Working Through Grief by Sarah Greene, MS, NCEP, MA, LCPC

Working Through Grief

Grief is a reaction to loss that can encompass a range of feelings, thoughts and behaviors.  We all experience grief differently based on our culture, background, gender, beliefs, personality and relationship to the deceased.  Feelings of sadness and yearning are common during the grief process. Guilt, regret, anger and a sense of meaninglessness may also be present.  If the deceased suffered through a long illness, we may feel relief or liberation.  The strength or mildness of our emotions can surprise us.

Research can help us understand grief and organize our feelings to better cope with our losses.  Many people are familiar with the five stages of grief as described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969.  These stages include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  Thirty years later, Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut described grief coping as a dual process rather than linear or cyclical.  This helps explain our back and forth feelings between the experience of loss (sadness, anger, yearning, crying) and the experience of restoration (normalcy, joy, contentment, laughing).

The feelings of pain that come with a loss are a natural part of being human.  Recent MRI brain research by Anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher may help explain why losing a loved one hurts so badly. She describes love as a “universal human drive”. From the anatomy of our brain, we love from our core brain, which is below the emotions and housed within the part with our basic human needs, such as hunger and thirst. 

If we don’t allow ourselves to feel the pain, we deny it and stuff it down where it festers in our unconscious.  This can then cause negative behaviors if we don’t recognize what we’re doing.  It is okay to pause and fully process where we are in our grief journey.  In grieving, we bring emotions to the surface and allow ourselves to feel them.  Grieving is allowing ourselves to feel all the emotions and pain of our loss—the anger, the loneliness, the despair.  Some people worry that if they start crying, they’ll never stop.  It may not feel like it in the moment, but crying is a cleansing process.

Any loss that causes a significant change to our lives is a life loss.  Death is the most obvious, but other losses can cause the pain of grief.  Tangible life losses might include the loss of a relationship, job, pet, home, business, mobility, health or memory.  Intangible life losses could include the loss of a belief system, faith, dreams, trust, respect, dignity or innocence.  It doesn’t take a major loss to set the grieving process in motion.   Even positive change entails a loss of what used to be and a transition into something new.  Graduating from college, getting a new job, having a child or reaching a weight goal can all make us realize that we’re not quite the same person anymore. 

There is no right or wrong way to grieve, or a definite timetable for moving through grief.  Everyone’s grief is unique and so is their process.  Some of us may respond to instrumental grieving which involves doing more physical things such as dancing, music, photography, scrapbooking, gardening or exercising.  Others may use intuitive behaviors to grieve, such as journaling, sharing feelings, exploring the lost relationship or finding new meaning and purpose in life. 

The psychologist J. W. Worden describes the Four Tasks of Grief as accepting the reality of the loss, working through to the pain of grief, adjusting to an environment in which the deceased is missing and then emotionally relocating the deceased and moving on with life. 

According to Kubler-Ross, “Grief is the intense emotional response to the pain of a loss. . . Most important, grief is an emotional, spiritual and psychological journey to healing.”  Our culture tends to avoid grief in an effort to be productive, happy and successful.  She argues that those who have allowed themselves to grieve completely find the greatest healing.  She further contends that many problems in our lives stem from unresolved pain and/or loss that was not grieved. 

For help working through your own grief, please attend our Exploring Grief group the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month from 7-8:30 pm at Kenilworth Union Church.  This program is free and open to the public.  Upcoming dates - 2/17, 3/3, 3/17, 4/7, 4/21, 5/5, 5/19.

Sarah C. Greene is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with Samaritan Counseling Center of the North Shore.  Ms. Greene sees clients in their Lake Forest and Winnetka locations.  She can be reached at 847-446-6955 ext. 18 or sgreene@northshoresamaritan.org.  

Samaritan Counseling Center offers hope, healing and restoration in a confidential manner that is professional, caring and accessible.