MS
grief can
aggravate the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis and cause them to become
much worse.
But what can help with reducing the effects of grief on Multiple
Sclerosis, when there is a death in your family or of someone that you
were close to emotionally?
Even though there is no easy answer for this one, don't despair about
you being able to work through the grief and deal with the it for you.
Facing working through grief is something that all of us have to deal
with in life, whether we have been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis or
not, after all death is part of the cycle of life.
There is a
time to be born, a time to live and a time to die.
It's part
of being human.
It's just that when it comes to Multiple Sclerosis, it's much more
vital that you find ways to work through the grieving period without it
impacting the Multiple Sclerosis in a way that can set you up for more
MS attacks or relapses.
Although
there is no "one size fits all" answer for dealing with grief, I do
think that the tips listed below can help to some degree.
Tips
for helping to work though and deal with MS
grief
can include:
* Let
yourself grieve.
It's
okay to grieve.
Everyone
faces some events in their life that can cause them to feel grief.
This
is how we work through the grieving period.
Grief
brings up all kinds of emotions and crying is a good stress release.
It
can help you to work through all of the emotions that tend to follow
after someone dies that was a big part of your life in some way or
another.
Stuffing
your emotions inside, never helps for anyone, but for people with
Multiple Sclerosis, it creates much more of a problem when you attempt
to stuff your emotions inside and not show them on the outside.
When
you try to hide your emotions inside, like if you think that showing
your emotions by crying is a bad thing to do...this creates a huge
amount of internal stress.
Stress
for people diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis causes too much over
stimulation to our nervous systems and can actually set you up for more
MS attacks or relapses to occur.
So,
finding ways to reduce internal stress is very important, after you are
diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and this especially applies to MS grief.
*
Allow yourself to cry to help deal with the
grief that you are feeling.
Crying
helps us to work through the feelings of grief after we lose a relative
or someone that we felt close to emotionally.
Crying
is a normal part of the process of feeling grief.
Don't
tell yourself that you shouldn't cry at all.
Crying
also alleviates the internal stress that would result otherwise.
*
Allow yourself periods to grieve, but don't
keep yourself so upset all of the time that you rarely seem to ever
calm down.
It's
normal to miss someone, who was in your life for a longer part of your
life, while you were growing up or someone, who you felt very close to
emotionally.
Yes...some
how the people, who are relatives or a loved on or some one that we
felt closer to like a good friend...it can feel like they were a big
part of us, while they were alive....
...and
when they are gone, this can leave a very big whole in our lives and
cause you to feel a big loss, personally.
One
thing that you need to remember is that you don't need to think that
you have to forget about them after they pass on or...
...that
you have to pretend
that you weren't close them, when they were alive, because you don't
have to pretend anything.
Let
it be okay for you to feel what you feel and let yourself find a way to
deal with it all.
*
Give it time.
As
you get further away from the point in time where your family member,
loved one or friend died, it does get a little easier to go on living
your life.
Unfortunately,
when a person dies that we were close to in life, you feel a loss,
because they do leave a void or a hole in our lives, since that person
can never be replaced by anyone else.
But
remember what that person meant to you and what you meant to them.
Hang
onto that good memory, of how close you were when you were around them
and know that you helped improve their life in some way from knowing
you in he way that they did.
*
Remember all of the good memories of the
person that you have lost.
It
helps to focus on the good memories of the person that you were so
close to who died because it helps to ease our pain with losing them.
I
know this doesn't bring the person back, but it helps us to know that
the person loved you, or they saw you as a good friend or that you did
share events in your life...
...that
made you feel happy or brought joy or hope or whatever they brought
that was good to your life.
Hang
onto those good memories for they ease the pain and grief in having a
person die, who meant so much to you before.
*
Allow yourself at least a few months up to a
year to grieve, if you need to or maybe even a little longer.
The
length of time for the period of grieving can vary for each and every
person, but at some point we need to find something to help you to
start living life again, in spite of your loss.
This
can sometimes be a difficult step for you to start learning to live
life again, without someone 
that you may have felt before would always be
around.
After
all, we will all die sometime.
It's
part of the cycle of life that we don't like to talk about much.
Many
families rarely or never talk about death, grieving or even what to do
when someone in our families die.
But,
it's one of the more unpleasant parts of the human existence that
involves part of the changes in our lives that everyone must face at
one point or the other.
Why
I am I talking about this anyway?
Well,
I recently had to face this myself, since my father died this past week.
So,
the topic of MS grief is a recent thing that I have
to face myself, since I also was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 13
years ago.
This
is not an easy topic for me to write about, since I am still so upset
about my father's death myself, but I feel that it is a very important
topic to discuss...
...since
we have to find a way for us to survive without causing more MS
exacerbations, attacks or relapses...
...while
somehow coming out on the other side of the grieving process to where
we find some way to go on living life after a family member, loved one
or even good friend dies.
So...I
have been thinking about this a lot lately and I want to help you too,
in spite of my feelings of sadness, grief, anger and sense of loss,
because you could be having this happen to you recently too.
It's
not the end of the world when someone, who was close to you emotionally
dies, but at times it can sure feel like it.
I
keep thinking about people, who live to be 100 years old and how much
grief they have had to face in their lives, with them going through
many more periods of grief...
...from
them losing family members, good friends, loved ones and even spouses
to death and somehow they find something to hang onto for them to be
able to go on living life...
...and
somehow it helps to put my own grief that I feel into perspective, but
since this a recent loss for me, it still is an extreme sense of loss
for me.
A
death in the family can also turn things upside down for you, since it
can all of a sudden mean that you need to move or go through a lot of
things that belonged to the person...
...who
died, and you have to decided what to to with their earthly possessions
now that they are not here anymore.
I
think doing these things are even tougher, since it can make it hit
home more that the person is really gone and they aren't going to be
around anymore.
That
can stir up a lot more emotions that can add so much more to the grief
that you feel after the person dies.
Going
to the funeral of a loved one, family member or good friend can also be
very difficult, but as far as the way that I look at it...
...a
funeral is where you go to say goodbye to the person that you knew, who
died.
It
kind of gives some closure, like turning the page to a new chapter in
your life.
It's
not an easy thing to do, but it can help you realize that this person
is really gone and not coming home again.
Funerals
kind of make us face reality, even though this can be a very harsh
reality many times.
But
it is a necessary thing to go though these things to help put some
order back in your life again, but that doesn't make it any easier to
do.
Whatever
you need to do to help you to deal with the death of a loved one, in
reducing your MS grief, it will somehow be okay for
you to be able to go on living life.
You
will find a way for you to make it through everything included in the
period grieving.
Trillions
upon trillions of people around the world have gone through one or more
periods of grief in their lives and they survived it all, and you can
too.
Somehow
you will find a way to make it though all of this.
You
will somehow find a way that works for you, even if your way of
grieving and dealing with grief is not mentioned or described above in
this blog post.
Don't
give up.
You
can make it through the time of morning and the range of feelings that
go along with the period of grieving for your loss.
The
only reason I can say any of this at this point in my life is because I
am going through all of this myself.
There
is no one way to work through grief in the death of someone, who was
close to you in some way emotionally, but somehow you will find a way
that works for you.
Just
give yourself a chance to work through the period of grief that you are
dealing with and you will find a way to get through it all and you will
find a way to live life again somehow.
