Moving Through the Impact of Grief

Grief is part of the human condition and fairly universal — it would be difficult to find someone who hasn’t experienced grief.

While challenging under the best of circumstances, when grief becomes overwhelming and invades every aspect of your life, there are places to turn to for assistance. 

In this blog post, board-certified psychologist Dr. Trey Cole and our team at Quandary Peak Counseling take a deeper dive into grief and loss and how it can affect your mental, emotional, and physical health in significant ways. We also explain how we can help ease this journey.

There’s no shortage of grief

Grief is all around us and, as we mentioned, most everyone experiences grief at least once during their lives, if not many times. Grief can come from many different sources, such as:

• Losing a loved one
• Trauma, which affects about 70% of adults in the United States
• Illness
• Regret
• Loss of a job
• Divorce or a breakup
• Loss of a pet

While time can heal some of these wounds, up to 20% of people carry their grief with them, which is called complicated grief. 

When grief overwhelms

If you’re finding it tough to break free from your grief, we’re glad you’re reading this. Complicated and intense grief can exact a heavy toll on all areas of your health, including  your mental and physical health.

If you’re wondering whether your grief is normal or potentially problematic, we first want to say that all grief is normal. But if you’re experiencing ongoing issues (months or more) of any of the following, it might be time to seek help:

• Feeling overwhelming sadness, hopelessness, or numbness
• Recurring dreams that are far from comforting
• Crying a lot
• Brain fog
• Sleep issues — too little or too much

Many people who are grieving develop symptoms of depression, or they turn to substances to numb themselves to grief, which can quickly lead to substance use disorders.

Grief rewires your brain — new neural pathways form in response to grief. Under ideal circumstances, these neural pathways are healthy ones that help you cope and move forward. 

All too often, we see the opposite occur, and your body enters a long-term stress response that keeps your grief front and center. This effect can also impact your physical health as the stress response leads to system-wide inflammation in your body.

Moving through grief

Given the widespread impact that grief can have on your life, we urge you not to go it alone. We are well versed in helping patients navigate grief and get to the other side. 

Through one-on-one counseling, we help you to process the grief in a way that’s healthy, leaving you with better memories and the ability to move forward.

For compassionate help with your grief, we invite you to call our office in Denver, Colorado, at 720-675-7918, or request an appointment online today.