The Relief Of Feeling Your Grief

After you experience a loss, it can be difficult to feel your grief. Even months after your loss, as the initial shock wears off, it can be difficult to experience the depth of the pain you know is inside of you. You may want to grieve. You may know that grieving is necessary and important, and that feeling your feelings will ultimately be a relief. But turning to face that pain can seem overwhelming, so you turn away. Or perhaps, while you know intellectually that the grief is there inside of you, it feels distant—as if something is blocking you from experiencing your feelings in their full force. You may feel numb. Or you may dip your toe into the grief, and then pull back.

You may be longing to grieve, to relax the emotional muscles that are keeping the feelings at bay, and to feel. But this can be easier said than done. Really feeling your grief is often not easy to do.

In American culture there can be a common distrust of sadness and grieving—the sense that when people suffer a loss, they should move through their sadness in a brief and limited way, and then quickly get back up on their feet, return to being okay, and move on. The ethos of individualism and autonomy can also get in the way of being open with others about your suffering, especially when things feel dark and hopeless. All of this can leave you wondering if something is wrong with you when your grief doesn’t quickly resolve and go away—and feeling alone in the depth and complicatedness of your sadness.

There have been positive developments culturally in terms of recognizing the importance of our emotional lives and emotional support, including the importance of therapy. But we still have a long way to go, and the old messages often come through, such as a discomfort around sadness.

Getting the support you need from friends and family can also be challenging. Loved ones, in their natural desire to see you happy again, may try and come up with strategies to cheer you up, or reassure you that you will feel better. On the one hand this may feel good; but on the other hand, it may leave you feeling that the true weight of your grief will feel burdensome to them, or that you are obligated to tell them you are doing better when that might not feel true.

You may also worry about your own capacity to grieve. You may wonder, “If I really sink into what’s there and feel it, will the sadness obliterate me? Will I fall apart? Will I be able to get through?” In the face of these fears, you may push the feelings down.

So there can be many impediments to really feeling your grief. And yet there it is inside of you, achingly present, and you want to be able to feel it, face it, be with it, and move through it.

Working together in the process of therapy, in a safe and caring environment, we can move into your grief and whatever emotions are there for you. Not abruptly or all at once, but at a pace that feels right to you, and in ways that you can handle. We can talk about any of this as we go—anything that emerges for you, including about the process of therapy. And, while feelings around grief can be very painful, in the supportive environment of therapy it can be a deep relief to finally be able to know and experience the feelings that have been there beneath.

If are grieving and looking for support, including for support in being able to feel your feelings, I invite you to contact me at (510) 500-9722 so that we can talk about how grief counseling can help.