8 Tips to Start Healing from Grief from a Licensed Therapist
Takeaway: Grief can feel overwhelming, but healing is possible when you have the right tools and support. In this post, a licensed therapist shares practical, compassionate tips that can help you take small but steady steps forward. While grief looks different for everyone, these approaches can guide you toward finding balance, comfort, and hope.
The most common form of grief that we think of often pertains to bereavement. It can hit you like a ton of bricks at the most random moments and engulf you into the memories you and a loved one shared together. It can be activated, for instance, by smelling the perfume that they used to wear, hearing their favorite song, or maybe even eating a food they used to love. However, grief doesn't just stem from the death of a loved one, it can also include a breakup with a partner; the loss of a friendship, job, health from illness, or safety after a trauma; a miscarriage, or something else. The grieving process is especially challenging, because there is no timeframe for grief. The most common fallacy I hear is that grief gets better with time. Grief only gets better as you process those intense feelings.
My name is Brianna Halasa, and I'm a licensed psychotherapist specializing in trauma, anxiety, disordered eating, and grief. In this article, we'll discuss ways to move through the grief process so that you can create new meaning and work towards a place of peace and acceptance.
How to start healing grief
Grief is a completely natural response to loss, and it can be incredibly challenging to adjust to your new reality. Below, are several tips in various categories that address multiple dimensions of self-care and healing.
Caring for your mind and body
During this difficult time, it's especially important to care for your mind and body while grieving.
1. Prioritizing rest and rejuvenation
Feeling the emotional pain associated with grief can be exhuasting on the body. Therefore, it's important to allow your body time to rest. Incorporate self-care activities along this grief journey to make this challenging time more easeful.
How to do it: Get enough sleep! The average adult is recommended to get between 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night. Incorporate self-care activities such as going for walks in nature, listening to your favorite music, taking baths, reading a page-turning book, or something else that fills your cup!
Why I recommend it: Sleep helps with energy conservation and storage so our cells can restore themselves for the next day, self repair and recovery to build immunity and heal injuries, and brain maintenance like consolidating memories and learned information, as well as reprocessing the day's events (1).
Therapist insight: It might feel hard to take care of yourself, and you may even feel guilty for doing so. However, nourishing your mind and body is an important part of the grief experience.
2. Processing your emotions
It can be easy to avoid the uncomfortable feelings of grief by keeping your schedule packed, but this can create unresolved grief or even prolonged grief disorder. Creating dedicated time to let your emotions come up and process them can allow you to move through the grief process. Grief and loss are accompanied by a plethora of strong feelings, such as disbelief, shock, sadness, guilt, anger, despair, fear, among others. Let yourself feel it all!
3. Use creative outlets
Expressing your grief in a creative way could help in processing those intense feelings.
How to do it: Spend time drawing, painting, collaging, creating music, or something else to channel your feelings. You don't need to be an artist and this doesn't have to look good! This is more about the process than the result.
Why I recommend it: Channeling your energy into a creative outlet could help if sitting with those feelings of grief is challenging.
Therapist insight: Getting creative can allow you to create meaning out of this loss and help expresss yourself in a different way.
4. Journal
It can feel hard to know where to begin when it comes to grief. Therefore, journalling can help put all your thoughts into one place instead of them lingering in your head. As if there were a microphone being put up to your brain, write down everything that you're thinking. It doesn't have to make sense, you're not writing the next bestseller! Just let your pen take on a stream of consciousness.
How to do it: Write as fast as you can and don't let yourself stop writing until all of your thoughts run out. Don't erase anything and don't take time to pause and read things over. Don't worry about grammar or spelling, and if you make a mistake, just cross it out and keep writing.
Why I recommend it: This exercise is unstructured and non-judgmental. It allows you to grieve without there being a "right" or "wrong" way to do it.
Therapist insight: Especially in cases of complicated grief, this exercise can be especially useful, as it employs non-judgment. These are your thoughts that you've written down, which makes them releveant and valid.
Finding support & connection
When something important in your life completely disappears, grief is the typical response. During the grieving process, it's especially important to connect with family members, compassionate friends, or loved ones. It can also be helpful to seek professional help or join a support group. When you're experiencing a loss, feeling more alone only adds to feelings of sadness.
5. Therapy and support groups
You might be wondering what healing during grief even looks like. Working with a trained professional in therapy could help guide you through the grieving process if it feels confusing about where to start or too overwhelming to parse through on your own. Apart from seeing a therapist individually, joining a grief support group could be validating to know that others understand the type of loss you're experiencing. It also gives you an opportunity not only to receive support but provide support for others in the group. There could be specific grief support groups in your area, such as a pet loss support group or bereaved parents support groups.
6. Seek Connection
While it might feel easier to isolate from relationships, stay in bed, or sink into a deep depression this can be counterintuitive to the grieving process.
How to do it: Reach out to family or friends. You can say something like, "I've been dealing with a lot of grief and [insert other feelings: sadness, anger, shock, guilt, despair, depression, etc.] over the loss of [fill in the blank]. I could really use the extra support and would love to connect during this hard time if you have capacity."
Why I recommend it: It's crucial that you seek connections with loved ones, spend time being open and vulnerable about your grieving, while also spending time doing activities that might uplift you.
Therapist insight: The challenging part of grief and loss is that sometimes loved ones don't want to bring up your loss for fear of upsetting you. However, it might be the only thing on your mind, creating difficulty concentrating on anything else. Leading with vulnerability and openness so loved ones have an understanding of where you're at could be helpful for everyone.
Rebuilding meaning & moving forward
Make meaning out of your loss experience, such as finding ways to honor who or what was lost, creating meaning in your own growth, and establishing new experiences.
7. Create new rituals, meaning & experiences
How to do it: Establish new traditions or rituals, for example, a future memorial or a meaningful way to celebrate them on anniversaries and holidays. You can also use your experience to help others, such as advocating for a cause that relates to your grief and loss or paying it forward through dedicated acts of kindness in honor of who or what you lost.
Why I recommend it: Creating meaning is a way to uphold your love for who or what was lost, even after time has passed.
Therapist insight: Loss is what has happened to you in life, whereas making meaning of the loss is what you make happen. It can empower you and give you agency to move through grief and loss.
8. Commemorate their life
How to do it: You can cook their favorite meal, plant a tree in their honor, write a letter to your loved one, share their story, or put together a memory box of pictures and items that remind you of them.
Why I recommend it: After the death of a loved one, you might think that you'll forget the precious memories you shared with them. Solidifying those memories into a tangible form could help with those fears of forgetting.
Therapist insight: This commemoration might bring up some sad, painful, or uncomfortable emotions, so take time to honor what comes up and be easy with yourself!
Final thoughts about the grieving process
In this article, we discuss supportive ways to move through the grieving process. There is no right way to grieve, and it looks different for everyone. Therefore, find a few healthy outlets that feel supportive for you during this deeply emotional time. An important part of grief and loss involves caring for your mind and body.
If you've experienced a loss, are moving through the grieving process, or need extra support, please feel free to reach out and book a first therapy session. This isn't something that you need to move through alone!
Citations
Bradley, Loretta; Noble, Nicole; and Witanapatirana, Kumudu (2022) "Complicated Grief: Counseling Considerations and Techniques," Adultspan Journal: Vol. 21: Iss. 1, Article 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33470/2161-0029.1004 Available at: https://mds.marshall.edu/adsp/vol21/iss1/1
Cleveland Clinic. (2023, June 6). Sleep. Retrieved from: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/12148-sleep-basics
