Experiencing Grief
“Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” ― Vicki Harrison
As a clinical social worker who has worked in private practice as well as in ICUs, emergency departments, and trauma bays, I have had the honor of connecting with individuals at all different locations of their grieving journeys. Many ask me variations of the same questions: What does grieving look like? Am I grieving enough? Am I grieving too much? Should I be less sad by now? More sad? Is it weird that I haven’t cried? Is it weird that I’m crying so much? Why do I feel angry? Why do I feel relieved? Grief, like so many other things in our society, is subject to scrutiny and this sense that we “should” be doing something or feeling something different than we are. Despite our attempts to characterize grief as a straightforward and neat process with stages and beginning and end points, the truth is that grief is messy, and it never really ends, and we need to accept the mess on some level in order to heal. And of course the concept of healing is complicated because we frequently conceptualize healing as a return to one’s previous state of being, but to lose someone is to be forever changed.
Here are some of the concepts I explore with the clients and families I work with who are experiencing grief:
Grief is not linear. While the conceptualization of “stages” of grief is not completely without merit, I believe this has contributed to the expectation that grief after a loss follows a basic pattern, and this often creates pressure to perhaps just get through the process. But, you may find that you feel you’re back to moving along through life as you had before, and a certain song, or place, or activity makes you feel, at least temporarily, like the loss was just yesterday. This is absolutely to be expected and does not mean you haven’t made progress in your journey, whatever that ends up looking like for you.
There is no right or wrong way to grieve. Even grieving is subject to self-doubt and comparison, and I’m eager to tell you that you’re not doing it wrong. Sometimes people are surprised by the magnitude of their grief and others wonder if they should be worried that they aren’t feeling overwhelming sadness. Grief takes as many forms as there are humans who have lost someone they love. While we can identify themes and commonalities among the grieving, it is a very individualized experience. This also explains why, despite the fact that we are surrounded by other individuals who have experienced loss, grief can sometimes also feel isolating.
Grief can bring forth complicated and at times conflicting emotions. If the person who died was in a great deal of discomfort or pain at the end of their life, died by suicide, if you found your relationship with this person to be challenging, or had been the caregiver for this person for a significant amount of time, you may identify feelings of relief, confusion, maybe even anger towards the person. These emotions may be accompanied by feelings of guilt for experiencing anything other than, or in addition to, sadness. This guilt can perpetuate a cycle in which you berate yourself for feeling what you are feeling, thereby intensifying the negative emotions of the loss. I encourage you to do what you can to push back against the guilt, telling yourself that nothing you are experiencing is invalid.
Reconceptualize grief traditions that are/have become painful or re-traumatizing. I worked with a client several years ago whose young adult daughter had died suddenly a decade prior. Since then, on every anniversary of her death, she engaged in a remembrance that included multiple activities and family members. She acknowledged that this process had, over the years, become increasingly painful and challenging for her, but she felt she had to keep it up to honor the daughter she loved and missed so much. Every story she told me about her daughter highlighted how joyful and fun she had been and we spoke about how she might feel knowing her mother was remembering her with a ritual that had become painful for her. After some discussion and exploration, my client planned a new tradition that both honored her daughter and brought her joy. Consider planning and participating in grief traditions that are joyous celebrations of the life of the person you lost.
Try to acknowledge and accept emotions as you experience them. Most of us are wired in such a way that our automatic reaction to negative emotion is a danger signal and desire to get rid of them as soon as possible. Since this is not how emotion works, we then berate ourselves for our feelings (see point #3), and for not being able to better “control” them. This cycle and belief that we “should” (there’s that pesky word again) be in better control makes us more susceptible to symptoms of anxiety and depression. When a wave of unpleasant emotion washes over you, envision yourself riding with it for a bit until it hits the shore. While it may feel counterintuitive at first, doing this will actually minimize the overall impact of the perceived negative emotions.
