The lights are hung and the cocoa is hot, but warmth and joy are not what you’re feeling. A sense of empty, lonely, and numb consume you, instead, while grieving a loss. You have guilt for not feeling how you “should” during the holiday season. Grief does that to us – it doesn’t leave. When we experience a deep loss, it feels like a black hole that may never fully close. Grieving during the holidays dims even the brightest of lights as you’re reminded of what you’re missing. If you don’t feel the magic of the holidays, lifted spirits in togetherness, you’re not guilty of being a grinch. Grief counseling can help you manage those complex and often conflicting emotions in a healthy way.
What does grief feel like?
Much more complex than an emotion we simply feel, grief can be an all encompassing response to a loss that we fully experience. Our mind, body, and spirit are all deeply intertwined, and grief is a prime example. Grief symptoms can be mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and all of the above.
Emotional Symptoms of Grieving
Our classic holiday songs tell us how we should feel – joyful, fun, merry, jolly. All of which may come in glimpses while you’re grieving. Then, you may feel guilt for feeling something good again. “It’s the first time I’ve laughed since he’s been gone – it’s a dishonor for me to feel like this when something so bad has happened to him.” Alternatively, it’s common to feel guilt for not feeling those fuzzy feelings. “My kids deserve a parent that feels happy over the holidays and doesn’t have to fake it – someone that doesn’t dread decorating that silly Christmas tree.”
Physical Symptoms of Grieving
Soup season, sweater weather, and my personal favorite – dessert delirium December – the holiday season is supposed to be warm and cozy. Grief leaves us out in the cold, though, watching warm and cozy through a window. You’re likely to experience fatigue, sleep and appetite disturbance, heaviness in your chest, weakened immune system, muscle tension, and hyper-arousal in grief.
Spiritual Symptoms of Grieving
No matter where you are on any sort of spiritual journey, grief is inevitably connected to spirituality. Within your personal beliefs, you may find comfort, existential questions, anger, compassion, feelings of betrayal, or uncertainty. Spiritual symptoms tend to be complex. Accordingly, our society tends to avoid these conversations. After the seventh “they’re in a better place” that you’ve heard this month, your eyes are sure to be tired from all the eye rolling.
Cognitive Symptoms of Grieving
No peace, goodness or light here. Grief can cause forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, and making decisions as we dissociate from reality. Intrusive thoughts may creep in – “I wish I would’ve told them I loved them more – did I express it enough at our last holiday together?” We may ruminate on these thoughts as they circle around and around in our mind. If the loss was traumatic in some way, you may experience PTSD symptoms like flashbacks, intrusive images, and nightmares.
Tips for Holiday Grieving
Grief counseling can be transformative – we can dedicate an intentional time to process whatever is coming up for us in our grief. While incredibly personal and individualized, there are certain things that can be helpful for almost anyone experiencing grief.
Emotional level of grieving
- Ignore the Christmas commercialization at Target, stop scrolling through the obnoxious holiday photoshoot frenzy, and let yourself exist. Acknowledge the things you actually feel and let those unwanted emotions pass as they always do: Guilt, numbness, hopelessness, despair, anger, depression, shock, anxiety, irritability, or relief in some cases, – these things can sometimes feel intrusive, but are temporary.
- Grief can make the holidays feel meaningless. This is a loss in itself. Losing the magic that we once felt can also be painful, and we have to grieve that loss, too.
- Your emotions can coexist. You may feel both joy and sorrow. You can experience the “holiday magic” and honor your loss. If you only feel one side of these things, that’s alright too.
- Feelings are not bad. Feelings are simply that – feelings.
- Grief is not a consistent or blanket emotion. Your feelings in grief may change or alternate, meaning your needs do as well. Some years, you may need to take a calm day to yourself. Other years, you may need to connect with others and celebrate life. Honor your needs as they come, and expect your needs to be different at different times.
Physical level of grieving
- Self-care is an over-used word that has become romanticized. Yes, romanticizing your life is absolutely self-care, but so is drinking a glass of water, brushing your teeth, eating something with nutrients, and changing out of your dirty clothes. Nothing we do in counseling will have any impact if your basic needs are not met. It’s okay if you feel like you’re just going through the motions – take care of your basic needs. If you need help, ask for it.
Spiritual level of grieving
- We all have different views on what happens after death. Even if you share beliefs with someone on a core level, the little details can vary in our minds at least to some degree. We can read from the same book, but interpret things slightly differently. One thing is certain, and that is that at least some uncertainty is inevitable. Get comfortable with uncertainty. We have some things we think, and some things we know. Focus there. Those things outweigh the things we don’t know.
Cognitive level of grieving
- Ask yourself: does this serve me? What do I need from this day? This season? Create a new normal for the holidays if you’re ready. Practice past traditions if you’re ready. It may take you 10 years to pull out mom’s recipe box, or to sing the Christmas songs that dad used to – or maybe leaning in from the beginning is how you cope. You may find that every year, your grief affects you differently and your needs reflect that. Grief doesn’t end, but you will learn how to work with it.
- Talk about your loss when and how you want to as appropriate. You’re allowed to opt out of the conversation if you aren’t up for talking about who you’ve lost. Alternatively, people may avoid the topic at all costs. You’re allowed to begin the conversation. If you get the sense that others around you don’t want to talk about it, you can journal, call a friend, or go to counseling. You can write a letter to the person you lost, find some space by yourself, close your eyes, and talk to that person like they’re still right next to you. Grief counseling offers a space dedicated to explore what you need to from a non-biased and nonjudgmental standpoint.