Loss

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Life, Love and Work: How to Navigate Life in the Workplace After A Loss

Life cannot be compartmentalized. Life and loss happen at the same time that you are expected to fulfill obligations at work. Here are some tips for dealing with challenging life events and remaining productive.

The challenge of maintaining emotional stability at work while going through a divorce, death or other major loss is called a “dual process” – on the one hand, you are navigating your loss, and on the other hand, you are getting back into your life and its obligations.

It is important to attend to your loss.  If you try to push your loss under the rug and not deal with it, this can lead to delayed grief, a form of complicated grief.  In order to prevent this, it is important to have support – reach out to others who have gone through a similar loss.  Join a support group. Get emotional sustenance from your spiritual community.  Get professional support from a counselor specializing in grief and loss.  Express your feelings to a trusted friend or co-worker.

Grief and loss can make us question things we always believed in, and journaling or other forms of expression can help us create meaning.  Take care of your physical health.  Grief is extremely stressful in all areas, including the physical.  Make sure you’re getting enough sleep and eating healthily.  See your doctor to support you in maintaining your physical health.

If you attend to your physical, emotional and spiritual health, you will be more successful in re-entering the workplace and maintaining emotional stability on the job.  Don’t forget, though, that you aren’t perfect and that “grief spasms” can come without warning.  If you get sad or angry and start to cry or snap at a co-worker, excuse yourself.  Take a two-minute break.  Breathe in cool, nourishing air, and breathe out stress and tension.  Roll your shoulders and neck as you breathe in this way.  Feel your feet grounded firmly on the earth. It may be helpful to confide in a trusted co-worker, and ask him or her to remind you to take those mini-breaks.

It is important, though, to maintain a balance regarding how much you share about your personal situation at work.  If you feel that your feelings around your divorce or other loss are interfering with your job performance or if your situation requires you to take time off from work, you may want to explain to your boss — in professional and non-emotional terms — what is going on and that you are going through a difficult situation and you are confident that you will get back to peak performance shortly.

It is also good not to confide in too many work colleagues about your personal life – keeping a boundary between your personal and professional life is important in all circumstances.   Additionally, work can be an “oasis” where you can just do your job and put your feelings aside for a while.  We all have our own balance point, and it is important to be mindful when you are tipping to the side of expressing too much about your personal life.

If you are unable to get the emotional stability to do your job, whether you are feeling overwhelmed by your loss, are finding that the pain of your loss remains fresh with little relief, are having intrusive thoughts that are preventing you from sleeping, having negative beliefs about yourself or other difficulties, a therapist who specializes in grief and loss can be extremely helpful.

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The Use of Narrative Therapy in the Transformative Work of Healing Painful Life Transitions

Helen Keller has said that “the only way to get to the other side is to go through the door.”  This is certainly true in the work of transforming painful emotions, such as those we experience after a divorce, into healing and growth. This process involves allowing ourselves to feel the intense emotions of grief – sadness, anger, despair and other difficult emotions, as well as tapping into our internal strengths and external sources of support.

Narrative therapy and has been used with a wide variety of difficulties and issues, including reactions to a major life transition.  The role of the narrative therapist is as collaborator or co-author with the client.  As such, the narrative therapist partners with the client to explore the stories that give meaning to the client’s life (White, 1995). The The

Narrative therapy is thus an empowering vehicle for “re-authoring lives” (Carr, 1998, p. 468; White, 1995), in which the therapist takes the role of a partner or collaborator with the client, rather than an authority figure (Angell, Dennis & Dumain, 1999).. The narrative therapist partners with the client to create a safe place to feel the emotions of loss and change, and to explore the stories that give meaning to the client’s life. The use of narrative or story is a useful vehicle for making meaning and sense of difficult experiences in our lives, by allowing us to access alternative cognitions and gain self-knowledge.

A narrative therapy tool that is often used in this work is the use of written expression, such as journaling and letter writing.  This can be a powerful vehicle for expressing the emotions of loss and change and accessing the individual’s unique internal strengths and resources.

The collaborative approach of the narrative therapist can be useful for accessing the client’s spiritual strengths by respectful inquiry into the client’s worldviews, including his or her beliefs before the loss, and how they may have changed since the loss, and discussing spiritual and existential issues that arise in this context. (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2000, p. 167).

As one gets in touch on a deep level with his or her own suffering and resiliency in the face of that suffering, he or she can begin to get a panoramic view of the human condition and tap into his or her spiritual strength. Religious and spiritual beliefs have been observed to be one way in which individuals create meaning and a sense of order and purpose to the human condition and its difficult transitions (Golsworthy & Coyne, 1999; Calhoun & Tedeschi 2000).

Narrative therapy can be an effective tool for working painful emotions and finding new meaning in one’s life.  The process of expression literally takes deep feelings out of the body, externalizing them so that they become workable. Through this process, my clients are able to see that they have some control over their lives, and can tap into their strengths and their inherent wisdom.  With my guidance as a partner on the path of healing painful life transitions, my clients can discover their unique strengths, resources and resiliency, deepen their spiritual beliefs, and enhance the meaning of their lives in the context of the human condition.