Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Ep 94: Navigating the Waves of Grief: Comforting and Understanding the Bereaved
Grief touches each of us in unexpected ways, and when it does, the journey can feel isolating and relentless. In addressing the tender path of mourning, we recognize that it can stem from various losses, not solely the death of a loved one. In our heartfelt conversation, I share insights on the deeply personal and unpredictable nature of grief, urging patience and understanding for those who are navigating its choppy waters.
The art of comforting someone who's grieving is a delicate balance, and during this episode, I share ways to do just that. By encouraging the bereaved to engage in familiar routines, we can offer a comforting sense of normalcy amidst their storm of emotions. Together, we explore how to create a supportive environment for loved ones, emphasizing that the goal isn't to move on from the loss but to live with it. Your stories and approaches to handling grief are invaluable; if you're seeking guidance or have wisdom to lend, I invite you to connect with me. Let's build a community that holds space for grief, anchored in empathy and led by love.
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
www.bethtrammell.com
Hello listener, welcome back. I'm your host, dr Beth Tramell, and I am an Associate Professor of Psychology at Indiana University East, where I'm also the Director of the Masters in Mental Health Counseling program, and my focus is to make words matter for good, and today's episode of Things you Learn in Therapy, we're going to talk about grief. We have talked about grief in small ways before, but it feels like a topic that we kind of continue to cover. You know, it's kind of like trauma, that another really common reason that people come to therapy is to learn about grief. And today I want to talk about how to love someone else who's grieving.
Speaker 1:You know, all of us probably know someone in our inner circle who is experiencing some form of grief, and I want to start by clarifying that grief comes even if it's not a death. You know, obviously, I think we often talk about or we think about grieving through the lens of death of someone you know, like they have actually died, left this earth, kind of thing. And while that's true, there's other things that people grieve, you know, I think people grieve the loss of their work. They lose their job, they may go through a grieving period If there's a breakup. They've lost that relationship. That relationship has died. There's a lot of ways that we can experience grief, and I just want to encourage us to not have kind of a narrow or a judgmental view of what grief is or should look like, because if there's anything that I have learned from walking alongside lots and lots of people in the therapy room and their grief, it's that there is not a one size fits all in any way. Everybody experiences grief in all different kind of ways, and I think that that is kind of one of the first things that I know that I have learned and have heard from folks who've experienced grief is that grief really comes in waves. Things are going just fine for a little while and then all of a sudden it really sort of comes crashing down just like a wave. You know if you've been to a body of water where there's waves, to the ocean, to the sea, where the wave sort of comes and crashes into you and sometimes it's so strong that it knocks you down. Sometimes it feels so strong that it knocks you down and it pulls you under. Sometimes people in grief will say like I just feel, like I can't breathe.
Speaker 1:That wave metaphor makes a lot of sense in this way because that is sometimes the experience that people have. It just sort of comes over them and sometimes it's unexpected, sometimes it's, you know, there's the smallest thing, or it's a smell, or it's a sound, or it's you know, a thought that you have, it's you know the birds chirping in some kind of way, and it just triggers this memory. And sometimes that memory comes with a lot of grief. And so if you are loving someone who's grieving and some days they seem fine and other days they seem really not fine, that's okay. We can be with them in those hard moments, even if it seemed like they were ahead of the wave. So I guess the first thing I'm saying here is I think there's some people who would say they kind of never get over it. I think this idea of kind of getting over it is one that we in our culture try to encourage people to do because it's comfortable for us. If my partner would just get over their grief, then they would always be happy, right, or they would be happier, or I wouldn't have to watch them cry or suffer, and I'm not sure grief works that way. I think folks who experience grief might say that they have learned how to live with the grief, but I'm not sure that they would agree that they will or even want to ever quote get over it. So I think if you're feeling frustrated in some kind of way, that you're like I wish they would just get over it, you might have to take a pause and say, actually, that might be more about my discomfort with this than what is truly good for this person that I love who is grieving.
Speaker 1:Grief comes in waves. It can be a big wave, a heavy wave. It can be waves that come with short bursts in between. Right, maybe it's every day. It comes in a wave and some folks may go days or weeks or months and they haven't had a wave. And then they do and it kind of knocks them off their feet a little bit and then they get back up. That's what honoring the person that we lost is all about. It's getting up and continuing to live life in honor of them and carrying their memory. So it comes in waves.
Speaker 1:The second thing to love someone well includes continuing to ask them about the person they lost in the days, the weeks, the years after. It's important to continue to ask your friend. You know, I still think sometimes. I'll say this to my friend who's grieving, I'll say I still think about them. I don't know how you continue to go on. I'm proud of how you continue to live your life and I just want you to know that I'm thinking about you today because I've been thinking about them today and as you are reaching out to the person and continuing to say how much you care about them, feel free to give them an out that they don't have to respond right away.
Speaker 1:Right, sometimes I think when those waves come, we may not even feel like reaching back out to someone who's reached out with a really kind message. It would be totally fair to say, hey, no need to respond right now, no need to respond at all. I just want you to know that I'm thinking of you. I just want you to know that I'm thinking of your dad, who you lost. I just I miss sometimes hearing his voice, I miss being able to come over and see his smile. I just want you to know that I've been thinking about him. So continue to ask, especially after that first wave.
Speaker 1:So a lot of times what happens is folks will get a ton of support in those first few days, or even the first week of when a loss has occurred and then life kind of goes on for us, right For the rest of us, and sometimes the person who's grieving can feel like the world is moving on past them and they're still stuck in this grief. So it is really great to support someone immediately upon their loss, but it's also great to continue after that first sort of wave of grief has come, and so reaching out, dropping off a gift card to a local restaurant, dropping off groceries, dropping off a meal that can be frozen, it could be really great to show support, particularly as time goes on. Just recognize that their experience may be, they're not ready to move on the way the rest of the world is, and so it's very fair for you to come back, meet them where they are, kind of have a conversation with them and just say how are you today? You know I was reading something that suggested that asking how are you is not necessarily a great question because they are not good. Asking them how are you today may make it more time bound right, like, how are you in this moment? How are you holding up today, recognizing that in the circumstances things may not be great, but maybe there are pockets of light for them. There might be pockets of hope for them and if it's kind of one of those wave moments they may not have pockets of hope. That wave may really be keeping them in kind of a hard place right now and as long as you can support them and let them know that you're there when they wanna come out of that wave, they may just have to ride the wave.
Speaker 1:Grief is not a linear process, meaning there are kind of these stages of grief that experts kind of talk about denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But it doesn't mean that once you're done being angry that you will never come back to being angry again. Folks who experience grief will say they kind of weave in and out of a lot of those stages, sometimes daily and sometimes longer than that. Right when they are angry right away they're in denial, right away they spend time bargaining right away and then they may move and land in depression for a while but then they come back to anger. Sometimes they come back to bargaining. Sometimes Maybe there's a memory that's triggered and they fall back into some of those other stages. So when you are loving someone who's grieving, try not to judge them at where they are in this stage.
Speaker 1:It's really hard for a person who's grieving to be around, someone who is also judging them. They're already doing their best and so when we are sort of making comments like it was like six weeks ago how are you still this sad? That feels like a judgment statement. Some folks it feels like yesterday. Some folks it feels like ages ago. But the reality is there is no standard timeline for grief. Some folks will say they will grieve the rest of their lives. Some folks will say the hardest part of grieving may be a certain number of days or weeks or months. But I can tell you for certain that there is no expert, no handbook, no guidelines that say when you get to this mark, things get easier. Some folks will say once you get past the first year of kind of holidays and anniversaries, the load begins to lessen a little bit. You know the first birthday, the first anniversary, the first Christmas or holiday. But I think there's also folks who would say that the eighth holiday is no less hard, it's no easier than the first or second holiday without their loved one. So I think it would be fair to reach out to a person that you love every holiday, every birthday, every time there's something that comes up, because, as you are bringing that person up, it doesn't mean that we are making our friend uncomfortable or making them sad. It means that we're honoring the person they love.
Speaker 1:A couple of the last things that I'm going to share here in this episode and one of them is around other people's tears, right? So sometimes when you talk about grief with a person who's grieving, they cry, and sometimes our discomfort will push us into advising them or placating them or trying to get them to start crying in some kind of way because we're uncomfortable, and I want to encourage us to just sit with the discomfort of the tears. The best thing we can do for someone who's tearing up is to just pause, be empathetic in our listening, which basically just means like allow them the space, ask them what the tears are about, ask them if they would be willing to share their tears, what's causing them to be tearful. They may be just so grateful that you've just given them that space instead of just saying, you know, kind of placating things like well, they're, they're in a better place now and you're gonna be okay, and you know, you say these things to try to minimize your own discomfort and for a person who's grieving, it may feel frustrating, it may feel disrespectful and annoying that you're trying to sort of cover up your own feelings of discomfort and making them kind of respond in a way that is about your comfort and that might be hard for you to hear right now. I know that I've been in situations where I have focused more on my comfort than on, you know, comforting another person and I never felt good at the end of it. You know, I realized later like oh geez, you know that was really about me and not about them, and in the whole point of having the conversation is to let them know that you care about them. It's just something to be very aware of as you are feeling this sense of discomfort around their tears or their sadness and allowing that space to be there.
Speaker 1:One of the last things I'm gonna share here, not because it's the end of the whole list of how to support someone who's grieving, but just for the sake of this episode you know, sometimes folks who are grieving really appreciate having a sense of normalcy, and so if you had sort of a Tuesday night dinner club that you would go out to dinner with some friends, or if it was the first Wednesday morning and you would meet for coffee, invite them to the normal things.
Speaker 1:Sometimes doing those sort of normal everyday things, where they're connecting with people and their space for them to talk about what's going on, can be the best gift we give to someone who's grieving. And you might even say beforehand you're reaching out to them and you say, hey, I'd love for you to have coffee with us again, and if you want to talk about your loss, we'd love to hear. And if you would rather not talk about it at all, we also can just talk about things that we usually talk about. It's no problem.
Speaker 1:So sometimes taking the pressure off of them is helpful ahead of time, right, so that they don't feel like everyone's waiting for them to share about what's going on or how they're doing, or people are kind of tiptoeing around this conversation. Sometimes it's good just to get that out of the way and then invite them into normal things again, the things that were regular everyday things that they used to do before they lost the person that they're grieving. So hopefully those are a few things that you can kind of wrap your head around in terms of helping someone you love who's going through the grieving process. If you have thoughts or feedback, anything you'd love to add, feel free to reach out to me, beth, at nakewordsmatterforgoodcom. And until next week, friends, I will wish you the best and stay safe and stay well.
