Understanding Grief: how to help our hearts feel lighter
Welcome to another edition of The Mind and Company’s blog! This month, we’re bringing you articles centred around grief, loss and coping, in honour of All Soul’s Day, and in an effort to help anyone as much as we can. The situation in the world right now is tough, and even situations far away can have their impacts on us. Before we move on to the finer details, let’s try to understand the grief we hold.
No matter how prepared we may be to face loss, grief can sometimes smack us like a train at full speed or it can slowly creep up on us and sink into our lives as the days go by. It’s easy to say that we need to be aware of it, and take care of ourselves, but the very nature of grief is such that it can change our perceptions of the world and of ourselves.
And yet, can we try to break it down to understand it?
While there are no definitive stages of grief, many grievers experience some common responses:
1. Reduced concentration: A griever may find themselves in the bedroom with an idea to retrieve something from the kitchen. However, upon arrival, they may have no idea why they are there or what they intended to get. A preoccupation with the emotions of loss and an inability to concentrate appear to be universal responses to grief.
2. A sense of numbness: Grievers often report that the first reaction after being notified of a loss is a sense of numbness, which can be physical, emotional, or both. The duration of this numbness varies for each person and is not a form of denial, as commonly mislabeled.
3. Disrupted sleep patterns: Grievers may struggle with either insomnia or excessive sleep, sometimes alternating between the two.
4. Changed eating habits: Grieving can cause some people to eat much more than usual or eat much lesser than usual.
5. Roller coaster of emotional energy: Grieving is often marked by rapidly shifting emotions, which can leave us feeling emotionally and physically drained.
Just as grief is a normal aspect of our lives, so are the symptoms of grief. One cannot prescribe who will feel which symptom and for how long they will persist.
You’ve most likely heard of arguably the most popular stage model of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance, given by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Through her lifetime, Kübler-Ross authored numerous books on the theory of grief based on her experiences with her clients. Let’s understand a bit about each stage:
Denial:
When we are first faced with the death of a loved one, everything may seem fuzzy and blurry in our minds; it involves a denial of the disastrous event or denying its intensity. In the beginning, we try to get through each day and survive enough of life to make it to the next. Denial can be a form of grace in the beginning- our brains only allow in as much grief as we are capable of processing at that moment.
An example of this could be “He told me he was on the way home, so he’s going to be here in a little while”, when the reality is that an accident could have occurred on the way home.
Anger:
One of many universal emotions, anger is widely recognised, accepted and yet feared in society. Anger can act as a barrier against the pain; it becomes an anchor for ourselves- if we feel anger at ourselves, at our loved one who died, at doctors, family members, even God, it becomes something solid to hold on to in the midst of what seems like vast nothingness. An example of this could be anger directed at God, if an individual has faith: “Why didn’t God protect us?”
Bargaining:
One gets caught up in the “if-onlys” and “what-ifs” of the situation- they bargain for the lives of their loved ones, in a desperate hope to turn back time and save those they love. Guilt may often accompany this stage and it may be a result of thinking that perhaps one could have done more. This could look like, “Please, come back to me and I swear I will never complain again!”
Depression:
Once we’re able to focus on the present, the reality of the loss might hit us, and we may feel as though the grief will never end, we may question the point of continuing life without our loved one and feel completely hopeless.
Acceptance:
Acceptance does not mean being completely okay with one’s loss, it means learning to live with the loss, accept that our loved one is not around any longer and try to reorganize roles and actions in a way that allows us to cope with the loss. Acceptance means having more good days than bad days, and accepting change, growth and evolution.
It’s important to remember that in her book, ‘On Death and Dying’, Kübler-Ross wrote about these stages of grief with respect to the dying person’s own feelings, and not those of others, though she did mention that close relations might face similar emotions. It’s also important to remember that it is just a theory, so there hasn’t been evidence-based studies to prove it. In fact, numerous studies since then have criticized and disproved these stages.
Not everyone may follow these steps in this particular order, which may lead to them facing adverse consequences for it. It is possible to accept death without bargaining and denying it.
In light of the criticism the theory faced, Kübler-Ross modified the stages to include 7 stages:
Sometimes, we cannot classify grief into stages because there is no structure to it. Stroebe and Schut from the Utrecht University in Netherlands proposed another model of grief that they termed the dual process model of coping with bereavement. They said that we can have either a loss orientation or a restoration orientation. When a person concentrates on an aspect of their loss, they lean more towards loss orientation. Thus, when one ruminates, longs or years for someone who has died, when they relive the memories they have with the person and when they cry, they are said to experience loss orientation.
Restoration orientation on the other hand, includes shifting one’s focus to other aspects that may also come about as a result of the loss. This may involve handling the other changes in our life that may arise as a result of our loved one’s death: dealing with insurances, loans and payments, shopping for groceries, managing the house. These new functions may understandably act as increased stressors. It may also include a role reversal for some people and include a necessity to take up functions and roles previously performed by the loved one.
Rather than stages of grief, these are approaches on how one handles it.
One more important way of understanding our grief can be in terms of Avoidance or Approach. Sometimes, we may tend to ignore or avoid situations or events that remind us of the loss in our lives and bring up negative or unpleasant emotions for us. Avoiding our grief can, however, lead to it being more long-lasting, due to a delay in experiencing other emotions related to it, and being unable to weave memories of the loss into memories of our daily lives.
Approach involves a willingness to acknowledge the impact of the loss in one’s own life and confront it either directly or indirectly. It involves actively engaging with the emotional pain in our lives and could involve speaking about our pain, our memories with the deceased, journalling or expression in other forms. It may bring some relief to us.
An important thing to remember is that Avoidance and Acceptance are not independent of each other; when grief hits someone, they may move back and forth between the two.
Our grief is also defined by the culture we live in. Some cultures accept open expressions of grief and encourage remembering the dead each year while others believe in a very short mourning period, after which life continues on. Our very understanding of death and what occurs after death may be different: the Hopi of Arizona are afraid of death, and so they tend to somewhat dismiss the event. In contrast, some Japanese people believe that the dead become our ancestors and so contact may be maintained with them. It is important to keep in mind that there is no right or wrong, cultures around the globe are simply different. Our family structures influence our emotions in a major way as well.
These are only some of the numerous models of grief proposed in the literature, which just goes to show that there is no “normal way” to grieve. Grief has the odd nature of knocking on our doors and inviting itself into our homes, and getting quite comfortable on our couch, in our living rooms. And yet, it is important to remember that just as there is an end to all things, there is an end to grief as well (or a management of grief). Nobody can prescribe exact stages of how to grieve because they simply don’t exist!
So, if you are someone who is grieving or if you know someone who is grieving, please remember to be kind and patient, with yourself and others. It can be hard at times, but remember that grief can actually change our BRAINS. It feels heavy and deep, because it is. But it’s not hopeless. The world can be tough to live in sometimes, and grief is bound to come to our doorstep at some point or the other, but I hope you believe that you can keep going and find your good days.
One day, grief will start moving towards the corner of the couch in the living room, giving you more space to be comfortable. It will keep moving, until YOU are the one lounging on the couch, and you’re not afraid of the little grief in the corner. I hope that day is soon.