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We are talking about a sad topic today. Loss.
Loss is very personal for Becky. She has experienced quite a bit of loss in her life. And there are different types of loss, but the feelings are generally the same.
We want to offer some validation to those who have gone through loss. We are talking about any kind of loss here: losing someone you love; losing a job; losing some papers in your house that you really needed; losing a file on your computer. Loss is loss and the feelings you feel are pretty common to everyone.
Primarily you will feel raw; hollowed-out; empty; numbness; your brain will slow down. Your brain will shut you down for as long as needed so that you are protected. It could be as long as a year that you feel shut down and numb or in shock and denial. There is a fog that accompanies loss. You are processing so much, and the brain can only handle so much.
In loss, you will feel uncertain, scared, afraid; as though life might never feel good again; accompanying darkness and depression; despair, anxiety, and physical aching of your heart and your mind. All these feelings are valid, normal, and okay. Please honor yourself during this time.
It's so hard to lose someone or the dream of someone and to have the expectations you had taken from you.
Normally, people live life, have their children, their parents die, etc. But when someone young is taken from us it can awaken us to our own mortality and make us start to wonder if anything is safe or not. Do you have control over anything? And no, you don't. Only your own reactions are under your control.
Covid gave us another level of loss. The loss of being in person with one another. And the older generations in assisted living centers--they were already isolated enough and then to have this fear of this virus could kill them and their loved ones had to stay away. There has also been loss of financial security for many people.
Another kind of loss is weight loss. Losing weight can change the way you feel about yourself; it can open up fear about negative things happening to you. It can create a sense of an identity change as well. The loss of the identity as a larger person is still a loss.
There are so many kinds of losses and some are more severe than others, but every kind of loss should be respected and honored because there may be the loss of the dream that you had of how your life was supposed to go. It will create some emotions.
So, make sure that you feel those feelings. This might be the darkest time of your life, but you won't feel like this forever. Grief and loss are not linear.
If you feel like you are lashing out at loved ones or strangers, please do get some help.
If you are pushing people away or you can't stop crying, these are indications that you have stepped past normal grieving and need some help. Talk to someone who gets you. That helps.
Sometimes these losses are so immense for us that navigating through grief is very helpful and when you are all alone in it, you feel inundated by it.
Often, we want to jump right to accepting the loss by saying things like, "It's done. It's over. It happened. They're gone" but you really can't fully do this. There is a part of you that isn't okay with it and that part will make you go through all the different stages of grief.
Denial and bargaining can be the ones we stay in the longest sometimes because we simply do not want to feel the depression part, even though that is one of the most important ones we have to go through in order to get to full acceptance.
The depression stage can make people feel like they are going to stay in the depression, but this is only one part of this and if this was a big...
