Becoming Comfortable With the Uncomfortable: Tools for Grief
Coping with anxiety and fear in grief.
Originally published at Psychology Today
KEY POINTS
- Identifying the current level of anxiety can help you seek tools to feel relief.
- Grief can cause anxiety and fear; differentiating the two helps us seek appropriate coping strategies.
- Fear and anxiety are healthy responses we experience, despite causing uncomfortable feelings.
All at once
The world can overwhelm me
There’s almost nothin’ that you could tell me
That could ease my mind.–”All at Once,” Jack Johnson
The hold that grief can take over our emotions, identity, and ability to engage in life is clear, as we’ve seen in previous posts about grief. In addition, we’ve learned that grief can shift and transitions into fear and anxiety as we progress through grief, as outlined in my book It’s Grief: The Dance of Self-Discovery Through Trauma and Loss.
Fear and anxiety are partners that feed off each other; differentiating them is difficult. The physical experience of both states is similar, and the dance can feel like a nightmare. Anxiety and fear may be speaking to you if you wake up with a pounding heart…
