What is Grief?

Grief

You may also hear it called Bereavement or Mourning.  In it's most general terms, grief is a reaction to major loss, and is usually an unhappy and painful emotion.

Loss can take many forms.  Most associate it with death.  You can also grieve because of a divorce, loss of a friendship when you feel betrayed, loss of your home when you move, loss of a limb, or any situation that changes your life as you've known it, such as learning you have a chronic illness.

According to the US National Library of Medicine, the acute phase of grief usually lasts up to two months.  Milder symptoms can last for a year or longer.  If you know someone grieving and want to help support them, this is useful information!  People are expected to be back at work after 3 days.  In many cases, almost all of the support disappears after the funeral.  But the pain lasts MUCH longer.

WebMD has a great description of grief and its symptoms, including the effects of it for children of varying ages.  They list the following symptoms:

• Physical expressions of grief often include crying and sighing, headaches, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, weakness, fatigue, feelings of heaviness, aches, pains, and other stress-related ailments.
• Emotional expressions of grief include feelings of sadness and yearning.  But feelings of worry, anxiety, frustration, anger, or guilt are also normal.
• Social expressions of grief may include feeling detached from others, isolating yourself from social contact, and behaving in ways that are not normal for you.
• Spiritual expressions of grief may include questioning the reason for your loss, the purpose of pain and suffering, the purpose of life, and the meaning of death.  After a death, your grieving process is influenced by how you view death.

Taking a look at the effects grief can have at different ages is definitely worth it, so I encourage you to check it out: http://www.webmd.com/balance/tc/grief-and-grieving-symptoms

You may be aware of the 5 Stages of Grief.  For a long time, I've thought they were a load of crap.  I've now learned the reason as to why they are, because of what they have been turned it into, and I've gained a lot more respect for Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who created the hypothesis.  You may disagree with me, and may have learned a lot from the stages which is GREAT.  I'm speaking from my own experiences.  They did not help me, but I'm always happy to know people are getting information that helps them.

The stages are:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

If you read my "About the Author" section, you learned most of my experience is with sudden, tragic loss.  With my situation, these stages are not very applicable.  There's no denying the person is gone - they're gone!  That's that!  And what would I be bargaining for?  Them to dig themselves out of their grave and suddenly be alive again?  That's ridiculous.  And creepy.  So, yes, to me this theory hold no weight.  Then, I was reading a book co-authored by a man who lost his wife.  He mentioned the 5 stages in relation to witnessing the dying process - losing someone to cancer or some other terminal disease.  This made so much sense to me, I decided to do some research.

It turns out, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross worked with terminally ill patients.  Her whole theory was based on what these people and those close to them go through when they are dying.  Then, on top of that, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross willingly admitted that this list was not a complete list of the emotions gone through in this situation, AND they can happen in any order.  She even said not all 5 of these emotions will be felt with everyone.  So basically, it seems her "hypothesis" would more accurately be described as "observations."  They are just common emotions that occur.  She did later say it applied to any loss, and with many different types of loss, I don't think it contradicts.  But when it comes to sudden, untimely death, she loses credibility in my eyes.  We could just list all negative emotions and say that people who are grieving go through them, but not all of them, and in any order.  I honestly don't know how her stages gained such traction.  She did a lot of good for the medical field in helping with grief, and I wish there was more focus on that than on these stages.

Through the last couple years I've made many observations on my own experiences as well as those around me experiencing such difficult tragedies.  I finally found a book that has followed my observations exactly, Recovery From Loss by Lewis Tagliaferre and Gary L. Harbaugh.  It has been so useful.  Tagliaferre and Harbaugh refer to William Warden's "tasks" of grief.  They then modified Warden's tasks and integrated portions of Kübler-Ross's work.  Without knowing these tasks, I've been through every single one in my commitment to myself to work through my grief.

These tasks are:
1.  ACKNOWLEDGE.  This is confronting the reality of death.  Although we are aware the death happened, the reality takes a while to actually register.  The first task is to register this reality.  Tagliaferre and Harbough suggest repeating the end of life story facilitates the absorption of the reality.

2.  FEEL.  This is feeling the impact of the loss, including feelings of anger, guilt, depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and more.  It is such an accepted idea to push our feelings aside because we have expectations put on us - we have things we need to get done, and apparently taking care of ourselves isn't one of them.  Anger and sadness are BAD.  FALSE!  We have feelings for a reason!  They are what they are, and they will get worse if we ignore them.  They will rot inside of us and cause infection.  Finding a safe, non-judgmental space to feel our feelings is an ESSENTIAL step to working through what we're processing.  Feelings also cannot be rushed.  Working through them takes time, and we will cycle through them many many MANY times before we are done.  (By the way, we are never done FEELING!)

3.  SUBSTITUTE.  When we lose something or someone, we feel the hole that is left there.  So what is our first instinct?  To fill it!  However, jumping to a premature substitution to avoid uncomfortable feelings can stifle the process of recovery.  The loss needs to be felt!

4.  DETACH.  At some point, mourners need to withdraw from their investment in the past and detach or disconnect from the one that was lost and the life as they knew it that is gone.  Tagliaferre and Harbaugh suggest this may be the most difficult and lengthy task.  Worden notes there is a difference between linking objects, transitional objects, and keepsakes.  Holding on to linking objects can prolong the mourning and detaching process.  Transitional objects facilitate moving on.  Keepsakes can provide lifelong comfort in the memories they hold.

5.  RECONSTRUCT.  Eventually, mourners must reconstruct a new life.  With a significant loss, life as they knew it is gone.  After their life has crumbled to the ground, the debris must be cleared away and something new must be built.  This task often requires reevaluating behaviors and values as well as constructing a new system of interactions with others.

Although it doesn't feel pleasant, grief is a healthy and necessary response to loss.  If losses are not fully grieved in a healthy way, the effects of each loss accumulates.  In the long run, it feels better to feel the loss than to push it deep inside.  Grief is not to be ignored or avoided - doing so can cause WAY worse issues such as severe depression, or symptoms of trauma.  Someone avoiding grieving may find themselves depending on alcohol or drugs for temporary relief.  It only makes it fester inside of you and grow worse.  Do not ignore grief.  Respect it.  Sit with it.  Talk about it.  Read about it.  Gather support around you, or be the support for the person you know going through it.  People often think that feeling pain or not being able to function at your normal pace is a sign of weakness, like something is innately wrong with you.  We have feelings for a reason - they are telling us something we need to pay attention to.  Being able to face the pain and sadness, being able to process it, takes unbelievable strength and in reality is something others admire.  And when you've gotten through it, you'll recognize you're stronger than a lot of people you know.