Skipping grief work causes this kind of harm to our bodies
I have started holding grief support groups for the past year. I suddenly realized how many difficult experiences and emotions we’ve been hit with lately and how almost no one I know is processing it well.
Things were already feeling bad with such high wealth disparity in the United States, then the pandemic happened. The pandemic was uniquely stressful because 1) we’d never experienced anything like it so we didn’t know what to expect, 2) scientists and public health officials didn’t know how long it would last or what all it could do—there weren’t expert voices in the beginning to calm us, 3) the mere act of breathing—something that normally sustains life—could kill us or someone else.
Trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté says in his book When The Body Says No: Understanding the Stress Disease Connection, “The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control.”
The pandemic met all three qualifications. It can be easy to forget just how stressful those uncertain and out-of-control days were the farther we move away from 2020 and 2021, but they were scary! We were in a constant heightened state of stress and anxiety. Additionally, many of us lost loved ones—if not to COVID directly, as a result of the increased stress. Nearly every disease is made worse my constant stress, including those caused by addiction and other deaths of despair.
Meanwhile, we expected to go to work, business as usual. Employers wanted profits to keep increasing, even as worker’s capacities to perform decreased.
Another wild thing about being alive in 2024 is that we’re constantly overexposed to every piece of domestic and world news and forced to pick sides even with limited and biased information. We’re always online and forget our shared humanity when we’re not face-to-face. We encounter online bullying. Photoshopped and AI images are everywhere, causing us to feel insecure—that we can’t live up to these impossible standards. Phone addiction seems to be hijacking our brains. Politics in the United States and many other countries are volatile. In the US, there’s the constant threat of gun violence.
Life feels weird and hard—it can be a lot to handle!
Grief support groups help us slow down, connect with others, label our emotions, label why things feel important, understand our fears, and feel less isolated. We can then develop a strategy to feel more agency and implement a practice for inner calm.
Once about 15 years ago, my mom sent me a blog that was about all the myriad small or itty bitty things there are to grieve in this life and I’ve never forgotten it.
About 5 years ago, I was talking to a beloved former piano teacher about how my life had gone since I was taking lessons with her in high school, so, a recap of my adult life. I had a lot of sadness, bitterness, and disappointment as I was describing it. “It sounds like you’re grieving life didn’t go the way you’d thought it would go in your head.” Oh my gosh, YES, that was exactly it! But I had forgotten about the term grief until she said it. Thanks, Sarah!
We must grieve all the times we wanted one thing and got another.
We must grieve when we see other people suffering and there’s nothing we can do about it.
We must grieve the perfect world we’ve imagined in our head that doesn’t exist.
And so, I offer grief groups. I have loved facilitating grief groups and grieving alongside participants.
I offer these grief groups:
Job Grief Support Group (the next one will be offered in September)
Grief & Action Support & Coaching Group - 6 Week intensive program (see details at the end of this blog)
The thing is, too, grief will get trapped in the body unless we feel it, causing harm.
I always show this video on the first meeting:
Dr. Gabor Maté reads obituaries that have secret coded messages in them as to what may have led to a person’s untimely death: namely emotionally care-taking everyone else with no boundaries or being cared for.
Ignoring our emotions causes real harm to our bodies.
Some notable points/quotes from his talk, in order:
⚕️The automatic and compulsive regard for the needs of others while ignoring your own is a major risk factor for disease.
⚕️Automatic and rigid identification with duty, role, and responsibility rather than the needs of the self is a second major risk factor for chronic illness.
⚕️She had no ego. She just blended in with the environment in an unassuming manner.
⚕️The suppression of the so-called “negative emotions,” particularly anger, actually suppresses the immune system.
⚕️This man suffered from two fatal beliefs: one, that he is responsible for how other people feel, and two, that he must never disappoint anybody.
What kind of harm will show up in our bodies when we skip grief work, feeling feelings, and setting/keeping boundaries?
It will depend on the person. When people say, “I have the alcoholic gene,” they’re mostly wrong but somewhat right. There’s no gene that makes someone drink too much—but we do have genetic predispositions for certain diseases and then our environment turns these genes on or off. Nature and nurture work together to create health or disease.
For example, I took a 23 and Me gene test and found that I have the gene for Celiac Disease, meaning, consuming wheat could be harmful to my digestive tract. I dont’ have any current negative consequences that I can see from eating wheat—so I either don’t have enough stress for this gene to turn on, or my stress is causing other effects—such as acne (something I get when stressed).
The body will teach us about ourselves and what we need to work on.
When we process grief—allowing ourselves to acknowledge things that mattered to us, why, and feel the negative emotions associated with loss in our bodies—we can lower our stress.
“According to researchers at the University of Iowa, feeling it is precisely what we need to do. They surveyed Americans’ responses to the stresses caused by the coronavirus pandemic. According to their data, people who checked in with their emotions and then took mindful action to address them reported lower stress levels. On the other hand, those who tried to ignore their emotions, or did not consider the impact of the actions they took to address them, were more stressed out.” (Source)
High chronic stress is linked to:
Diabetes
Stomach ulcers
Heart disease
Psychiatric illness
Tumors/Cancer
And pretty much any health outcome you can think of.
(Source)
Short bursts of stress are good for us! Without stress, we wouldn’t get anything done. We need it. Stress also protects us from disease—but when stress becomes chronic it’s referred to as “toxic stress,”—then our body starts to break down—it can’t fight for that long.
Grief & Action Support & Coaching Group
In this group, we will:
share our hopes, fears, and worries about the state of the world right now (far-right take-over, climate crisis, greed/wealth-hoarding, increasing health concerns, decreasing life expectancy, and more)
hold space for each other, practicing active listening
create specific actions we can take to feel some sanity and sense of control (limiting the news, participating in an issue we care about, focusing on relationships, buying fewer things, starting a community coalition or meetup, etc)
learn and practice self-regulation tools
remember to enjoy life despite the horrors
What you will get:
feeling of belonging
community of like-minded people
a decrease in stress and helplessness
feeling empowered to focus on what you can control
a strategy and support to achieve small actions
a sense of purpose
resilience and stress reduction tools you can use again and again
sanity and inner calm (at least more often)
resources for continued growth and learning
better mental and physical health
strength you can offer the people you love in your life
The next group starts on August 1st, 2024.
Learn more here and enroll: https://www.kindwarrior.co/grief-action-group
