The fourth stage of grief: Depression
While the bargaining phase of grief is marked with motivation and energetic engagement, the depressive stage is heavily silent. It is the lone figure sitting in a shadowy and cavernous church, head bowed, tears gently rolling onto the old scratched floor.
When physical energy is low or the enormity of your loss washes over you in a fresh wave of realisation, deep melancholy is inevitable.
During these quiet, almost catatonic times, the mind and soul are filtering painful information, observing life from a safe distance.
If the sun rose in an instant it would be blinding and painful to our eyes. It is the same with grief, we shield ourselves with anger, bargaining and depression, each phase leading us ever nearer to acceptance. There frequently is no clear and obvious path of one step leading to another. Sadness and feelings of loss are like the threads of a cloth. They weave in and out of every stage of grief, forming a unique fabric of sorrow as individual as the soul who suffers.
When acceptance is not possible
For some the grief is soaked into their psyche, saturating them with a perpetual melancholy which becomes part of who they are. Acceptance may not even be possible, with an almost permanent state of denial being preferable and more easily tolerated. The pain is buried or purposefully ignored.
A subtle and consistent expenditure of energy is given to keeping painful memories at bay, but ill-health, fatigue and further traumatic exposure (even vicariously through watching a sad movie), can mean there is suddenly not enough energy or composure to keep those deep seated emotions in their vault. It can be confusing and disconcerting when the strong emotions of long buried grief finally escape.
How can acceptance be supported?
Talking through feelings, sometimes many times over, aids the recovery from any traumatic or sorrowful event. It is a debriefing, a sorting out process of mind and spirit, and an opportunity for emotions to be poured out, even flushed out with copious tears.
Crying releases tightly held pain resulting in a sense of relief, and a lightening of the spirit.
Dr William Frey, a biochemist in Minnesota found that emotional tears expel chemicals linked to stress, out of our bodies. (compared to tears while chopping onions)
Talking and crying are healthy and shouldn’t be suppressed, although sometimes if it is not abating and becoming regular without a sense of relief, there is a question of clinical depression occurring.
Finding someone you trust and feel close enough to, to share your grief and thoughts will not only help through the worst of your journey, but provide a voice who may prompt you to seek professional help if required. When we are too close to the forest to see the trees, this helpful voice can steer you into a safe harbour.
If there really is no-one you feel close enough to for this degree of intimate sharing, seeking an impartial yet caring professional can be all that is needed to find a sense of recovery.
Enrolling in a course of Meditation is profoundly helpful and will even support the chemical balance of your brain to release feel good endorphins. There is so much that meditation does to enhance a happier more peaceful state of being, that learning and patiently practising it, would continue to have a positive effect for the rest of your life.
How do I know I have reached acceptance?
Acceptance is coming to terms with a new reality, a change which is permanent. It is finding out what life now looks and feels like following loss, becoming more familiar with it, accustomed to it.
It is a gradual movement, which becomes easier with time, while not forgetting what once was. The sorrow is still there, the love is still real and palpable, but life is unfolding differently. Acceptance allows for times of sadness still, understanding that it is ok to have quiet reflective moments of how things were. It is not a perpetual denial when we start to live a more normal life, and begin to feel enjoyment in activities again. In allowing the time to adapt to loss, in seeing the sorrow but not burying it, we almost imperceptibly move away from the grief process and into our new reality.
The fifth stage of grief: Acceptance
Finally there comes a day when you are smiling and laughing. And it hits you, that you are laughing again. It’s ok to be happy, your memories are still intact, your spirit carries an imprint of a painful journey, but moving forward feels natural and acceptable.
Eventually even your memories are balanced so that good and positive outweighs sad and negative. This is acceptance.
