{"id":2349,"date":"2015-07-17T22:15:36","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T22:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vivehealth.com.au\/blog\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2015-07-17T22:15:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-17T22:15:36","slug":"helping-others-cope-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vivehealth.com.au\/blog\/2015\/07\/17\/helping-others-cope-grief\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping Others Cope With Their Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"McCosker-Dell<\/a>One night, when I was twenty, my dad uttered a sentence to me that in a split-second thrust me into a world of overwhelming pain, shock, denial and bewilderment. \u201cYour brother has died\u201d. To say I was unprepared for this devastating turn of events is an understatement, and of course it is not possible to fully prepare for learning that your brother has just taken his own life. I had spent no time in my first twenty years contemplating the reality of death (in fact I had been avoiding those thoughts at all costs), and I had no concept of how to help myself during this time, or support my family members. I didn\u2019t want to appear to be not coping, to un-burden myself on my friends or make anyone feel uncomfortable, and to be honest very few seemed keen to talk about my loss. My pain therefore got locked away; however it regularly resurfaced over many years in many complex forms that initially I did not even recognise as denied, unresolved grief.<\/p>\n

Why do we often find it so hard to talk about death? Why is another person\u2019s grief, for some, just too uncomfortable to be around? The reasons for this are of course complex and our history of how grief and loss has been treated would shed much light on this, along with our innate fear of death. One reason that stands out to me is that if we have been conditioned from a young age to not allow the expression of strong emotions, if our pain from inevitable losses \u2013 loss of friendships, a pet, trust in another, the life of someone we love, a cherished toy \u2013 have been denied, shut down, suppressed with immediate offers of distraction, we will then carry a lot of unresolved pain and grief (and perhaps anger and despair). These become trigger points for us, they don\u2019t go away, and when we are exposed to the palpable grief of another it will generally feel unbearable to be around; it will push on our own simmering, unexpressed, dormant emotions and we understandably will want to escape that or even try to shut it down.<\/p>\n

It is from my own experience of a tsunami of grief as a young adult, of feeling as though I was drowning in my pain of loss and often becoming quite isolated, that I now have a vision that one day, we as a society, will be much better prepared for our own inevitable grief, and for supporting those in our lives that are adapting to their own loss. There is no formula, in my opinion, for how to support someone else with their grief. How an individual grieves will always be unique, although there are of course some common elements of grief. In light of these commonalities, here are some thoughts on how you may be able to help someone you know who is in a grief stage in their life;<\/p>\n