How to Let Go of Someone You Love: Deal, Heal, & Forgive After Loss by Julian Demarco

Author:Julian Demarco [Demarco, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Grief & Loss, Self-Help, Death; Grief; Bereavement, Journaling, Motivational & Inspirational, Anxieties & Phobias, Emotions, Self-Management, General, Personal Growth, Happiness, Psychotherapy, Counseling
ISBN: 9798481888606
Google: XpZFEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Island Hammock
Published: 2021-09-21T21:41:39+00:00

Embrace the Stages of Grief

We have become quite familiar with the Kübler-Ross stages of grief model since it has been popularized in film and TV. While the actual model is based on interviews with the terminally ill, this theory still has excellent value. It states that we go through different stages of grief when we are facing loss (Holland, 2018). These stages include:

Denial

When you have suffered a severe loss, it feels like you have had the rug pulled out from under you. You are falling, and you can’t believe it has happened to you. One minute you are fine and living your life, happily married, and the next, you may be divorced or a widow. When I lost my son, I went through such terrible denial. Even when I held his tiny body and gazed at him lying there so perfect in every possible way, I couldn’t accept that he was not alive. He looked like he was peacefully sleeping.

Denial hit me big time. I went through various emotions: anger, fear, rage, regret, and ultimately, I experienced vast amounts of denial. For sure, the doctors were wrong? How could my perfect baby not be alive? I had done everything right during the pregnancy, so how could this have happened to me?

Your brain is trying to wrap itself around the idea of your loss. While your brain is a phenomenal organ, it doesn’t always respond well to sudden changes, the loss being a prime example of that. So, you end up wanting to deny it happened. The shock eats at you, and you can’t and won’t accept that you have just had the most precious thing in your life taken from you.

So, how do you stop denying your loss? What can you do instead? For each of you, it will be something different. For me, denial only ended when I opened myself to feel my pain, acknowledge what had happened, and let the thought enter my mind that things had changed. I had blinked, and my life became a different version.

My father died in a mere two days, my son just short of seventeen weeks of pregnancy. Loss doesn’t make an appointment with you. It doesn’t schedule a time that suits you or a person you can “do without.” It simply strikes. Accepting that it was inevitable and what time we have with the people who matter to us is the beginning of the grief process.

If you are in the denial stage, you may say things like:

No, he’s not dead; he’s just pranking me.

My husband is just upset, and he won’t go through with the divorce.

My friend is just angry, and we’ll hang out again once she’s cooled down.

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