7 Tactics for Healthy Grieving
Living life without facing grief is impossible. People experience grief and the bereavement process when loved ones die. They can also experience grief a professional setback, marital or relationship breakup, and other of life’s unhappy events. Not only is important to understand the reality of grief and bereavement but that there are tactics you should consider seriously employing tactics for healthy grieving. Indeed, there are seven specific strategies to consider utilizing to aid in overcoming grief in a healthy manner.
Reach Out to Others
A major error some people make when it comes to dealing with grief is to close themselves off from others. The build fences around themselves following a loved one’s death. Indeed, they may not journey beyond the fences that encircle their homes.
In fact, an important part of working through the grieving process in a healthy manner is to reach out to other people. There are a number of ways in which you can bring other people into your life while grieving. A very basic was is to maintain social contacts with family and friends a like.
Reaching out to others as part and parcel of the bereavement process even can occur in at a funeral or memorial service. There can be something nurturing and emotionally helpful in coming together collectively at a funeral or memorial service which can prove notably beneficial to a comprehensive healthy grieving process.
Establish Rituals
One of the less spoken of tactics that can prove helpful in creating a health grieving process is the establishment of certain rituals. These rituals need not be anything complex and can include:
- visiting the deceased loved one’s grave
- celebrating the birthday of a deceased loved one
- maintain holiday traditions associated with the deceased individual
The establishment of rituals is demonstrated helpful in staving off or minimizing depression as an aid in healthy grieving. These types of rituals permit you the ability to feel a tangible connection to a deceased family member or friend when working through your own grief.
Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle
Oftentimes in the aftermath of a loved one’s death people end up leading less that healthy lives. They may eat in an unhealthy manner. They may drink to excess. In short, they may adopt many practices or even habits that are not part of a healthy lifestyle.
Another important tactic that you will want to foster following a loved one’s death is to maintain a health lifestyle. In fact, if you didn’t have a particularly health lifestyle before your loved one passed, working to establish one as part of the bereavement process can prove beneficial in a number of ways.
There need not be anything complicated about establishing a healthy lifestyle as a tactic to grieve in a productive, beneficial manner. You really need to focus on the three primary areas of healthy living:
- eat properly
- get regular exercise
- get plenty of sleep
Spend Time Outside
On a note related to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, as part of establishing a healthy bereavement process spend at least some time outside. There are tremendous benefits to be realized by taking in fresh air and spending time in the sun. This is yet another tactic that need not be complicated. Indeed, it can be incorporated into your overall strategies of eating, exercising, and sleeping in an appropriate manner when grieving. Taking time out for a leisurely daily walk exposes you to sunlight and fresh aid which can further an overall health process of grieving.
Understand Your Triggers
Grieving is a process, not a destination. Therefore, you may go through a period of time of some length in which you take positive steps towards working through your grief in a healthy manner. Having made this type of progress, you may experience or encounter something that triggers intense emotions associated with the loss of a loved one or associated with some other type of grief causing event.
You will never be able to fully protect yourself from these types of triggers. A reason you won’t be able to accomplish total avoidance is because you may never fully know what will prove to trigger you into what fairly can be called a highly or close to overwhelming emotional state.
For example, you may find yourself having gone for some days, weeks, or even months without have a significant emotional reaction arising from the loss of a loved one and your own grieving process. Nonetheless, by happenstance, you may find yourself at some location at which you have some type of memorable moment with your deceased loved one. The location may be something as basic as a restaurant you’d not been to since your loved one’s death. Being their may well trigger a flood of emotions. The ultimate key is to begin to recognize possible triggers and either avoid them or prepare for them as part of your overall bereavement endeavor.
Get Creative
There is a growing school of evidence that engaging in a creative pursuit can assist a person in dealing with depression, anxiety, and other emotional issues. Moreover, this is an increasing body of evidence that participating in or undertaking some type or types of creative pursuits can assist in addressing the grief process in a healthy manner.
These creative activities or pursuits can come in any number of forms and include everything from painting to writing or journaling to dancing to singing and truly nearly anything else that has an associated creative element.
Attend a Grief Support Group or Obtain Grief Counseling
You may also want to give serious consideration to joining a grief support group of some type. In the alternative, you might want to seek out the professional assistance of an experienced, caring grief therapist or counselor. Depending on your unique bereavement situation, both participating in a grief support group and obtaining individual grief counseling might be an ideal course for you to take.
In conclusion, you must bear in mind that you must permit yourself to grieve in a manner that is uniquely your own. No two people grieve in the same manner. Therefore, you must never compare what you face in your own bereavement process against what you perceive happening with anyone else.
