When We Feel Stuck in Our Grief

How much should we focus on the progression of our grief? On whether we are “doing better”?

The question came up this week when I received an email from a man who thought an associate was “stuck” in grief. He wanted assistance. He wanted the person to experience healing.

A worthy desire. However, the person may or may not be “stuck.”

I tread lightly when I hear someone brandish “stuck” in relationship to grief. It’s just too easy for outsiders to label us with a condition in need of a fast cure. Grief isn’t finished after the funeral. It isn’t done after the first year. Nor the year after that.

We also can become impatient with ourselves, feeling we aren’t moving along quickly enough. We may feel – yes – stuck. How, we ask, do I extract myself from this hellish sorrow?

Complicated Grief

Admittedly, there is something called complicated grief, or persistent complex bereavement disorder. It’s generally defined as painful emotions so severe and long lasting that the person has trouble resuming their lives. Daily activities may be hard to accomplish.

I felt stuck in the fall of 2013. I was toiling with several simultaneous issues – career, illness, relationships, professional envy – that contributed to my general sense of loserhood. The project to clean out my parents’ home slowed even further as a deafening voice in my head reminded me how long Dad and Mom had been dead.

Seven years. Four years.

I’d been holding onto their home all that time. I loved visiting it. As I sifted through every object and piece of paper, I felt as if my parents were with me. I loved that connection.

At the same time, my grief lingered just under my skin. Was this clean out project a sort of scab? Was picking at it keeping my emotions raw?

I wrote in my journal, “Is the house holding me back?”

Blind to Progression

I kept the house five more years, but as I look back, I see progression. I was like a thirsty woman making it through the desert on a few drops of water every few miles. But every drop – every bit of friendly comfort, changed perspective and new joy – helped me cross that landscape.

In the middle of a journey, we may despair that the pain is the same. The tears fall as easily. None of the regret or guilt or other thoughts or feelings have dissipated. We feel stuck.

The changes within us can be very subtle and come very slowly. Grief evolves in a jagged way. Up and down.

I call it a journey, but I don’t mean we should take out a map constantly and looking for landmarks to take us back to what life was before, nor to the place everyone else thinks we should be emotionally. Actually, the process is more like a meandering road, and we’re on an exploration. Each person will create an individual road, one not exactly like anyone else walked.

This individualized exploration of self, of God and of the relationship with our deceased loved one is often challenged. We reside in a world that urges us to measure, compare and progress.

Resist. Celebrate each small step. And don’t condemn yourself as I did for standing still from time to time. I believe even the period I felt stuck was valuable to my journey. If for no other reason than to sit here now and encourage you to keep hope alive.

Unsticking Ourselves

What if we really are stuck? How do we unstick ourselves?

Experts recommend therapy with a licensed professional for those with diagnosed complicated grief. According to Mayo Clinic, counselors guide grievers to adjust to loss, redefine life goals, work on coping skills and process thoughts and emotions.

And for all the rest of us? Actually, some of those same things will help us. Grief will not follow a four-step process. It runs through lives like a lightning bolt, but we may nudge ourselves from time to time if we strongly suspect we’re in a rut.

In generalities, the only way past the intensity of grief and all its cousins is through grief and all its intensity and cousins. Stuck or not stuck, I dived deep. I examined myself. All the onion levels. The mind, the will and the emotions. The past, the present. What I did or didn’t do as a daughter and caregiver. It took a long time. Years.

As God granted me little snippets of perspective, I began to transform from being able to only feel the loss to mostly feeling the love that I still have for my parents. I also still feel their love.

As I reflect back, I see I was progressing at times I thought I was completely standing still. I see small shifts that added up over time. And I’m glad I did not rush things. I might have missed something important if I had.

You might not be where you want to be now, but can you name a shift in perspective or a comfort you embrace that continues to help you? If your grief is still fresh, can you pinpoint another loss in your life years ago and see progression? Hold onto that – because it will happen again.

 

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