No two ways about it grief and loss are heart centred, attachment focused experiences, and sadly our culture does not cope well with the intense emotions and reactions that grief and loss can cause.
In our society, people tend to be intolerant of strong reactions to pain. After a very short time, even after a sudden or traumatic death, other may use clichés to placate feelings and say things like ‘buck up’, ‘think of the kids’, ‘every cloud has a silver lining’, ‘it’s God’s will’, ‘he or she is in a better place’, ‘they wouldn’t want you to be upset’, ‘you’re young enough – you can have another baby’, ‘you can get married again’… While usually expressed from a place of concern and a genuine belief that getting upset is bad for you platitudes and clichés are designed, consciously or unconsciously, to PREVENT feelings being expressed.
If you do show distress openly, you may be described (or describe yourself) as ‘breaking down’, ‘falling apart’, ‘cracking up’ or ‘not coping’. All of these terms are derogatory and patronising, and demonstrate a lack of understanding of the nature and process of grief. Conversely, if you demonstrate stoical restraint when someone you love had died (or left you) you are likely to be described as ‘brave’, ‘strong’, ‘courageous’, ‘holding yourself together’ or ‘coping well’. All of these expressions are cxamples of how language is used to prevent or control expressions of feelings.
So write the authors of Coping with Grief.
In truth this is no right or wrong way to grieve and we will all “grieve as we have lived”, the problem only occurs when we are forced out of that natural pattern or told to act in ways to make others comfortable.
“For example, when an expressive person is forced to contain emotion, they may later experience physical symptoms or even physical illness.”
This is a point the David Dawkins also makes in his book Letting Go : The Pathway of Surrender. According to Dawkin blockages of the expression of grief due to complicated feelings (especially when some one dies or leaves that we may not have had the most straightforward of relationships with) lead to blockages in our energy body and meridian or energy pathways leading to disease in organs.
Failure to work through any of the various emotions associated with mourning and loss can result in chronic stuckness in any of its components. Thus it can result in prolonged depression, and prolonged states of denial in which the death of the person is actually denied. Chronic guilt or refusal to work through the emotions associated with loss can result in delayed grief reaction and physical disease.
It is said the we can only assist ourselves and others with the grief process by accepting certain truths about grief, and by giving people the necessary permission to find a way to express or move through grief that suits them.
Mal and Dianne McKissocks; book Coping With Grief is an excellent concise guide to the grief process, it is now in its fifth edition.
Following are seven principles of grief and grieving that they list in the introduction to their guide.
- It is normal and healthy to experience intense and painful emotions when grieving any significant loss.
- Expressions of grief help bereaved people to live with loss.
- A bereaved person may experience a wide range of feelings – shock, sadness, anger, guilt, despair as well as relief, hope and acceptance.
- Bereaved people do not grieve in stages – grief is not linear but chaotic – an ‘all over the shop’ experience.
- Painful feelings decrease in intensity over time IF THE BEREAVED PERSON RECEIVES THE KIND OF COMPASSIONATE SUPPORT THAT IS RIGHT FOR THEM. If intensity does not abate after a significant period of time, that may be an indication the professional help is required.
- A total absence of observable grief may also be an indication of the need for professional help – an emotional ‘check up’.
- Bereaved people that have not been helped to express grief in ways that are right for them are more vulnerable to physical and psychological illnesses in the long run.
It is not hard to see the unresolved grief often lays at the base of so many mental and psychological maladies. Not all experiences we have can be processed due to the fact our process will often receive nil validation and we may never have been educated in any thing other than a socially sanctioned stoic response to grief. I can certainly bear testament to this in my own life
In his book David Dawkins cites the case of a female client who did not grieve the loss of an emotionally unavailable mother for more than 22 years. The woman in question ended up with a myriad of physical symptoms including breathing problems. When granted assistance to work through delayed mourning she eventually was able to release many of her symptoms. It time she undertook training to work as a therapist with the dying in a hospice programme. This is a beautiful example of a path her soul chose for her due to past traumatic experiences, her own challenges must have taught her much and helped her to be a guide for others, something that would never had happened had the true causes of her symptoms remained unrecognised.
Grief involves a process of letting go of attachments that are no longer meant to last, on the physical plane, the degree to which we experience eventually a degree of serenity and acceptance depends on the ability we develop to open to and express and move through (and eventually reconcile or let go off) all the associated feelings and emotions. We can lock down in our grief and refuse to accept the loss. In his book Dawkins gives the example of a mother who lost her son and over time alienated everyone around her with expressions of anger which never broke through to the deeper feelings of impotence and powerlessness associated with the deep grief and sadness buried underneath.
Writer C S Lewis noted that he eventually realised, following his wife’s death that dealing with grief was akin to dealing with fear. Loss of attachments may make us feel as though we are falling through space, as if the ground underneath us has fallen away, we will in grief be launched upon a deeply complex process that has physical, emotional, mental and deeply spiritual aspects, for many of us death, grief and loss may offer a pathway in to the soul, opening us up in ways we would never have experienced had we not been forced to negotiate the critical loss.
Emerging From The Dark Night 