Self Care Articles
Self Care Articles for Grieving
Grieving and loss are universally emotionally intense experiences and at times can feel ultimately overwhelming. For those struggling to recover, the Center has developed many ways to help. For example, our website is a public service and has many resources for your use. Feel free to peruse these self care articles for grieving and loss. Remember that your healing path is unique to your own values and needs. Therefore, not all the suggestions will resonate with you. Simply take what fits for you and set aside the rest. In addition, be mindful that your own solutions to deeper emotional issues may take time, reflection, and engaging in dialogue with a professional who brings skillful listening and empathic attunement to your personal recovery and healing path.
Let’s Talk Grief: How Rituals Illuminate the Intricate Path of Grief and Healing
If you are curious about the psychology of loss, cultural grief rituals practiced around the world, or how individuals can create personal grief rituals, check out this recent podcast interview with The Center's assistant director, Dr. Paul M Martin! Listen to the...
Grieving and the Holidays
These past three years have been an ongoing exercise in learning to manage profound uncertainty and the precariousness it generates. Our entire world was traumatized. Yet, long before the pandemic, but especially since then, the mushrooming possibilities—both positive and negative—for our individual lives and our society have been dizzying and destabilizing. And like it or not, we have all been enrolled in what the existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard called, “the school of anxiety.”
School of Anxiety
These past three years have been an ongoing exercise in learning to manage profound uncertainty and the precariousness it generates. Our entire world was traumatized. Yet, long before the pandemic, but especially since then, the mushrooming possibilities—both positive and negative—for our individual lives and our society have been dizzying and destabilizing. And like it or not, we have all been enrolled in what the existentialist philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard called, “the school of anxiety.”
From PesiUK: Helping Clients Design Personal Grief Rituals
PesiUK published Paul M Martin's article, "Helping Clients Design Personal Grief Rituals" in December 2022. You can read it online at https://www.pesi.co.uk/blog/2022/december/helping-clients-design-personal-grief-rituals When working with bereaved clients, we may...
Personal Grief Rituals by Paul M. Martin
Personal Grief Rituals presents a new model for how bereaved individuals can create unique expressions of mourning that are tailored to their psychological needs and grounded in memories and emotions specific to the relationship they lost. This book examines cultures...
On the Washington Post’s “How to Grieve During a Pandemic”
To witness is to protect and preserve experience from being denied out of existence. As mourners we go through phases of protest, not the least of which is the fight to not have our grief taken away from us. Back in September, 2020 when the total number estimated...
On the NYT’s “What if There’s No Such Thing as Closure?”
Bereavement thrusts us into a world of multiple swirling self states; feelings, thoughts, sensations that are unpredictable in their depth and range. In and through this bewildering painful process, we struggle to find a way to relinquish certain aspects of our...
Walking A Difficult Road—Together
At long last we have a national leader in charge, who is capable of acknowledging our collective grief and the need to mourn our losses. Apart from how his administration goes on to govern, Biden’s self-declared first responsibility of leadership suggests that now...
Recovering a Future Vision
As Covid-19 and our country's political crisis continue to rage on, it becomes increasingly difficult to cope with and manage our fears and anxieties. We are enduring so many losses. In fact, there's a kind of hazy, threatening cloud of grief hanging over everything....
Acedia: The Lost Name for the Emotion We’re All Feeling Right Now
Never in our collection living memory have we been forced to persevere through the social, economic, and psychological consequences of a pandemic. And it is hard to articulate a set of emotions that seem to defy articulation. But language used well can help. The words...
Engaging in Post Traumatic Growth
Among other challenges, the coronavirus calls us to reorganize our consciousness about death and dying. Perhaps the sudden plunge into mortality forced upon us by the pandemic can inspire new ways of being helpful and useful to each other, even while we grieve and...
Grief and Coronavirus
Despite the anguish of grief, under normal social circumstances most people move through its demands well enough. We are resilient despite our losses and the upheaval they generate. However, things are different now under Covid-19 conditions. Usually friends can...
The Problem of Regressive Restoration
Many of us are hoping—perhaps beyond reason—that we will take a large evolutionary step forward as a result of the corona virus/covid-19 crisis. After all, we are being plunged into a sudden awareness of death, and death prompts introspection and life review in deep...
Managing Anxiety During Difficult Times
I'm a psychotherapist at The Center for Grief Recovery and have some tips about managing anxiety during difficult times such as these. It is important to remember that although the future seems so uncertain and frightening just now, that we have never had any...
From Simplify Magazine: Self-Care in the Face of Grief and Mourning
Simplify Magazine published David Fireman's article, "Self-Care in the Face of Grief and Mourning" in December 2019. You can read it online at https://simplifymagazine.com/essay/self-care-grief For a 25% discount on single issues and subscriptions to Simplify...
Having a Witness
If you’ve endured the death of a friend, colleague, or relative, hopefully someone was there who could witness your pain. In the case of grief and mourning, witnessing illuminates how our grief in the current situation is influenced by our beliefs and previous...
Grief Rituals, Part II
by David Fireman, LCSW The anguish of grief takes its own course and demands an unknown schedule. For a time we are dominated by its waves as they crash through us, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. Our reflex is to fortify and resist. It's actually only natural...
Thoughts on Grief and Ritual
This article will introduce some definitions that are useful to think about in the context of loss. Grief is the natural healing cycle humans endure when they experience the emotional, cognitive, physical, and spiritual reactions after a loss or separation. Grief is...
Going Back to Basics: Learning from Social Work’s Person-in-Environment Perspective
In the last few years, there have been days, weeks, months even, when I have felt more uncertainty and gloom than ever before in my adult life. Whatever personal issues were within and in front of me, they felt toxified by the social and political disorder of our...
Thoughts on Responding to Feelings of Helplessness and Futility
At a mental health provider training that I attended not long ago, at one point the facilitator was attempting to communicate how survivors of trauma often feel frighteningly out of control even in the most secure and benign situations. In a tone that suggested he...
Feeling Helpless
I can’t say I love feeling helpless. The underlying fear keeps haunting me, its tendrils reaching into my thoughts, pointing me darker, deeper. I can say I love myself when I’m feeling helpless – or more specifically, I’ve learned to let myself receive what I need....
Response to Senseless Death
The last Sunday of October, I attended a local vigil held in honor of the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. The sanctuary in which it was held brimmed with worshippers and neighbors from all walks of life. The majority in attendance were non-Jewish; I...
October
October We harvest the memories planted in the spring And grown in the summer sun. We remember harvests past And in the crisp night air Luminous with October moon And the stars in the clear autumn sky We bundle them like cornstalks Silhouetted against the western...
Vulnerability and Transformation
We have all been conditioned to think about human vulnerability primarily in terms of weakness. As such, the experience of vulnerability is to be denied and avoided at all costs. We think to be weak is unacceptable. To be vulnerable is to be weak, therefore it is...
Introduction to Experiential Methods
Experiential Methods of Grief Therapy Many of us have gotten out of touch with our physical selves. We have become so good at intellectualizing and live so totally in our thoughts that our emotional life suffers, becoming constricted and narrow. We find life losing...
How to Cope in the Workplace When an Employee Dies
Grief is particularly difficult to manage within the workplace. The two are grossly incompatible. Work takes place in a high-energy environment full of future-oriented developments, and its successes are measured in tangible results within clearly-defined...
Taking Care of Yourself
In order to stay as balanced as possible when grief evokes intense and variable emotional states, we must attend to body, mind and spirit. Use gentle, peaceful means, and be patient with your self and your process to recover from a loss. Taking care of yourself when...
Depression Boot Camp
Tips For Combating Grief - Depression Boot Camp Be up and dressed by 6:30 every a.m. Take a 30 min walk. Eat at least 3x per day or 5 smaller meals with a little protein in each—especially in the morning. Keeping blood sugar in check is very important. Avoid sugar and...
Comfort Quickies: Self Care While Grieving
During grieving, it is common to need breaks from our emotions. This in no way dishonors the seriousness of our concerns and the memories of our loved one. These ideas may give you some added nourishment to respond to the stress that comes with grieving. Some Quick...
September: A Time for Contradictions
August and September are poignant times for most of us. The days get shorter and signal the end of summer. Evenings begin to cool off ,letting us know that winter approaches. The end of the summer growing season is at hand, and yet we are expected to begin anew. Yet...
Pain Bonds Us
I feel close to you when you let your pain show. A protective shield inside me slides away. So often I didn’t even know it was there, not until I feel myself softening, my heart opening to you. In such a sacred moment, I feel a resonance with you in the vulnerable...
Managing New Beginnings
1. Let whatever emotional pain you are experiencing come into your awareness. What are your hopes and fears about the future? List them. What memories come from the past? Painful memories tend to lose their power when they are published. Secrets become more and more...
Managing the Holidays
Managing the Holidays While Grieving Can Be Difficult No matter what your religion or lack thereof, the holiday time can be most trying. The holidays stir up memories of the past, evoke powerful feelings, and force us to compare our life situation to that of the...
Invitations to Vitality: Aging Well List
The purpose of this aging well list is to spur your own reflections. Notice if there is something here that flirts with your attention. The following items are suggestions. You might find that some of them require a good deal of thought and effort, while others may be...
Does Time Heal All Wounds?
Occasionally, I am asked by students of the helping professions certain compelling questions. Recently, one such set of questions came across through the Center’s website, regarding the phrase "Time heals all wounds". After responding, I decided to post my answers. If...