Healing Grief with Five Simple Daily Exercises

You are not alone if you’re in pain. You’re not alone if you’re wondering how the world can go on when you’re hurting so much. I know how much that hurts. I’ve been there.

There’s no getting around grief. There’s only moving through it. In order to heal, you must feel. But feeling that grief is so painful, and it’s hard to fathom how the world’s going on, as if everything’s OK, when it’s not.

On a beautiful day in the summer of 1994, I was driving on Rt. 287, crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge. Unlike the other 20-somethings on the road, I wasn’t going on an adventure. I was taking my fiancé to Westchester Medical Center to have his bone marrow extracted. As his sisters were not a match for a bone marrow transplant, we were hoping that his own bone marrow could be harvested for a bone marrow transplant. We drove to the hospital riddled with anxiety, knowing that he was going to endure a painful procedure, and hoping that cancer was not in his bone marrow. I silently wept. I squinted to release the tears from my eyes so that I could see the road. I didn’t want to use my hand to wipe away my tears and have him see that and know that I was crying. A red Jeep whizzed by with two mountain bikes on the back of the car. Oh, how I wished that was us.

Things did not go well with the bone marrow extraction. Things did not go well with his life. He took a turn for the worse and was admitted to the hospital in September, 1994. The doctors said that there was nothing left that they could do for him, and that he was going to die. Every day was unpredictable. I didn’t know if he’d be able to open his eyes and look at me that day. I didn’t know if he’d be able to speak my name that day. I didn’t know if he was going to die that day.

One thing that was predictable during those anxiety provoking days was that I was able to get a cup of hazelnut coffee.  After all of the visitors left at 8PM, I was comforted by that cup of coffee. The aroma permeated his hospital room and made it seem less sterile. It reminded me of home. The warmth of the cup was calming. I was so grateful for that simple cup of hazelnut coffee that was so predictable at a time when nothing else was.

I discovered the power of gratitude during the worst time of my life. Now I show others how to do the same.

I know what you’re thinking. “How can I possibly feel grateful for anything when I’m grieving?” Or maybe even, “I’m not grateful for anything. I’m mad at the world right now.”

Gratitude does not make your problems go away. Gratitude didn’t make my fiance’s cancer go away. However, gratitude does change the lens with which you see the world, and that makes all the difference in your well-being. When I focused on the simple joy that the cup of hazelnut coffee brought me, I noticed that I felt better. Through his illness, his death, and my father’s sudden and unexpected death six weeks later, gratitude for the simplest of things helped me to fee better. Helped me to heal.

Here are five simple exercises in gratitude that you can do every day, to help ease your pain. Gratitude truly does heal.

1. Every day before you get out of bed, say “thank you” before your feet hit the floor. These may be the last words you want to say right now, and that’s understandable. This exercise is simply focusing on the words “thank you.”

• When you say the two words “thank you”, you are priming your brains to be more positive. This is because your whole life, these words have been associated with positivity. You thank people for nice, positive things, not for crummy, negative things!
• Keep in mind when you say these two words, you do not even need to be thinking about what you are thankful for. You may even think that you have nothing to be thankful for. Just say the words “thank you.” Your brain will do the rest!
• Your brain receives a dose of “feel-good” neurotransmitters, and you are setting the stage for your brain to notice all that is good around you.
• You are beginning your day in the most positive way, and also heightening your level of awareness of all the good things that happen throughout the day.

2. Set your intention in the morning to be more aware of your blessings as you go about your day.

• When you set our intention, you are utilizing a part of our brain called the Reticular Activating System. This is the part of the brain that works as a filtering system. It sorts through all of the information coming your way every day and helps you notice and pay attention to what’s important to you. You get to tell it what’s important to you by setting your intention.
• Setting your intention to focus on gratitude magnifies your ability to notice and celebrate the good things, and pay less attention to the negative things. Doing so helps the Reticular Activating System do its job. It’s like telling your brain that you want to notice and highlight your blessings.
• Setting your intention to focus on gratitude does not change the world, but it helps you change your focus to the positive in your life and in the world.
• You see the world in a more positive light. You are better able to see the wonderful things, big and small, and pay less attention to the negative things.

3. Express appreciation for someone every day.

• The number one factor related to your happiness in life is your relationships. Expressing appreciation for people in your life is the easiest way to increase the level of closeness and improve the quality of your relationships. Although this may be a time when you want others to reach out to you, by taking action and reaching out to others, you are strengthening the relationships that sustain you.
• When you express appreciation for another human being, not only are you making another person feel good, but you are experiencing a boost in mood in the process.
• This works particularly well when you express appreciation for things you take for granted, or for behavior that is expected.
• This appreciation can be expressed in many different ways – say it in person, write a thank you note, make a phone call, or send an email or text.

4. Use uncomfortable or painful feelings as a trigger to think about what you’re grateful for.

• First, allow yourself to feel your pain. Process your pain. Express your pain. Then, when you are ready to move forward, think about something that you are grateful for. When you experience feelings that are painful, you can use that feeling as a trigger to find something positive in a situation.
• One of your greatest human freedoms is your ability to choose your own thoughts. Your feelings are directly impacted by your thoughts. You can use feelings of anger and frustration as a sign that it is time to look for something positive.
• Ask yourself: 1) What good can come out of this situation? 2) What can you learn here? 3) What is something positive that I can find or create?
• This helps us to avoid going into a downward spiral and remaining in the pain of grief by focusing on something positive. This is not easy, but it is powerful.

5. Before you fall asleep, think of one or two experiences you had that day for which you are grateful.

• Your sleep is affected by what you do and think right before sleep. Keep it simple. Thinking about a positive experience is a wonderful way to end the day, and particularly helps to ease the heaviness of grief, right before sleep.
• When you do this on a regular basis, you will become more aware of things to be grateful for and pay more attention to them as you go about your day, because you know that when you go to sleep, you are challenging yourself to recall two wonderful experiences.
• Over the course of time, when done on a regular basis, you are literally rewiring your brain to think more positively. You are training your brain to pay more attention to the positive things in your life, and less attention to the negative. This will become habit and involve less conscious effort. It will simply become your way of being in the world.  Appreciative.  Grateful.