S9.4 | The Stages of Grief: Overcoming Trauma and Loss
In today's heartfelt episode, we dive deep into understanding and navigating through grief. Carla shares her personal journey as her family faces tough decisions regarding her father-in-law's life support, and she opens up about the various forms grief can take, extending beyond just the loss of a loved one. From mourning unrealized futures to grappling with mental health struggles, grief intertwines with many aspects of our lives. Carla offers insights into the stages of grief, emphasizing the importance of moving through these stages to find acceptance and healing. With the comfort of our faith and the Holy Spirit, we can journey through grief and emerge stronger. Join us as we explore how to confront grief head-on and find the hope and joy promised in our faith. Tune in, and let's walk this path together.
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Key Takeaways
Understanding Grief Beyond Death:
Grief is not limited to the loss of life. It encompasses any profound loss, including childhood dreams, unfulfilled futures, and even relationships.
Biblical Perspective on Grief:
The Bible is rich with expressions of grief, offering numerous examples and God's promises of comfort during our darkest times.
The Role of Acceptance
Embracing acceptance is crucial for living a thriving and abundant life. Acceptance does not mean forgetting; it means integrating the loss and moving forward.
Connect With Carla:
Inquire about 1:1 coaching ---> carlaagreswellness@gmail.com
Renewing Hope Course —-> https://www.carlaarges.com/renewing-hope
Come hangout on IG with me @carlaarges
Check out the blog
Resources:
5 Steps to Building Resiliency
Affirming Truths Facebook Community
5 Tips for Overcoming a Negative Body Image
Who You Say I Am Biblical Affirmation Cards
TRANSCRIPT
Carla Arges [00:00:08]:
Hey friends, welcome to affirming truths. I'm your friend and host, Carla Arges. This show is a safe place to share our struggles, grow in faith, and root our identity in Christ. My hope is that you will leave each episode feeling encouraged in your journey. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review. I am so glad. Here, let's get started.
Carla Arges [00:00:36]:
Hey friends, welcome to this episode of affirming Truth. Before I dive into this topic, I want to tell you about this free thing that I'm doing, and I don't know if it's going to work, but I'm doing it and I would love for you to join me. I am hosting a Wednesday evening virtual Bible study, Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. eastern. We are kicking it off, going through the book of Philippians. This is just an opportunity for sisters in Christ to come together and learn about Jesus and learn about the Bible and really iron sharpening iron. So I'm not putting this in the show notes, so you're not going to find it there. But if you want to participate in this virtual Bible study that I'm facilitating, find me on instagram at Carla Arges and let me know.
Carla Arges [00:01:31]:
I've started a group chat there for those who are going to be participating. It's going to be over Zoom.
Carla Arges [00:01:38]:
No, you don't have to commit to.
Carla Arges [00:01:39]:
Showing up to every single session.
Carla Arges [00:01:43]:
That's not realistic.
Carla Arges [00:01:44]:
But you do have to commit that.
Carla Arges [00:01:46]:
What?
Carla Arges [00:01:47]:
To the best that's in your control. You're going to make it a priority, right? Like Bible study groups should be a priority, not perfect attendance. So I want to invite you. If you are looking for a Bible study group, if you're looking to meet with other women and grow in the word, I would love for you to join us. I think by the time this episode.
Carla Arges [00:02:10]:
Airs, we will have been one session.
Carla Arges [00:02:12]:
In, and that's okay.
Carla Arges [00:02:14]:
Come join.
Carla Arges [00:02:15]:
We're doing Philippians Wednesday nights, 07:00 p.m. eastern, starting with Philippians. I think we might move into Ephesians after that and just really take an expository look at the word and grow together in the word. So find me on Instagram if you want to take part in it, at Carla Arjes, and we'll go from there. Okay. Speaking of Instagram, I had a q and a in my Instagram stories about grief, if you know, which you may not know. It depends on if you're on my email list or not. My household is navigating through some grief.
Carla Arges [00:02:59]:
My husband's dad is on life support as of the time of this recording. And there are some heavy decisions that have to be made about whether or not to keep him on life support. And that's been hard. That's been hard, obviously, for my mother in law. That's hard for my husband to go through. And there's been grief. And so I opened up the discussion on grief to Instagram.
Carla Arges [00:03:28]:
And there's a lot of people grieving. There's a lot of people grieving. And so I wanted to bring that topic to you here, because grief often goes hand in hand with trauma.
Carla Arges [00:03:44]:
Grief often goes hand in hand with a mental health diagnosis. Grief exists in these areas. And I know for me, when it comes to trauma and when it comes to my mental illness, I've had to grieve. I had to grieve a childhood that I never got to have. I had to grieve some of the.
Carla Arges [00:04:09]:
Situations and things that happened to me growing up, you know, in terms of my mental illness.
Carla Arges [00:04:15]:
I had to grieve the future I thought I was going to have. That just is not possible in managing mental health.
Carla Arges [00:04:26]:
I had to grieve these things in.
Carla Arges [00:04:28]:
Order to move on, to heal, in order to thrive. I believe grief is a major intersection that we have to go through in trauma recovery, in breaking free of. Of chains that keep us bound and not living, that thriving, abundant life God has for us.
Carla Arges [00:04:53]:
And so let's talk about grief, because maybe you're there right now, and here's.
Carla Arges [00:05:00]:
The one thing I want you to know about grief. Grief is not just about death. Sometimes we incorrectly associate grief just with death. That's not what grief is. Grief is where whenever we experience profound.
Carla Arges [00:05:18]:
Loss, and what's profound to one person may not be to another. So we can never sit in judgment over what someone's grieving, right? Like, I've never had a pet, but I have seen friends who have lost.
Carla Arges [00:05:33]:
Pets and go through deep grief.
Carla Arges [00:05:37]:
Now, I can't understand that. That doesn't mean it's not a profound.
Carla Arges [00:05:42]:
Loss to them, right?
Carla Arges [00:05:45]:
And so whatever is a profound loss is grief. And we cannot move through grief except by actually moving through it, feeling it, integrating it, handing it over to Jesus, inviting the Holy Spirit in as our comforter, doing things that support our grieving process. Now, you may have heard that there's different stages of grief, and there are the popular five stages that you'll hear about are denial. And that can often look like numbness or being in shock.
Carla Arges [00:06:33]:
Denial is often the first stage that you hit when you're in grief. Like, I cannot believe this is happening. How is this happening? Right? We're numbed, we're shocked. And then there's other stages.
Carla Arges [00:06:47]:
There's, like, anger. Like, this is unfair. The fact that I'm experiencing this is unfair. That anger can be directed towards others. It can be directed towards yourself. It can be directed towards God. But there's anger. Like, how dare someone put me in this position?
Carla Arges [00:07:05]:
How dare someone make me go through this? This is so unfair. Maybe it's bargaining.
Carla Arges [00:07:12]:
That's another stage where we're like, what ifs? Or like, God, I'm such a good person. How can you let this happen to me? If I do this, can we. Can we reverse the grief somehow? Right? We try to make deals with God. There's depression, you know, that deep sense of sadness and hope, hopelessness. And then finally, if you allow yourself.
Carla Arges [00:07:37]:
To go through the stages of grief.
Carla Arges [00:07:39]:
You get to this beautiful place of acceptance. And in acceptance, the ability to fully live again. Now, these stages are not linear.
Carla Arges [00:07:52]:
There's not a specific order. You move through it. It's not like, oh, I'm in anger now. I'm a quarter of the way through. It doesn't work like that. And some of you might not experience every stage.
Carla Arges [00:08:02]:
Maybe you're not going to go through bargaining.
Carla Arges [00:08:05]:
Maybe you don't have anger, right? Maybe you see that this is a.
Carla Arges [00:08:11]:
Good thing, although it's a hard thing, right? So, for example, Terry's dad, he's elderly, he's sick, right? Him passing for his father's sake is a good thing, so he doesn't suffer anymore.
Carla Arges [00:08:27]:
Right.
Carla Arges [00:08:28]:
We sometimes have less anger when we feel like it's happening at an appropriate time versus if it's a child that is going through something and passes, right? Then we feel more sense of injustice in that. So you might not experience every stage, but my point is that you have to allow yourself to progress through it, because otherwise, you will never lead to acceptance. And if you cannot accept that which you cannot change, you will not live a thriving and abundant life. Do you hear me? If you cannot accept that which you cannot change, you will not live a thriving and abundant life. You know, the Bible is full of expressions of grief. There's so much grief in the Bible. We see it in the psalms. There's a whole book, lamentations, that is expressing grief and that anger and that bargaining and all of that that comes with it.
Carla Arges [00:09:34]:
We see grief in Job's situation, but we know that in psalm 30 418 the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saved those crushed in spirit. God promises comfort and he sent us the comforter, the Holy Spirit, to indwell in us. So that when we do have to progress through grief because we will all experience grief at some point, we don't have to do it alone. We can do it with the comfort and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, in my experience, both with working with clients and in my own life, there's usually two things that keep us stuck from moving through grief, and one is avoiding it. We avoid the pain, and part of that is in our human makeup, right? Our brain is designed to help us avoid pain. And so when we have a painful emotion, when we have a painful experience.
Carla Arges [00:10:41]:
The brain likes to distract us from.
Carla Arges [00:10:44]:
It to avoid it because it doesn't want to feel the pain. The only problem with that is that you can't heal what you don't feel. Avoidance doesn't bring conclusion. Avoidance prolongs the pain unnecessarily and usually adds to it. The friend I want to ask you, what hard feeling of grief are you avoiding? You know, sometimes we avoid grief when it comes to trauma because it feels like it's closely related to memory and we don't want to relive the trauma. But can I tell you that grief doesn't have to be re traumatizing, especially if you grieve in safe spaces. Grief can be a healing balm to trauma when you allow yourself to move through it. I've seen this even in my clients.
Carla Arges [00:11:49]:
As I help them walk through the grief of their trauma, it becomes freedom for them. The other area where people get stuck in not moving through grief is that they set up camp at a particular stage. Like they don't allow themselves to progress. Some people say stuck in anger. They stay stuck, angry. And it can be hard to tell.
Carla Arges [00:12:14]:
That they're actually grieving because they're so angry and aggressive.
Carla Arges [00:12:18]:
They get stuck in anger and in doing that, add burden to themselves, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically, because anger has physical manifestations. Or they get stuck in depression and they just can't move past the hopelessness. They set up camp and the feeling, like these feelings need to be felt to heal. But we're never meant to live permanently in them. We're meant to pass through them. Like we pass through the valley of the shadow of death. We pass through it. We don't stay there.
Carla Arges [00:12:57]:
We don't pitch a tent in those valleys. And so I want to ask you today, are you stuck in anger? Are you stuck in depression? Are you unnecessarily burdening yourself because you can't release yourself from those emotions, because you can't lean into acceptance? Grief is not easy, but what's harder. What's harder is when we prevent ourselves from moving through it fully. That's what's harder. That's what keeps us stuck. You know, I come across so many.
Carla Arges [00:13:45]:
Women that want to thrive in their life.
Carla Arges [00:13:48]:
They want to live in God's abundance, right? In the abundance of the fruit of the spirit. They want to live with ease and joy and peace. And not that the hard things don't happen, but they're able to navigate it.
Carla Arges [00:14:00]:
With a God confidence that they've never experienced before.
Carla Arges [00:14:05]:
And oftentimes, if we look beneath the.
Carla Arges [00:14:07]:
Surface of these women that want to thrive and want to live in abundance.
Carla Arges [00:14:13]:
And want to live in the power that God's gifted them with, what's underneath the surface is unresolved. Trauma is unresolved. Pain is unresolved. Grief is unresolved unforgiveness. We have to resolve it. We have to get to acceptance. And there's no timeline for this.
Carla Arges [00:14:39]:
Friends, I don't want you ever thinking like, man, I'm still grieving. I should have been over this by now.
Carla Arges [00:14:45]:
There's no timeline. Some people move through these stages really quickly. Some people, it takes a lot longer. But as long as you are being an active participant in moving through, you will reach acceptance. As long as you commit to not setting up camp in one of these spots, you will get to acceptance. And acceptance is freedom. Now, acceptance doesn't mean you forget. We don't forget.
Carla Arges [00:15:17]:
I believe in some part we are always marked by our past experiences, that they inform their data points in our life. They don't have to run us. When they're unhealed and unchecked, they run us. We don't want to give them power. The past should not have power over us, but we don't forget it. It can still be something that we integrate into ourselves as data, as a point of reference, as one color in the rainbow that makes us us. So acceptance is not about forgetting. Sometimes people don't like to finish the grieving process when it comes to grieving, a loss of a person, because they.
Carla Arges [00:16:06]:
Are afraid that if they're not grieving, they're forgetting.
Carla Arges [00:16:09]:
If they're not grieving, they're not honoring. And that's simply not true. Acceptance does not mean not remembering. Acceptance doesn't mean negating the importance or the value that something or someone had acceptance means that you're giving yourself the freedom to live according to how God.
Carla Arges [00:16:31]:
Wants you to live.
Carla Arges [00:16:33]:
And that's in freedom, right? Christ came to set us free. And so I want to encourage you today to stop avoiding your grief, but also not to set up camp in just one stage. I want to encourage you to move through acceptance, and I want you to know that grief is not forever if you actively engage in your healing. Grief is not forever. When we avoid it, we extend it. When we say stuck in one stage, we extend it. But grief is not forever. My affirming truth for you today is I can trust God with my grief and hold tight to the hope found in Jesus.
Carla Arges [00:17:21]:
And in psalm 35 it says, sorrow may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Joy is coming. Grief is not forever, friends. Yes, you have to feel it to heal it. Yes, you have to go through it to get to the other side. But there is another side, and there is hope, and there is joy. And it's all found in Jesus. It's all found in heaven.
Carla Arges [00:17:51]:
So, guys, as you continue on with this week, reflect. Reflect where you may be keeping yourself stuck in grief. Reflect on how you can invite the Holy Spirit, the comforter, into the process and start making strides towards acceptance, knowing that you have a hope in Jesus and that joy is coming. I'll talk to you later.
Carla Arges [00:18:22]:
Thanks for joining me today. I hope we're already friends on social, social media, but if we're not, come find me on Instagram at Carla Arges.
Carla Arges [00:18:30]:
Or at affirming truth.
Carla Arges [00:18:32]:
Can't wait to see you back here next week. Bye, friends.