LOSS AND BEREAVEMENT
If you have experienced the loss of someone who was very important to you, you may be finding it difficult to adjust to the immense changes happening in your life..
Grief can shake all our perceptions - beliefs, personality, sense of reality and can even manifest into physical emotional pain.
Keeping emotions bottled up or denying the sadness could prolong the pain.
Any loss has to be acknowledged for us to move forward. Bereavement is the time we spend adjusting to loss.
There is no average time and there is no right or wrong way to feel in your grief - everyone learns to cope in their own way.
Grief, although normal, can manifest in a huge range of unexpected ways. Some people get angry, some people withdraw further into themselves and some people become completely numb.
Sometimes, grief can turn into something more serious - like depression.
Talking about your loss often allows a person to adjust to their new life with all its changes.
The counselling relationship will try to help you find a place for your loss so you can carry on with life and eventually find acceptance to move forward.
WHAT IS ANXIETY?
Anxiety is used to describe feelings of worry, fear and unease. Typically, it incorporates both the emotional and physical sensations we experience when worried or nervous.
Anxiety is related to the ‘fight or flight’ response and, while unpleasant, this is a normal reaction when our body perceives a threat.
We will all feel anxious at some time and it’s very common to feel tense or unsure about a potentially stressful situation, such as an exam, starting a new job, or moving home.
However, some of us will be affected more than others.
Despite being a normal experience, if these feelings are very strong or are lasting a long time, it can be overwhelming.
Anxiety can make you imagine things are worse than they are and prevent you from carrying out everyday tasks, or even leaving the house.
Where stress is something that will come and go, anxiety can affect a person even if the cause is unclear.
When under stress, our ‘fight or flight’ response will engage..
This acts as an internal alarm system, designed to protect us from danger in the wild. These days, we can recognise this system through the ‘butterflies in the stomach’ we feel when we're nervous.
Anxiety, however, may cause this response to activate at inappropriate moments. You may feel this during normal, non-threatening situations.
Anxiety UK describes anxiety like a bucket of water;
Our 'emotional capacity bucket.'
If we keep adding stressors to the bucket (even tiny ones, like the school run or commuting to work), over time it fills up until one day it overflows.
This can be a good way of looking at anxiety and it explains why sometimes it can seem to come out of the blue, with no significant trigger.
When is the right time to seek help?
Anxiety is a problem that can get worse if the stressors continue to build up. Often we feel ashamed to ask for help, or believe that it’s not ‘that big a problem’ so covering our feelings and dealing with it alone.
Counsellors are a good place to start talking things through in the first instance and together we can often deal with issues before they become overwhelming.
If you are experiencing physical symptoms, it is important
you consult your GP.