Reminds me of something my Dad sent me when I was dealing with grief over someone who wronged me. It's from the Alcoholics Anonymous book, but I found the advice worked anyway. Here's the scan from the book:
https://imgur.com/a/XlkPGLp
I agree with your point about not harming yourself. After my first parent died, I tried to pretend like it never happened. I drank heavily to ignore the pain. Drinking affected my own physical and mental health. It was tough to break out of that cycle - it took about a year.
After my second parent died, I acknowledged the pain and tried to embrace the grief. I didn’t drink or take drugs - when a memory came to me, I just let it ride. That was a much healthier grieving experience.
For me, being around friends and family and keeping myself busy helped the most. Keeping up with my hobbies, hanging out with friends, and focusing on work kept me sane. Not sure if it was the healthiest method, but I tend to get a little self destructive when my mind is left to itself.
Avoid the "what ifs". You cannot go back in time, and it is unfair to yourself to constantly question what you could have done different. Be kind to yourself.
Finally, one comment that deeply resonated with me during a time of grief is this reddit comment[0]. It helped give me some perspective in a time that seemed void of hope.
My mom played a huge part in my life, both growing up and as an adult. When she died, I took it really hard. I was grieving for years.
The therapies suggested here are good ideas, and various people did various versions of these, and I think it did help somewhat.
But in the end, the thing that helped me the most was talking to the husband of one of my wife’s friends. He was older, and had more life experience than I did, and had recently had some of his own family who had recently passed away.
The biggest thing he did for me was to tell me that the pain never really goes away, not completely. That giant sucking cavern in your soul never goes away, at least not completely. But it can get better over time, if you let it. And that can be easier if you allow yourself to get back into what would be your normal life, and participate with your friends and family.
Kind of a “fake it til you make it” sort of thing, but where most everyone realizes that you might be faking it and that’s okay, but that you will recover.
My dad passed away a couple of years ago. As his only living direct relative, I had to be the one to make the call to remove his life support. That decision and process afterwards was made a lot easier for me, thanks in part to my recovery from when my mom passed away.
No one close to me has died, but I have had other big traumas in my life and big changes. I found that going out and finding something constructive to fill my time was a good move at some point, sometimes after having a period of mourning/wrapping my brain around the issue. I also spent some time in my twenties watching tear-jerk movies (alone and late at night) and crying my eyes out. After a while of that, I stopped feeling sad all the time. It helped me release those emotions.
I'm glad it helped your grieving process, and a big yes to the reality of "this is hard to study".
I have an intuition that catharsis as part of a grief process might be quite different (more useful) than in situations where the anger arises out of other circumstances.
Many do. As a westerner living in Vietnam, mourning is a process takes months and has clear protocols.
Versus going to a church service, then getting drunk at the wake and going home, it’s a far more emotionally intelligent way to allow grief to take its course.
I’ve known the feeling, of pressure to grieve, since I was a teen, and from The Blindboy Podcast I have some more words around it: solemnity (by its nature performative, and maybe there’s a social benefit but I don’t feel it). I see funeral gatherings as a celebration of the life of the deceased and all the relationships they has to bring this group together. Not very Midwestern US of me. Privately I am more-able to cry and grieve, but in public maybe I’m performing? I find being around people exhausting.
My dad drank himself to death a few years ago (well, over a lifetime) and after about a year The guilt of not reaching out to him more often finally faded. I mostly actively remember the good now, while acknowledging all the trauma.
If you don’t already have a mental-health counselor (disinterested third-party, a “helper” in Fred Rogers terminology) I recommend it, at least to offload all your thoughts and feelings so you don’t trouble your family or friends who can’t handle it or would rather not (as others have noted in other discussions, some people have family and friends who will gladly listen and support—-good for them! I’m not so lucky, as much of my family is also dealing with a lot of trauma and I’d rather have professional, not-entangled advice). You’re not alone.
I drank a lot (really, a lot. Like so much you can have a seizure when you try to stop.) when my dad was dying. And didn't visit for a few months because I had the excuse of my toddler I'm raising. I regret not spending more time back up there with him and my mother until the very end. I know he was scared and I wish I was there for more of it.
I'd hate to give you advice that I know won't work, because I've received the same in the past. I can only tell you what I've learned from my experience.
Last year, as finals were approaching, I would drive up north every weekend to see my grandpa in the hospital. He was suffering from a bad case of kidney failure. It was an immensely stressful time of my life, ultimately ending in him passing away the weekend before finals. We were extremely close. After hearing the news, attending the funeral, etc., I realized I hadn't cried much, and thought that was weird. I was bottling up my emotions thinking that is was the 'manly' way of coping. What happened was that I had bottled up so much emotion, that the bottle couldn't contain any more, and every so often the bottle started to leak emotions, and I found myself in periodic ruts of depression. So the lesson for me was to just mourn.
So, just mourn. Of course, realize that you have responsibilities and goals that need attention, but if taking time off will help you cope, then so be it. Face the situation and don't try to run around it, because it will catch up with you.
I've been surrounded by substance abuse my entire life, and narrowly escaped it myself. Feel free to schedule a call with me, if you think talking to a stranger will help:
It's not specifically about grief, but The Anthropocene Reviewed is a collection of essays that have really helped me navigate my pursuit of happiness and meaning. It was published as both a podcast and a book:
Completely agree with you and would add that I've found mourning after something that gets me down is ESSENTIAL for moving through those things. If I avoid grieving the loss I'm perceiving, that's also suppressing my emotions.
I used to not associate mourning with everyday events; it was something reserved for people/pets dying. Now, if I can't shake a bad feeling, I try mentally eulogizing whatever I lost.
When my brother Richard died I was overwhelmed by grief, so I developed a systematic way to get through it. I assembled a list of all his adjectives (dear, lovely, wonderful, artistic etc) and all his nouns (brother, little brother, youngest brother, Richard, etc). Then, in the most bloody minded way, I went through and considered every combination of the 2 lists, and found that every descriptive phrase seemed to contain a droplet of grief... but only 1 such droplet. When I had worked through the whole list I had just about cried myself out, and I wasn't bothered by those phrases ever again. So I dealt with grief.
I am not saying this to be cruel, but you have not reached rock bottom yet.
A person you loved, who was important /everything to you has left.
You are desperately sad. This impacts your life and your work /studies.
Most people will experience this in some way during their lives.
The lucky few who dont.
That does not make it any easier and nothing anyone can say can make
it go away.
This is a process.
It will take time.
Nobody can make it just go away.
The statistics are in your favor my friend.
People usually recover :)
When you do, you will still have an open wound and it will make
your next relationship a bit more difficult bur you will also be
better prepared.
However, you still have a place to live, you sound reasonably healthy,
dont have any serious drug issues, you can feed yourself, you can shower.
Dont trivialize this. This is more than a lot of people ever have.
You have hit a most difficult time of grief.
Ancient wisdom for such patches is to get drunk and f..k wh..-
This is misogynistic, wrong and does not do anything to help anyone.
Ancient wisdom from a different place would be to hang out with a
shaman and eat mushrooms or similar. (The shaman part if vital)
Now we have therapy, self-help books and even pills.
If you have the funds, possibility, ability and time, something
I have tried to go somewhere strange / different.
It can either help you, you get distracted by strange things and ways.
Or it just make you feel even more lonely and isolated.
In which way did it help you?
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