When Is Grief The Worst?
What You NEED To Know
When is grief the worst?
While I wish I could answer that with any sort of precision, it is an impossible question to answer with any sort of time/duration in mind.
However, what I do know from research by Dr. Dan Siegel is that if you “can’t name your feelings, you can’t tame you feelings.”
Research has shown that being able to deconstruct the elements of grief decreases the intensity of the feeling and lighten the burden it creates.
After all, if we don’t notice the nuances of the feeling… it doesn’t mean that the feeling go away. Nor does it lessen the emotional impact when grief is at its worst. So when grief is at its worst, it’s essential to be able to understand the components of grief- so you can “Name it to Tame it.”
Famed Shame researcher, Brene Brown has also spent time studying grief. In her book, Rising Strong, she notes that grief has three key elements.
We’ll investigate the three components separately.
1. Facing Loss When Grief Is At Its Worst
When loss happens- rather it be the loss of an expectation or a loss of a loved one, it is healthy and helpful to acknowledge and name what we lost.
Loss can be tricky because with loss there can be lots of secondary losses
The primary loss is easy to recognize.
The secondary losses can be easy to gloss over.
This is especially true when a loved one dies. The changes that happen are often not immediately apparent. Here are but a few examples:
- A part of yourself (the way your brain processes the relationship is that you were part of the person. Therefore, you don’t just lose the person, you also lose a part of yourself.)
- The loss of a future that will never be
- The loss of goals that would be accomplished together
- The loss of inside jokes & family stories
2. Longing: A deep desire to go back to a place or time that no longer exists.
Unfortunately, longing- aka, yearning- is something that isn’t a topic that makes its way into everyday conversations.
Which is a shame, because the feeling is incredibly common. When you ache for the moments that exist only in the past, it can be incredibly painful.
Take for example, a couple that loved to cook together every evening. When the woman became a widow, she longed to be able to cook with her husband again. The pang of longing would occur every evening.
I cannot stress enough that longing can be intensely painful. After all, the future you imagined is no longer possible.
In those moments, you search for the comfort you used to have with the person and are faced only with the void of their absence.
Longing can also be a deep desire for something that never existed.
Take for example, if you grew up in a dysfunctional family. If your mom never was able to take care of you the way you deserved to be taken care of, it can create deep feelings of longing.
Longing can also be a deep desire for something that never existed.
Take for example, if you grew up in a dysfunctional family. If your mom never was able to take care of you the way you deserved to be taken care of, it can create deep feelings of longing.
3. Facing Feeling Lost When Grief Is At Its Worst
You know when you are driving somewhere new and you get lost? It is disorienting and can be a little scary.
When you are grieving the loss of something, it is perfectly normal to be disoriented. You may be asking, “Where do I go from here?”
That’s a good question. The map of how you planned to navigate your life, decisions, & relationships has suddenly changed… and- unfortunately- you can’t stop and ask someone for directions.
You have to create a new direction. And because there is secondary losses that accompanies grief, there will likely be many times when you have to create new directions.
When you don’t know the next turn to make, your brain isn’t very happy.
It likes to have clear and tidy directions.
Grief is anything but neat and tidy. With grief, there is a ton of uncertainty. In fact, the only thing certain is that things are uncertain!
Your brain may spiral and get into a loop as it is trying to figure out the map. However, because there isn’t certainty, you may feel:
- Stuck
- Overwhelmed
- Shame
- Fear loss of control
When Grief Is At Its Worst: What Can You Do With The Elements of Grief?
I’ll answer it the same way as I answered the question at the beginning:
While I wish I could answer that with any short of precision, it is an impossible question to answer.
However, I do know that when you “Name It” you can “Tame It.”
With that in mind, I suggest that you get out a piece of paper and make three columns labeling each column with the various elements of grief. When you encounter moments of grief, get curious and reflect on which of the elements of grief you are experiencing.
This can be a helpful way of taming (or at least taking a little bit of the edge off of) grief.
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Jill
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