When it comes to MS grief, the death of a loved one, relative or even close friend can be very traumatic.
After the initial shock has set in...now what?
Often the death of a relative or someone, who you live with, can mean drastic changes in your living arrangements or in how you are going to survive after the traumatic event itself.
It is tough enough dealing with the stress that the death of a loved one, relative or someone, whom we were close to, can bring but other stresses can also present themselves by the worry and stress that may also follow by you having to move or having to change drastically what you are able to physically do from day to day, which can increase the stress and its effects on actually setting you up for more MS attacks, excitations or relapses.
Stress along can aggravate or even cause more MS attacks or relapses to appear, which can set back your recovery from previous relapses, but to have too many of the typical stressors that can enter our lives to occur way too closes together...
...this can even be more than your body can handle all at once when Multiple Sclerosis is present.
But what can you do to reduce the internal and external stress that you feel, if this is happening to you?
The following tips can help you to minimize the stress and survive the tougher times in life that are closer to a traumatic experience, like the death of a loved one, a relative or close friend.
Tips on surviving MS grief and the stress of your life changing after the death of a loved one can include:
* Admit it yourself and maybe even others around you that you don't like the changes going on in your life, while it happening.
All too often we can either deny how we feel or act like we have to be strong and just accept it.
Just because things sometimes happen to us, which are out of our control, doesn't mean that we have to like it.
* Do what you feel that you need to do for you to get through it all.
Sometimes we need to sort through physical objects or things that belonged to the person that died and that can be a tough job.
This is especially harder to do, if you have a shorter period of time or a deadline that you need to meet by when you need to be done doing this.
But sometimes, just getting it done and working through the grief later can cause us to stress out much less than if we think about every little thing as we have to do it.
* Allow yourself to grieve, when the stress starts to build up to be too much for you to handle.
Crying is a good outlet of our emotions, when the stress becomes too much for us to handle.
Allow yourself some time to think through things...as in re-evaluate where you need to or want to go from here.
The death of someone close to us can make us re-evaluate our lives.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we need to figure out what is really important to us in our lives.
Death has a way of helping to clarify what is important to us in our lives.
* Find a support network, support group or other friends that you can talk to about the feelings that you are going through, who will be supportive and let you "talk it out".
Find an MS support group or a grief counselling group to help you to work through the MS grief.
* Do what you can to help improve your situation in some way.
Sometimes this is easier said than done, but doing something, even if it seems small can help to relieve the internal stress or even the external stress that you are feeling, while going through moving or changing something in your daily life, after the death of a loved one, relative or close friend.
Clean if you need to.
Sort through things if you need to.
Throw things out or give things away if you need to.
Prepare to move if you need to.
Do whatever you need to do for you to get more order back in your life.
* Be thankful for who is still in your life, who is supporting you and helping you through this stressful time for you.
Sometimes, it helps to change your perspective, when you make an effort to be thankful for those who help you through the trying and stressful times in your life.
It may seem difficult at first to be thankful, when you are going through MS grief, but the attitude of gratitude can make all of the difference in you making through the stress, without you suffering more major MS attacks or relapses.
* Don't sit and drive yourself crazy over analyzing things or thinking through things over and over without doing something.
It's okay to think about things...we all need to do this from time to time in our lives, but don't set yourself up for major depression to set in by driving yourself crazy about everything that is stressing you out.
I'm not suggesting not to grieve, for it's part of the healing process, but allowing yourself to focus on becoming upset about everything that is changing in your life after the death of a loved one, relative or close friend will just set you up for more MS relapses or attacks to occur.
When you internalize the stress rather than finding ways to work through it and find ways to go on living life again, this increases the adverse effects on your body by causing your nervous system to short circuit even more than the Multiple Sclerosis can cause by itself.
I'm not suggesting that you forget the person that has died, but to the contrary...
...for the sake of the person that you were close to, who has died, find a way to go on living as a tribute to how much they loved you and how much you loved them.
Your mind has a strong connection to your physical body.
You can use your thoughts and/or your emotions to help guard your body from more harm, because of the effects of MS grief on your body, or you can use focus your thoughts and your feelings for a prolonged period of time in a negative way, which can greatly impact how severe the MS relapses and attacks can become.
We would love to hear what you think!
If you have found this to be helpful or if you have any other comments, leave us your comments.
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