Go Ahead And Grieve
Posted on September 24, 2014 by Mark Newton, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
We suffer losses all the time. Some are bigger than others. When we allow ourselves to grieve, we recover quicker. Contact me. I'll help you grieve.
It’s good to grieve.
You suffer losses all the time. You lose your keys, your kids go off to college, you lose a loved one. Some of the losses are permanent. Some are not. But when you lose something or someone, you need to grieve. It’s good to grieve.
Here’s why.
The world is chaotic and you are human. You therefore have a brain, so you crave order in the midst of chaos. When you lose something or someone, it is a shock to your system, a blow to your foundation. It is a crumbling into the abyss of chaos. You might say I am exaggerating. Maybe.
You may be familiar with the five stages of grief, developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D. The five stages of grief when you suffer a loss are:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
Some of you reading this post today suffer from depression. A major cause of depression is loss. When you experience loss, you feel a lack of control, which leads to the three stages of grief leading up to depression. Many people get stuck here. They just can’t seem to move on.
However, if you will allow yourself to get to the point of acceptance, you will complete the grieving cycle and believe it or not, you will be healthier and happier.
Let’s say you lose your keys. At first, you can’t believe it (denial). Not again! It’s the third time this week you lost the keys. So you get mad (anger). You then start pleading with God or the Universe to help you find the keys (bargaining). And when you can’t find them after 5 minutes, you’re totally done in (depression). You finally find them, but you still feel terrible and you’re just trying not to crash the car on the way to work. You feel stupid and defeated.
But let’s say you complete the grieving cycle. You get to acceptance. Here is where you win. Here is where you get a toe hold in the midst of the chaos of life. If you can get to acceptance, you realize that there is a reason you lost your keys in the first place. It’s not just a jumble of chaos. You can figure this out. Acceptance is an incredible healer, but you need to go through the four stages of grief to get to it.
So go ahead and grieve.
