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Sorry this blog is a little late, it has been a rough past week as we all know they crop up when we least expect them to. But all is good, and I want to get us back on track with this new blog.

By now you can see grief has a lot of components to deal with and this is just the beginning.

In this blog I wanted to talk about the 2 major types of grief just to help you better understand what is going on. There are lots of other types that they like to break down further, but I just wanted to focus on these 2 because let’s face it you can subcategorize everything, but it is still all comes back to the main issue. I will touch on a couple others but not that much.

Type 1: Instrumental

This is the type that I found myself in. This type of person is more action oriented they tend to intellectualize their emotions. Relucent to express feelings and may only express them in private. We seek solitude to reflect on things independently.

Instrumental grievers adapt to their loss by doing things, keeping busy and thinking through things. We need to seek information and try to problem solve with decision making and tend to be future oriented. I am not sure I am very future oriented I really don’t want to think or plan to far in advance.

This is more typical in men, but women can also feel this way as well, but more men are this way.

Type 2: Intuitive

Intuitive grievers tend to be more emotional and verbal of their grief. Sometimes they seek support from others. They yearn for comfort. They can become easily exhausted, anxious and have problems concentrating. They express more sorrow and depression.

No surprise this is the type most women feel and fall into.

There is a more common type of grief it is called Blended this is a mixture of both intuitive and Instrumental.

I know with my own experience with grief I thought something was wrong with me since I didnt act like what I assumed was the normal grieving process which is Intuitive. Once I was told in one of my few grief counselling classes about the different types of grief, I could see that I was more Instrumental in how I was processing what I was going through. Which was a relief, for some reason we all have in our minds what things are supposed to look like or how you are to act to different situations but no everyone fits into that model. If you are feeling out of sink or think you should be acting a certain way, take a step back and realize we are all different and handle issues as they come differently that does not mean there is something wrong with you.

Again, there is no one size fits all, when it comes to most things anymore. I just wanted to share these 2 types as a guideline to help you understand and maybe help you with the process of your grief. Again, you could very well be a combination of both or more one than the other knowledge helps with dealing with grief if you feel you are struggling with how you think you should be feeling or acting.

There is another one that if you feel conflicted between the way you experience your grief internally and the way you express it outwardly this is called Dissonant. This grief type creates persistent discomfort and lack of harmony. Although your grief may be profound and strongly felt the griever struggles to hid their true feelings in order to preserve the image they wish to project to the public.

As you see grief has lots of different faces and you could be a little of each, I just feel the more you understand what you are feeling it will help you in the long run to calm down and let your grief come as you are feeling it and not constantly feeling you are doing something wrong or have too much emotions or not enough.

Remember it is a journey of 1000 miles we are all on and some of us will stumble and some will fall face first, but we all have to get back up and take that first step to a small sense of healing.

When you feel overwhelmed just take one breath, one moment, one thought at a time there is no rush or timeline you have to conform to.

I will see you in my next blog.