perspective 2

This part is written with the exact same loneliness emotion in mind but I want to tackle it from a different perspective. I met with a wonderful friend the other day, our situations are different but we share similar experiences of loss, she wrote to me today:

“I’ve developed a stronger and deeper relationship with [family and friends] that I wouldn’t have had… and that has enriched my life enormously”

This statement made me stop in my tracks. Of course the pain of losing Claire cuts deep but sometimes those surgical cuts can also have a healing effect. I can definitely feel a deeper relationship with some family members since losing Claire, especially my wonderful kids. I can feel  a deeper connection (rather intangible) but also notice things that are said and done (much more tangible) which never would have been said or done before.

In that sense, and with that frame of reference on the same situation, I can also see that my life has been enriched enormously.

Thank you O,T,T & M…. I love you guys.