So, I am sure you are asking, what do ping pong balls have to do with grief and loss? I am so glad you asked! Most of us know what happens when we play ping pong and the ball goes rogue. The ping pong ball bounces off the edge of the table, it goes one way, then the other, then you chase it round and round in a circle, then you fall backwards on your rear-end, then it bounces off your head, hitting the wall, and rolling under some weird piece of basement furniture….”Ugh you think, not again!” This is more like what grief and loss feels like than those Five Stages of Grief everyone talks about. Now, I am not saying there are not certain aspects that are all relative to grief and loss, such as the Five Stages; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, but it is not necessarily linear stages, nor does it go in a nice round circle to a certain end. It bounces around like a ping pong ball. One minute you are crying because you saw a certain type of flower that reminds you of your loved one, the next you are laughing hysterically because you recall that memory you have of your loved one who went down a waterslide and flipped over, then you go back to tear-filled eyes because you realize you won’t be able to make any more memories with your loved one, then you are mad because you aren’t able to laugh with them anymore. And on, and on it goes, from one emotion to the next, sometimes by the second, sometimes by the hour, and occasionally by the day, but more often moment by moment. Have you ever felt this way? Wouldn’t it be nice if grief and loss were linear, or cyclical because we would know when it was going to end, we would have some hope of it ending as we neared that depression stage because we could say, “Hey, that’s nearing acceptance, I’m almost done with this!” Unfortunately, grief doesn’t come as cut and dried as this, it bounces around like that unfortunate ping pong ball that sometimes gets lost under some dusty piece of furniture. That feeling of being lost without our loved one is another aspect that isn’t necessarily described in grief because it can hit us years after the loss. For example, if we lose a parent when we are young, we can think about them when we get married, when we have their grandchild; the one they never get to meet, And BOOM! There we are in those grief stages again, crying about our loss, often years later! Once, again, “Ugh!, I thought I was done grieving!” you think. Honestly, we never truly finish grieving, we simply enter that acceptance stage more often than the others. The other annoying thing about grief is that it doesn’t just apply to death, which has finality. It encompasses all kinds of loss; loss of a spouse due to divorce, loss of relationships with your ex-spouses relatives, loss of a pet, loss of a limb, loss of physical health, loss of stability, loss of innocence, and that’s just to name a few in today’s society! Also, did you know that cultures used to allow for us to truly grieve, I mean, people wouldn’t leave their houses for a year or more after a death, and after that they would wear black because they were mourning until they determined they were done grieving. In our culture today, we get the time off for the funeral, then we go back to the grind. How are we supposed to truly grieve? We don’t get our quiet moments to think about our loved one(s), we push our emotions down, we don’t deal with the loss, and if it wasn’t a death we are dealing with, we really don’t get a moment to grieve our losses. Is it no wonder people have trouble in the aftermath of grief and loss? So, have you ever felt like a ping pong ball? If you have, there is hope, one of the best things to do is to reach out to someone who understands, someone who has been there before, someone you can connect with. It can’t hurt more than bouncing around along like a ping pong ball.

Kristen Swart, MSW, LSW is an individual, marital, family, and group counselor at Peace Counseling Group. We serve the communities of Carmel, Zionsville, Westfield, Indianapolis, Fishers, and Brownsburg Indiana.

Address: 9640 Commerce Drive
Suite 413 Carmel, IN 46032

Phone: 317.605.7015

Email:

nancy@peacecounselinggroup.com

Grieving is a Ping Pong Ball

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