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How can I balance grieving with daily life? · Wellbeing Solutions - Ask A Counsellor

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: How can I balance grieving with daily life?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Grief unfortunately cannot be put into a timetable.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just as we think we're doing okay, just sitting at our desk at work, absorbed in our emails and spreadsheets or whatever it is you do, and all of a sudden a wave hits us out of nowhere, and at least that's what it can feel like.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: The chin starts to wobble, the throat tightens up, and tears threaten to flow.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not now, please, not at work.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a good time, you say to yourself.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this is just an example of how grief can surface without warning.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we do not even need to be triggered by a memory, a song, or a word.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: In grief counselling there's a really good model we use that can explain how we can give our grief expression whilst continuing to function in our everyday lives.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is called the dual process.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you can imagine your day split into two, or your week or your month, a blue half and a red half.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: When we are fully functioning, we're in the blue box, and it's called a restoration orientation.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we're just getting on with daily tasks, we're able to be around people, and we're just focusing on the practical aspects of living.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this can look like attending to life changes, developing new roles in light of your loss, creating meaning from the loss, avoiding grief, so taking temporary breaks away from it, and establishing new routines around the loss.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: When we dip into the red box we enter the loss orientation state, where we do the grief work it's called, and this can look like crying and expressing sadness, reliving memories, good and bad, intrusive thoughts around the passing, looking at photos, yearning and searching behaviours, talking about the deceased and attending to grief rituals such as funerals.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: We move between the two states and this is called oscillation according to the model.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: A healthy and expected way of juggling both everyday life and your loss is to oscillate between the red and the blue.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when grief overwhelms you, give yourself time and space away from everyone, everything, to let it flow for a while, so you're dipping into the red.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: However, make sure you've got strategies to hand, which I'll go into a little bit, and make sure you distract yourself out of the grief to focus on the living, just whenever it gets too much.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you can do this with some grounding techniques such as breathing, going out for a walk in the fresh air, having a soothing warm drink, or looking for small sensory glimmers such as sunshine coming through the window or the smell of coffee.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Staying in grief too long is detrimental to your health.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: However, so is pushing through life, suppressing your grief.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: This will always the grief will always come up without any control if you try and push it down.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: It does need an expression.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: It can come up years after if you push it down.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're struggling, please do not hesitate to call the Samaritans in the moment on 116123 or you can call the Cruise Bereavement Support Helpline on 0808 808 1677.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this has been useful.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Please take care and look after yourself and do reach out for support so you don't have to do this alone.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.