At one time in history, it was brushed under the rug if you lost a loved one. Grieving was considered a sign of weakness to many people and something that might make the situation worse in the end.

Fortunately, this is no longer the case and in fact, people realize that grieving a loss is very important. If you don’t grieve properly, it can affect your physical and mental health, but you also need to know what the benefits are of the grief process.

The Benefit of Grief: Some Examples

Properly grieving a loss has numerous benefits and advantages, and below are some of them:

1.  You Heal Faster

Simply put, you cannot heal or move forward if you do not grieve your loss. During the grief process, you’ll have good days and bad days, but this is both normal and necessary.

If you don’t grieve properly, the pain stays inside of you and makes things worse for you. If you do allow yourself to grieve, you’ll start to feel better sooner, which allows you to go back to being normal eventually.

2.  You Can Eventually Move Forward with Your Life

If you don’t grieve, you will never get back to where you were before your loss. You’ll essentially be stuck psychologically in your dark spot with no end in sight.

If you do allow yourself to grieve, you can count on getting better on a continual basis and each day will bring you one step closer to going back to the way you felt before your loss occurred.

3.  You Can Get Rid of Any Resentment or Anger You’re Experiencing

A lot of times, with grief comes anger and resentment, and it is often difficult getting rid of those things. When you grieve like you should, you can work through that anger and resentment and eventually let go of it altogether.

It may take a while and it won’t happen overnight, but it’s much easier to get there when you’re allowed to grieve.

4.  You Can More Easily Let Go of Your Grief

Extreme grief doesn’t last forever, but if you don’t deal with it in the very beginning, it will stay with you for a very long time, possibly forever.

If you deal with your grief, get the support you need, and deal with it directly, it will eventually be eliminated — maybe not all of it because grief is sometimes a lifelong situation, but you should be able to eliminate most of it.

5.  You Can More Easily Honor Your Loved One

Honoring a loved one is important to most people, and if you cry, talk about the good times you spent with that person, and even rant and rave occasionally, it goes a long way in honoring a loved one.

Of course, the amount of grieving you do doesn’t always tell exactly how much you loved that person, but it is a good way to honor and memorialize them.

6.  You Can Get Some Closure

Closure is sometimes an overused word, and some people think that closure is never completely possible, but grieving properly will bring you at least a little bit of closure, which helps tremendously.

One thing is certain: if you don’t grieve properly, you’ll never have closure, and without closure, you’ll never be able to move past this event and get your life back.

7.  You Can More Easily Understand Your Feelings

Processing feelings and emotions after a loss is very difficult, but if you’re not allowed to grieve, it’s impossible.

Understanding these feelings is the first step to dealing with them properly, and this is exactly what grieving allows you to do. You’ll never do anything without grieving, including getting back to the way you were before your loss.

8.  You Can Feel a Little Less Shameful

Sometimes, the loss of a loved one makes you feel a little bit of shame, but grieving can help you feel less shameful almost immediately. There is nothing wrong with taking a long time to grieve, and proper grieving can get rid of some of those shameful feelings you’re experiencing so that you can get back to normal sooner rather than later.

9.  You Will Discover Other Important Emotions

When a loved one dies, you’ll likely experience many different emotions, including those that have been hidden for a while.

If you have feelings deep inside of you that you didn’t realize you had, they’ll likely come out while you’re grieving. This is a good thing because you can deal with those feelings and begin to move forward with your life.

10.  You Will Have a Sense of Support and Control

Losing a loved one can make you feel as if no one knows what you’re going through and that you’ve lost control over your entire life.

Once you allow yourself to grieve, that sense of control will start coming back, and you’ll feel more of a sense of control with each passing day. Eventually, you’ll feel back to normal again.

Conclusion

Grieving is a very important part of mourning someone’s death because without it, you may never start to feel better. And as the saying goes, it’s going to take as long as it’s going to take, which is different for everyone.

With the right grieving, you can release and deal with emotions, feel less anger and resentment, and even discover emotions that you didn’t know you had.

Remember that grieving is crucial and that it takes a different amount of time for everyone, so never rush your way through it.