Coping with grief
Hello again everyone and welcome to my last blog of 2016. I hope that you have all had a fantastic and stress free Christmas and that you are looking forward to a positive new year ahead. I have decided to talk about the subject of grief in my final blog simply because of the amount of celebrity deaths that there has been this year. I’ve witnessed an outpouring of grief on social networks and it did make me question why we get so caught up in the death of somebody that we don’t personally know. Christmas Day was the last example when pop star George Michael passed. Quite an apt time of year seeing as last Christmas was a huge hit for him in the 80s and has been played constantly every year since. Christmas is also an emotional time when feelings can be running quite high. I think many people were shocked to hear late Christmas day that he had passed including myself. It’s not always the loss of the actual celebrity that we are grieving but it is a nostalgic loss of days gone by. We relive many happy memories and sometimes unhappy memories of growing up and the nostalgia can play on our feelings. Also if we are carrying around any unresolved grief from our loss of our own close ones then this can sometimes be brought to the surface which isn’t a bad thing. Harbouring unresolved grief can cause many negative symptoms. Many clients that come to me for all manner of reasons sometimes their problems stem back to loss and worse than that not being able to grieve properly and that emotion becoming stuck in the subconscious. Not being able to grieve properly can be because of all manner of reasons such as being too busy to grieve, having to keep strong for other family members or friends or even, especially in men, seeing letting any emotion out as a weakness. The problem is that emotion is there and if you don’t release it then it will just remain trapped in the subconscious causing all manner of problems.
I wouldn’t work with anyone using hypnotherapy for grief within the first two years of losing a loved one. It is important that those left behind go through the various stages. There are five stages of grieving and they can take two years to process and trying to get rid of those emotions in that time could be damaging as those feelings need to be processed. The 5 stages of grief and loss are: 1. Denial and isolation; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance. People who are grieving do not necessarily go through the stages in the same order or experience all of them. If a client gets ‘stuck’ at any of these stages and two years has passed then that is where I would use hypnotherapy for unresolved grief which can have powerfully effective positive outcomes. For any help with grieving in the first two years I can highly recommend cruse who are a there for your support at these sad times. http://www.cruse.org.uk/.
So, grieving is natural, necessary and healthy. It’s not grieving that would have a detrimental effect on you. Don’t let anyone berate you for grieving and expressing your emotions even if it is for a celebrity that you don’t know. This person was still part of your life and you may be grieving those times or it could be just bringing out negative emotions that need to be brought out. That can never be a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with releasing negative emotion.
The grief stages are universal and experienced by different cultures from all walks of life. Grief isn’t only experienced for people that we have lost to death but also for the end of relationships and for the death of animals. Pets are a huge part of many families and the death of our beloved pets can be just as traumatising.
On a happier note I would like to wish you a happy and positive new year. For more information about hypnotherapy and EFT in Essex please check out the rest of the website www.positivelycalm.com. I will also be posting a series of EFT (tapping) videos for weight loss over the coming weeks with the first one hopefully to be posted in the next few days. Here’s to a Positively Calm 2017!