Stuck in grief?

[MrsJLevinson]

Hi all,

Just posting to see if anyone else can relate to how I'm feeling.

It has been 11 years now since my mom passed away, I was only 20 at the time. I thought, with time, her loss would get easier but it seems as every year goes it gets a little bit harder.

I haven't been feeling too great mentally lately which has not been helping, but I keep thinking back to when she was still here. Whenever I would be feeling down, she would always come up with a solution and I guess more than anything I miss her unconditional love.

I am lucky I am supported by a great DP, my dad and brother, family and friends etc but nothing comes close to the support I got from her.

As I've said, I know it is worse the due to how I'm feeling about myself at the moment, but its like I'm getting stuck in a cycle of thinking about the past and happier times and it's making me distract from the present....if that even makes sense 😂

I'm not sure what kind of responses I am expecting, but can anyone understand this?

Completely get it OP, both how you’re feeling and the notion of being ‘stuck in grief’.

Have you had any bereavement counselling? It’s not too late. Particularly EMDR which can be useful for ‘unlocking’ stuck trauma and grief. I personally benefited from it after nearly 20 years.

Hope your family and friends continue to be a comfort. Their support is here and it might not be the same, but try not to make the distinction at the expense of letting them help.

I think I understand what you mean.

My Dad died about 18 months ago. He was my best friend, my benefactor, my advisor. My whole family has split up since his death.

I'm supposed to be over it but I'm not even close. I spoke at his funeral, which was live-streamed and I watch it about once a fortnight. Kicking myself for not saying more, not doing more.

Grief sucks

Thanks both for your replies.

@MarchionessVonSausageI really relate to the feeling of not doing more. I distinctly remember my dad saying a few weeks after she had died, “did we do enough for her” and I think about it often.

@SoScarletItWasI did have a few sessions of counselling not long after, but I think maybe this was too soon after. I don’t think I had really processed all that had happened. Not heard of EMDR, how would I go about getting this?

@MrsJLevinson I found mine by simply googling EMDR + my town and that brought local counsellors who can provide it. I cross checked they were properly accredited from this site

https://emdrassociation.org.uk

Then I read reviews and went from there.

You CAN get it on the NHS (self refer or via GP) but as ever, waiting lists will be long.

https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/mental-health-services/find-nhs-talking-therapies-for-anxiety-and-depression/

CRUSE is excellent but bear in mind, not all counsellors are equal and it might take a couple of different ones before you find one that works for you.

That was certainly the case for me.

No rule book on grief, it takes what it takes to rebuild your life around the pain of loss but you did what you all that you could for your Mum and she would have known this.

You lost your mum when you were so young, barely out of your teenage years. Of course that grief will linger in ways it probably wouldn’t it you lost your mum like I did, in my early 40s.

Coming up for ten years since my mum died, and the grief is still sharp - there are things I want to tell her, things I understand about life now that I just want to share. Things I want to ask her about.

In those moments I allow myself to recognise the feelings of grief and loss, and I pause and reflect. Then I have certain mental routines or physical actions that I follow to lift myself back to “now” and not sink into imagining what could have been if mum hadn’t passed away.

I don’t have other close family and no one including dh wants to hear me wittering about my late mother.

So I also spend a lot of time doing things which, in my head at any rate, quietly honour my mum. I pray, I tend my garden, I bake my own bread, i decorate the Christmas tree with her favourite baubles, I read her favourite books to my children. Little tributes in daily life keep her with me, comfort me, and sometimes it is almost as if she is with me - if that makes any sense. That can be a cause of sadness because remembering is hard, but over the years the sadness is becoming manageable.

I don’t know how to tell you to cope with the grief, honestly. But I hope it helps to hear that it’s possible to find your little paths through it, and it is possible to feel happy again.

Thank you all for the kind words.

@UnDeuxTwuh Thank you for sharing, I really resonate with what you have shared. I will try and think of some habits and routines to remember my mom.

Hi @MrsJLevinson
I know a bit about this! My dad, who had been ill for a while died when I was 23, then my fighting fit mother who’d spent 5 years looking after him got a short sharp cancer and died within weeks. So that was a fun 18mths as you can imagine!
This was all a long time ago before counselling was a “thing”. Would it have helped me? Maybe, but I think sometimes dragging things up over and over again is the wrong approach, it would be for me anyway.

I would suggest, that for me anyway, once the initial shock was over was many years of ongoing grief at what I was missing out on. I used to feel it greatly when friends would casually say “ oh, off to mums for Sunday lunch, or I’m off to Sainsbury’s to pick up a few things for mum” totally everyday things that just weren't an option for me. And then it ramped up a whole new level when we had our children and friends would be whining that Granny wasn’t helping enough or had fed the baby something they didn't like. It cut like a knife really, the special relationship my kids didn't have a chance at. I’d say I was grieving a life we all could have had as much as her as an individual really.
You are without doubt feeling robbed of someone who should have been around for much longer.

What helped me was that various friends of my mothers stepped up to be honorary grandmothers, unfortunately DH’s mother was a shockingly useless granny…And I think an acceptance that although I had it tough for a year or so, everything has worked out okay. Others have it much worse, I could be living in a war zone for example or born in a different era where we only lived till 30yrs old anyway. I have quite a strong stoic attitude - things could always be worse!

There is also the fact that my parents never got old and awkward. I watch now, in my 50’s wth grown up kids as friends navigate their elderly parents getting dementia and needing increasing help at all hours of the day. Some of them still have primary aged kids and they are trying to juggle work, kids, menopause and an ailing parent - it’s a lot and I’m glad I’m not in their shoes. Every cloud and all that!

11 years or 11 months, grief still randomly punches people in the throat outta nowhere sometimes. Especially when life gets hard and your brain starts searching for the person who used to make everything feel safer 😭 makes total sense honestly.

11 years doesn’t sound like being stuck to me, it sounds like missing someone who was your safe place. Sometimes grief gets louder when life gets heavier and your brain goes looking for where comfort used to live. That part sounded very human to me.