How to Heal the Pain of a Broken Heart: Dealing with Grief & Loss

By Mark Stefko

Are you in pain, suffering from a broken heart?  Has your world been turned upside down with the loss of a loved one? You have opened yourself up to love, you are vulnerable and now you suffer loss and pain as a result. No one wishes for a broken heart, but through living life fully we are open to loss. Breakup, betrayal, separation, divorc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Stefko
• Release date: Aug 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781535614900

Mark Stefko

Mark was born and raised in Michigan. He is an accomplished business person and educator. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Management from Eckerd College, an Master of Business Administration Degree from Florida Tech and Doctor of Business Administration(abd) Degree in Marketing from Nova Southeastern University. Mark worked in the corporate world for Fortune 500 companies for years, traveling and living throughout the US and abroad. Mark was also an adjunct Professor of undergraduate and graduate studies at three universities and is a small business owner. Mark currently resides in Indian Rocks Beach Florida.

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How to Heal the Pain of a Broken Heart:

Dealing With Grief & Loss

Mark Stefko

Copyright © 2018 Mark Stefko

All rights reserved. No part(s) of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form, or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval systems without prior expressed written permission of the author of this book.

ISBN: 978-1-5356-1490-0 (ePub)

ISBN: 978-1-5356-1491-7 (Mobi)

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Loss

3. Loss Intensities

4. What Is This Grief/Pain I Feel?

5. The Grief Process

6. How Do I Feel in This Grief Process?

7. How Can I Get Through My Grief?

8. The Gifts of Loss

9. Getting Stuck in the Grief Process

10. The New You!

11. How to Recognize and Support Someone Who Is Grieving

Appendix 1. Tools to Help You Get Through Your Grief

Bibliography

Dedication

This book is written for the heart; from mine to yours. It is meant to wrap you in kind warmth and love as you experience your pain. Loss is a difficult time, and the care, support and understanding of others will make all the difference in assisting you on your grief journey.

We have all suffered loss. My loss shook me to my core. But the gifts of loss brought true understanding and relationships that are heartfelt and long lasting. This book would have not been possible without those who lifted me up during my darkest days. I would like to give recognition to:

God: for raising my consciousness to my life journey

Chris: My incredible son, who is the rock of my life

Melissa: My awesome daughter, who conquers the world

My former wife Kim, with whom I shared my formative years

My friends: Joe, Bobby, and Jeff, who are rock solid and always there for me

And finally, my angels: Trudy, Alison, Victoria, and Susan, who, at the lowest point of my life, lifted me up and comforted me through my pain. I will forever be greatly indebted to you.

Please read this book, do the exercises and understand that this will pass. Life will go on, albeit different than before. We are here for you. You are not alone

With warm kindness,

Mark

Chapter 1

Introduction

You are hurting. What is this pain that you feel? How can it be so deep? Why does your inner being ache and yearn? What happened to your normal life and feelings? Will you even get back to it?

If you are reading this and this is how you feel, then this book is for you. You are not alone. Others have felt the way you now feel; have experienced the pain of loss and have survived. Those who have survived loss, wrap their arms around you in comfort and care and say to you, It is okay to hurt. It is okay to cry. It is okay to feel lost and empty. The pain you feel is real. It is a testament to the importance of what you have lost playing out in your life. There is an emptiness, a deep sense of forlornness that creates a vacuum. How will I ever be happy again? you may ask. This book has been written to help you through this process. At some point in every person’s life, they experience loss and walk through the process of grief. The loss of a loved one leaves an emptiness in our life. The grief that consumes you takes hold of you and encompasses your entire being. It won’t let you go. Grief is different for all of us, depending on who we have lost and the importance they played in our life. In the beginning, grief will consume you. It will take all of your time. But over time, as you proceed through the stages, you will find your new footing, a new foundation that is part of you, part of your past and part of your vision and hope for the future.

The grief process is very difficult, but it should not be more difficult than it has to be. That is why resources, such as this book, are important to know. People that have correct information can fare much better through the grieving process as a result. You will need to personalize the information you gain from this book and curtail it to your own needs. Remember, grieving a loss is a very personal experience. It does not matter what anyone says commonly occurs. What happens in your loss situation is personal to you. You should learn the concepts contained within and apply them as they best fit your grief situation. The more you know, the better you can progress through the grief process most effectively, and without unnecessary pain.

There are many types of loss. You can experience loss of material things, such as homes and cars, loss of security, such as safety, money, job or sense of well-being, loss of social standing, such as friends and reputation, or loss of a loved one, either through death, divorce, and estrangement. You will grieve and respond differently for each of these losses. The focus of this book is dealing with the intense loss of a loved one. There is no greater pain than to have your heart splayed open as an open wound, bleeding before the world. You will get through this! That is why this book was written, to help you when you need it most. The loss may seem insurmountable and the pain so deep that it consumes you. What happened to your world? You thought that you were stronger than this, and now you are thrown to the floor and struggle to get back up. With help and time, you will.

Why read this book? You are grasping at anything that can help steady your life. Anything that can help you deal with the why of your loss. You cry out – Please let me sleep through the night; Please let the pain go away; Will I ever feel happy again? The answer is YES!

This book is designed to help you understand what you are going through, the steps to follow in the grief process, and how to emerge into a new life and move on. By understanding the process of what you are going through, this information can help you deal with your loss and move through the grief process. It will be painful. It will take time. You will need to open up and seek the support of others. But through it all, you will grow, become stronger, and learn to appreciate what you had and will have. The aim of the book is to help you deal with the stress and pain of dealing with your loss, leading up to the growth you will experience. Grief is a very intense and personal experience. There are no two people that will go through the grief process the same way, even if they experience the same loss. Grief is unique to every individual. It is up to us to find our way through the process. And you can and will! It may not seem like it now, but many others have experienced the type of loss you are experiencing and have grown through the loss and have moved on to fulfilling lives.

The purpose of this book is to help you ease your burden. I’m writing this book not from a perspective of academic research, but from the personal experience of grief’s constricting grasp on the heart. It is through this profound change experience that transformational growth can occur. I have traveled the path you are on now. Not the same one, but similar. I have felt the pain that you now feel and have survived. You will too. This book is my gift to you to help you through your sorrows. You may not be able to see it now, but at some point, there will be a turning point in your grief work. The excruciating grip of pain will subside, and you will come to a place where you realize that even though you will never be the same, it is going to be okay.

There is only one way for you to live without experiencing any grief in your life, and that is to live a life without love. Grief – as is love – is a representation of your humanness. Most people are unfamiliar with the grieving process until they find themselves caught in the intensity of its grasp! Their grief has no predecessor. They have no point of reference from which to operate. Grief is like a stranger that has come to take up residence in a person’s heart and mind, holding the person captive and now running their life! Grief is not a stable thing, but a process that one must work through.

Everyone’s experience of grief is different in that the process a person will go through will be unique to them based on their own personality and loss. Generally, a person surviving a major loss event can be expected to experience three major phases as they do their grief work: shock, disorganization, and reorganization. Like the stages of grief, some may not experience all of the phases, such as shock to an expected loss.

One thing is an absolute must, that you cannot walk around the perimeter of your loss, but must walk through the core of your loss, it’s very center in order to continue your life in a meaningful way. One key to working through the grief of your loss, to walk through its core, is to talk about it. The more you talk, the more you process your feelings and get them out, and the less you will then need to talk about it. By talking out your feelings, you are then able to transfer your thoughts and energies on to something else and rediscover and reinvent your own life, your new normal!

Why are we so unprepared for loss when it occurs? Is life only about gains and not losses? Of course not. So, why then are we so unprepared to deal with the deep sorrow of a major loss event? Do we still cling to our childhood fantasy of magical thinking that life is supposed to be perfect, and everyone lives happily ever after? Does this permeate our thinking and cause us to perceive the world through this skewed filter? This magical thinking that we are to live without any loss, or that it is not supposed to happen to us, is why we are so unprepared for loss. So then why do we grieve so much when we suffer a major loss event? It is because our loss hurts us very deeply and we are experiencing severe emotional pain. The pain of grief can be described as closely resembling that of fear. This can be a result of childhood emotions that are awakened during a major loss event of abandonment that produces feelings of being scared, exposed, and not being safe. We feel out of control and helpless. This emotional conflict will continue until we are able to release our attachment to our loved one.

Grief is a natural and normal reaction to a loss of any kind. The grief process is a journey of experiences in feelings in response to your loss event and your adjustment to the loss. You cannot choose to or not to grieve. Grief is a necessity in direct proportion to the depth of your attachment to your loss. You feel grief all over, through many aspects of yourself: physical, social, emotional, spiritual, and psychological. This journey is a personal one, in that there is no one way through it. All grief is personalized, as are relationships. Grief requires work. Grief hurts because of the love in which your relationship was based. The deeper your feelings towards your loss, the deeper your need to grieve. You do not ever complete the grief process. You merely reach a point of incorporating the loss into your new reality, but the loss still exists. You do recover, and the degree to which you recover is based on many factors, such as lifestyle, history, past experiences, faith system, support network, and emotional feelings. The grief process will often produce changes in priorities, interests, and lifestyles. Grief is a series of actions and reactions. It is not linear, but forward, back, sideways, up, down, and repeat! You will reach what can be deemed recovery, but it is on your timetable. Only you can do the work to process your loss. Be kind to yourself and those that are grieving. This is the time for love and compassion, patience and caring. This is humanity at its truest level.

Life is change. With change, there is a loss. With loss comes grief, so life is a succession of change and losses, both large and small. Since life is full of losses, we must, for our own happiness and fulfillment in our life, learn how to deal with losses. That process is called the grief process. Grief is the natural and normal reaction to any loss. Therefore, since life is full of loss, one must learn to grieve those losses effectively, because unresolved grief will build up inside a person, stewing until it explodes into a life of unhappiness, misery, negativity, and anger. You can end up a very bitter person that is not fulfilled. Your joy, peace, happiness, and contentment will be robbed from you by the darkness of unresolved grief. Your relationships will be affected in that you will not be able to exchange love and compassion in a healthy way, because you will cut yourself off emotionally to protect yourself from feeling any more pain. The pain is mounting, building, into a life of discontent and emptiness, driving a search for happiness from material thing to material thing, superficial relationship to superficial relationship, in an attempt to fill the void left by an emptiness inside. Nothing will fill the void until you deal with the losses you have accumulated in your life. Once you begin to deal with them, you can begin to replace that emptiness with love, peace, joy, and contentment as you were created to experience in life. So, with that said, let’s begin!

Chapter 2

Loss

Some key lessons on how to deal with loss in your life are:

Understand the feelings that come with loss;

Learn the grief process and how to work through it in times of loss;

Learn to take care of yourself while you are healing.

Remember, life is not defined by the difficult times we face but by how well we work through those times and grow as a result of having experienced them.

One of the best gifts of realization you can give yourself at the onset of profound grief is the permission to grieve the loss in your life. You can do this by accepting that the grief will remain with you for as long as it takes, no matter the fact that it will most likely be longer than your support network feels necessary or is comfortable providing support for. This honors the significance of the loss you have experienced or had in your life and provides you time to integrate the loss into your life in order to move on, albeit changed.

You also need to accept that your feelings of loss are valid to feel, and do not dismiss the importance of the loss and impact that it has on your life. You need to grieve fully and completely; there are no shortcuts through the process. By doing this, you begin to integrate the best qualities of the loss into your new life going forward. This will allow what was lost to live on in you as you re-emerge into your new life. If the loss event is significant, then this will influence the rest of your life, because it was such a part of you.

There are different types of loss. They are:

Death

Divorce

The death of a pet

Moving

Starting school

The death of a former spouse

Marriage

Graduation

End of addictions

Major health changes

Retirement

Financial changes

Empty nest

Holidays

Legal problems

Loss of trust, safety, control over one’s body

Loss of reputation

Loss of ability

If you are alive, there is a certainty that you will experience loss. Loss is universal. Losses are large and small, but we are not taught how to deal with it. People are ill-equipped to deal with loss. The pain of unresolved grief is cumulative. It builds up, stews and festers, and will have a negative impact on a person’s happiness and quality of life.

Recovery from loss is made by a series of small and correct choices. But, how do you make these correct choices, that become the steps that lead to healing on the road to freedom? That is what this book will educate you