I'm Grieving, Please Explain What's Happening To Me: Coping With Grief

By Addison Cooper

"I'm grieving! What's happening to me? How long will it last? What do I do?"

 

Bereavement strikes, you are stunned, your world is shaken to its core, someone special is gone.You know that life will never be the same again. You will never be the same again. You try to make sense of it all. But you are overwhelmed by difficult emotions and troubling thoughts. You struggle with what to expect and what to do. You need answers. You need a guide through the unfamiliarterrain of grief.

 

Counselor, psychotherapist and grief specialist Addison Cooper is a highly experienced grief recovery expert who has been helping the bereaved through grief and loss for more than twenty years. Written as a short grief recovery handbook, to help serve as a guide through the grief journey, this easy-to-read, practical book explains just what grief is, why it affects us the way it does and what we can do about it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Addison Cooper
• Release date: Apr 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215716021

Book preview

I'm Grieving, Please Explain What's Happening To Me

A grief specialist explains what we know about grief, why it hurts so much and what we can do about it.

Addison Cooper

Copyright © 2023 by Addison Cooper

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.K. copyright law.

Using This Book

Thank you for purchasing I'm Grieving, Please Explain What's Happening To Me.

This book was written with the intention of explaining just what it is that grief specialists have learnt about grief and grieving.

The book can be read from cover to cover or by just reading certain chapters of interest.

It’s a technical book, rather than a book of consolation.

I wanted to provide a basic guide to what it is that healthcare specialists understand about the subject of grief.

Please don’t read it just once.

Pick it up again from time to time and you will find that it helps you as your own perspective on grief changes over time.

There are more resources on my website https://www.copingwithgrief.net

I can be contacted through the website. there is a grief email mini series that you can subscribe to and other free resources that can help.

Absence, hear thou my protestation

Against thy strength,

Distance and length:

Do what thou canst for alteration;

For hearts of truest mettle

Absence doth join, and time doth settle

John Hoskins

To Geomar, who gently coaxed me out of the depths of absolute despair.

About Me

My name is Addison and I’m a certified counselor, psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. I work in private practice as a mental health care professional, but grief is a particular specialism of mine.

My Story

My history with grief began in childhood when I lost two schoolboy friends to death by misadventure through inhaling a solvent. They were both 12 years old and did not know what they were doing. I lost another friend as he walked home from school and was hit by a drunk driver. He was 14 years old.

As I grew older, more hits came. Hodgkin lymphoma took a close friend at age 22, and suicide another at age 25. As the years continued, age took away my grandparents, cancer took two uncles and a good friend, alcohol addiction took away a brother-in-law, and suicide, again, took another friend. My dad died a slow, lingering, painful death from progressive supranuclear palsy and murder took my wife and two young children. 

I grieved each death deeply, and I tried, somehow, to keep going, bearing the deep scars of loss as we all, every one of us grievers, do. 

My Professional Background 

I have a joint honors degree in psychology and philosophy, a master’s degree in philosophy of the mind and professional diplomas in psychotherapy, in counseling, and in hypnotherapy. I have, during over twenty years of professional practice, specialized in grief counseling, anxiety and depression, family and relationship counseling, pain management and alcohol dependence.  

Grief Counseling

Over the years, I have helped people of all ages. People who have lost their parents, grandparents, siblings, aunties and uncles, cousins, children, grandchildren, close friends and distant friends. Some of these losses were from illness, others from accidents, addiction, violence, suicide, age. Some deaths were sudden and came as a shock, whilst others were peaceful and expected. Despite having experienced more than my share of bereavement, I have learned so much from other people who shared their pain and heartbreak with me as we collaborated on working out how they could handle the devastating emotions that grief brings and be able to move forward. 

Why Write a Book? 

All too often, there is little support available to people affected by the death of someone they care about. After the death certificate has been issued, the funeral is over and friends and family return to their everyday lives, the bereaved are expected to pick up the pieces and ‘get on with it’. But what is it they ‘get on’ with? What if life has no meaning because their beloved partner has died? What if work seems completely pointless when your daughter recently died in a car accident, or your son took his own life? 

The terrible reality for many in grief is that there is no one to talk to about feelings of despair which, if unresolved, can lead to mental and physical ill health. 

In working with the bereaved, I have found that it helps if they understand what grieving is, why we grieve, what we can expect as we grieve and what we can do to mitigate the effects of grief. It is important to recognise that our reactions to loss are ‘normal’, and that it helps if we can clarify the meaning of our feelings. To that end, I wrote what I believe is most helpful for people who are struggling with loss and the uncertain future that comes with it. 

This first book is about explaining what we grief counselors understand about grief, why we grieve the way we do and what we can do to alleviate some of the pain. There will soon be a second book about what to expect over the days, weeks, months and years following a bereavement and then a third book which goes into greater detail about what we can do to lessen the impact that grief has on us. If I wrote everything I have learned about grief, it would be a very long book indeed. I would prefer to write shorter books on specific topics so that readers can choose what concerns them the most and tackle this very complex subject in bite-sized pieces.

I’m a professional counselor, not a writer, so I sincerely hope I succeed in my attempt.

Best Wishes To You,

Addison

Introduction

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Morris ‘Morrie’ S. Schwartz  

Sadly, we will all experience bereavement. As life runs its course, we will suffer the loss of family, friends, and colleagues, and with every loss, there is pain and disruption. The closer we were to the deceased, the greater the impact of their death. It is often said that when we grieve; we are making a statement — we are stating that we loved someone. The more we loved them, the more we will grieve them. I would prefer to say that when we grieve, we are making a statement – we are stating that we still love someone; we haven’t stopped loving them, we never will. The end of their life was not the end of our love for them. The more we love them, the more acute will be our sorrow and the more intense will be our emotional suffering and distress. In our grief, we will come to experience physical and emotional pain over and over again. We will experience confusion, fear, the deepest sense of loss and forlorn longing, and, possibly, abandonment.  

There is almost always an initial shock in grief, whether we show it or not. There’s always an impact of some sort; grief hits hard. And yet, as we emerge from the initial shock, we look around; we see the world still turns, the sun shines, the birds sing, the clouds drift on by and people continue to go about their daily business. Life continues as if nothing happened. But for you something did happen, something seismic. The world did stop turning and you know, with a terrifying certainty, that nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing ever could be. You can’t just pick up where you left off. In your despair, you may feel that things can never, ever, get better. But they will. In time, they will.  

Whilst trying to pick up the pieces, most grief-stricken people don’t understand what’s happening to them, and that only increases their distress. In time, they come to understand that grieving is not an orderly process, there’s no linear progression through grief, we can’t control it, we can’t tame it, we can’t schedule its appearances. You move forward for a while, only to discover that you’re back in the same territory that you thought you had left behind. You think you’re finally free of the pain of grief, and that’s such a relief, but you will, unfortunately, come to know that same pain again and again.   

Grief is not a subject that is discussed frequently and not something that people have much of an understanding of. As we are raised from childhood to adulthood, we are not taught about the process of grief and how it manifests, and so we struggle when it comes our way. Following a bereavement, we are mostly encouraged to take a little time off in order to come to terms with it, get over it and be able to move on again. In fact, often, after a few weeks or after a few short months, it may be suggested that it’s time for you to move on with your life. It is as if grief comes with a time limit that society will allow and really shouldn’t continue further. There are always platitudes that really don’t help and can even be a source of more pain and suffering. By trying to be kind, people often achieve the very opposite of what they intended. Meaningful support isn’t always at hand and when you find some support, you often find that people are trying to fix you. The problem is, you don’t need to be fixed. What you really need is a greater understanding of grief, what is happening to you, how grief runs its course, and what you can do to move forward. This