Category: grief

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Crying Is a Sign of Emotional Intelligence and It’s Necessary

We have this strange idea that crying, or letting people see us upset, somehow diminishes us in their eyes.

That it makes us weak, like someone who can’t take care of themselves or handle what life throws our way, and I don’t know how this idea began or why it became so engrained, but it’s wrong.

Totally, 100% wrong.

One of my favorite quotes is from Charlotte Bronte:

Image Credit: Pixabay

“Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you’re alive.”

We are human, and actually, a crying when you feel like it is a good way to “reset” both your body and your mind, to free yourself of negative emotions, and focus on what caused them and how to avoid the situation in the future.

Roger Baker, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Bournemouth University, has further thoughts about why we cry, and why it’s necessary.

Image Credit: Pixabay

“Crying does help us process faster than if we don’t cry at all, but it’s not the only thing – it’s part of a package of expressing it. If your father died, your natural reaction would be to cry.”

He adds that it’s not the passage of time that eases pain, but how quickly and honestly we’re able to look at and process the emotions that go along with it.

And Dr. Judith Orloff agrees that crying plays an important role in human life.

Image Credit: Pixabay

“Crying makes us feel better, even when a problem persists.

In addition to physical detoxification, emotional tears heal the heart. You don’t want to hold tears back. …Try to let go of outmoded, untrue, conceptions about crying. It is good to cry. It is healthy to cry. This helps to emotionally clear sadness and stress.

Crying is also essential to resolve grief when waves of tears periodically come over us after we experience a loss.”

In short, you don’t need to feel badly or apologizing for expressing the full gamut of human emotion. It happens to everyone, it’s totally normal – and healthy. We should also keep this in mind the next time someone cries in front of us and tries to say they’re sorry.

Assure them there’s nothing to be sorry for, then maybe give them a cookie.

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10 Tips for Dealing With Grief Around the Holidays

For many, the holidays are a really hard time. People who have lost loved ones or had other difficult experiences in their lives tend to get depressed around the holiday season, as they reflect on their past and relive old memories.

If you are one of the many people who deals with grief and depression around the holidays, here are 10 tips you should consider to try to alleviate your pain.

1. Time and space.

Loneliness

Give yourself time and space to deal with your emotions. It’s okay to feel pain and loneliness if you’ve experienced loss. Treat yourself well and give yourself a break. You’re only human.

2. Spend time alone.

The holiday season can be very overwhelming for many people, so you need to find time to spend alone so you can work on yourself and get away from it all. Do what you need to do to recharge your batteries: take a walk, sit in a park, and if you want to leave parties or events early, go ahead and do it.

3. Escape route.

Party

Have an escape plan if you attend parties or events that you know might trigger you and make you sad, emotional, or angry. It’s okay if you need to bolt, just be ready and make sure you have all your belongings so you don’t have to make a return appearance.

4. No thanks.

It’s okay to say no to parties, events, or any other kinds of invitations that you think might make you feel uncomfortable or might cause you to lose control. Remember, it’s up to you.

5. Honor their memory.

Thinking

Some people choose to celebrate the traditions that their lost loved ones did to honor their memory. This can help people to remember the good times and to be nostalgic.

6. Start new traditions.

Instead of trying to recreate the traditions that you enjoyed with your departed loved ones, try to create some new ones. This practice can help you deal with the grief.

7. Get out of town.

Road trip near Sykkylven

Go somewhere new or take a road trip. Get your mind off of the familiar and the places that are associated with your loved ones who are no longer with you. A new atmosphere may do you some good.

8. Fulfillment.

Focus on some activities that you know will fulfill you and make you feel good. Volunteer. Read. Exercise. Walk your dog. Try to make some new friends. Whatever makes you feel good, do it.

9. Totally random.

Smile

Practice random acts of kindness. Help out other people and try to better, not bitter. In other words, live your life to honor the people who are gone and do your best. Part of that can be helping out strangers.

10. Remember the good times.

It might sound easy, but it can be tough. Try to remember the positive memories and happy times you spent with your departed loved ones instead of suppressing all thoughts about them. In the long run, it will help.

And while you’re at it, listen to this short but sweet song by the great Willie Nelson.

Enjoy your holidays, everyone.

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An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason

Sadly, we will all go through the experience of losing people we love. It’s part of life, but that doesn’t stop it from being incredibly painful and gutwrenching.

A woman on Reddit lost someone important in her life and she turned to people on the Internet to help her get through the tough time. The title of her post was, “My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Photo Credit: Pexels

That’s when the self-proclaimed “old” person offered up their advice. Be sure to read his entire post, because it is pretty incredible.

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes.

Photo Credit: Flickr,michael_swan

My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

Photo Credit: Pexels

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

People were deeply moved by the old man’s eloquent words.

“I’m reading this now as I lay bedside by my mother who has had cancer for 6 months, and cancer won. She’s been on a morphine drip for the last few days. I’m trying to cope, and came across this. Thank you.”

“This is beautiful. You have helped more people than you know by posting this. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“As much pain as it’s caused, the memories I have of my friends and family are much more pleasant. And when I feel like I’m floating, I hang on to those memories like a life preserver, and you know what? They work really well.”

Thank you for your thoughtful words, sir. I think they brought comfort to many strangers who needed them at exactly the right time.

The post An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason appeared first on UberFacts.

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An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason

Sadly, we will all go through the experience of losing people we love. It’s part of life, but that doesn’t stop it from being incredibly painful and gutwrenching.

A woman on Reddit lost someone important in her life and she turned to people on the Internet to help her get through the tough time. The title of her post was, “My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Photo Credit: Pexels

That’s when the self-proclaimed “old” person offered up their advice. Be sure to read his entire post, because it is pretty incredible.

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes.

Photo Credit: Flickr,michael_swan

My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

Photo Credit: Pexels

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

People were deeply moved by the old man’s eloquent words.

“I’m reading this now as I lay bedside by my mother who has had cancer for 6 months, and cancer won. She’s been on a morphine drip for the last few days. I’m trying to cope, and came across this. Thank you.”

“This is beautiful. You have helped more people than you know by posting this. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“As much pain as it’s caused, the memories I have of my friends and family are much more pleasant. And when I feel like I’m floating, I hang on to those memories like a life preserver, and you know what? They work really well.”

Thank you for your thoughtful words, sir. I think they brought comfort to many strangers who needed them at exactly the right time.

The post An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason appeared first on UberFacts.

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10+ People Who Survived When Others Didn’t Share How They Deal With It

It’s hard to imagine what it must be like to survive an event in which other people lost their lives. If they were people you knew, the sense of grief and potential guilt you’d feel would undoubtedly haunt you for the rest of your life.

In this AskReddit article, people who survived such incidents share how they cope.

1. Guilt

“I met a man who survived the Korean airliner crash on Guam. He had bent down to tie his shoe at the moment the plane hit the mountain and a fireball went through the interior of the plane. He told me he felt so bad that so many had died while he had survived. At the time, I was so confused and only years later realized he suffered from Survivor’s Guilt.”

2. Strong current

“I was swimming off a beach in Vietnam. There were a whole bunch of people. I was on the edge of the group further out. There was another guy, maybe 50 years old maybe five feet further out than me. Strong current swept me and the older guy out even further away from the group. In a slight panic, I started swimming and made it back ok. The older guy did not. I remember making it back to the shore and the lifeguard on duty was being yelled at by other people to go save the old guy.

The lifeguard froze up and it was several minutes before he swam out there and pulled the guy back in. The old guy was limp and they didn’t even try CPR. They just loaded him up on an ATV and drove him off.

I think about it and wonder every now and then if I could have saved him. But not being a great swimmer or trained rescuer, I probably would have died too if I tried.”

3. Remorse

“Was in a boat accident with my entire family when I was 8. I wasn’t injured but my sister was killed. I saw her bloody body in the arms of my grandfather in the remains of what used to be his boat. He was never the same man after that. I’m still unpacking how much it’s affected my life, but I know I’ll never forget the image of my dead sister.

Yes, I have very real survivors remorse, as this boat trip was the first time the whole family had been on the boat together, and my sister and I fought over sitting at the tip. I won, she died.”

4. I see their faces

“In the summer of 2012 I was taking a road trip with my family when we got T-boned by a guy going 50 mph. Luckily I was sitting on the left side of the car right behind the driver seat but my sister and my step mom weren’t so lucky. Almost every day I see their faces right before the crash happened and the sheer terror split second before they died. I very rarely take automobiles now and only like biking or trains.”

5. Boston bombing

“My mom was waiting for my sister at the Boston Marathon bombing. She saw the bombs go off and as a medically trained professional, she felt that she should have gone there to help but she also didn’t know where my sister was and whether more bombs would go off.

So she left and found out that my sister had only avoided being at the finish line because her period had started in the last mile of the marathon. It took them hours to get out of Boston. My mom said she could still smell the bombs and felt intense guilt for not helping and a lot of rage towards the bombers.”

6. Lucky to be alive

“Hit by car at 50 mph.

Ironically the girl in the car died from all of the glass and I only needed a few months to recover been 6 months still can stop thinking about her.”

7. Crazy story

“A relative of mine served in WWII, and apparently when he was stationed on an island base in the pacific (fighting Japan) a Japanese plane just showed up out of nowhere and landed on the airstrip. They just kind of left it there for a few days until they decided that it probably wasn’t a kamikaze, and went to confront the pilot.

They found him there starving to death and chained to the cockpit. Eventually he told them that he was supposed to have been a kamikaze pilot, and that all of the propaganda about how brave and willing to die all of the kamikaze pilots were was just to cover up the fact that no kamikaze pilots were volunteers, and they were all forced to die in those planes.”

8. A sad story

“I was in a head-on collision in which a drunk driver hit me and another car in the lane next to mine. The 82-year-old lady in the other car died the next day due to her injuries. When she was pulled from the car, one of her legs looked badly twisted and broken. But other than that, she looked much younger and in good shape, so I figured she’d be fine. I walked away with only some scratches from glass in my face, and some soreness. The drunk driver was taken away on a stretcher, but she survived and is in jail now.

I felt terrible for the lady who was killed. I didn’t find out till a day or two later when a police officer called to get my statement. I didn’t feel survivor’s guilt, because it had nothing to do with me, and I just felt lucky to be alive. I was 41 years old and getting married a few months later. The daughter of the lady who was killed contacted me a few years later, just to hear first-hand what happened that morning. I felt terrible for her and her family, especially since i lost my own mom and dad within two years after that accident. But I didn’t feel guilty. Just sad.”

9. Bomb

“I was on my way to school with my sister, our driver was making a turn onto the street where our school was when a bomb went off. Everything stopped and I huddled my younger sister under me as glass exploded.

It was just scary because I had no idea what to do in that kind of situation, I was just 13.

What’s crazy is that we had stopped for gas otherwise we wouldn’t have been late. A few kids and teachers lost their lives and one happened to be a teacher I was very close with.

I wasn’t able to attend school there anymore, I used to get scared from the vibration of big trucks and loud pops, even balloons lol. I don’t have survivors guilt but always will have that morbid feeling in my stomach wondering what if we hadn’t stopped for gas.”

10. PTSD

“Las Vegas shooting.

I actually don’t have survivor’s remorse, but I think I have (minor) PTSD from it. I feel uncomfortable in large crowds because I’ll imagine gunshots going off and seeing people running everywhere in chaos. It’s gotten better but still unsettling sometimes.”

11. Awful

“I do have survivor’s remorse. 13 years ago, I was running errands with my mom and my little brother.

My brother, who was 17 at the time, had just got his first job in the cafeteria of our local hospital. He just needed to complete his pre employment drug screen. We stopped by the clinic first thing to get it out of the way. After waiting for a bit I went back to my car because I wasn’t feeling well. I was a few weeks pregnant with my son and had awful morning sickness.

While I was in the car I saw a truck come speeding through the parking lot towards the clinic. I thought “wow they’re going too fast to take the turn” and they were. The truck hopped the curb and slammed through the clinic’s window at the end of the little road. My mom and my brother were sitting right where the truck hit. They died an awful, painful death and I nearly did too.

I feel so guilty for not being with them. It’s taken years but I have realized that my mom and brother wouldn’t be angry or upset that they died and I didn’t. I miss them so much.”

12. I miss him

“When I was 21, I was in a tandem hang glider accident that killed my dad. Just a few seconds after takeoff from the hill, a wire came loose and the glider plummeted to the rocky hillside. He took the brunt of the impact for the both of us and died two days later, while I was relatively unscathed.

My dad raised my brother and I on his own from the time my brother was still in diapers. I credit him for my values and my resilience in the face of misfortune. He died just as I was starting my career and finding my own way. I often miss being able to share my trials and triumphs with him – adventures, marriage, births and his grandbabies growing up.

But I never once wondered why it had to happen this way. Our only thought on the subject was to imagine that he would’ve had it no other way. Maybe he even, in those last few seconds, did what he could to shield me from injury. He was a skilled and advanced pilot, achieving his instructor rating after almost three decades of enjoying the sport. He likely knew the outcome of our predicament. But I’ll never know since the seconds before and after the impact are a blackout.

So no, there’s no guilt. That’s not where my head goes for acts of pure chance, however tragic. I just miss him, sometimes terribly.”

13. Poor souls

“I was born with cancer in the late 80s (Canada) and at the time chemo wasn’t really used on kids. A European doctor came to Toronto and took 14 of us and gave us chemo. I was cancer free by the time I was 4 but only half of us walked off the floor. I’m 31 now and have 4 kids but I often think about those poor souls who didn’t make it.”

14. Close call

“I didn’t ‘survive’ it, but I did make a choice to not get in the car that killed one and severely injured my best friend.

The driver was the one killed, but there was no remorse for the guy. He was always a dangerous driver.

However, there was a bit of anger towards him for what he did to my friend. It changed him. Years of childhood memories wiped away due to the head injury. The stuff he did remember was some of the bad times we had, including the argument that led to me not getting in the car.

Our friendship was never the same after that.”

15. Terrorist attack

“I survived a terrorist attack. Many people died and I survived and now I have the worst survivors remorse. I remember reading headlines about all the people that died. There was a father and a son who died together and the son was little like 12. I feel so guilty every single day that I got to to go my prom, go to college, make mistakes, have fun, get my driver’s license, and keep doing all those things when this little boy can’t do anything ever again.

He doesn’t get to keep learning every day like I do. His family will never get to learn his personality, he’ll never meet his first love, or feel pain, or accomplishment, or try something really hard and succeed. Its really hard to put in words the feeling that I feel every day. Its not that I want to die, its more that I feel this incredibly deep sadness and this feeling that I don’t deserve any day or any joy that I feel.

Other than that, any time I hear a loud noise, my entire body stops working for a second. I cant run or I have a flash back of running. Sometimes I feel like ‘That’s So Raven’ because I’ll be doing a totally normal thing and then everything just stops and I am transported back to the place. And I have a permanent bruise on the top of my foot which is annoying. Also, I have learned to use humor as a coping mechanism and it makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable, which is a bummer.”

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