Emotions of grief

Grieving when a lost one has passed away is about more than just sadness. It can come with regret, shock, anger, or even numbness, especially if you've buried your emotions so deep that they feel out of reach. If you feel that pushing away these emotions—pretending you're fine—isn’t the best approach, you might want to consider learning to cope with them. However, it can be a bit scary to open up to these emotions since they can be quite overwhelming. Luckily there are plenty of ways to interact with them, and I think there’s something for everyone. 

Before I give you these tips, I want to give you a little background on me. So why am I the one telling you about grief? Well, in short, I lost my mother to cancer when I was 13 and couldn’t ignore the grief (believe me: I tried). Since pushing away my emotions didn’t do me much good, I decided to learn how to deal with them. I spoke with many people: friends, psychologists, experts, peers, and even strangers. Even my Final Bachelor project was centered around grief. I would now love to share with you some of the tools I learned from my experiences, conversations, and research about dealing with your emotions of grief.

Express your emotions

First of all, it’s important to realize that it’s completely normal to experience a myriad of emotions when you’re grieving. I’m sorry to break it to you, but that’s part of the journey. Somewhere in this journey, you hope you’ll also learn that it helps to accept that these emotions are okay. Accepting these feelings can be easier when you have ways to cope with them, making them feel less overwhelming. There are many ways you can physically let go of your emotions. Some of the more well-known ways are for example smiling when you’re happy and crying when you’re sad. But there are many more emotions and ways of expressing them. Think about screaming into the open air, punching against a cushion, or hugging a soft pillow. Everyone has their favorite ways of getting their emotions out, so just go explore what works well for you. For me, it also helped to let off some steam by dancing or going into moshpits. 

Diary

Something that surprised me with its effectiveness was writing a diary. Throughout the days, I would sometimes feel overwhelmed by emotions, but somehow when I wrote this all down in the evenings, the emotions suddenly became less. Like a weight off my shoulders. Also, when I read this diary years later, I learned a lot about myself and gained new insights that helped me in my journey.

Talk

Don’t worry about bothering someone with your story, people are often really pleased if they're able to help you out. Talking to people helps you to understand your feelings better, and provide structure. With the insights of the people around you, you might be able to set the next step in your grieving journey. Also, this way, you don’t have to travel this journey alone. 

Create a memorial

Just because someone is gone doesn’t mean the memories disappear. You’ll probably think about this person often. Maybe more than you would like to, or maybe you feel bad for not thinking about them often enough. These thoughts are all very normal. Some people find comfort in carrying reminders of their loved ones, such as wearing their jewelry or keeping a small reminder in their wallet. Others might like to create a little memorial setting with a picture of them to have a place for the grief.  

I hope these tools are already of some help to you. But, in case you’re looking for some more tips and tricks, I have some things that you might like to look into: