Coping with Grief 101
The loss of any loved one can bring about almost overwhelming feelings of grief. It is a painful process, but there are ways of coping with grief that can help you move from the initial shock and emotional upset, to a place where the loss does not feel so raw. Some people get ‘trapped’ because they are not able to process their grief. There is no one right way to do it. Everyone is different. But there are recognized strategies than can help people cope with grief and emerge stronger than ever through what they have learned from the grieving process.
If you’ve lost a friend, relative or even pet, Coping with Grief 101 is designed to help you understand grief, process it and move on despite your great loss.
TO REGISTER:
To start studying this course, click on the button on the right, BUY NOW, to pay for the course. You will be asked to create a user name and password for this site. Once you have set up your free account, you can buy any course on the site. Pay via PayPal or any credit card.
Once you have paid, return to this course page. Instead of the BUY NOW button, you will see a “Start the Course” button instead. Click on it to start studying now.
Note: You may have to REFRESH the page for the button to update.
Navigate though the course through hitting the buttons at the bottom of each lesson to move forward, or use the clickable table of contents that will appear once you start the course to move up and down to the different sections if you wish.
This course was prompted by my work over the past 20 years as a life coach, but also my most recent experiences. I lost my mother, brother and aunt all in the space of 18 months, in a series of sudden deaths that left me reeling.
Mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer on December 4, 2014 and put on chemotherapy. She died on January 29, 2017 because she had gone into septic shock. Apparently her doctor had warned her about the symptoms but she had tried to avoid going to the hospital because she disliked it so much. She was 72 and had been in great health up until September of that year, when her ‘indigestion’ started to become noticeable.
My brother died almost exactly 1 year later after shoveling snow in his driveway. He had forgotten to get gas for his snowblower. His 8-year old son found him dead on the sofa when he tried to ‘wake Daddy’ to come have dinner. He was 53.
My aunt died in August 2015, oddly of the same thing that had killed her sister 18 months before, septic shock. She had been happy, positive and cheerful only days before.
Sepsis is one of those things you wish you knew more about when hospital staff tell you it’s the diagnosis. I was asked to do her eulogy by her family because they were all sure they would break down and cry. I wasn’t far off it by I did my best.
The trouble with grief is each time we have a loss, it often reminds us of other losses. When the deaths are all sudden, as in all these cases, with no warning, it can leave you reeling and wondering what next. There is the emotional side of your loss, and sometimes the practical side too, as you suddenly find yourself having to arrange a funeral or cremation when you’ve never done it before, and trying to notify people of all the plans when you literally have no idea how to contact many of them because all the computers and phones are passworded.
In this course, we will be talking about the emotional side of grief, and how you can cope with what has happened to you and your family, and how to move on from a place of darkness to one of light.
We will also talk about grief in relation to the loss of a beloved pet. In a lot of cases it can hit us even harder than the loss of a person, harsh as that may sound. Why? Because unlike many people, pets give us unconditional love and companionship. There’s no past history of spats, unkind words or ‘issues’ to be dealt with when a pet passes, there is just the gap they leave in your lives because your cherished little furry friend isn’t there any more.
But let’s get started by meeting the instructors for the course, and getting your downloads.
Annabelle Stevens has been a life coach and grief counselor for more than 20 years. She is the author of more than 50 self-help guides.
Evan Stevens is a counselor and inspirational speaker.
