Loss is part of life. We lose things all the time: our keys, our glasses, our cell phones, sometimes even our minds.
But when it comes to grief, people often think mostly about two types of loss: death and divorce.
Those are certainly losses – no matter how you feel about the person who’s no longer in your life. Even if you didn’t get along with a family member who dies, there’s still grief there for all the things you wish had been but now can never be.
Divorce can be heartbreaking, a loss of the hopes and dreams of your future together. It can also be something of a relief as you no longer have to participate in an intimate relationship that was, in some way, broken.
Both of these losses can be huge and lead to years of emotional pain if not processed.
Loss comes in so many forms
There are other losses, though, that accumulate throughout your life, that you may not have previously considered.
According to the Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale, there are 43 life events that are most liable to cause feelings of stress and can, in turn, cause illnesses and other health problems. Many of these also cause feelings of grief, as they involve losses of many kinds.
These include, but aren’t limited to:
- The death of a loved one or a not-so-loved one, including a former spouse
- The death of a pet
- Moving, especially during childhood
- Starting school or graduating from school
- Marriage, divorce and even marital reconciliations
- End of addictions
- Major health changes for you or a family member
Leaving a job, even due to retirement
- Financial changes, both positive and negative
- Legal problems
- Basically anything to do with your children: pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, adopting a child, having your kids grow up and move out, a significant change in your child’s physical or mental health, or your child coming out as gay/lesbian or transgender (or both)
- A change in personal habits, even good ones
- Imprisonment
- Loss of trust
- Loss of safety
- Loss of control of your body, often due to sexual abuse or assault
Loss can come even from happy change
Even changes we usually consider positive can cause you to feel loss and grief. For example, when my first child was born, it was an amazing, wonderful, empowering experience for me. He was a huge, healthy (if a bit fussy) baby and I felt like a warrior goddess having given birth to him with no pain meds (he was over 9 lbs and 10 days overdue) and then being able to breastfeed him, like I’d always imagined.
But I lost my freedom and independence. I became tethered to this other being who I loved beyond life and who ordered my days and nights. Fortunately, I recognized this and worked through it, so I was able to enter into motherhood relatively easily, despite the usual lack of sleep.
However, if my experience had been anything different, if the birth had needed more interventions, I wasn’t able to breastfeed, or he wasn’t healthy, I probably would have experienced significantly more loss. The loss of my hopes and dreams of what childbirth and motherhood would be like. If he had major health issues, I’d grieve the loss of the future I imagined for my child.
Grief is cumulative, and cumulatively negative
Your experience of grief also depends on how you feel about the change in your life. Some changes we can roll with an adapt to fairly easily, especially if we don’t have a lot of unresolved loss and painful emotions hanging about.
But other changes feel harder to deal with.
Sometimes that’s because they’re stacking up on top of other losses we haven’t fully resolved. When that happens, it’s like a bruised spot that’s getting pushed over and over again. Ouch! It doesn’t ever get the chance to heal.
So the grief and loss and difficult feelings continue to build up, added to with every other loss you experience.
Developing awareness is the first step to healing
Becoming aware of the different life experiences that can produce feelings of grief and loss is the first step toward healing.
Grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss.
Grief is the feelings you have (often conflicting ones at that) when a familiar pattern of behavior changes or ends.
When you know your feelings are coming from the grief you have around a loss, you can begin being a little kinder to yourself.
“Oh, this is grief I’m feeling,” you can say to yourself.
Even without knowing how to resolve the grief or how to stop trying to cover up the painful feelings you have due to loss, you’re a step ahead by being able to identify what’s going on.
If you’ve noticed you have losses in your life that are still affecting you, the Grief Recovery Method is a wonderful way to begin to resolve them. You’ll learn about the misinformation you’ve learned about dealing with the pain caused by loss and how to resolve what’s been emotionally incomplete and hurting all this time.
Steps toward healing
To learn more, schedule a free call with me. We’ll talk about what you’re going through right now and if working with me is the right thing for your right now. No obligation and no pressure. Just love and understanding.