How Grief Work Heals

Being a human is hard sometimes. There are few who can, with any humility, argue this point soundly.

We may want to dismiss it, avoid it, bypass it or otherwise eject from it, but somewhere in the back of our psyches, we inherently understand and accept it – because most of us have lived it.

Life that is hard. Life that is challenging. Life that hurts. Not always, but sometimes.

However, in a post-2020 world, and after all that we’ve collectively endured in the last few years, “sometimes” has looked, at least from my office window,  a little more like “often”.

Like the breaths between waves have gotten further and fewer…that many of us have felt like we’re taking on water as we try to come up for air…that, some days, ‘making it through’ is the best we can do. And, what I find at the bottom of all this struggle, is there is a deep grief in this current moment of social and individual challenge.

Existential therapy works to name and witness concerns of human existence and the “givens” of this life that we struggle to hold and stay present to within others and ourselves (see The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yallom).

It is work that supports us in zooming out from the personalized, and therefore profoundly painful, versions of our stories and hold, with greater ease and capability, the nature of reality, including suffering and hardship.

It is work that helps us grow, develop, mature and ultimately soften toward ourselves and others as we sit in the discomfort of these human bodies and experiences, not alone but together.

Grief work is existential work. Grief work is about learning to sit inside of ‘what is’ without becoming overwhelmed or despairing inside of it. And it’s no joking matter.

In times of crisis and upheaval, we are called, more than ever, to look the ‘givens’ straight in the eye – we are not able to, as much as we normally would, avoid them, distract from them, suppress them or run from them. Crisis is when the psyche, and all its internal tension, comes rushing forward in an un-ignorable way and demands our attention.

But if we don’t yet have the psychic strength or sinew needed to acknowledge, contain and, ultimately, move what lives within us, we typically send it back down into the ground where it came from, leaving it to continue festering and boiling until something (or someone) calls it back out.

We know these moments, as defined by present-moment pop-psych, as triggers.

Or the moments where life touches us right in the most tender of places and everything we’ve been holding onto, holding in, holding back comes erupting out, uncontained and uncontrolled, often leaking out onto ourselves or others in ways that further our divides and deepen our stories.

No one can support me.

No one cares about me.

I’m too much.

I’m not enough.

The world isn’t safe.

I’ll always be alone.

I’m broken.

There is grief in this, too. Disconnection in this, too. A furthering of division, protection and defense.

So, we harden. Armoring even more against what might get in or come out. Distancing further from ourselves and others and the trauma of this lived experience in order to not feel what we don’t feel equipped or safe enough to feel.

And this is where purposeful, intentional grief work arrives, ready and waiting to lead us somewhere new.

Because getting stuck in cycles of suppression and explosion, rage and remorse, activation and shut down, and the shame that often arises inside of these responses to our hurts, hurts.

And it keeps us tethered to a world wherein no one has capacity for another and we all continue along feeling dropped and alone.

I see it every day in my work. I see it all around me out in the world. Humans with feelings they don’t know how to contain coming out onto each other in hurtful ways.

It breaks my heart. I am a part of it, too- this world and its patterns.

And still, I advocate for more.

Because I also see in my work, every day, the innate growth and resilience that develop when these same humans are supported inside their wounds. Supported to hold their wounds. Supported in processing their wounds.

When I am supported inside my wounds. Held inside my wounds. Given space to process my wounds.

These moments and places where good and consistent care becomes the bedrock for good and consistent love, presence and tenderness in and outside of the therapeutic setting.

Where what is processed and competed inside becomes compassion and empathy for what is still happening outside.

When human bodies are able to move through stress cycles, we grow what are known as capacity and flexibility. In other words, experiencing a stressor, moving through it, recovering from it and completing it leads to a greater sense of internal strength, capability, confidence, maturation and wisdom.

“I know more about myself and the world having gotten through and integrated this experience. I am also open to future experiences because I know I have the strength, capability, confidence, maturation and wisdom to get through them, as well.”

This is growth. This is development. This is what we gain when we grieve and grieve with help.

Because grief, in a way, is a stressor. And something we develop and grow through when we can stay present to its somatic, cognitive and emotional aspects.

In existential grief work, we are not fixing what has happened. We can’t. Nor are we making it all disappear. Again, we can’t.

Rather, we are making compassionate space for it and connecting deeply and beyond words through it.

And as we let go of what we have been holding back, we make room for what comes next.

As we release some of what hurts, we no longer need to protect so fiercely against it.

As we tend to internal inflammation, we soothe those places that feel red and sore.

As we allow for cleansing tears, we feel renewed.

As we make space for ourselves, we find space for others.

As we meet life as it is, we no longer have to reject it.

In other words, we soften. And when we soften, yes, it sometimes hurts, but it also heals.

Because softening is what allows us to connect. To ourselves, to our bodies, to life, to all living beings, to others. And this, no matter what we have endured, is when we feel most safe and alive. In connection.

This is how grief work heals. By the way it connects.