consequences of grief

What is your first loss memory; the first time you experienced the death of a pet, loved one, or had to move away from friends/family, etc.? You may have also experienced an intangible loss, such as a loss of trust event as a child, too.

As adults, we don’t consider that the losses we experienced as young children (that cause grief) leave a lasting imprint on our hearts. However, they do. And the subsequent losses (that cause grief) we experience along the way is stacked on top of those previous losses.

Grief is cumulative and cumulatively negative, therefore, all of the undelivered communications you’ve accumulated in your life (and in your heart), creates a heaviness that only recovery alone can undo.

Ways Grief Stacks Up

When you’re young and you’ve lost your first pet, you’re likely taught that “it’s only a dog” and a dog can be replaced. But, what your parents don’t (or didn’t) understand was that to you, you felt like that dog was your only friend. And, you really can’t replace a beloved friend, can you?

When your family moves and you have to switch schools and forge new relationships, you’re also leaving old relationships behind. There may have been things, as a kid, you never got the chance to communicate to those you left behind. Or, perhaps there was a teacher who you felt close to, trusted, and who made you feel safe and you never got the chance to tell that teacher how much you appreciated them.

As a child, when you lose a loved one, adults may mistakenly make the assumption that, because you’re young, you don’t understand what’s going on – what it means when someone dies, etc.. So, there may be more grief experienced because, although  you do understand, you’re not allowed the space and time to share your feelings around the loss.

Growing up, into the teen years, there are more grief experiences as well. Today, kids are dealing with bullying in a way that allows bullies to bully nearly 24/7 online and from their phones. There are self-image issues that many teens face as well. There may be struggles and challenges at home that has a negative impact on their education, too.

And, we all know that adulthood is filled with grief experiences. As adults, we experience relationships that come and go, choose careers that aren’t in alignment with our desires and values, marriages that turn out to be not meant-to-be, and parenthood brings with it grief at times, too. Also, as we age, our parents also age. We may become parent caregivers while raising families of our own.

When you start losing loved ones time after time, is when all of the unresolved feelings you’ve experienced over your life begin to come to the surface. When this happens, eventually, there will be one loss where all the grief will become too much to bear. You’ll find yourself pulled back in time, emotionally, to a previous loss you likely never dealt with or recovered from fully.

You may begin to feel stuck in your life. You may find yourself in the same types of situations or relationships over and over and over. You may feel as though you’ve lost a part of yourself and you find yourself searching in all the wrong places. Or perhaps you feel full of despair, regret, resentment, anger; all the emotions that had burrowed a deep hole within you.

Where Grief Begins

Grief isn’t something that begins in adulthood. You don’t know grief, for the first time, when your parent dies when you’re forty-five, for example. Grief experiences occurred long before that; you just haven’t seen the behaviors you’ve exhibited in your life as stemming from grief.

Grief, in adulthood, looks like gambling, addiction (porn, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.), chronic pain, high blood pressure, shopping, food, excess exercise, ulcers, stress, workaholism, approval-seeking behavior, and the list goes on and on. These are examples of short-term energy relieving behaviors or STERBS (affecting our emotional health) and a few examples of how grief manifests in our bodies (affecting our physical health).

Childhood Grief

When it comes to grief in children, I want to first illustrate a point. Human emotions in infants go from happy to sad, or sad to happy, without any apparent external stimulus. Infants communicate all feelings (sometimes, at the top of their lungs). They never question themselves until we start teaching them and showing them to not feel bad. Adults train children to believe that having sad feelings and communicating about those feelings is not okay. To the child’s developing mind, it becomes a simple choice: happy feelings are good and get rewarded vs. sad feelings are bad and get punished.

Grief, in children, is generally expressed the same as adults following a loss, for example. Sleeping patterns may change, eating patterns may change, too, and there’s an inability to concentrate. The way a child responds to grief is often the same because, monkey see, monkey do. In the example of a death of a loved one, if the parent isn’t communicating their sadness with their children and sharing in the loss and instead of going to be alone to grieve and cry because all they know (and were taught by well-meaning but misinformed people) is to be strong. Is it any surprise that the grieving child will do the same and not talk about their feelings?

Although adults (and teens) exhibit short-term energy relieving behaviors, they didn’t develop overnight in the teen and adult years. STERBS are the result of years of being taught unhelpful ways to respond to grief and the misinformation passed on since childhood.

Societal Impact of Grief

The rates of obesity, suicide, addiction, etc. have all been on the rise. Meanwhile, life expectancy rates have been on the decline, consistently, the past three years. These rates hadn’t changed since 1915-1918; life expectancy, in the U.S., had been on the rise ever since, until recent years, as previously mentioned. Check out the video below for recent statistical data information and the reasons the CDC provides insight into why life expectancy is declining.

After watching that short video, what do you think is at the root of the addiction, obesity, and suicide rates? Perhaps, it’s grief? Sounds too simple, right? I think not. Grief is anything but simple.

Self-Evaluation & Awareness

Take a self-examination of the behaviors you fall back on when you’re feeling emotional. Do you seek solace in the fridge, pill or liquor bottle, or another person’s bed? Do you close up and shut down the world around you? Or, do you find yourself angry at the world, consumed with negativity and pessimism?

Awareness is what we need to know what needs to change.

We don’t get to where we are in our adult lives (emotionally, physically, or mentally) overnight, friend. We are a work-in-progress of some form of self-destruction in some way or another. However, it’s never too late to choose to become a work-in-progress toward healing and recovery.

much love from victoria

P.S. Are you interested in becoming a work-in-progress for healing and recovery? Message or email me to inquire about the evidence-based Grief Recovery Group Program.

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