chapter 1

The State of Grief

Grief is a complex emotion that’s often not understood, especially if you haven’t experienced it before. Sometimes a person doesn’t know he or she is grieving. For example, we don’t usually associate “grief” with a job loss. Because of this, we might not completely heal because we don’t know we’re hurting in this area. However, unresolved grief is often an unfinished issue in people’s lives. It can underlie anger, acting out, and depression, and it can cause problems in other areas, such as physical health, emotional well-being, job performance, or a romantic relationship.

What Is Grief?

Grief is a profound feeling of sadness and pain caused by an important loss, change, crisis, or failure, either actual or perceived. Although grief is usually associated with bereavement, many types of loss, such as a job, a move, a failed relationship, or health problems, can lead to grief. There is a whole range of grief, from mild sadness—missing someone or something that’s over in a few days—to abject suffering that can last for many years.

Bereavement means to be deprived by death. Someone whose spouse has died, for example, is said to be bereaved.

Because grief is often an unknown reaction, one you usually don’t experience until you have an important loss, it catches people off guard. It’s similar to other feelings you’ve felt, yet grief is still a unique experience. Grief is also unpredictable. It also differs in various circumstances, so you might not recognize it. Even if you’ve been through times of grieving before, no event feels the same. You can’t anticipate what your grief will be like, or how long it will take to recover.

When you’re grieving you can feel like you’re going crazy or something is wrong with you. One of the benefits of educating yourself about grief is the sense of relief you receive from knowing what are normal reactions. Learning that you’re grieving helps you make a shift in your coping. You have an emotional label for your reactions; you aren’t weak, crazy, or overreacting. As painful as it is to settle into your grief, you can also have a sense of relief, as in, “Now I understand what’s happening to me. I’m grieving!”

The ability to identify what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling it helps put your emotions into perspective. They aren’t any less intense, just more understandable. Without the fear of being “crazy” or the pressure to change, you have more emotional resources to manage your grief. You can allow yourself to feel instead of worrying about your reactions.

When Ben’s wife died from a cancer that quickly progressed, he took bereavement leave for six weeks before returning to his job. While at work, he was able to compare his pre-loss performance and his post-loss functioning, and could see a distinct difference, which worried him. He began to question how he was handling his grief and wondered if he’d come back to work too soon. Yet he also loved his job, and his boss and co-workers supported and cared about him.

Ben brought his concerns to me. “I’m so up and down. Sometimes I’m fine, then I’m struggling,” Ben told me. “Sometimes I feel sad, and I’ve teared up a few times at work. I can’t concentrate much.” He gave me an anxious look, which eased when I reassured him that his reactions were normal. “Sometimes I feel like my muscles are sore, especially my shoulders, for no reason that I can tell,” he added.

“That’s normal, too,” I said. “You’ve been carrying the weight of your world—your wife’s illness and death—on your shoulders. You’ve probably been very tense in the last few months.” Ben straightened in his chair. He looked relieved. Now he could stop worrying and focus on work and his recovery.

Even though aches and pains are a normal reaction to a loss, make an appointment with your doctor to rule out any physical causes.

Grief is complex and multilayered. Many in the depths of grief find words inadequate to explain how they feel. Others, especially those grieving the death of someone close to them, use words like “raw,” “unpredictable,” “empty,” “terrified,” “isolated,” “confused,” “exhausted,” and “wild” to describe their emotions.

To grieve means to acknowledge in your heart, and to others, that your loss meant something to you, and that now you must honor the importance and pain of that loss. The reality of the grief journey—the sadness, tears and fatigue, the alteration of normalcy, changes in family, distancing of some friends and family—can be confusing, lonely, and difficult. Times of grieving can be the darkest, most troubled of our lives. Some who become mired in their grief can grieve for the rest of their lives.

However, you need not grieve forever. Part of recovery involves the knowledge that you need to give yourself the space to grieve for as long as it takes. Your journey from pain to recovery begins with the belief that you will come to terms with your loss. When you become discouraged, remind yourself, “I will recover. It will just take time.”

A Universal Experience

Grief is a universal human experience, a theme that winds through the seasons of our lives. No one escapes the pain of suffering losses through death and other circumstances. As the years pass, we will experience times of our own mourning, and we’ll support others through their sorrow. Sometimes, we’ll go through a period of little or no loss. Other times, losses will pile on us in a weight that we think we cannot bear. Then there are those in-between phases, where we have space to recover before the next crisis hits us. Or the loss is small enough to heal quickly.

While grief is an emotion, mourning is a state of being, a time of grieving where the individual focuses on his or her sadness. This length of time is different for everyone. There is no “normal.”

Because grief and grieving eventually happen to all of us, it’s important to know how to cope in the best way possible. While what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another, there are many similarities to the grieving process. Often your best resource is others who’ve been through the same experience. They can support you throughout the crisis and to recovery. But family and friends can still listen and be there for you even if they haven’t had the same personal experience with grief.

Not Just Sadness and Disappointment

Grief is different from sadness and disappointment, although those feelings are included in the bundle of emotions that are part of grief. Most people have experienced sadness and disappointment before. Often things that cause these emotions first happen during childhood and adolescence. Learning to deal with these feelings is part of growing up.

Grief is characterized by pain and sadness, but a lot of other feelings and reactions comprise grief. (Chapter 3 delves further into grief reactions.) While sadness is a response to loss, you might also experience it from the following:

• Loneliness
• Someone or something hurting you
• The pain of others (including animals)
• Feeling troubled
• An unhappy event or one or more painful circumstances in your life
• Feeling discouraged and/or hopeless
• Pain from your past
• Feeling “blue” or “down”

We all experience disappointments, both large and small, throughout our lives. You feel disappointed when someone or something doesn’t meet your expectations. You can be disappointed in yourself, in others, in things, in an ideal, or in an experience. The more you risk, the more you can feel disappointed by failure. Most disappointments are easily set aside, but others remain life-long feelings. If the pain of the disappointment is sharp, and the person doesn’t let it go, it can turn into bitterness.

However, you can utilize disappointment to grow and change. You can reevaluate what caused your disappointment and use it to increase your efforts. You can head in a different direction, or let go of someone or something. You can also channel your sadness and disappointment into creativity. Your feelings can inspire stories, art, poetry, and music.

Grief Is Different for Everybody

Grief often has an abrupt beginning—an event happens, and you’re plunged into mourning. Other times, the loss is gradual, and you might have a corresponding slow build-up of grief. Sometimes it might take you a while to realize you’re grieving. According to grief experts Russell Friedman and John W. James, authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook (see the Resources appendix), more than 40 events can cause grief. However, there may be far more than 40 events. We assign personal meaning to times, places, feelings, objects, our bodies and health, people, and pets. A loss that to many people isn’t a big deal (something that might not even register on their emotional scale, such as the loss of a pet) may be very meaningful to someone else. Because grief is emotional, it doesn’t always make sense.

It’s important not to judge the grieving of others, because we can’t determine for someone else what’s important or how he or she should feel and behave.

There are some similarities and patterns to the grieving process. However, grief is as individual as the person who feels it. No two people will grieve the same way. Everyone’s emotions are unique to them. The effects of a loss, and the amount and way someone will grieve, can be based on many factors, such as …

• Spiritual beliefs.
• Life experiences, especially of other losses.
• Types of loss suffered, and the circumstances of the loss.
• Developmental and cognitive abilities.
• Meaning assigned to the loss.
• Physical health, age, gender, and culture.
• Personality, temperament, and attitude.
• Family pattern of grieving.
• Social support and other meaningful activities in one’s life.

Misconceptions About Grief

A lot of myths exist about grief and grieving, especially when it comes to bereavement. Friends, family, co-workers, and even some religious advisors and counselors can cause harm to those who grieve, even though they mean well. They can give the wrong advice, or they can, subtly or overtly, criticize the person’s grief journey.

Because of these misconceptions, the grievers may fail to process their grief in the healthiest ways. They may think something’s wrong with them. Or they might try to avoid or suppress their feelings, which can lead to prolonged grieving and physical health challenges. Or they can become hurt and angry with those offering the “advice” and argue with them or withdraw.

To process your grief means to allow yourself to feel your emotions instead of suppressing or avoiding them. You explore what you feel and why you feel the way you do. You come to accept your emotional state.

It Will Pass

“Time will heal your pain” is a common misconception, as if the passage of days, months, and years is enough to make people feel better. People often toss this cliché at grievers, as if bestowing a great piece of wisdom. Even if it were true (which it isn’t), what good does some hope of future relief do for someone who is grieving now? Often, after a loss, especially bereavement, people can hardly put one foot in front of the other. They’re not sure if they can bear their grief for another 10 minutes, much less until a hypothetical future.

The truth is that time alone will not heal you. Time does help in that, eventually, you adjust to the loss. Time doesn’t erase your emotions. You can still miss what and whom you lost. What the grievers do with the time is what makes the difference. If you just sit in a chair and stare out the window, waiting for time to heal you, you might be there a long time. You’ll collect a lot of dust, but you won’t make much progress.

A small number of people may experience delayed grief. Initially, they may think they’re fine (although perhaps they may be numb) and that feeling may last for weeks or even months before they begin to grieve.

Everyone Sympathizes

Most people do sympathize, but not everyone. Some people are too self-centered, busy with their own lives, or uncaring to feel for you, much less support you. But just because people sympathize doesn’t mean they express their sympathy to you. They may do the opposite and avoid you. Or, if they say something, it may not come across in a helpful manner. Because most people don’t receive education in talking about uncomfortable subjects, much less grief, they may handle the situation poorly for several reasons:

• They’re uncomfortable.
• They don’t know what to say, and are afraid they’ll say the wrong thing.
• They don’t like to see someone else’s pain.
• They don’t like the reminder that loss can happen to them.
• They’re already negative people, so critical comments are consistent with their personality.

It’s especially difficult for people to know the best way to support the bereaved. Many people would rather say nothing at all than say the wrong thing, and that can come across as uncaring. Most don’t know that a simple sentence such as “I was sorry to hear about your loss” can make all the difference. Chapter 13 will go into greater detail about what to say (and what not to say) to someone who has had a loved one die.

People who are grieving often learn not to show how they feel. They try to share their feelings and perhaps aren’t met with understanding, or maybe they’re shamed by critical comments. To avoid the shame of others’ implied or outright judgment or criticism, grievers often isolate themselves further to protect themselves. Yet that very isolation adds to the deep loneliness they may feel, and it lengthens (or even stalls) the recovery process. Chapter 18 goes more into how to take care of yourself when someone is unsupportive.

When Diana’s house caught fire and burned down, she was traumatized and grief-stricken. But she found, when she tried to talk about losing her house in the fire, people kept telling her, “You should be grateful everyone got out safely.” Diana was so very grateful that her family and their pets were all okay. But she was still upset about losing her house and wanted to share her feelings. Because she wasn’t able to do so, she found herself becoming depressed.

While lack of understanding while you’re grieving is often painful, the positive part of a loss may come from the unexpected support of some individuals or groups. For example, people you work with but don’t really know give you a hug after the death of a family member, neighbors organize a clothing drive for your family after your house burns down, or strangers send money after reading about your loss in the newspaper. If you allow it, those who surprise you by reaching out can often balance (although not erase) the hurt of those you expected to be there for you but weren’t.

Distraction Helps

People are often told to “keep busy,” as if distraction will make them feel better. Often grievers will try to exhaust their bodies so their thoughts will stay away from their grief and/or so they can sleep at night. Sometimes this is possible. Other times you’ll feel tired and sleepless.

Dan and his 32-year-old son, Gary, worked for the same company. Gary was a fun-loving guy who enjoyed riding motorcycles. On one weekend trip, he was killed in an accident. Dan was devastated by the death of his son. He couldn’t escape reminders of the pain because memories of Gary were around him at home and at work. While he and his wife deeply grieved together, when he was at work, Gary appeared to shut out his grief. He threw himself into his job and didn’t talk much about his son. He became irritable and critical. Distraction was the only way he knew to avoid feeling his pain. His co-workers had no idea how much he was grieving.

Distraction does help, but only to a point. While meaningful occupation can be comforting, frantic busyness only serves to help the individual avoid feelings. Compulsive housecleaning, extensive yard work, and long hours spent on the job are all ways to avoid your feelings. However, some tasks such as cleaning and organizing your home are a way to feel in control of something (your environment) when you have no control over the death of a loved one or other losses.

In a recent workshop, I discussed ways of reducing stress and asked for examples from the audience. One participant mentioned that she cleans. I joked that cleaning would make me feel more stressed, and everyone laughed. But this is a good example of meaningful occupation. For this woman, cleaning has always helped her. Therefore, if she experienced a loss, using it as a way to cope would make sense for her. Even better would be if she’d allow herself to stop and reflect and perhaps cry when she dusted an object that reminded her of her loss. It’s important to pick activities that help ease your stress rather than just exhausting you.

If you spent your time distracting yourself, your grief may remain underground, but not healed, and may spring up when you pause. It’s important to balance periods of busyness with times of quiet. That might mean you’ll start to feel and grieve when you pause. But that’s what you need to do. Giving yourself this space is taking care of yourself.

Mandy discovered this for herself. She spent the first year after her beloved mother’s death trying to distract herself through compulsive shopping, even though she’d never really liked to shop. She spent money she didn’t have, which made her feel guilty. Finally, Mandy stopped shopping. As the reality of her mom’s death set in, Mandy spent much of the second year in tears. It took a time of “real” mourning for her to move on from her deep grief.

One way distraction helps is to be of service in some way. Volunteer to assist those less fortunate. (There are always people who have it worse.) However, don’t do this in the early phase of your grief. If you get too caught up in a cause, you may not have room to process your feelings.

Don’t Think About Sad Things

Grief isn’t something that’s controllable, yet some people believe it’s better to try to restrain it. They’ll tell you to put sad things out of your mind. Many grievers would love to follow this directive if they only could, but there’s nothing they can do to control their emotions. They feel the way they feel, and they can’t stop it. Whether they like it or not, their thoughts are preoccupied with their loss.

The lack of knowledge about grieving, accompanied by a suppression of feelings, can cause emotional blockage (or even damage), which can prolong recovery. It can also lead to physical stress or illness. People tell themselves, or are told by others, things like this:

• “Shrug it off.”
• “Don’t think about it.”
• “Stuff happens.”
• “Don’t dwell on it.”
• “What’s done is done.”
• “Think about the good things in your life.”

Part of processing your loss is thinking about what makes you sad. You will return to your memories many times. Even though they may make you sad, they can also bring you comfort. Processing your grief, including the sadness, is a necessary part of recovery.

It Could Always Be Worse

People tell themselves this phrase as a way to comfort themselves. There’s nothing wrong with feeling some gratitude for the blessings you do have, even though you’re grieving a loss. Holding on to gratitude is a helpful way to balance out your sorrow. Yet you can also use this platitude to cut yourself off from experiencing the full range of your grief.

When Nancy’s 5-week-old son died suddenly, the only way she could get through the shock and pain was to tell herself, “At least it wasn’t Donna.” If she felt that much sorrow over the baby, how much more devastated would she have felt if she’d lost her 4-year-old daughter? Only years later did she realize she’d learned the “it could have been worse” philosophy from her mother, and had used it at the time because she didn’t know how else to cope. With hindsight, she saw that if she’d been able to talk to supportive people, especially other mothers who’d been through the experience, she would have dealt with her son’s death differently.

That doesn’t mean you won’t hear or read about someone else’s grief story that is far worse than yours, and you can find yourself moved by their plight. These moments might give you some perspective and make you feel grateful for what you do have. However, these experiences must come from your own encounters in life, not those imposed on you by others.

People can use this cliché as a “band-aid” to try to put over the wound of someone’s grief. They don’t know how to be with your feelings, so they attempt to stop your pain. They think they can point you in another direction, which will make you feel better. While you might agree that things could be worse, it probably doesn’t make you feel better.

Like anything else in life, it matters how you take care of yourself during your time of grieving. There are things you can do that aid in comforting and healing yourself. There are also things you can do that aren’t beneficial. Chapter 20 will help you explore ways to cope with your grief.

Essential Takeaways