Loving Balance During Difficult Times of Grieving, Depression and Recovery

By Annette Colby, PhD, RD

Whether you are depressed, sick, recovering from surgery, grieving, feeling less than one hundred percent, too fat, too big, too small, too scared, or just too ______ (fill in the blank), it’s important that you love yourself and soothe yourself through the difficult times. We’ve all been knocked off center and caught up in experiences that feel less than desirable. When this happens, it’s easy to feel sad or become withdrawn, like we’ve done something wrong. Or we blame ourselves for having these experiences in the first place. When life feels intensely different from normal, we can find ourselves adrift without anything to hold on to.

Painful Emotions Require Treatment and Healing
Like All Other Injuries and Illnesses

How do we get through these difficult times? By relying on self-love to guide us to the best way to take care of our needs moment by moment. If you’ve never been particularly good at taking care of yourself when you’re feeling well, let alone when you’re feeling down, here’s an outline of what self-love during a difficult experience might look like.

Alone time
Often feeling less than optimal can bring about a process of introversion or isolation. The pain of sickness, grieving or depression is intense, and many times we wish to be left by ourselves. It’s important to follow those inner urges to retreat from many of the normal day-to-day activities and seek solace with our own self when necessary. This down time can be healing as it slows us down, makes us introspective and allows us to listen within.

Expression
If you choose to be in solitude, allow your alone time to be healing and expressive. Any media in which you can give expression to deep emotions can be equally healing. Expressions such as writing, painting, collage, conscious breathing, or talking aloud to a friend or yourself in a mirror can help clear the subconscious and permit the progression of emotional healing.

Nature
In addition, when you feel the need to be alone, follow your inner instincts by going for a walk in nature, sitting beneath the trees, or watching the water. Sit with the Earth and let her listen and provide comfort as you softly express your sorrow. Fresh air and a change of scenery can help you breathe, give you access to the healing power of nature, and get you through at least part of the day.

Reach out to others
Withdrawing is sometimes the best answer – and sometimes it’s not. Rest assured that you don’t have to handle your experience or your emotions all by yourself. Even if it feels like no one would want to be around you right now, it just isn’t true. There are people who will listen with acceptance to your feelings and thoughts.

Many people can offer the type of listening or support you are looking for. A trusted friend, understanding family members, a trained therapist, doctor, or religious counselor can offer compassion, non-judgmental listening, and a safe environment for emotional expression.

The emotions that accompany the pain of illness, surgery, depression, or intense sadness are often messy and can feel overwhelming. Sometimes just having someone sit with you, listening, and quietly holding your hand as you struggle emotionally can provide the most important healing.

Even if you don’t feel like talking about anything in specific, sometimes it’s important to spend some time with people and trusted friends who love you. You don’t have to be entertaining or your usual self. Just being in the presence of a friend can lift you up enough to make it through the day.

Connect with the right people
Not everyone is capable of sitting with you in a helpful, reaffirming way. Listening with empathy to a person sharing dark or despairing feelings can be difficult for many people to handle. It’s a normal tendency for people to get nervous, want to talk, give advice, try to fix the problem, or offer solutions. Some people will argue with you about how miserable you feel or insist that you just “snap out of it.” Don’t give up because one or two people weren’t able to provide support in the way that you needed. Consider telling those people what type of listening would be most helpful.

What you really want is someone who can be present with you comfortably, who can validate your experience, and who truly wants to understand how things are for you right now. If a particular person can’t learn how to be with you, trust your instincts and reach out to someone else.

When you are in the presence of another person, give yourself a break from feeling responsible for his or her comfort. Making small talk or taking care of others is often an impossible task when recovering, grieving or depressed. Even the thought of keeping someone else entertained may require too much energy. Let the other know that you just want to sit together outdoors, watch television, or read together. Reassure them in advance that you have no need for them to entertain you, and that they don’t have to fill the silence.

Human contact
If being with a friend doesn’t feel right, consider scheduling massage or chair massage sessions. We often delete human contact and pleasure from our lives when we need it most. Massage won’t cure you of grief, illness, or depression, but there is something very basic and fundamental about being in the presence of human compassion and touch. While you’re receiving a massage, you can be with another person just the way you are without feeling like you have to smile, be nice, or give anything back.

Ultimately, there are no preset criteria for when to be alone and when to seek support. Sometimes talking with someone is what you need, sometimes sitting in silence with another person or being alone in nature is most helpful. As you continue to travel through your journey back into health and well-being, trust yourself to discover your own unique balance between using self-help techniques and reaching out to others for support, listening, and validation.

Annette Colby PhD, RD is an acclaimed author and expert in personal growth, nutrition and exercise physiology. She is a contributing editor to Health and Fitness Sports Magazine, Her Sports Magazine, O Magazine and Pulse. For more information, please visit http://www.annettecolby.com

The articles written by guest contributors are the sole responsibility of the individual writers in terms of factual accuracy and opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher of this blog.

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