Here we go again... grief anxiety

I used to think that every trigger was going to send me back to the beginning of grieving, back to the original devastating gut wrenching feeling.

I got anxiety and then that took me into a scared shame spiral. It wasn’t the grief, but the fear of my ability to cope with the emotions on my own. This perspective started to become a limiting belief. I wonder if you have experienced it? I would factor it in planning for my week. I might have some big obligations, activities, like a doctors visit or going to place that held lots of memories, and they could trigger me. I would often cancel or get into a panic attack.

The thing is that grieving is the process we have, to deal with deep loss. Loosing hubby was just one layer of loss.

There are other undercurrents that we have to come to terms with and they have their own grieving story. The emotions themselves also carry rules and beliefs. There is the relationship we had with them from childhood, experiences we encountered as young adults, that may have re-enforced a negative belief; and the more recent experiences as a parent.

Until I learned to greet these emotions, that arrive when I was remembering something consciously (or triggers from unconscious thoughts) with space and curiosity, I just thought “oh no, here we go again”.

Once I learned a simple strategy to :-

1. acknowledge that an emotion was on its way,

2. ask myself what it was, e.g. disappointed,

3. say that emotion out loud, as "I am x!";

4. and then tune into what I am ____ about and sit with that message for moment. I felt such freedom.

This literally took the overwhelm away. It chunked the experience down to one thing at a time. It became a moment I could handle.

It doesn’t mean there is no anxiety, but I can feel safe that there is a degree of grieving that can take 10-15 minutes, some that might take the afternoon and some that need support. I can also register that it might not be the grieving for hubby that is giving me the strength behind the experience. It might be old rules/ beliefs around the event e.g. doctors visits that are running the show.

Because lets face it we all had a pile of baggage before they died but at least now we have the missing steps that will allow us to meet the emotions without needing the exaggerated intro of “here we go again… I’m grieving and I’ll go back to square one, just when I was feeling better". Now we have a way to feel capable.