- Edith Eger is a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor and psychologist who dedicated her career to helping people with post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Eger, who released her new advice book “The Choice” in September, told Insider there are three keys to overcoming grief.
- No matter the source of your grief, you should embrace negative emotions, engage in positive self-talk, and reconsider your priorities, Eger said.
In 1944, 14-year-old Edith Eger was just trying to survive. Eger and her entire family, who came from Hungary and were Jewish, were being held in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
A year later, after her parents had been killed, Eger and her sister were found by an American soldier among a pile of dead bodies in Austria.
Eger, now 90, went on to get married, move to the United States, and complete a doctoral degree in psychology.
In her latest book “The Choice: Embrace the Impossible,” Eger shares the lessons she’s learned coping with survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder, and how working through these issues brought her a newfound sense of personal freedom.
Eger told Insider her top three tips for coping with grief and growing from it.
When someone experiences grief due to a lost loved one, irreparable relationship, or other difficult event, it’s normal to wonder when the all-consuming feeling will end.
But according to Eger, embracing tough emotions like anger and sadness is necessary if you want to move on in a healthy way because “there is no forgiveness without rage.”
“You’ve got to go through rage, but don’t get stuck in it,” Eger told Insider.
She said expressing these emotions through action, rather than bottling them up inside, is the best way to process your grief.
“The opposite of depression is expression, so go for a walk to the beach and kick the sand and scream it out. And cry,” Eger said.
Read the article by Julia Naftulin in Business Insider Australia.