Using space, time, and new focal points in your life, you can learn to cope with loss healthily.
Everyone deals with loss in some aspect of their life. Whether it’s the death of a loved one, a relationship with a friend or lover ending, or you lose an important event in your life. While this change in your life can be disappointing and unfortunate, there are many stages and steps to overcome and deal with loss.
First, you have to allow yourself time to grieve. Give yourself space from the situation and allow yourself to both feel and express your emotions. An interview I collected with a licensed therapist said “Grief can be a burden, but don’t let it be the anchor, know it’s okay to feel sadness and anger but don’t let it pull you into a negative space.”Allow time to grieve, but then move on and find things in life to make you happy. Go out with your friends or family, adopt a pet, find something you are truly passionate about, and focus on that. Move your attention away from the subject of grief and occupy yourself with something positive that you enjoy doing.
Another step in the process is to seek help from your friends and family, even a counselor to share how you feel and get a support system running. This can give you comfort and peace from the situation. A therapist or counselor can also offer professional mental help if the grief has been overwhelming and unbearable. It’s important to share your grief because then you can both remember and memorialize the person or thing you lost and help honor it as an important part of your life. Remembering can further the healing process and help look back at it and know that the stage is done and you need to move forward.
All in all, it is important to know that everyone copes in their own way. You have to find what is the best way for you. Give yourself time to feel what happened but also realize this feeling will eventually pass in its own time. You can find a new focal point in your life that brings you joy. No matter what way you decide to deal with your loss, you should take care of your mental state until you move to bigger things in your life.