Anxiety- The Missing Stage of Grief

by Claire Bidwell Smith

  This positive experience reinforced my desire to continue meditating, and I began to cultivate a practice outside of my lessons with Juliette. I cleared a space in the corner of my bedroom near a window, and each morning before starting my day I would sit for ten minutes in meditation. It’s helpful to make a designated spot for your practice, as it eliminates the need to figure out where to go each time.

  Feel free to really devote a special space to your practice. Clear out a room in your home you haven’t been using. Make it beautiful. Add candles, plants, a comfortable place to sit. Make it somewhere you enjoy being.

  In the same way that it is helpful to create a space for your meditation, it’s also helpful to designate a specific time. The goal is to establish a habit of meditation, and doing this will help train your brain to feel ready for it. Choose a time when you are not too tired or drained—first thing in the morning or midday or afternoon are all good times. Some people even like to open and close their days with meditating at two different times.

  I personally love to meditate in the afternoon, as I’ve found that it acts as a reset button from all the day’s hectic thoughts and experiences. Meditating in the morning is a wonderful way to open your day and set a calm tone, but if you have a demanding work or life schedule, it can also work wonders to take ten minutes out of the middle or afternoon of your hectic day to reset your thought processes.

  Keep in mind that resistance to meditating is normal. There are days when it feels like the last thing I want do or the last thing for which I have time. However, I’m always rewarded when I push through that resistance and allow myself a few minutes of peace. For help with this, join a meditation center or download an app on your phone that offers guided meditations to help support your practice. And above all, be patient and compassionate with yourself while you embark on this journey.

  LIVING MINDFULLY

  As you continue to think about the concept of mindfulness and to explore building a practice, there are a few more things to keep in mind.

  In Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn outlines seven attitudes that are essential for mindful living. They are nonjudging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, nonstriving, acceptance, and letting go. Applying these attitudes toward your practice, and your life, is essential for tackling anxiety and panic. Here is my adaptation of Kabat-Zinn’s attitudes:

  Nonjudging means taking a step back from your experiences and your thoughts and using that observer’s perspective rather than rushing to categorize and judge everything going on in and around you.

  Patience means recognizing impatience and the impulse to rush into reactions to our thoughts and experiences. Be patient and compassionate with yourself as you learn to stay in the present moment rather than directing yourself according to your thoughts.

  Maintaining a Beginner’s Mind simply means becoming more open than ever to your experiences. Try to view your world as though seeing it for the first time. Relish the way the afternoon light comes in through the window. Meet each experience as though through the eyes of a child who has never seen it before.

  Trust in yourself. As you deepen your practice, so too will you deepen a sense of trust in your surroundings and in your own innate wisdom.

  Nonstriving means adopting an attitude of nondoing. This is essential to meditation. Learn how to just be rather than constantly do. This is where you will begin to feel a new sense of calm in your life.

  Acceptance means being willing to accept the present moment for what it is rather than striving to change it or feeling disappointed that it’s not different from what it is. Start living right where you are, with whatever you are feeling or experiencing, and accept this with compassion.

  Letting Go is one of the biggest keys to alleviating your suffering. It is when we hold tightly to people, objects, and outcomes that we experience suffering. We can never truly hold on to anything or ever truly expect a perfect outcome. Learning to let go of these expectations is essential to mindfulness and to finding peace.

  There’s obviously much more to these seven attitudes, but it will be helpful for you to have this foundational understanding as you adopt a mindfulness practice.

  ATTENTION AND AWARENESS BRING RELIEF

  Meditating is one of the most useful tools I can recommend for help with your grief-related anxiety. I want to reiterate that when we are grieving, we spend an awful lot of time dwelling in the past and worrying about the future. Bringing attention and awareness to the present moment will bring you immediate relief. And developing a mindfulness practice will positively affect all areas of your life. You will find that you are more compassionate toward not only yourself but others as well. You will have more room in your heart for healing and less room in your mind for anxiety.

  Take the first step toward this right now. Close your eyes and breathe…

  A NXIETY C HECK-I N

  Let’s check in with your level of anxiety. In the last chapter, you were introduced to the techniques of mindfulness and meditation, my favorite tools for coping with and reducing anxiety.

  The goal of this book, and the work you’re doing as a result of reading it, is all about reducing anxiety by truly embracing your grief and loss. Learning how to be truly present and compassionate with yourself as you go through this experience is one of the very best ways to attain a new level of peace in your life.

  Rate your current anxiety level on a scale of 1–10 (with 10 being the highest).

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Check the symptom boxes that currently apply:

  Panic attacks

  Insomnia

  Nausea

  Dizziness

  Heart racing/palpitating

  Obsessive worry

  Hypochondria

  Hopefully, by now you’ve been able to discern a noticeable difference in your panic and anxiety levels. If you feel that you are continuing to struggle, then read back over particular chapters that resonated with you or seek out the additional support of a therapist who can help you implement the tools you’re learning here. In the next chapter, we’re going to focus on opening yourself up to a deeper belief system, either religious or spiritual, with the goal of both restoring a sense of connection to your loved one and also giving you a greater sense of meaning in your life.

  10 | Something to Believe In

  Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

  —F RIEDRICH N IETZSCHE

  W HAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE? I S THERE AN AFTERLIFE? A RE WE still connected to our loved ones? Can they see us? Will we ever be reunited with them? Asking yourself these questions is a difficult yet intrinsic part of the grieving process. Not letting yourself ponder this mystery is a hindrance to your emotional growth and a surefire way to cause anxiety to bubble up following a significant loss.

  In this chapter, I want you to initially set aside any current beliefs you are holding about the afterlife and our connections to our loved ones. Even if you have a strong belief about what happens next, or if you feel certain that there is nothing after this life, for just a short period of time I want you to hold your notions in a place of openness and let yourself explore them on a deeper level, in addition to letting yourself think about new ones.

  In my work as a therapist, I have come to understand that those who are able to maintain a strong sense of connection to their loved one almost always have an easier time with the grief process. But what this connection looks like for each individual varies widely, and helping my clients explore this sense of connection is a big part of the work I do, particularly in alleviating anxiety.

  Recall my client James, whom you heard from in earlier chapters. While he generally leans toward an existential way of thinking about the afterlife, as in not believing in one at all, he found great healing in letting himself connect with his father through the act of writing him letters. James did not need to settle on a particular belief about what happens when we die to nonetheless let himself feel connected to his dad again. And doing
so was a big part of his working through his debilitating anxiety.

  As I wrote about in Chapter 2, for a long time in the history of the psychology of grief, there has been an emphasis on helping grievers “let go” of their loved one. But over the past couple of decades, we have seen a shift in that approach. Now much of the literature and the practitioners themselves place a stronger emphasis on helping people maintain a sense of connection, and research has shown that this has a much greater impact on the healing process.

  This makes sense. When we lose someone significant, it feels wholly unnatural to completely sever that connection. When we lose a person whom we talked to or saw on a regular basis, it is startling and often devastating to feel as though that relationship is over for good. How do we go from such closeness to nothing at all?

  The answer is that we don’t have to.

  The truth is that after you lose someone, your relationship with that person does not end. Take a deep breath, and let that last sentence resound within you. Your relationship with your loved one is not over.

  In fact, it will continue to evolve on many levels as you yourself change and grow through new life experiences. In time, you may find that your thoughts or feelings about the person you love change as well. I know that for me, in the twenty years since my mother has been gone, my relationship with her has continued to grow and change.

  I went through many periods of time in which I felt angry with her or resentful of her. There were times when I felt very distant from her and other times when I’ve felt closer than ever. There have been times when I have wanted to be like her and times when I’ve actively attempted to differentiate from her. And along the way, many of my own life experiences, such as giving birth or reaching the age she was when she became a mother, gave me new insights into who she was, allowing me to develop new understandings of both herself and my relationship with her, past and present.

  Along the way, I’ve also experienced a desire to reconnect with her on a deeper, more spiritual level, something that I was not open to in my early years of grief. And doing so has strengthened not only my relationship to her but also that of my daughters, who never even had the chance to know her in this physical realm.

  Doing this work and letting ourselves open up to the idea that our connection to our loved one is not gone altogether can bring great relief and healing. In this chapter, I’m going to provide you with a lot of thoughts to ponder, questions to ask yourself, and ways to create rituals around your honoring and connecting with your loved one.

  This work can feel like a daunting task for some and easier for others. Some of you may not feel ready to open up to this work just yet, but I encourage you to read this chapter anyway and to keep these ideas in mind. When you are in the initial stages of grief, you may feel resistant or overwhelmed by the idea of exploring these more ethereal concepts, but with time know that doing so will be a way to bring your person back into your life.

  Writer Cheryl Strayed says, “I’m still sad. I want my mom. That’s all I want. Such a simple, impossible thing. But through my writing I have in some small way brought her back. I have done as we say writers do: I have made her alive on the page. It’s not enough, but it’s something. I have found tremendous solace in that.”

  I know that for me, after my mother died when I was eighteen, I wasn’t ready to think about where she had gone. I was lost and scared and angry. I didn’t want to think about her being somewhere else, and I didn’t want to talk out loud to an empty room. I just wanted my mom back, right in front of me, to touch and hug and talk to.

  But after years of feeling this way and trying to just move on and let go of her, I came to the conclusion that this approach wasn’t working. My love for her, and her presence in my mind and heart, had not dissipated in the slightest since she’d died, and I realized that it was time to begin finding meaningful ways to embrace that closeness with her rather than continuing to try to “let go” of her.

  This occurred to me around the time that my first daughter was born, and I was feeling a new sense of longing for her and a great sadness that my daughter would never know her. I felt a new determination to bring my mother not just into my life but into those of my children.

  I also realized that I was yearning for a framework with which to understand death and the afterlife, something I had never had before. I had also become a grief counselor in hospice by that time, and I recognized this same struggle in many of my clients. Those who did not have a religious or spiritual belief system in place with which to use a framework to understand their loss were flailing in a sea of uncertainty. Many of them were also struggling with depression and anxiety as a result of having lost their sense of connection to someone who had once had such a vital presence in their lives.

  I became consumed with a desire to find some answers, not just for myself but for my clients as well. This desire for answers became the root of my last book, After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go? For that book, I embarked on a journey that led me from conversations with priests and rabbis to shamanic rituals and psychic mediums. While I didn’t discover the exact answer to what happens when we die, I did find a sense of relief in letting myself finally think about it all, and along the way I developed a much deeper sense of peace about my losses as well as a stronger feeling of connection to my parents.

  Today I feel closer to both of my parents than I have in all the years they’ve been gone. And I have so infused the lives of my children with their essence that they bring them up and talk about them all on their own. I have taught them recipes that my mother taught to me, and I constantly tell them stories of my father’s adventurous life. There are multiple photos hung around our house, and we always find ways to ritualize and memorialize them on holidays and anniversaries. Doing this work has brought me a wonderful feeling of peace and helped my children feel that they are not completely missing out on the experience of having maternal grandparents.

  But almost more important, doing this work has quelled my anxiety to a discernible degree. Prior to restoring my sense of connection to my parents, I carried a constant gnawing emptiness around with me, and I now understand that it came from the feeling that my connection to them was completely severed. Reinstating that connection, in addition to developing a new spiritual framework, also gave me a sense of peace that if I die early (one of my deepest fears), my children will have known my parents to the best of their abilities. I also feel confident that they will know how to maintain their own sense of connection to me after I am gone.

  A NOTE ON ANGER

  If you have anger or unresolved issues with your loved one, the idea of reconnecting with them may feel impossible. How can you suddenly open up to the idea of a spiritual connection when you are angry with your person? The answer is that finding ways to express that anger is the start of reconnecting. If you have things left unsaid or anger you need to express, then start there. Write your person a letter and tell them how angry you are or anything else you need to express. Getting these emotions out of our system and, in essence, saying our piece allows us to eventually move into a softer place of connection.

  When someone dies, we automatically think that our opportunity to resolve things like this are over, but that is not true. Once you work through any feelings of anger, resentment, or guilt, you will find that it will be easier to move on to a gentler sense of connection.

  SO WHERE TO BEGIN?

  Death is not something we talk openly about in our culture. In fact, you may not even know what some of your closest friends and family members believe about the afterlife. This realization struck me most profoundly when I was in a graduate school seminar about aging and dying. Our professor broke us into small groups and asked us to sit in a circle and share with each other what we think happens when someone dies.

  It was a revelatory experience and one that I have thought back on many times throughout my career. That day in school, sitting around in my small circle of classmates, it felt as t
hough we were doing something illicit, so profound was the experience of talking about something that is usually so hushed. I was also surprised to find how fascinating and also cathartic it was to hear so many different ideas from my peers.

  Some of them believed nothing at all. Some had very strong beliefs. Others told stories about experiences they’d had with deceased loved ones that felt otherworldly. But there wasn’t one of us who didn’t have something we thought and believed. After that day, and even more so when I began to work on my last book, I started to ask everyone I knew what they think happens when someone dies.

  This also became an intrinsic part of the work I do with my clients. As we move past the initial grief process of working through the difficult emotions and beginning to explore the larger picture of our new life without our loved one, I always ask my clients a set of questions. And the work we do around their answers never fails to provide a deeper sense of meaning to their loss and to their lives.

  To start opening up your belief system, I want you to ask yourself the same questions I ask my clients. Take your time with them. Reread them multiple times if you need to. Sit and stare off into space, and just think on them.

  You may find that some fear arises when you initially begin to ponder what happens when we die. This unknowingness all of us have about what comes next is at the root of all anxiety. For as long as we have been on the planet, humans have feared the unknown. And death is nothing but the great unknown. But allowing yourself to face that fear is what will see you through it.

  Go slowly. Allow any anxiety to surface and become a gentle observer of it, as we learned to do in the last chapter. The thoughts you have about what happens after this life are just thoughts. Opening up space to create new and reassuring thoughts about the afterlife will help diminish the anxiety.