Those grieving over Christmas should remember they have survived other days and will survive the holidays, a psychologist has said.
Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show today, Niamh Fitzpatrick said it doesn’t have to be your first Christmas without a loved one for it to be difficult.
“Whether it's your second Christmas or your fourth Christmas or your 15th Christmas or your 30th Christmas, there'll be people listening here now who are missing loved ones,” she said.
“It's the ‘most wonderful time of the year’ is what the song says to us, but if you have that empty chair and you're missing that person, it can feel like a disconnect because it doesn't feel like necessarily the most wonderful time of the year.”
'It's still just a Monday'
Ms Fitzpatrick lost her own sister Captain Dara Fitzpatrick in a helicopter crash in 2017, which she documents in her book Let Me Tell You About Loss: A Psychologist's Personal Story of Loss, Grief and Finding Hope.
She said the first Christmas after her sister died was a Monday.
“I reframed it and I said to myself, ‘When it comes up to these couple of days before Christmas, if I find it overwhelming and I can't cope, I'm going to remind myself that with everything else going on... it's also still just a Monday and a bit chicken of dinner’,” she said.
“I kind of said that to myself jokingly in the beginning, but it became quite comforting because there's that sense of when we take away all the layers, you magnify it and realise just as you have survived every other day of grieving, you will survive this.”
'I'll sit with you in the dark'
The psychologist said if you know someone who is grieving at Christmas, you shouldn’t “force them into merriment and festivities”.
“Being authentic is really important to us, and really good for us,” she said.
“Don't shove people into a space of having to get involved with festive celebrations.”
She also said common phrases people share with those grieving are not always comforting.
“Don't worry about trying to say something to ‘make them feel better’,” she said. “Just be with them when they're feeling awful.
“There's a lovely expression which says, ‘When you cannot look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark’.”
Children grieving at Christmas
When it comes to grieving children at Christmas, Ms Fitzpatrick explained, they have their own unique attitude.
“When we think of the grief of children, if you can think of a puddle as being sort of the big space, where all their feelings around their losses,” she said.
“What happens with children is sometimes they will jump right into that puddle, and they feel all those feelings of loss.
“But when it becomes overwhelming... what they will do sometimes is they'll jump out of that puddle and they'll say, ‘Can I go and play with my friends’ or ‘Where's the dog?’.
“That doesn't mean that they're not grieving... it just means they’re coping.”
She said it’s important for everyone to understand that people grieve in their own ways, and over Christmas, those people need the space to learn how to cope.
