Are you grieving in a healthy manner?

We all experience personal loss. When I say personal loss, I don't mean death. It could be the loss of anything, if you feel the sadness and grief, you’ve lost something.

So what do you do now? How do you handle loss?

When you lose something important, the typical reactions come to mind. Crying, anger, yelling, sleeping a lot, not sleeping, overeating or not eating, reminiscing, making wishes or prayers that it isn’t real, you may stop taking care of yourself while ignoring your phone, friends, family, or you simply can’t believe it.

There’s other ways to handle personal loss. How we deal with loss is a learned behavior, and if you can learn it, you can unlearn or adjust the behavior. But not what we’re talking about.

Let me give you an example:

I was in Massage Therapy School for nearly two years, in my second to last class I began experiencing severe pain in my wrist. While I talked to the teacher and the teacher sitting in on the class about it, they told me to see a doctor.

I went to the walk in clinic, they took some x-rays and informed me nothing was broken but they we’re going to send me to and orthopedic surgeon. They wrapped it to reduce movement and I was off to class for my last day. Long story about that but let’s skip ahead. I have one class left and its a few months away.

I go visit the ortho doctor who informs me that while the x-ray shows no breakage or even fractures, my ulna (the bone in your forearm closer to the pinkie) is too long. Sadly I was just born that way and most of the movements needed to be a massage therapist would be ones that would injure my wrist more. Basically the ulna is slow grinding the carpal bones and a tendon, as this is a degenerative condition.

I went through hand therapy, didn’t work. They braced it, didn’t work. Saw the “top dog” ortho surgeon who put an even more uncomfortable brace on that I had to wear at all times except during showers for close to three months as a Hail Mary. Guess what, didn’t work. So my doctor had the talk with me and explained that I couldn’t keep practicing massage therapy or I would basically destroy the wrist of my dominant hand.

My heart smashed, right there. I left, drove home just feeling completely empty. I wasn’t ready to process all my emotions until I was home.

So its 9am, I’m home with my cats, in my favorite chair and now I can process. An overwhelming sadness overtakes me. Not only did I absolutely love massage and certain modalities, but I had come up with a blend of oils and modified a couple modalities of massage that I wanted to (once I had my license) test it out. I mean, how else are new modalities created?

By the way, modalities are things like hot stone massage, reflexology, or deep tissue massage.

I had spent basically the last two years in school learning all these modalities and building up debt and now, there was no way to get my time back, to finish school, or get my money back. I was up to nearly 16 grand owed. But more than anything, I had to quit something I loved. I’m one of those people that are people notorious for not finishing things but I had faithfully gone for nearly two years and I only had one class left and my clinic hours.

Since I had been spending about six months in therapy for my wrist and I knew from the first day when they told me I would most likely had to quit. I had been having my own pity party for almost half a year. So I knew now that there was nothing else to be done, I had two choice. I either ignore the doctor, finish school, work until my wrist gave out or quit while I was ahead and help save my wrist for a longer period of time.

The biggest thing on my mind was it’s my right wrist, my dominant hand and for the six months I tried to learn to use my left hand, didn’t work very well. I’m 28, did I really want to ruin my dominant hand just to finish school, maybe work a few years, and then have a non-functioning wrist that would constantly be in pain for the rest of my life? Nope, I needed to work and make money and I want my wrist. So, that’s the story of my personal loss.

The Reaction:

I could have thrown a fit. I could have kept throwing my pity party. I could have called everyone I knew from school crying. But I decided I was going to take a different route this time. Since I’m working on self-improvement, it means to me that I need to work on changing all the aspects of me that were self-destroying or a negative pattern.

*Disclaimer!* I fully admit that I used to have that incredibly annoying and super draining to those that try to help me habit…I had a full blown case of victim mentality, and I used it most of my life. So I completely understand why “friends” didn’t stick around.

With all these changes in my life, I knew I had to change even the way I grieve.

So I thought to myself, “Self, you get today to process it. Tomorrow you get to grieve. You may cry, you may scream, you can do what you need to. But after that, you’re moving on.”

I followed through with this, I processed one day, I grieved the next, and keeping in mind I had basically a six month heads up and pity party for myself. Then I emailed my school letting them know I had to quit. I let the owner of the school know also and she let me know she’d take a look at what I owed and get back to me.

We worked together to come up with a payment plan and she also allowed me to bring all of my massage stuff to the school, stash it there and form prices so we could try to sell what I had. With new students applying every day, to get a used table and supplies for cheaper, we figure the sale would be easier. She also offered to buy back anything in perfect condition to help with the payment.

I could have cried and threw a fit but instead, with a simple change of thought and behavior it actually turned out decently positive. By looking at our reactions, we can usually see a pattern in our behaviors. Most behaviors are acquired or learned which means you can change them.

Changing your behavior, especially life-long ones, but actively trying to make a change can make a drastic improvement in improving your life, helping yourself and your interactions with other become more positive, improve self-esteem, and improve the relationships you have in your life.

Ideas for positive grieving:

• Journal. Sometimes all those thoughts swirling around your head need to get out. Don’t think, don’t worry about grammar, complete sentences, just write whatever is going on inside your head.

• Sometimes writing isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to take what you’ve written and burn it, or tear it to shreds, or crumple it. Be as creative as you want in your destruction method.

• Punch a pillow.

• Go for a run until you’re so exhausted you could drop.

• Call someone from your support system and ask if you can rant for a bit.

• Live alone or home alone? Scream at the top of your lungs.

• Listen to music. (I have playlists for when sad, when I lack motivation, to get pumped up, when I feel suicidal, ect)

Whatever you feel like you need to do, do it. Take more time to listen to yourself, not your head or heart, your inner voice or instinct. There is NO wrong way to grieve, only different ways. Only you can decide how you want to handle things. I can only speak for myself when I say that personally, I needed to find a more healthy way to express my feelings and allow myself to actually feel what I felt.

Whatever you do, please make sure that you’re doing the best thing for your mental and physical health. Self-love and Self-care are two incredibly important things that some people tend to forget about. You are important and worthy. If you don’t think so, that’s another attitude that can be changed. If you haven’t heard it today, I love you and you are remarkable, an individual with so much to offer the world. Take care of yourself.

Vibe Higher,

Lobeless