The Heaviness You Are Feeling Is Grief
The heaviness you are feeling is grief.
Collective grief can often be difficult to deal with.
It is both a shared and a unique experience.
It can feel overwhelming and trigger our past traumas and losses, and exacerbate any pre-existing psychological distress. It can also open our eyes to the dark side of humanity, and shatter our assumptions of what we thought was a ‘Just and Fair world’.
Grief consumes our entire body.
Just like trauma, it provokes our ‘fight and flight’ response.
We might feel more tired than usual, lose our appetite or have trouble sleeping.
There is no unique or right way to grieve.
People could feel emotionally overwhelmed, which is similar to a soda bottle that's been vigorously shaken. It's filled with a lot of pressure, and the best way to handle it is by carefully opening and closing the cap slowly and gently to prevent it from bursting.
This also applies to our emotions.
After experiencing or witnessing trauma, individuals often lose their sense of safety.
This is why the initial step in addressing these overwhelming emotions is not necessarily to talk about or process the trauma, but to establish a sense of safety. What you need now, more than ever, is a sense of routine.
While this is a difficult time for many, grief has its positive side too.
It can give us permission to revisit our own experiences and to express our own grief again.
It can also allow us to connect with others and share our experiences which will deepen our relationships and enhance our feelings of ‘common humanity’- a shared human experience of something that we all go through rather than feeling that we are suffering alone.
There are many ways to process grief and cope with it:
- Practice being present. Mindfulness and meditation can help you stay grounded rather than dissociating or reliving the past traumas.
- Be in nature. Instead of spending time watching the news and consuming information, go for a walk. This helps you connect with nature and be grounded.
- Express your feelings. By drawing, writing or even crying. This will help release feel-good hormones and chemicals in your body, and decrease your stress response.
Grief is a tough, but a great teacher.
Beyond acceptance, it helps us reconnect with ourselves, our pain, and our values.
Take home message:
Take things one day at a time as you feel better, and you will notice how your symptoms will naturally improve with time.
Yours truly,
Dana Berri
Kindness is not just a virtue, it's a way of life.
References:
https://doi.org/10.1080/15325020490255322
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/105413730501300402
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