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Grief and loss, whether person or place or part of self, are inevitable. Every one of us will lose someone or something, and every one of us will need to be cared for through it; yet, our culture has no shared language for loss. Grief is a collective experience that feels isolating and lonely.
In her book It’s OK That You’re Not OK, therapist and widow Megan Devine speaks to the complexities of grief from both her professional and personal experiences.
The narrative about grief in our culture is one of stages. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, devoted her career to studying death and loss. She pioneered the theory we have of the five stages of grief; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Kubler-Ross later discussed that these stages were never meant to be understood as linear; however, the culture we exist in has a present-day expectation of a speedy recovery after loss.
Let’s pause and take a look at grief. Devine writes, “Recovery inside grief is entirely about finding those ways to stay true to yourself, to honor who you are, and what has come before, while living the days and years that remain.”
Grief is not pathology and it is not something to “Get Better Soon!” from. However you feel your grief is the correct way because it is a normal and healthy reaction to a permanent change that you did not ask for. What this means is we are tasked with rebuilding around loss, not “getting over.”
Let’s change the expectation of recovery. If you are grieving, approach yourself with compassion. Our natural inclination is to avoid and distract (brilliant, by the way, for those moments it hits you in line at the DMV and it isn’t a good time). In environments and with company you feel safe with, though, let it be messy and nonlinear. Loss itself is messy and nonlinear.
More words on grief –
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If you have ever had a conversation with your therapist about coping skill development, you have probably received a recommendation to begin a journaling practice. Understandably, sometimes journaling is met with skepticism – What does writing about my emotions solve, and why is writing so widely recommended?
Processing Emotions
Putting emotion on paper engages the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain which puts language to emotion, grounds us in the present moment, and assists in regulating emotion.
Memory Consolidation
Put simply, memory consolidation is a process by which information in short-term memory is transferred to long-term memory. Writing about your experiences – positive or negative – strengthens the parts of the brain associated with this consolidation. What this means is that, over time, we become better at accessing various parts of a memory (sound, taste, touch, smell, thought, etc.) and this allows us to better make sense of memories that may be difficult or traumatic in nature.
Stress Reduction
Journaling has been found to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (the “rest and digest” response/the antithesis of fight/flight/freeze). Cortisol levels drop, breath deepens, heart rate begins to slow. Suddenly, the writer is able to be more present with themselves as they process.
More than what researchers have shared with us about how journaling impacts the brain (as noted above), put simply – writing with and for ourselves fosters an internal relationship. We are in relation with ourselves more often than we are anyone else, yet rarely are we taught what it means to interact with self or how to do so in a compassionate way.
If you are interested in exploring journaling but are unsure where to start, here are some prompts to explore:
Remember, journaling is as individual as you are. Let there be spelling mistakes, run-on sentences, scribbles, and even drawings. Humans are gritty and messy; let the way you cope be gritty and messy, too.
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