to grieve for any type of loss

​‘No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear’ (A Grief Observed, CS Lewis).
 
‘Your former life still seems to exist, but you can’t get back to it……The process creates panic and guilt’ (Hilary Mantel).
 
To grieve means to feel intense sorrow for a loss.  Grief is usually associated with a death, but we may need as much support for the intense sorrow caused by another type of loss.  Sometimes a divorce, the loss of a career, or the estrangement of friends or family can be experienced as devastating and as shocking as a death.  However, society does not often expect the term ‘grief’ to be associated with any loss other than the death of a loved one.  If someone is divorced, if they lose their career, or if they become estranged from a friend or family member, there is rarely the same level of support as when there is a death.  Instead there is (at best) a bewildered silence, or (at worst) an unspoken assumption that the person experiencing the loss is in some way to blame.  So what can help someone who is grieving for a loss other than the death of a loved one?
 
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified the following five stages of grief –

• Denial – Without denial of the loss, there is a danger that our feelings might become overwhelming.  Denial helps us to survive the initial experiences of loss.  Once denial subsides, this is when feelings flood in, and sometimes this is when we need support the most.
• Anger – People often try to look on the bright side of loss, but allowing yourself to truly feel your anger can help you move on through the stages of grief.  Kubler-Ross referred to anger as a means of giving you some sort of connection after feeling lost in a sea of grief.
• Bargaining – This is when we are consumed with the ‘if only’ questions.  This is often a painful stage because it can involve self-blame – for example, if only I had worked harder, if only I had reacted differently, I might not have lost this.
• Depression - This is a natural and expected stage of grief but there is a tendency to look on this as a symptom to ‘cure’.  Instead, it is useful to think of it as part of the healing process.
• Acceptance – This is not necessarily a point when the loss is viewed as a positive thing, as that may never happen.  Instead, this is about accepting the reality of the loss, and this is the new world we live in.  It is one thing to accept a loss intellectually, but to accept it emotionally is quite something else.

Some have criticised this as an over-simplification of what is essentially a complicated process, but Kubler-Ross responded by clarifying that the five stages ‘were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages’.  She explained that ‘our grief is as individual as our lives’, and the five stages ‘are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling’.  Whatever the truth, the important question is whether or not you find these five stages to be helpful in making sense of what you may be experiencing.  Some of my clients have said ‘yes, this helps me to make at least a little sense of what I am feeling right now’, and other clients have found other concepts more helpful.
 
Here are some of the other concepts that have helped grieving clients –

• Allow yourself to grieve at your own pace – Some clients have tried to push through their grief in the mistaken belief that there is a ‘normal’ amount of time to process their loss.  Often clients have felt under pressure to ‘move on’ because a friend or partner has been pushing them to do so.  Perhaps the friend or partner has become anxious in the face of this grief because they fear the prospect of experiencing a loss of their own.  This is akin to someone who may avoid someone who is terminally ill because they fear their own mortality.  According to the fifth edition of the DSM, if intense grief continues for more than twelve months, this may be considered a disorder.  However, some say that there is not enough evidence to support the distinction between normal grief and a mental disorder.  When clients realise that they have been given permission to grieve at their own pace, a tremendous pressure is often lifted, and sometimes just alleviating the pressure of expectation can help the client move a little further through their grieving process.   
• Consider the importance of personal rituals – George Bonanno has studied grief for a number of years, and he has found that between 50 and 60 per cent of those studied showed no signs of grief after a month, and some even within a few days (‘The Other Side of Sadness’).  Michael I. Norton and Francesca Gino (Harvard Business School) identified one common factor amongst this significant proportion of people, and this was the use of a personal ritual during the grieving process.  The personal ritual is to be distinguished from the public displays seen in religious ceremonies, because the personal ritual can be done in private.  You could recite each day a poem you once shared with this family member, or you could have a walk in a park that you used to enjoy with a friend.  At times you may feel lost in the darkness of grief, and so to hold onto something familiar can be extremely comforting.  Jules Evans discussed the importance of rituals in response to a death, because ‘it’s hard to invent your own response to death’, and the same can be said for your response to any other loss.  If we suddenly find ourselves divorced or unemployed, we can find it hard to make sense of our new identity, and so, as Evans points out, a ‘ritual is comforting, enabling us to express something we struggle to put into words’ (Philosophy for Life). 
• There is strength in breaking down - When people ask us how we are, they rarely want to know the truth, and they want even less to see an open display of emotion.  Some people believe that grief should be kept “under complete control by strength of will and character, so that it need be given no public expression” (Geoffrey Gorer).  If you sense that someone is expecting you to maintain this ‘complete control’ (perhaps translated into the ‘stiff upper lip’) and you end up breaking down in tears, perhaps their discomfort is less about your strength and more about their insecurities.
• The degree of loss is directly related to the quality of relationship you once had – Learning how to grieve for a loss may depend on the quality of the relationship you had with the person or career you lost.  For example, if you had a violent relationship in your marriage, or an intense relationship with your career (viewing it as integral to your identity, for example), then the loss of that marriage or career may take longer to work through. 

Over a number of years the concept of a ‘death cafe’ has gained in popularity.  This is a place where people can meet and increase ‘awareness of death with a view of helping people make the most of their (finite) lives’ (deathcafe.com).  Perhaps it is time to start a Grief Café, where people can meet others who need to share their experiences and understanding of grief as a result of any type of loss.  I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

​Chris Warren-Dickins LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in New Jersey. 
To book an appointment, please telephone +1 (201) 862-7776 or email chris@exploretransform.com

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