Your Thoughts On Grieving

[Killashandra]

I'm curious to see what you all associate the word Greiving with?

I heard a few years back that grieving the death of a loved one is a selfish thing to do because your not grieving for the person that died, your Greiving for the loss of that person in your own life.

Personally I have never really put much effort into the thought of it. It's just crying when someone dies isn't it? Not a big deal.

I'm trying to learn that grieving has more to it than just crying, and it's more than just a death of a loved one, it can be the death of your childhood, the pain and suffering from our life's journey,
I'm learning that it's allowing yourself to love and nuture yourself. Allowing you to learn and love and move on on life's path.

So with respect and gratitude I ask for your thoughts. ?

Thank you ❤

 

[Deleted member 34328]

Yes. It is so much more than tears or crying although that may be a part of it in expression. I find it hard or almost impossible to describe or put this in writing. Grief for me has been the loss of so many parts of myself. You're right. Grief over the loss of innocence, relationships, trust and so much more.

Without accepting and even moving through every part of grief, healing will also not be more than just tears or occasional crying. It's not true freedom.

I don't know what you've been through or what has prompted you to examine grief more closely but I would encourage you to continue to learn and experience what you can. This is a very painful and difficult topic for me as my own loss is so strong.

Your insights are very good. Thank you for seeking to learn and understand more. Seems to me, you're on the right path.

 

[EveHarrington]

Grieving is not a selfish act. Telling someone this is IMHO an invalidation of their feelings. We cannot control how we feel when going through a loss. I can't help but feel that labeling someone as selfish for having these feelings is pretty much telling them that their feelings are bad/wrong.

Grieving is indeed a bit more involved than simply crying after a loss. Are you familiar with the stages of grief?

 

[Casey_03]

For me, grieving has always been more about empathy than anything else. When I grieved my mom, for instance, I wasn't grieving the fact that I'd no longer have her in my life, I was grieving for the fear that I knew she'd experienced before she died. She had a battle with cancer that lasted several months, so I had to witness her struggle with accepting death -- for me, those are the most painful, excruciating memories, the memories of her going through denial, of experiencing sheer terror, of realizing she was leaving her daughters behind. It's been the same for other people I've lost. It's more about wishing I could have provided them some comfort at the end, and feeling pain because I couldn't.

 

[Whyteferret]

Grieving is definitely not selfish. IMO, it's a way of honoring the person who passed. Although part of the grief is for what we lost, the person was a part of our life as much that we miss the loss. If that makes sense.

I feel grief in my guts. It's like a numb ball of pressure. It's also the symptoms of depression. It's not clinically depression until several months have passed though. The APA recognizes grief as normal so it is not a diagnosis.

People can grieve more than death. A friend moving away, losing a job, losing a sense of innocence and happiness. Being changed by trauma. In many ways, all of those are deaths of who we were. We end up something and someone else
I grieve about what changed with the initial trauma and my car accident. I am not who I was before. They were a forced growth in a sense. But the growth came out twisted.

 

[Sideways]

I think that I see grief as a process that we go through when we suffer a loss (although not every loss will inspire a period of grief). When a person who is significant in our life dies, our life changes. The role they used to play, the space they used to fill, the things we used to get from them being in our kife - all those things have gone, and our life is going to have to go theough a period of change and adjustment, and often not one that we would like. Grief is a natural human reaction to that sort of loss.

Saying that grief is "selfish" is a bit like saying Hunger is selfish - if you haven't eaten, the natural human reaction to is feel hungry. When you suffer a significant loss, the natural reaction is to feel grief. Grief is natural enough that it's a process that we share with a whole heap of others in the animal kingdom. For anyone who's had 2 pet dogs and had one pass away, you'll know first hand, for example, that dogs go throu a very obvious grieving period in those situations.

When it comes to trauma, grief is part of the recovery process for a lot of people because there's so much that we have lost because of our trauma. For example, at some point once I've nailed 'Acceptance', I know that I'm going to go through a periof og grieving for the childhood that I lost, the innocence that I lost, the loving parent that I lost, etc.

 

[Killashandra]

Thanks everyone for your responses, they make a lot of sense,
I'm having trouble opening my self up to Greiving my losses, mostly personally losses you know Cptsd. .

I'm sort of half in denial and half in anger. Verbal ventilation is what I desire most. But it's so hard to talk. About anything meaningful I would dearly love to just start blurt in stuff out to my husband and talk but I get lost as to where to begin and if he wants to hear this stuff and I don't want to be boring etc.. I don't want him getting angry either.

I mean I barely open up on here as well I was reading my diary and realized it was mostly just the whey that I speak about not the curdle. Stupid analogy but there you have it.

Grief is something that I want to embrace and move through and through understanding different concepts of grief helps.
Thank you so much
Killa

 

[lostforgottensoul]

it can be the death of your childhood, the pain and suffering from our life's journey,

Sure it can. Im learning to grieve my "inner child"...or for "her"...the loss of a childhood...the loss of many things.

My mother, whom was one of my two main abusers, is days away from dying and i feel nothing...and everything all at once (if that even makes sense). Nothing in respect to one grieving a death but everything in the sense of being thrown in the middle of my entire past. Though that sounds like super harsh. Im still trying to figure it out.

But you can grieve the loss of anything. Actually, grieving my childhood is something my therapist encourages.

 

[St.Maybe]

I think that grief is what happens when love and attachment are forced to separate.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Or when childhood is lost, or when anything or anyone is lost in any way.