Growing Through Grief
Oomph, so you lost something. You lost something or someone that you loved. My hand is on my heart, sensing the pain, or the numbness, or the mind-scattering, forgetful, dissociation that you’re currently experiencing. I understand. I see you.
So often, we run the risk of minimizing the pain associated with the loss of a relationship, for example, because it is not uncommon in today’s society for you to separate, divorce, or lose a job you feel deeply connected with. Or, maybe you didn’t deeply connect with the job, or the person itself, but it hits that wound. That survival wound, that scarcity wound. It’s common, and it’s painful. This deeply felt pain is not diminished just because other people in the world experience similar life moments. There’s power in relating, sure, but it can water things down and feel reductionist if we leave it at that. We forget this, collectively, and tend to assume people are doing fine, or better than they actually are, when in reality, their entire lives have been altered. We go so fast as a society, we celebrate the successes and wins, and we tend to ignore the pain associated with loss and grief, or put a time limit on it. Especially non-death-related grief and loss. This is an awful reality to endure for someone grieving. Our friends, our siblings, our co-workers, our community members, their entire assumptive worlds have been shattered.
What exactly is “the assumptive world”?
The concept refers to the assumptions or beliefs that ground, secure, stabilize, and orient us as humans. They are your core beliefs. So in the face of death, or of non-death loss and grief, and of trauma, these beliefs are shattered, leading to a visceral disorientation, a disequilibrium, that enters you. That shakes you. That changes you at your core.
Janoff-Bulman (1989, 1992) suggested that there are three primary categories within the assumptive world, each is comprised of several assumptions. The three main categories are:
Benevolence of the world – in general, this category consists of how you perceive the world in an overarching sense, and also the expectations of benevolence to others.
Meaningfulness of the world – this category involves your beliefs about the distribution of outcomes, including expectations of fairness and justice, perceived control over events, and the degree to which randomness is explainable in the course of events.
Worthiness of the self – the view of how you perceive the ability to respond to events and to act in ways that ensure self-protection and control over life events.
Let’s revisit this working model in a way that may involve assumptions that are not generalized for everyone in the same way, even if they center around the same concepts. In this version of the construct, there is space for those who may not have grown up in a world where they’ve not known safety, or where foundational individuals in a person’s life have not been well-intentioned, or the view of self has been mirrored in a way that does not affirm the individual’s worth, capacity, or value. AKA, let’s look at this through a trauma-informed lens, which we do with all our work here at Woven.
Your assumptive world may be composed of:
How you tend to view others and their intentions
How you believe the world should work
How you tend to view ourselves
It’s important to note that this is more than a cognitive construct. These assumptions exist at the very core of your being, and come out to play throughout every flavor of life you experience and in response to what life provides you. You embody them, almost like you embody your values (whether you realize it or not).
You move through these core beliefs cognitively, socially, spiritually, emotionally, and relationally in the world.
They become the house you’ve built for yourself, and the house you live in. In the aftermath of significant loss or of a period of devastating grief, the core beliefs that make up your assumptive world are challenged, so the entire house that you have built your lives inside of begins to crumble. This is all happening while you’re attempting to function well in society. What a wild, painful, humbling thing to endure. The hopes, the dreams, the stability, all that you knew is forever changed, and when reflecting on it, may now seem like naive or childlike illusions. You can liken it to a tornado, or hurricane coming in to wipe out or destroy your physical homes. There may be pieces left to identify or collect, but you can physically no longer live there. You can rebuild, but it will inevitably be a different house.
Sometimes, it’s too scary to turn inward and face what’s happening with your body, with your nervous system. Sometimes, even if you feel like you’re giving yourself permission to feel the feelings of grief and loss, it’s necessary to pull out of it. This is human, this is necessary, this is the process, and this is okay.
Giving yourself permission to pendulate, where you allow yourself to experience a level of emotion you can tolerate, then pull back and re-engage when you are ready, is the secret to rebuilding your internal home. It’s the secret to nourishing your internal flora and fauna, and the foundations of which you’ll build your new house. Sitting with the grief is important. Identifying somatic sensations associated with how grief shows up for each of us is important (which happens to be one of my favorite ways to explore - we’ll have to do an entire blog post about this part of the process).
Here are a few other ways to explore this wild journey of rebuilding your sweet home from the ground up.
Recognizing:
Grounding yourself within the social context and social factors of grief and loss can provide you with agency, and permission to simply exist within your own experience. As you are inseparable from the surrounding social contexts you’re a part of, it only makes sense to explore questions like:
What does this mean for how you’re judging yourself?
What have you internalized about grief, and where did you learn it?
What rules are you clinging to?
How do you notice yourself trying to be “good” at grieving?
What “shoulds” are coming up as you reflect on your experience and how you’re navigating the deepest moments of grief?
Recognizing that external factors have real, deep internal responses is a huge step in carving out the space for yourself. This allows you to grieve in a way that breaks barriers, defies societal expectations, and ultimately brings you back home to yourself internally so that healing emerges naturally, over time, instead of according to some playbook you’re attempting to lean on. There can even be joy and empowerment in this part of the process. When your experience feels like it it falls outside of general social norms, outside of someone else’s cultural expectations, the experience of grief is compounded by isolation and pressure to deny your own experience. You’re recognizing this can exist, and you’re actively choosing to participate in the process in spite of it. This is bravery.
Meaning Making
Exploring how you’re experiencing grief can be a powerful way to bring in qualities of mindfulness. This allows you to build on some of the recognizing you’ve done. With acknowledging all of these external factors (cultural considerations, societal expectations, loud critial parts of yourself), you’re better equipped to more deeply understand what meaning we’re making of it all, from a perspective outside of just being the one experiencing it. Asking questions like:
How am I viewing this?
What does this experience, and how I’m experiencing it, mean about me, and my life?
What meaning am I making here?
It doesn’t mean that the meaning is correct - in fact, it may uncover a deeply rooted negative belief that your internal child says, “oomph” in response to. This is okay. There is no judgment, you’re just starting to explore the parts of you that come up during the dark times in our lives, and welcoming them in. Allowing them to stay with us for a moment, acknowledging they’re here. This is just part of the process.
Relating
Thinking of a situation in your life when someone else you know experienced a non-death loss, and their personal narrative surrounding it provides us with perspective.
Can you recall some of the assumptions challenged by this loss?
Did their loss experience change how you viewed yourself, others, or the world?
There are no wrong answers here. We’re simply reflecting on the powerful ways we learn and grow through witnessing the experience of another, and of how expansive someone else’s experience can actually be, for us. Reflecting on how you’ve collected bits of wisdom along the way from the experiences of others can be a humbling way to begin to turn inward, in an effort to begin trusting our own wisdom. It allows you to explore the ways in which you might be learning, growing, and expanding throughout your own experience. This also relates to co-regulation, where two people interact to help one another regulate their emotions. This builds trust and safety, which are paramount to anything in life, but especially the grieving process, as so much isolation tends to take place.
Expressing
I need to emphasize that this part cannot be overlooked. I don’t care whether you identify as a creative, or if you consider yourself the least creative human on the planet. Release the outcome, and embrace the process. Expressing yourself is part of the human experience, and it’s an important part of the grieving process.
Draw two hands, with one hand being who you were pre-grief experience. On the other hand, draw who you are now. Sit back and compare. What are the differences in colors, patterns, words, textures, energies? Notice what comes up as you reflect on your piece.
Dance. Shake. Move your body in an intuitive way. What music do you tend to gravitate towards when you go to pick a song? Do you go straight to the floor to sit down and curl up in a ball, or do you need to jump and twist and take up space?
Make a playlist. What’s the journey like, from start to finish? What moods come up, what memories? Sensations?
Paint. Get messy.
Write poetry.
Go swimming.
Scream, growl.
No expectations, no limitations. Stagnancy in the body builds up over time, so we can feel the difference in a built-up body vs a clearing of energy and a shifting in relationship to what we’re experiencing, when we take time to express and notice what it feels like.
Expression of grief gives us an opportunity to experience it in a new way, like entering through a different door in the house. Over time, this becomes part of the decoration, design, structure and bones of our new house. An amalgamation of it all - who we were, who we are, and who we’re becoming.
Nurturing
Asking the question, “What do I need now?” allows you a moment of self-compassion, even if you can’t find an answer or don’t have the ability to meet your needs at that time. When you move half as fast, you notice twice as much. Taking a brief pause to tune into your present moment experience and explore what needs arise may surprise you or humble you. It also allows you to take inventory of your existing support system, including how you’re relating to yourself. What brings you joy? What brings you comfort? What gets you into that flow state where you forget what time it is? What do you need in this moment? A nap, a heating pad, a meal? Who do you need? Perhaps texting a friend saying, “I not feeling like my best self today, can you remind me of who I am?” are a few ideas to marinate on.
Integrating/Rebuild
This is emergent, based on weaving in and out of all of the above. This is what happens over time, when you release the sense of urgency to move past grief and loss, when you release the sense of urgency to escape your pain. You are building back up your home throughout this process. Navigating the human experience is a wild ride, and loss is a frequent companion in life.
Robert A. Neimeyer (a grief and loss expert/scholar), calls out the dichotomous nature of human existence, stating that we are beings wired for attachment, but exist in a world defined by impermanence, change, and loss. Our work becomes navigating this balance with as much grace, self-compassion, and trust as we possibly can.
In Darcy L Harris’ book, she further reflects upon this sentiment by sharing, “Navigating life in this world means that we love while knowing we will lose; we appreciate our surroundings with the recognition that all that is around us can change in a moment through a tragic event; and finally, while we can be filled with wonder as we experience the depth and beauty of life, we can also become disillusioned by the injustice and cruelty that may present themselves to us…Life is precious; every moment matters. Life is a limited resource that shouldn’t be squandered. Even the moments of uncertainty, pain, loss, and disenfranchisement can shape us in ways that open us to cultivate greater sensitivity to others, allow for an appreciation for what might be possible, and even surprise us by bringing forth our own resilience and strength.”
If you relate to any of this, if it’s landing for you, and if something in you is curious to learn more, please feel free to schedule a free 15 min consultation with me. We can discuss more about what you’re experiencing, the ways in which I typically work, and we’ll feel out how we flow together/if it feels aligned. It would be an absolute gift to sit with you in the midst of your story.
These blogs talk more about the basics of EMDR:
You can read more about Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy here:
References:
Krystal, H. (1993). Shattered Assumptions: towards a new psychology of trauma. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 181(3), 208–209. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-199303000-00017
Neff, K., & Germer, C. (2018). The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thriveÿ ÿ. Guilford Publications.
Non-Death loss and grief. (2019). In Routledge eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429446054