Have you ever sat down to breakfast at a hotel, and the person across from you is eating yogurt and blueberries – your husband’s Go-To breakfast. And, suddenly, you’re in a grief wave, all those emotions crashing down onto you. Then, two hours later, you’re sitting on the top deck of a tour bus exploring a city you’ve never been to before, really enjoying the sites, just living in the moment. Then, returning to an empty hotel room, and once again missing your spouse terribly.
This is normal, the swinging between happiness or contentment, and sadness or grief. It’s called The Dual Process Model. The general idea is that you naturally swing back and forth between looking backwards at what you’ve lost, and looking forward, in your present moment, and to the future. We don’t stay in just one mode all the time. It’s a natural progression to slowly move from focusing on your loss, to focusing on your future, but allowing yourself to fall back into those moments of loss – to not demand of yourself that you’re always progressing on your grief journey. The healthy journey allows for switch backs and loops, and you find your way forward.
When we’re grieving, it can feel like we’re constantly in a state of emotional turmoil. Up is down, and down feels like we’ll never see up again. Waves of emotion come crashing into our lives when we neither expect them, nor know how to navigate them. Perhaps worse is the fact that it feels abnormal for all of this to be happening, certainly with such frequency. We apologize regularly, and try to control the crashing waves of emotion. We fail to understand that this is a normal part of the process. We don’t need to apologize, though. There is nothing wrong with us. This is a human response to the overwhelming feelings that grief brings, and the frequency that we switch between feeling OK and emotionally broken. This is so common that it has been researched and studied.
My favorite part about the Dual Process Model is this: There are no limits for how often we swing between these two emotional states. And there is no limit on how many times we experience them. In short, it takes the time it takes, and we bounce between the two emotional states however many times we need to, until we find a sense of balance in our grief.
For some, this is achieved through counseling, psychiatry, working with a grief coach, or religious or spiritual coach. For others, there is a natural ebb and flow that can be followed. A growing number of people are finding solace in Thanatotechnology – or technology used to help navigate the grief process. Two examples of this are The Grief App or Help Texts. The Grief App provides workbooks and resources for working through grief any time they are needed – especially at 2am, when the list of people to call is often a very short one.
If you feel like the constant switching between grief waves and feeling comfort isn’t normal, or you feel like something must be wrong with you, we want you to know that you aren’t broken. What you’re experiencing is a normal part of the grief process.
We’re here for you. Our app helps you understand what you’re going through and provides you techniques to work through these heavy moments of your grief experience.
