The Fear of Opening Up

Alex Mammadyarov, MHC

Grief is a complex collection of emotions that can feel scary to begin opening up and looking through…even with support. One of the most common concerns I come across from grieving people entering my practice is the fear that once they let their emotions out in the session, they will not be able to stop the outpouring. 

It’s an understandable fear: What if the flood of tears never ends? What if the pain never lets up?

In order to survive, it must. Being in the deepest depths of grief is not something that can happen at all times. If that were the case, we wouldn’t be able to function in our daily lives, welcome new experiences, make space for the good or envision a future.

It can also be daunting to let emotions surface because so many spaces, unlike that of the therapy room, actually encourage keeping grief packed up where no one can see. Being welcomed to do the opposite and let it all hang out while relieving, may not come so naturally. 

This doesn’t mean, however, that it’s best to keep grief packed away. 

It’s actually vital that we work with grief little by little, slowly releasing the valve. By doing this, we lessen the blow of a potential explosion that may take us by surprise. We also do not have to process grief from a place of fear, seeing it as purely a means of preventing distress. Of course, grief waves do occur, sometimes seemingly unprovoked by anything in our environments. Opening up the valve also serves as a meaningful process in integrating the existence of loss into our lives. By doing so, we can tap into something quite transformational. When catharsis happens, we free up more space within ourselves to assess how loss has impacted us, our desires, our values, and our sense of identity. From there, meaningful and unexpected shifts may take place. 

So, how do we confront the fear?

Being transparent about this fear as you build a relationship with your therapist helps create a space in which you are both on the same page. The therapy room should be a safe container where you can step inside, open, and process, trusting that the person sitting across from you will help things feel sealed enough at the end so that you can comfortably re-enter the outside world. It may even be beneficial to request that the last five or so minutes of the session are reserved for a grounding practice.

For those who already encounter challenges with emotion regulation or have a highly sensitive nervous system, facing all of these feelings in session can be especially daunting because people generally find that in grief their emotions are more unpredictable.

This is where skills of mindfulness and self-soothing are helpful to build. Grieving people tend to become acquainted with the existence of grief waves - essentially minutes, hours, or even a few days that feel heavy with emotion. There is often a fear here that we are going backward when in truth, grief is just doing it’s thing, coming to the surface and then fading into the background. It can be helpful to work on identifying warning signals that a wave is coming, places and things that can activate a wave, and self-soothing techniques that work for us. Sometimes, this looks as simple as the way we talk to ourselves about what is happening - I’m experiencing a wave of grief. It makes sense that I feel this way. It’s okay to feel this way. It will pass.

One practice that may also be helpful to form is creating a safe and grounded mental space to return to via visualization when feeling overwhelmed by emotion. We can tap into the rich interior worlds we possess by visualizing what it looks like, smells like, and we can touch there, what we can hear, and what we can taste. Knowing that we can close our eyes, take some gentle breaths, and drop into that safe place can aid us in feeling more comfortable going to places where deep emotions lie. 

Like many other things in life, opening up to the myriad of emotions that exist within grief, is scary, yes, but also so worth it.