How to Coach Yourself and Others Grief Coaching and Counseling | Page 17

Grieving and Healing:
5 Steps to Help You Through the
Grieving Process
How to work through grieving and begin to enjoy life again
From Sharon O'Brien, former About.com Guide
At some point in life, everyone loses someone they feel especially close to and we enter into grieving.
The loved one can be a parent, child, spouse, dear friend, or even a beloved companion animal.
The grieving that follows a loss is real, and can be very painful.
While it may be tempting to deny grieving in an attempt to avoid the pain, it's much healthier to accept
those feelings of pain and loss, and to work through the grieving process in an intentional way.
In his book, "Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, Second Edition" (Springer, 1991), J. William
Worden, PhD, describes what he calls "The Four Tasks of Mourning." These tasks can be the means
by which a healthy person works through the pain of grieving for a loved one, and moves into the next
phase of life.
In my practice as a therapist, I have counseled many people who lost a loved one and worked through
the grieving process. Combining my own experience with clients and Worden's work, here are five
steps that can help you get through grieving in a healthy way.

1. Learn to accept that your loss is real.
For many people who are grieving a loss, the first impulse is to deny the
loss. Grieving denial can range from downplaying the loss, as if it's not
important, to having the delusion that the person or pet is still alive.
It's often easier for people who are grieving to have an intellectual
understanding of the death (the person or pet is physically gone) than an
emotional understanding (the loved one is not coming back). So the first task
for the grieving person is accepting that the loved one is really gone.

2. Make it OK to feel the pain.
The pain of grieving can be both emotional and physical, and unfortunately there's no way to avoid it.
Denying the pain of grieving can lead to physical symptoms and can also prolong the grieving process.