Coping with Loss
Letia contacted me a couple of months after a miscarriage in her ninth week of pregnancy. Letia was finding everyday life difficult, especially at work in a customer facing environment where she couldn’t hide away on days when she wasn’t coping as well.
Grief is a process which I believe should not be meddled with unnecessarily but when the emotional overwhelm of loss is causing a woman to feel she is unable to cope on a day-to-day basis, then a little therapy can make a very positive contribution to her emotional healing and make life much more manageable.
Miscarriage is a huge shock for any woman who finds herself facing this unexpected outcome. My work with women who have experienced loss both in early and late pregnancy has confirmed for me over the years, that grief cannot be measured in weeks or months of gestation. Whether we intend to or not, we can all find ourselves becoming emotionally connected to our babies from the moment we see proof that we are expecting. It is only natural to become excited and find our minds wandering to baby clothes, nursery furniture, prams and seeing our newborns becoming part of our immediate and extended family. When we lose our babies, the impact is devastating at any stage.
Letia had fallen pregnant naturally and in all the excitement, she had shared the good news with family, friends and work colleagues very early on in her pregnancy. When we met for therapy Letia said she just wanted to curl up and shut the world out. When I asked what her dominant emotion was, she described a feeling of numbness and disbelief, so this is where we started in therapy, clearing the shock and trauma of her loss. As we cleared these emotions, Letia described feelings of anger and overwhelming responsibility for the miscarriage. As we cleared these emotions we also dissolved feelings of guilt and shame too.
The emotions which surfaced next were connected to Letia’s physical loss. We gently worked through feelings of finality, lack of control, overwhelming grief and guilt. As these emotions cleared, Letia acknowledged feelings of jealousy towards the women she knew at work who were expecting and feelings of suffocation and overwhelm when she found herself surrounded by pregnant women in everyday life, so these were worked through as well.
Next we cleared feelings of guilt, shame and failure for letting her partner down and embarrassment for sharing the good news so early with many people, despite her partner’s reservations about telling anyone too soon. Letia was also struggling with feelings of shame and embarrassment when friends asked her how the pregnancy was going and she felt obliged to share news of her miscarriage.
As the emotional overwhelm dissolved, Letia started to look visibly relaxed and regain colour in her face. She commented on how relieved she felt and as we talked a little more about the future she said she was going to try again in a few months time.
The final issue that cropped up as a result of this conversation was a fear that a miscarriage might happen again. Whilst we couldn’t guarantee outcomes in the future, we could certainly dissolve this unfounded fear, so that Letia could get on with her life and not have unnecessary feelings of foreboding overshadowing a positive test result in the future.
If you would like help to ease the emotional impact of an early or late loss in pregnancy, then my Pure Therapy Programme page will give you more information on therapy when you want to find out a little more. Alternatively, you might prefer to use the form below to drop me a line or call and speak with me directly on 01276 21386. I'm here to help when you are ready to talk.
Conception & Birth Services
Pure Therapy Programme Brief therapy to dissolve your fears, phobias, anxieties and any emotional trauma. This programme focuses on calming your mind, restoring your confidence and self-esteem, giving you back a sense of control in your life as well as the clarity to make important decisions.
Essential Support Programme Regular, short check-in sessions by phone to keep you calm, relaxed, optimistic and positively focused between significant milestones from conception to birth. The therapeutic toolkit enables sabotaging emotional wobbles to be dissolved in an instant.
HypnoBirthing® Classes The ultimate in birth preparation classes to teach both you and your partner how to use hypnotic relaxation skills, special breathing techniques and endorphin releasing massage to manage the physical demands of labour and feel calm, relaxed and confident during the birth.
Parent Coaching Programme No baby arrives with a manual and few parents have endless hours to devour a ‘how to’ book. Parent coaching is a supportive route to helping you create your own practical solutions to whatever parenting challenges you are facing, in time sensitive short sessions.