Rife with expectations, social obligations and bittersweet reminders, the holidays are known for putting added stress on the grieving. Specializing in grief counseling, Wendy Littner Thomson, MEd, LPC, CIMHP, RYT, shares her insight on how to take care of ourselves and others when living with loss through the festive season.
Respect the Complexity
At its heart, whether in reaction to a death or a non-death loss, grief is a powerful stress response. It can include a complex of emotions: sorrow, anxiety, anger, confusion and sometimes relief, if someone’s suffering has ended. It can have cognitive effects like forgetfulness, and physical manifestations from headaches to new allergies. “For one client,” Littner Thomson notes, “a new eyeglass prescription was no longer appropriate following their significant loss.”
Spiritually, we’re reeling with uncertainty about our purpose and identity, how the universe works, even questions of justice.
“Because we are whole people,” Littner Thomson says, “we grieve as whole people when our world is torn apart and our assumptions shattered. We’re remaking how we understand ourselves and what we understand our worlds to be. It can become a very existential process and can change us at our core.”
Because we are whole people, we grieve as whole people …
Shelter in Self-Care
As we endure this stress through the holidays, caring for our basic needs is of vital importance, especially since grief can provoke extreme behaviors like sleeping or eating too much or not enough, drinking too much or isolating socially.
Heaps of Christmas cookies, spiked eggnog and flowing wine will send our energy into unstable zigs and zags that can make our grief more intense. Paired with frequent gatherings late into the night or involving tiring travel, it’s a season of stress on the body.
“Generally,” Littner Thomson says, “I encourage people to be selective with what they take on. Be your own CEO, Chief Energy Officer, because grief takes a lot out of you. Just know, mood follows food, and choose accordingly.”
Commit to rest, exercise, time in nature and eat healthy overall to give yourself the best odds.
Errors of Expectation
The famous Five Stages of Grief retain a hold on the public consciousness, as much as Littner Thomson wishes otherwise. “The problem is, if you expect the implications of a stages model—that you will pass through in a delineated and linear way—and then you don’t, you’re holding yourself to an unrealistic standard,” Littner Thomson says. “People think and feel, ‘I can’t even do grief right!’”
Grief comes in waves like weather systems in our emotional atmosphere, bringing a multitude of feelings that can loop back, evolve, rear up in no particular order and that change over time.
Don’t expect grief to have an endpoint. “How we experience our grief will shift and change over longer than most people think,” Littner Thomson says. “It’s popular to think that grief will subside in two or three months and things will get back to normal.”
The truth is there is no going back. To varying degrees, everything is different now, and that’s normal.
Flexible Festivity
That said, the holidays may be different. “You may not want to adhere to traditions,” Littner Thomson says. “You might want to keep some. Some may be comforting. Others may have lost their meaning.”
Know that it’s right and responsible to make changes to ease the way. Know that a grieving person, if it’s not yourself, needs lots of room around expectations.
Because grief is unpredictable, you may go to a party and enjoy it, or you may intend to go in and want to turn around at the last minute. “No problem, but it’s crucial that you communicate ahead of time. Give yourself this permission,” Littner Thomson says. “Set it up with the host: ‘I think I can come, I want to come, but I may need to change my mind.’”
Don't Trust the Instructions
Some people talk their feelings out, cry, maybe join a support group. Others express themselves in action, channeling their feelings into repairing a fence, or walking for a cure. The key is to connect the grief to the activity, transforming and releasing it in a way that doesn’t leave it suppressed inside.
As a registered yoga teacher, Littner Thomson thinks that yoga is ideal for both types of people. “It’s a physical practice that helps people to connect to their breath, excellent when you’re living with ongoing stress. It unknots the body’s energy channels so that vitality can flow, focus can be cultivated and emotions can move and be released. If you practice with others, it can offset a sense of isolation that can often accompany grief.”
There’s no magic wand to take grief away, but you’ll find things that help with the journey. Just take every book, article and Instagram post with a grain of salt. “The perfect book on grief hasn’t been written,” Littner Thomson says, “because there are 8 billion people on the planet and 8 billion different ways to grieve.”
Published as “Ask the Expert” in the November 2023 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
