Am I grieving?

Grief

Grief is a natural process we all go through when we experience loss. Grief is a mix of feelings and emotions that occur when we experience loss, loss in itself can literally be anything from losing a loved one, to a relationship coming to an end to having your car stolen.

Grief is a very personal process for each individual and you may grieve in a different way to those around you. The length of time it takes for you to grieve can be just as unique – there’s no time limit, you take as long as you need.

There are many ways for you to deal with your grief, allowing yourself to feel is a very helpful one, this could be allowing yourself to feel sad or angry. Below are some coping strategies you could try:

1. 1. 1. Go for a walk, punch a pillow, do some exercise, anger is a very physical feeling, you need to burn it out of your system, the key is to make yourself angry by focusing on the things that make you angry when you’re doing your chosen activity
      2. Write a journal, you can write anything which comes to your mind, don’t overly focus on it, go with how your feeling and what your thinking. Once you’ve written it, you can do whatever feels right to you, keep it or rip it up and throw it away.
      3. Cry, if that’s what you feel like doing, go for it and have a good cry. Let it all out.
      4. If you have any regrets. Process what you regret and gently remind yourself that when you made your decision/choices in the past, you made them with the knowledge you had at the time, you made the best decision at the time with the information you had. In hindsight everything’s different, you’ve changed, your processing is different, you’ve learnt more, you’ve experienced more since then. Remember it’s about what you knew and felt at the time, not in hindsight.

Allow yourself to feel your feelings and find healthy coping strategies to deal with them so it doesn’t impact you or others around you in a negative way.