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Helping people process grief

Dr. Amy Beth Taublieb, a licensed psychologist, wants you to know that it's OK to give yourself permission to not be OK.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Right now, we are processing emotions that many of us have never felt before, and Dr. Amy Beth Taublieb, licensed psychologist, wants you to know that it's OK to give yourself permission to not be OK.

"We need to look at this the same way we would look at any other grief response," Dr. Taublieb said.

Numbness, sadness, anger. Dr. Taublieb says they are all normal feelings. And it's normal to keep going through them all for quite some time.

"We have to give ourselves permission to not be OK and let our kids see, you know, it's really scary for us too," Dr. Taublieb said.

She says we need to recognize that this is more intense than anything most of us have gone though before.

"When we walk into a grocery store, when we send our kids off to school, we do not expect to have the horrific experiences that these individuals have had, so we don't have the blueprint. So it would be very weird, it would be very, I hate the word 'abnormal,' if we reacted to this in a calm, unaffected manner," Dr. Taublieb said.

Dr. Taublieb adds that children at different developmental levels may express their feelings in different ways than we do, so we need to know and respect that.

"And the key here to making it out the other end is to give ourselves permission to feel what we feel," Dr. Taublieb said.

Tending to your own needs is also important. Dr. Taublieb says that can be going out for coffee with a close friend, talking with a clergy member, or going in for some therapy. She says treat yourself the way you'd treat a good friend who is going through a tough time.

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