Grief is a multifaceted experience that can manifest in many emotional and physical ways, including but not limited to: anger, loneliness, chronic pain, sadness, and guilt. Beneath the surface of grief are layers of complex emotions and feelings that have resulted from hurt or longing, for example.
Grieving does not only entail the loss of something physical or psychological, but it also involves losing “what could have been.”
The process of grieving isn’t linear either and can result in delayed reactions and/or suppressed emotions. For example, after losing a loved one, someone might experience deep sadness months after the passing. This is a delayed reaction and it can happen to anyone. Another example is if one feels or seems very confident about moving to a new country but once they have moved there, they experience deep loneliness.
Grieving is a very personal process, however, the way it is expressed can be influenced by sociocultural contexts such as norms and traditions.
Examples of Grief:
- Physical Loss: Losing a loved one, a home, or material that held sentimental value.
- Psychological Loss: Losing a sense of home, identity, control, and/or safety.
- Relational Loss: Drifting away from relationships, breaking up with a significant other, and losing connection with people around you. Relational loses can occur when you are around the people you feel that you have lost connection with as well. This is because the emotional connection may be missing.
- Loss of Potential: Grieving what could have been. An example could look like the following: “if only my mother was here, I would have loved to share this with her.”
- Anticipatory Grief: Preparing for impending losses. An example could look like a teen preparing to depart to college, which means having to leave home.
Supporting the Youth Experiencing Loss:
- Therapy: This intervention can help to distinguish between grief and depression as well as to allow the client to work on any suppressed emotions.
- Coaching: This can help the youth to work on processing their feelings and building a plan to work on taking care of their social-emotional wellbeing by setting goals.
- Social Support: peer-peer support, counseling services at school, and community support can be a major source of aid when one is grieving. This becomes a type of protective factor in the youth’s life and helps them to recover more effectively.
Internal Resources:
Some young people do not have access to social support or even professional support while others have the support of both professional and social support but feel a deep sense of void within. Internal resources can help one develop personal tools to work on themselves on a personal and individual level.
- Journaling: Journaling can help create space for thoughts. Writing or drawing on an empty paper can create room for different contemplations to reside and this can be helpful because those thoughts are visually accessible and are physically detached from the person.
- Journaling prompt ideas: How would you describe grief? What is grief trying to communicate to you? What do you need to help yourself at this time?
- Spiritual Practices: Engaging in practices that offer comfort and grounding while grieving can be beneficial. This can include: meditation, prayer, and reading for example.
- Validation and Acknowledgment: Recognizing and validating the pain you’re experiencing can be beneficial. Giving yourself a hug, allowing yourself to cry if you need to, asking for help are some examples of validating your experiences.
- Self-Compassion: Taking actionable steps to take care of yourself with the resources you have available and offering yourself the care you would to someone else in your shoes.
Why is grieving complex?
Grief has many faces because each person processes experiences differently. Additionally, the way one grieves is influenced by one’s personality, life experiences, sociocultural norms, coping mechanisms, and beliefs.
Checking in on people from time to time, regardless of what the emotion is shown as on the surface, can be helpful. It’s hard to know what is going on in one’s life as they may not be too comfortable sharing or open to discussing.
Here are some ways you can check in with one another:
- “I haven’t seen you in a while, how have you been?”
- “I saw that you were sitting alone, would you like to sit with me?”
- “I’m here if you want to talk about it”
- “I would love to hear how things have been on your end”
