Author: Tracy Kennedy / Source: Lifehack
It was almost 11:00 pm when I called my long-time boyfriend (with whom I had just recently broken up with), from my dorm room phone. I had been busy all day but had a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. His Dad answered and my feeling was confirmed with devastating news.
*Carl had shot himself and was in the hospital on life support. I hung up the phone, walked into the long hallway outside my room and fell to the dirty dorm hall floor, sobbing. It was like something out of a movie.The next 24 hours were a bit of a blur. My friend James arrived in his pick-up truck at the crack of dawn the next morning to take me to the airport. There was a huge snowstorm in Denver, and I’d have to go through Salt Lake first. It was freezing and snowing as I boarded the plane. I kept my head down, streaming with tears, and waited and prayed that he would make it. But as I stepped off the plane in Portland, my brother held me tighter than he ever has before and quietly told me Carl was gone. I would never get to see him again or even say goodbye. They called it ‘accidental suicide’ but we would never know all the details of what had happened.
The next few days and months were heartbreaking, overwhelming and intense. I remember making arrangements for and reading a poem at his funeral, spending most of my time in bed, crying in my room. I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. I didn’t want to eat. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live. I was lost. I felt guilty. Alone. Scared. I felt so many emotions and at the same time, I was numb. All the buoyant vibrancy that is who I was and always had been, was gone.
I’m no stranger to loss. I’ve lost grandparents, jobs, pets. I’ve made major changes in my life, many moves to different cities and countries where I felt the sadness and loss of what I knew, friendships and familiarity. I’ve felt the heartache and pain of leaving relationships with people I loved and some I thought I’d spend a lifetime with. I’ve left jobs, feeling the sadness that comes with that change, even if it was something I had chosen and even physical capabilities I had always prided myself on.
I only realized, as I reflected on my life at a workshop earlier this year, how much loss I have really experienced and the impact that has had on who I am. But this tragedy, by far, was one of my most painful experiences of loss. When someone dies before they’re supposed to go, there’s just no way to make sense of it.
The question, becomes, what do you do when you have no idea what to do?
How do you proceed when you have little hope, life is dark, you’re full of grief, guilt and pain? Because the reality of life is that we will all experience loss. No one is immune to the feelings of grief and sadness.
Whether you relate to losing a job, a home, an important relationship, a hope or dream, your sense of self, a physical ability or mobility, confidence, or most devastating, the loss of a loved one, loss is everywhere. We must all learn how to work through it so we can return to live our lives once again.
7 Valuable Pieces of Advice from Experts on Loss
In this article, I’ve interviewed seven experts on loss from a variety of different backgrounds. Here, they share their words of wisdom, advice, insights and recommendations on how to deal with an emotional breakdown after a devastating loss.
For those of you facing loss of any kind, my hope is that you find at least one of these strategies helpful and supportive in working through your own process and journey.
1. Mike Bundrant, Master NLP Trainer, Life Coach, Retired Psychotherapist, and Founder of the iNLP Center
If you’re having a breakdown after a loss, then that’s probably a good thing.
Emotionally breaking down means that at some level you have accepted the loss. The breakdown means you aren’t in denial! That’s a great start.
Hanging out in denial about a loss or telling yourself the loss isn’t a big deal (when it’s not true) will only prolong the recovery time and the agony.
Remind yourself that the emotional breakdown is a GOOD thing that needs to happen — a sign that the healing process has begun.
There is NO HARD AND FAST rule about how intense the grief should be. No rule about how long it’s supposed to last. The best rule about this stuff is: Stay out of the way! Let the process happen.
If you’re sad, be sad. If you’re terrified, be that. Let your feelings flow and don’t worry about when the breakdown will end. It will pass, guaranteed, and you will heal.
Your emotions are intelligent. Let them be what they are and ride them out, interfering or interrupting as little as possible. Acceptance is the key here.
Finally, reach out to people whom you trust. Your emotions are your own, but sharing them with people lightens the burden. After a loss, it’s a good idea to remind yourself who is still present in your life. Connect with them.
2. Lucia Giovannini, Doctor of Psychology and Counselling
When faced with a loss, the key element to recovery is resilience.
Recovery happens in 4 phases:
1. The first phase is the encounter with the obstacle; you feel you are taken down by a painful negative experience.
Acceptance is the only way to deal with it. Often loss is something beyond our control; we can’t do anything about it, the only way to react is to accept.
Because if you cannot accept it, you are going to fight the experience, which might be even more painful. Accept this experience as the part of life.
2. The second step is actually experiencing the loss, the trauma, the pain.
After experiencing the loss, we feel like we are missing something that we had before. It’s human and it’s normal to feel the pain. What’s important is not to suppress the feelings.
If you expect yourself not to feel pain, to be well immediately and you don’t allow yourself some time to actually experience pain, you bring yourself into even more pain.
Here you’ll need patience. Sit with emotions, knowing it will not last forever.
3. The third step is the process of confrontation.
To be able to re-emerge, you need to confront yourself, gather feedback in order to understand what can be done.
Normally, when we lose a person, job or a house we ask: “Why did this happen to me?” This is a very ineffective question that brings us into a negative spiral.
The good question to ask yourself instead is: “What is the learning here for me?” This question can make all the difference. The idea is to find the meaning, which will help you to find the end of this pain.
4. The fourth stage is when you’ve gathered the teaching, gathered the lessons, and have grown from this pain.
For example:
During a tsunami I was in Thailand, working with the Thai government as a volunteer to help people who lost their families, houses, businesses to cope with the loss. Of course, people were in pain, they were in despair.
I still remember one man who lost his child and business to the tsunami. Everything was gone for him; there was nothing that he could do. The only thing he could do was to give some meaning to everything that happened.
And he did.
He founded a non-profit to help orphan children in Thailand. Nothing would bring his own child back, but he found happiness and meaning once again after losing everything in that disaster.
Recommended Reading
A Whole New Life: Discover the Power of Positive Transformation — Covers being faced with traumatic change, defining your power zone, about getting back on your feet.
3. Dr. Zach Bush, Triple Board Certified MD
Whenever you’ve experienced a significant loss or trauma, getting your physical body quickly back into balance is critical.
Emotional trauma can live in our bodies, and if we don’t deal with it, it sets us up for disease and disorder in the long run. The danger when trauma occurs is that your body holds that trauma memory and defines a…
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