Grief…I should be over it by now…

Katy Hoole
May 8
4 min read

How many times have you heard a bereaved friend or family member say this? How many times have you felt it yourself? It is such a common experience to feel that there is a time limit on how long we are allowed to grieve before those around us will reach their limit of compassion and want us to ‘move on with life’.

Understanding the Pressure to "Move On"

This can be compounded further when the experience of grief is linked to a traumatic or unexpected death, when your relationship with the person who died was fraught or complicated, or if the amount of grief you are experiencing feels disproportionate to the relationship you had with the person. I hear this, and many other variations, from the clients I work with all the time, and it also fits in with my own personal experience of grief.

Introducing the Pillars of Strength

When I came across a model called the Pillars of Strength for grief by Julia Samuel, it really resonated with me. Unlike the models which describe stages of grief, which encourage the idea that people move through grief in a linear way, reaching similar milestones until they emerge at the other side, this model suggests that there are 8 pillars of strength which can support a person through the grieving process. Each pillar must be built slowly over time, and each pillar further strengthens the person’s ability to process their grief and begin to move forwards in their lives.

An overview of the pillars is:

Our Relationship with Others and Relationship with the Person who has Died
Relationship with Oneself
Ways to Express Emotion
Time
Mind and Body
Limits
Structure
Focusing

If you interested in exploring this in more detail, the reference to Julia Samuel’s website is at the end of the blog. Right now, I just want to spend some time reflecting on the pillars that stand out to me as being particularly relevant from a therapeutic perspective.

Focusing on Emotional Expression

As a practitioner of Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), expressing and processing emotion forms a key part of what I help clients to do in the therapy room. Emotions can often be perceived as a ‘frightening, alien or unacceptable’ feeling.

Sometimes our minds and bodies work hard to develop coping strategies that help us to avoid experiencing these feelings. These coping strategies could involve practical things such as using activities to distract, or a withdrawing from or pushing away from the emotions; ‘putting them in a box’. These strategies can work well for a time, but eventually the repercussions of them can make themselves felt, perhaps through experiencing anxiety, detachment, angry outbursts or tearfulness.

When someone we know dies, experiencing and processing the emotions that come with this can feel overwhelming, but often this eases over time as we allow our emotions to be felt, and gradually the intensity decreases, and we grow around our grief as we move forwards in our own lives. Sometimes, however, this emotional wave feels too overwhelming; perhaps there is a complicated mix of emotions that feels too tangled together or maybe you assume the role of caretaker for others and simply can’t allow your own emotions space at that time. Whatever the reason, the connection with, naming and expressing of emotion is interrupted by your coping strategies and this pillar of strength is not able to be built.

Building Emotional Awareness in Therapy

This is where an EFT therapist can help. Together, you and the therapist can start to become familiar with the emotions you are experiencing, building a picture of how you experience it in your body, what you tell yourself about what is going on for you, and gradually moving towards a place where you can connect with and experience that ‘frightening, alien or unacceptable’ emotion with the safety of your therapist.

Experiencing the emotion in a new and corrective way is part of a process of integration, moving you towards a place where it no longer has the same impact on the way you experience it in the present.

The Body’s Role in Grieving

This processing of emotion is both a mind and body experience. The body can hold and store emotion; consider the way fear is often described as being felt in ‘the pit of your stomach’. Similarly, your body sends warning signals of anxiety to us when we are in danger, or when it interprets an experience as dangerous or threatening, such as the ‘frightening, alien or unacceptable’ emotions associated with grief. For these reasons, tuning in to our bodies and listening to what they are telling us can not only help us to connect with emotions in a felt way, but can also help us to take action that will ease the impact of the experience. For example, fuelling our bodies in a way that creates a stable blood sugar level throughout the day, reduces the peaks and troughs of energy that can impact on how we are feeling emotionally.

Grief is Personal—Support Should Be Too

In all, I like the holistic approach to working with grief that the Pillars of Strength provides. It leans into the idea that we are complex and unique individuals, and our experiences of grief will vary depending on how well supported we are by these pillars. For example, it makes sense that if you lack structure in your life due to fluctuating shift patterns or caring responsibilities, then you may experience grief differently to someone who is able to build structured routines into their day. This not only allows room for compassion for yourself and your circumstances but also offers ideas about changes that could be made that may support you with your grief process.