Most people will experience grief during their life in one way or another.

When you lose a friend, partner, parent, spouse, family member or anyone else who held great significance in your life it is devastating. It’s important to have some healthy coping mechanisms in place to support you during your grieving period.

Grief is a natural response to loss. When we lose something or someone we have been highly emotionally invested in, it disrupts our day-to-day lives. We can experience grief by losing a loved one, a pregnancy, a job, a marriage or a way of life.

Similarly, we can also experience grief when we make major life changes. Notably, when we move away from our hometown or sell our family home. Changes like these affects us in many ways. For instance, our emotions, thoughts, behavior, beliefs or entire belief system, physical health, identity, and our relationships with others are affected. Grief can leave us feeling anxious, angry, isolated, sad, depressed, relieved, overwhelmed, or numb.

Loss is an extremely personal experience. Don’t ever feel ashamed or guilty for feeling any particular emotion in response to your grief.

If you have lost someone or something significant to you, your grief is valid. And it’s completely normal to experience these feelings. That said, and as we mentioned before, having a “toolkit” of healthy coping mechanisms will help you to navigate grief. Through the complex emotions of grief in helpful, it helps to have constructive ways.

Establish or maintain a healthy daily routine.

Routines provide a sense of familiarity and comfort in what can feel like a time of complete upheaval and confusion. Make sure you get enough sleep, eat nutritious food regularly and get outside in the fresh air once a day. With this in mind, do some physical activity (when you feel ready) as it will help to create a sense of stability. It’s vitally important to practice self-care and nourish yourself as you create space for your grief.

As we know, grief can bring with it a lot of mixed emotions, such as anger, sadness and overwhelm.

While it might be tempting to numb these emotions with alcohol or other substances, the most important part of the healing process is to experience and address these emotions head-on.

You might like to try journaling your thoughts or feelings, taking some time in a calm or beautiful place to cry and release your sadness, channeling feelings of anger or chaos into safe physical activity (such as boxing or dance), or talking to someone you trust about how you’re feeling. All of these things can help you process your emotions in healthy ways, and prevent your feelings from becoming “bottled up”.

It can also be very helpful to work with a therapist.

Therapists are specially trained to help you navigate your own grieving period and healing journey. A good therapist can help you navigate through the various stages of grief, listening objectively and providing support and objectivity as you work through your difficult period of loss.

However you experience or manage your grief, know that these feelings will pass with time. You can come to accept grief as a part of life and accept your loss, find new meaning in life, and eventually move on as a stronger person.

Other Services offered at The Relationship Therapy Center in California:

In addition to grief counseling, Our Sacramento area counseling clinics located in Roseville and Fair Oaks, CA are pleased to offer a variety of mental health services. Our couples services include: Couples Counseling, Counseling after infidelity, sex therapy, co-parent counseling, family therapy, divorce counseling, intensive couples retreats, and premarital counseling. Our individual therapy services include anxiety treatment, therapy for children, teen therapy, depression treatment, codependency counseling and individual relationship counseling. Our therapists offer online counseling in California to treat a variety of mental health concerns. Please reach out to our Sacramento area therapy office to learn more about the many ways we can help you or your loved ones.