I’m your host, Dr. Jennifer Levin. I am a grief therapist and the founder of From Grief to Growth, the host of the podcast, Untethered: Healing the Pain from a Sudden Death, and I am the creator and author of the Growing After Traumatic Loss course. I provide support, guidance, and teachings to help you with the aftermath of chaos, trauma, and grief.
Hi everyone and welcome to Untethered: Healing the pain from a sudden death. I am Dr. Jennifer Levin, and I specialize in traumatic death and helping individuals through the struggles, pain, trauma, and chaos of an unexpected death.
Today we are going to be talking about acceptance. Accepting the loss of your loved one and that they are not coming back. Ever. Their death is final. For many of you, right now, this may be beyond comprehension, and you may not be able to fully wrap yourself around this concept. I have clients who down right refuse to accept their loved one’s death and who cope by telling themselves things like – “my son is off at college”, “my husband is a long business trip” or “my friend still lives back east” because the reality is completely unacceptable. It is hard enough to get through the day-to-day struggle that comes with grief and the heaviness that has taken up residence in your heart. Accepting the death of your loved one is so difficult when it comes to sudden loss and may be further complicated by the way your loved one died, their age and the time since their death. Accepting the reality of your loved one’s death and letting it truly sink in may be beyond understanding at this point in your life.
Today’s podcast is titled But I don’t want to accept it! Most people do not want to accept the death of someone they love. And when it happens without warning you may find yourself living in the land of disbelief for a very long time. It is a natural instinct to reject something you do not want to be true. I have clients who tell me they just want to kick and scream on the ground and throw an adult temper tantrum because it hurts so much. In this podcast I am going explore what it means to accept the loss of someone you love, and to help you assess where you are right now in the process of acceptance. I will also talk about what happens when you struggle to accept the death of your loved one. Finally, I will provide you with some ideas about how you can begin the process of accepting your loved one’s death.
How do we define acceptance?
Let’s start off by exploring how do we define acceptance when it comes to the death of your loved one? This is a huge concept and there is no clear-cut definition. The dictionary offers us a few definitions of acceptance that may help us to begin. Acceptance can be defined as an agreement with a belief or an idea, opinion, or explanation. On an intellectual level, you understand that your loved one has died and that they are not returning. But you are not struggling with your intellect here. You are fighting with your emotions. Your heart is broken, and you do not want to accept the source of its pain. It is easy to hold hope or even fantasy for the impossible, that your loved one will return, will walk through the door and that life will return to normal. A great book that illustrates this concept is the Year of Magical Thinking by the late Joan Didion.
The second definition of acceptance provided by the dictionary describes acceptance as a willingness to tolerate a difficult or unpleasant situation. Grief is definitely difficult and definitely unpleasant. But I think it takes more than “will” to tolerate grief. Will implies choice and although I agree there may be an element of will or choice involved, especially in the later phases of grief, at times, will has nothing to do with grief. There is so much more to acceptance than will and these definitions simplify the process of acceptance when it comes to grief and especially sudden loss. Depending on where you are in your grief process, you may be incapable of accepting the death of your loved one who died suddenly at this moment in time.
The acceptance of loss has been an important theme in grief work.
I am sure that most of you are familiar with the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Rosses 5 stages of grief. As you may know, the 5th stage of grief is acceptance. But Kubler-Rosses research was performed with individuals dying from cancer and it only was later applied to grief. According to her work, acceptance, in short, can be seen as a stability of emotions, reentering reality, and coming to terms with your loved one never coming back, and it’s also being ready to develop new relationships.
William Worden, on the other hand, has developed four tasks of grief and the first one is to accept the reality of the loss. According to Worden, it is normal to initially experience a sense of disbelief. However, when this dissipates there is a transition to accepting the reality of loss and integrating the death of your loved internally and “taking it in” to your whole being. He elaborates that you can accept the loss on both simple and complex levels. Simple acceptance includes things like speaking in the past tense or going through rituals such as funerals. Complex acceptance is more difficult. It involves accepting the way your loved one died which can be very challenging in a sudden loss. It also involves coming to terms with the impact the relationship had on your life.
Now understanding what it means to accept the death of your loved one and actually doing it are two very different things. I am commonly asked “When does the process of acceptance begin?” How do you know where you know where you are in the process when it comes to grieving the loss of your loved one?” and “What if you are only able to accept the loss on an intellectual level?”, “How will you know when you have begun to reach a point of acceptance?” “What if you refuse to accept the death of your loved one?” These are really great questions with really difficult answers.
You have probably figured out by now, that just like grief, accepting the loss of your loved is not going to be a linear process. Some days you may feel closer to the notion of accepting the loss and other days you may feel like you will never get there. Acceptance is not something that you just arrive at. It is more like a fluid state. But when you are in a state of acceptance you are going to be able to do things like:
* Have the ability to acknowledge your loss and the surrounding circumstances
* Be able to remember your loved one with more joy than pain
* Spend little to no time thinking about the traumatic circumstances of your loss
* Release the majority of feelings related to guilt, blame or regret
* Experience feelings of gratitude for your time together with your loved one and find pleasure in your memories
* Enjoy your life and look forward to your future
When you are in a period or state of acceptance, this does not mean all your sadness and grief will have disappeared. It does means that your entire being fully understands that the physical presence of your loved is absent from this earth and you are no longer focused on the surrounding circumstances of how your loved one died, and the pain associated with a traumatic loss. It means that you are functioning in the world and able to work towards a future without your loved one and experience happiness and joy in your life.
Consequences of denial
Acceptance of loss does not happen quickly, and some people never quite get there. I do want to point out that there can be some negative consequences of existing in a state when you deny the death of your loved one. These consequences may include anger, depression, anxiety and perhaps symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Other consequences may include problems with interpersonal relationships, difficulties functioning at work, school and in day-to-day life. Additional complications may also include physical problems such as increased illnesses, problems with your sleep, maybe even high blood pressure and/or exasperation of existing medical problems.
Individuals who are able to accept the death of their loved one are more likely to be able to invest in other relationships, experience improved mood, and an increased quality of life.
Where are you right now?
So, if you are struggling to accept the death of your loved one, please know you are not alone. You did not sign up for this. Something happened outside of your control that has left you in this very difficult situation. Nevertheless, it is to your benefit to develop some tools to help you move towards accepting your loss.
One way to start is to ask yourself “where am I in this process?”. I recommend you take a moment and write down all of your beliefs, thoughts or fantasies that you have about your loved one’s death and its current state. Here are some examples of what this might look like:
* “I understand that my loved one has died but I wish they were coming back”
* “My loved one has died and there is nothing I can do about it”
* “My loved one has died, and I am never going to be okay”
* “I refuse to believe that my loved has died because it’s more than I can handle right now”
* “I am just pretending my loved one is away because it is easier for me to cope”
* “I know my loved one is gone on an intellectual level, but I can’t grasp it on an emotional level”
Next, ask yourself based on what you wrote, on a scale of one to ten, 10 being total acceptance and 1 being no acceptance at all. What level of acceptance do you currently have regarding the death of your loved one? I think it’s important to be able acknowledge where you stand regarding your beliefs or feelings about the level of acceptance that you have when it comes to your loved one’s death. I encourage you not to have any judgement here. Just ask yourself honestly “where do I stand?”. You may be at a 7 or an 8 which indicates you are at a moderate to high level of acceptance and with time most likely you will continue to move toward total acceptance. Or you if you wrote something like “I am pretending my loved one is away because it is easier for me to cope” you are probably at 1 or 2, indicating your acceptance level is pretty low.
This rating is subjective, and this is not a validated scale. It is something that I just came up with, but it’s something to help you understand where you are, and it’s designed to help you decide if you want to do anything to help move yourself further towards accepting the death of your loved one.
Acceptance is a process.
As I said, accepting the death of a loved one is a process, and accepting the death of a loved one does not mean that you have to be okay with it. It does not mean that you have to like it. It just means that you have to be able to acknowledge it and acknowledge all of the changes that come with the sudden loss. Perhaps acceptance is not the right word for you. Perhaps there is even a better word for you…Tolerate it? Understand it? Come to terms with it? Learn to live with?
So how do you go about accepting the loss of a loved one?
First, I highly recommend talking about it, a lot. Because this is going to help you normalize it and acknowledge all of the difficulties you are having with accepting the death of your loved one. Talking about any type of a loss, especially a sudden loss, will help you move you towards acceptance by allowing you to process the specific things you are struggling with, and a dialogue with others is going to help because most likely they are going to have experienced a loss as well. All of us experience loss. All of us experience death. It is a normal part of life.
Second, I encourage you to write about it or engage in some sort of a creative activity. This is a solo process, and it is going to allow you to process your loss on a whole different level compared to an active dialogue with another person.
Third, consider the concept of radical acceptance. This concept was developed and written about by Tara Brach, and radical acceptance means accepting things that are not under your control and learning to embrace what happens in your world in a non-judgmental way. Although her work is not tailored toward grief, I highly recommend her book, Radical Acceptance, Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha. I really love this book and it has helped me in my life with a lot of different things that I have struggled with.
Forth, give yourself the time you need to mourn and remind yourself acceptance is a process. You are asking yourself to do something really difficult. You are asking yourself to accept something you do not want to be true. You need to treat yourself with kindness and compassion and gently remind yourself with love that your loved one died, and that you are working on accepting this loss for your well-being so that you can continue to move forward in your life.
Fifth, separate what happened from the circumstances or the event that happened and focus on the person you love. Remember, death is a natural part of life, and it is going to happen to us all. Most likely the hardest part of all of this is what happened and the untimeliness of how it happened. Focus on your grief process, that is the natural part and the human way we express our love for one another is the grief, the pain, and the love.
Sixth, try creating a ritual to further your acceptance. You can do this at any time, long after a funeral or a celebration of life. If you a struggling with acceptance, try creating mini rituals to focus on new ways of accepting different parts of your loss. For example, if there is something you are holding on to that is keeping your loved one alive in your mind create a ritual or a way to say goodbye to that part if it will help you move towards acceptance.
Finally, when you assessed your level of acceptance earlier, and if your number was low, please consider seeking the support of a mental health professional for guidance to identify what is keeping you from acceptance and see if you can develop some coping skills to help you.
Today’s podcast was about focusing on acceptance. We looked at the difficulties that come with accepting the loss of a loved one. We explored what it means to accept the death of someone we love, how to know where you are in the process of acceptance and some of the consequences of denying acceptance of your loved one’s death. We ended by exploring different steps you can take to move towards accepting the death of a loved one who died suddenly.
Our next podcast will be on Wednesday, September 28th, and will be titled You Can Heal From Traumatic Loss.
Thank you so much for joining today’s episode of Untethered Healing the Pain After a Sudden Death. For help with a sudden and unexpected loss, please sign up for my free mini course, where I will teach you about the 3 Truths About Living With A Sudden and Unexpected Loss. Please visit my website www.fromgrieftogrowth.com to sign up.
