This blog looks at the importance of grief and support. My previous blog looked at our natural tendency when we are grieving, to withdraw, to protect ourselves. While this is absolutely understandable, it can mean that we miss out on the support that we really need at this time. Accessing…
My next few blogs on the topic of grief look at ways in which we can mind ourselves while we go through the deeply painful process of grieving. This first blog looks at support and grief. As human beings we need to have the face-to-face support of other people as…
My last blog looked at the five stages of grief suggested by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. David Kessler added a sixth stage - he looked at the importance of finding MEANING in grief. When Elizabeth Kubler-Ross moved to the US from her native Switzerland in 1958 she was shocked by the way…
Many people these days have heard of the five stages of grief and this blog looks at where they came from and how useful they can be as a roadmap for grief recovery. The five stages of grief were based on studies done by Swiss psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross of the…
“The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places." Ernest Hemingway. My last few blogs looked at the emotion of sadness. I’m now going to have a closer look at the emotion or the collection of emotions that make up grief. What is grief? Put simply, grief is…
“Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This blog looks at ways of coping with sadness. My recent blog looked at how, from an early age, we tend to bury our sadness. Avoiding feeling this sadness means that we can lose touch…
Is what I'm feeling sadness or depression? People often worry that their feelings of sadness are going to turn into depression, or indeed ARE a sign that they are depressed. But sadness and depression are very different and this blog looks at the key differences between the two. Feeling low…
This blog looks at new ways of looking at grief. My favourite writers who each have their unique take on this are David Kessler, Francis Weller and Stephen Levine - see links below under More Information. Form a new relationship with your loved one Grief researchers Denis Klass, Phyllis Silverman…
Over the next couple of months in my blogs, I’m going to focus on sadness, loss and grief. We are thankfully much more able, these days, to talk about mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and addiction. But perhaps less likely to talk about our sadness, our losses and…
This blog looks more closely at how to find calm when we have been pulled into fight, flight or freeze states. My last few blogs looked at Stephen Porge’s Polyvagal Theory which I would very often explain to my clients. The polyvagal theory is useful firstly because it allows people…
The polyvagal ladder exercise Continuing on from my previous blog, Deb Dana, clinician and Coordinator of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute in the US, has taken Stephen Porges theory and found ways to explain it simply and powerfully. The polyvagal ladder exercise involves us imagining our…
This blog looks at the vagus nerve and trauma. My last blog looked at the key role of the vagus nerve on how we think, feel and behave and in particular at Stephen Porge’s Polyvagal Theory. I described how moment by moment, our neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people…