Most people will lose someone they love at some point in their life. While this is a shared human experience, the pain can be powerful and overwhelming. Though grief is an understandable response to a loss, it can bring about emotions beyond your expectations. It can feel paralyzing at times, making it feel too difficult for you to “pick up the pieces” and resume your daily life activities.

Grieving is a personal thing; you may experience it differently than family or other people affected by the same loss. While others may heal or move forward, you may not. If the feeling becomes almost too much to manage, do not be afraid to take the first step toward healing. Seeking counseling may be what you need to accept and move forward after a painful loss.

Understanding Grief

Grief can be physically, emotionally, and spiritually overwhelming, making it difficult for you to live your daily life. Since it follows no usual pattern, your responses and emotions can be unpredictable. Author Molly Fumia writes, “Grief is a journey, often perilous and without clear direction.” The experience can be difficult to explain, and the process of working through it cannot be rushed, controlled, or ignored. It can affect your life in a way you never imagined.

Grief can breed negative emotions, leaving you feeling helpless, unhappy, scared, and alone. The longer you experience grief the more you may find yourself also experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other concerns.

There is no typical time limit for bereavement, and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. This makes it difficult to say when the initial shock will wane or what you will feel afterwards as reality sinks in. However, if your pain fails to diminish in intensity over time, or your symptoms are getting worse, do something about it, counseling can help.

Your Grief Is Unique

People grieve differently. The pace and the way you will grieve, accept, and live with the loss vary. Even when the loss affects a whole family, the members will vary in their own unique experience. While some losses may be easier to accept, there can be certain losses that tremendously impact your life in ways you didn’t think possible. This means that you may respond in unexpected ways.

According to Focus on the Family, the intensity of your pain can be influenced by the following: the suddenness of the event leading to the loss, the degree of connection, your personality and traits, your beliefs, and how the people around you are taking the loss.

The Power in Mourning

Grieving or mourning is a vital part of healing. It may entail doing things that you used to do with your loved one and offers the opportunity to process your loss. It gives you the time to say goodbye. While certain rituals can be extremely painful, they reaffirm the reality of the mourning process, so you can heal and move on.

Mourning can also leave you with feelings of fear, helplessness, and hopelessness. While there is no standard time limit for bereavement, the intensity of the grief should wane in time. If you are consumed by the memories of what you lost to a point that you can hardly eat, sleep, think clearly, study/work, or you are even turning to substances, it is time to do something.

How Can Therapy Help?

If extended grief has made you feel isolated, seek the assistance of a counselor independently contracted with Carolina Counseling Services – Pittsboro, NC. It is not wise to avoid facing your loss and your pain. Facing your experience can be an essential and helpful part of healing. A therapist contracted with CCS in Pittsboro, NC, can help you reconnect and find a life for yourself after your loss.

Call Carolina Counseling Services – Pittsboro, NC, to schedule your first appointment and to begin to overcome your loss in a healthy way.

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• Living with Loss without the Grief
• Remembering Loss Without the Heaviness of Grief
• The First Steps to Overcoming Grief and Loss