I’ve got another activity for you to try. When we think about things that help grief, we also think about things that don’t help it at all. Sometimes, we don’t know either of these things until we try to interact with other people or situations. Then, we might realize that certain friendships become extra special to us or that something like getting a pet ended up filling a tiny bit of that emptiness in our souls. On the flip side, we might realize that we didn’t like something that was said to us or how we were treated during such a rotten moment in our lives.
Because we’re extra sensitive after grief, especially the early stages of grief, our reactions to both the good and the bad are going to be tuned way the heck up. If someone does something really kind to you and it wound up being exactly what you needed in that very moment, you’re likely to cry. If someone does or says something really mean to you during this time, you’re also likely to cry. Of course, I’m speaking from my own personal experience, as I cried quite a bit (and still do sometimes) when someone either helped or harmed me regarding my grief. And what can add extra conflict or confusion is when the help or the harm come from the same person.
Purpose
So, here is a quick, little activity for us to do together. I will refer to it as the Helping Hand/Harmful Hand Activity. We’re going to label things that help with grief and things that harm it. It’s a very simple and therapeutic activity that combines a little bit of art and a little bit of writing.
Above, I mentioned interactions with other people a lot as a contributor to both. But direct deaings with people don’t have to be a factor at all. Sometimes the things that help are indirect interactions or have to do with animals, or nature, or food.
For example, maybe you might find the following helpful:
- Eating ice cream
- Adopting a kitten
- Going to a museum
- That a friend gave you a gift certificate for a massage
- That family made you your favorite dinners for several weeks
- That someone in grief support group gave you a hug
Here’s some things you might find harmful:
- Being told your loved one is in a better place
- Being ghosted by someone you thought was your friend
- Being told you’re overreacting
- Seeing happy-in-love couples or families at the store after losing your spouse
- Nightmares
Materials
- 8 x 10 piece of white paper (you can use any color really, but white will probably show your writing the best)
- Colored pencils or markers
Instructions
- We’re going to do your helping hand first. Pick a colored pencil or marker of your choice and trace the outline of your hand on one side of your paper. Choose a color that you find matches the tone of “Helpful”.
- Then, choose another color and trace the outline of your other hand right next to it. Choose a color that you find matches the feeling of “Harmful”.
- For your Helping Hand, pick more colors that match the feeling of positivity and write down inside your hand what helps you with grief. If you don’t know, write what you would think would be helpful. If you don’t want to fuss with color picking, you can just take a regular pen or pencil and write with that.
- Same thing for your Harmful Hand, pick a color or colors and write down what you hate that people say or do during this time or other things that trigger you or in general, just make grief worse for you. And don’t be afraid to be totally raw about it. Just say it like it is. As the saying goes, “Talk to the hand.” This can be cathartic and relieving to do on paper since usually we filter out this kind of thing when actually speaking to people, especially well meaning people. You can also use the Harmful Hand to list your grief triggers.
My Result
This is another activity I did with my family. For me personally, I would have to say I probably enjoyed the “Harmful Hand” more than the Helping Hand. Usually, when we do art therapy activities together, we do ones that center around more positivity or comfort. That’s what the Helping Hand is about. And it’s nice to find out what comforts you. But having the Harmful Hand was different because it focused more on saying:
“Hey, these are the kind of things that get under my skin and I really can’t stand them and I swear if this happens one more time, I’m going to explode into five million pieces and each piece will catch on fire and launch itself past the very edges of the universe.”
Every single one of us found it a little relieving and validating to just list those things inside our Harmful Hand and not get any judgment about what they were. Not everything was full of rage, mind you, some were just pricky aggravations.
So, here is my result. I felt like I scribbled like crazy in this activity and that I had a lot to say, especially in my Harmful Hand. I spend so much time trying to present a calm, serene persona in reality (sounds like we need to do a “mask activity” sometime) that it feels a little weird but relieving to just flat out say, you know, this kind of thing does not help me at all during grief. And actually, they wouldn’t help anyone at anytime.
(I know we want to be all about no judgment but I still want to explain one thing in my Harmful Hand that mentions language classes. At the time of this activity, I was having a really difficult time with these classes while finishing my degree. I entered them soon after my grandmother died. They were stressing me out and I had a couple of teachers who weren’t very nice or patient. That’s all. I wouldn’t want any of my visitors to think I’m against learning new languages because I’m not. It just wasn’t a good time for me after losing her to begin learning a new language.)
I also found that I had one conflicted item that wound up in both hands, on purpose. If you feel like it, see if you can find it.
Your Turn
Now, I want to hear what you find helpful and what you find harmful for you during your grief journey. I am hoping that you find writing down these things inside your own hands will be some form of validation for you. A way to know that what you are going through and what you feel and think during this time is important. Especially for something like the Harmful Hand, because I’m betting that you also often put on a mask just the way I mentioned that I do when we’re out and about with others. We don’t make a point of telling people to shut up or stop doing certain things because most of the time, we’re dealing with friends and family who are often well meaning. Of even if they’re not, sometimes we feel guilty for expressing our true wants and needs simply because they are the people closest to us.
But as I like to stress, here I don’t want any kind of judgmental environment for you or for me. So, if you feel okay with sharing the words from your Helpful and Harmful Hands in the comments below, I would love to hear from you.
And as always, take good care 🙂