The 7 Steps of Grief:
5. Feelings of Depression/Grief

This page: Articles on Depression/Grief Over Loss of Health:

We May Attract More Belief From Other People

A Poem about Illness and Depression

What is Depression as a Stage in Grieving?

We Stop Pretending We Are Not Ill. We Feel Our Feelings.

How Can I Learn To Feel My Feelings?

Understandable Healthy Grief Over Loss

Steps of Grief: 5

Depression/Grief

We May Attract More Belief From Other People

I work with the idea that our beliefs create our reality. The outer world may mirror back to us our own disbelief at illness , our lack of sympathy towards ourselves.
As we move through the steps of grief and loss towards acceptance of the illness, we may find that other people in our life also move forwards to accept the illness.

Or else we may let go of those who do not support us. More and more, we attract into our lives people who show a greater level of belief in the illness.
The empathy and sympathy we receive then helps us to move on to the next step and feel our grief and sense of loss.

What is Depression as a Stage in Grieving?

We use the word depression to mean at least two things.

Depression can be an illness in itself. It feels like a state of being, a grey blanket over your life. This depression is not a feeling, but a numbness, an absence of feeling.
This kind of depression can be a secondary symptom of illness. It was for me.
Or it can be an illness in its own right.

In times of difficult change, you may feel depressed about something. This is what happens when you suffer depression over loss of health.

To give an explanation of this stage of grief which distinguishes it from the illness depression, I prefer to call it “grief”.
Depression/grief over loss of health may also trigger depression as an illness. But often it is simply (though painfully) a time of numbness and withdrawal as you take in the extent of your loss.

We Stop Pretending We Are Not Ill. We Feel Our Feelings.

In the moment when you feel grief, you stop pretending this isn't happening, you stop trying to be brave.

Your willingness to be with the other steps of grief prepares you to feel your feelings about your loss.

Here you are.
You may have tried to avoid this feeling. Yet, in the moment of grief, there is a knowing that this is a good pain, one that leads beyond itself.

How Can I Learn To Feel My Feelings?

Most of us are not great at feeling our feelings. I know I wasn’t and I still have much to learn.

It can be a good idea to get support from a counsellor to provide you with a safe space in which to learn to feel.

Or, you can find a method of emotional release work that works for you.

I developed a technique called the release which was a huge help in teaching me how to feel my feelings. Thanks to the release I can catch myself blocking a feeling and allow it instead.

Time does not heal. It is feeling our feelings that heals us. If we have learned to block all our feelings, time is not enough. Thankfully, we can learn to feel again. We can allow the healing process to take place.

Understandable Healthy Grief over Loss

If you have lost your health, you have lost something. It is understandable and healthy to grieve your loss and feel upset.

If it helps, please let me give you permission to feel upset and grieve your loss.

I am sorry for your loss.

Be gentle on yourself, and allow the healing process to take place.

Click to hear author, Lynn Serafinn give an interview on spirituality and depression. Lynn's depression was not prompted by physical illness. It was possibly genetic and definitely affected by the emotional environment in which she was raised. Nonetheless, there is much anyone with depression will relate to in this compassionate and compelling interview. Lynn is author of Garden of the Soul in which she speaks of her journey with depression.

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