I did not want to go through grief I did not want to feel those feelings.
However, I learned to feel those feelings because the intense feelings lasted 60 to 90 seconds. Intense feelings feel like they are going to kill you. But they will not. You can be curled up on the floor kicking at the wall while everything hurts but talk to yourself as you would a friend. “This won’t last forever.” “You feel so much pain because you loved so much.”
Too often, people dive right into distraction
The trick is to sit with the pain first.
Because when it lifts, you can distract yourself with a healthy coping strategy. And that’s not a mug of beer. That’s taking a walk, reading fart jokes, playing with your dog, exercising, reading, doing a puzzle or whatever pastime engages your mind.
Skipping that step, that “feeling” step you don’t want to do, will prolong your suffering and keep you in that ugly raw place of pain much longer than you need to be. It will stalk you and leak out in ugly ways like anger and bitterness if you try to ignore it.
Being strong doesn’t equal avoidance. It means having the strength to sit with those difficult feelings whether it’s the loss of a job, the loss of a marriage, or death of a loved one.
Most of us want to lessen our suffering
Another analogy is knee surgery. You have the surgery, you go home and how does it feel afterward when it’s all blown up?
It’s painful. The physical therapy hurts even more but that is the path to healing. That’s how you get range of motion back.
What I’m saying is that pain has a purpose.
Healing often hurts before it feels better
So think of it like a balloon that keeps being filled with air.
If something is bothering you, then every day you don’t talk about it means it grows bigger and bigger and takes up more brain real estate until it’s all you can think about and you can’t think about anything else. Then it’s keeping you awake at night.
However, if you talk to somebody about it with someone you trust– a good friend, a counselor, a group– all of a sudden that balloon goes deflates and gets smaller.
Then your brain has more real estate, it’s like it’s been freed up, and you can think about other things. It’s such a major relief to get it off your mind.
That’s how you start to process your pain because all that pain makes up the emotional building blocks to healing.
What if you are listening to someone else who is struggling?
You might not think listening is “enough” or classify it as a lame excuse for helping a friend.
But listening and allowing another to feel heard serves as a major relief valve.
So you can do it for yourself by finding a listening ear. You can do it for someone else by listening to them without judgment.
See mental health programs with AnneMoss Rogers, speaker for mental health in the workplace.
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AnneMoss Rogers is a leading wellness and suicide education expert and one of the top mental health speakers and suicide prevention speakers. Known for her powerful, motivational keynotes, AnneMoss combines her personal story of loss with proven strategies to help organizations build a wellness culture that drives results and saves lives. She speaks at conferences, workplaces, K-12 schools, and universities, delivering impactful presentations that inspire change and promote mental health awareness.
AnneMoss does this work in memory of her son, Charles, who struggled with anxiety, depression, and addiction, and died by suicide at age 20 in 2015.
I’m still trying to figure out how to open myself up to the possibility of healing & came across a quote that I can resonate with so much “Sometimes holding on is as painful as letting go”