Chapter 2
Compounding the Problem
Grief is difficult enough without added complications. Unfortunately, many factors can compound our reactions to loss and limit our recovery. This chapter will alert you to some of the pitfalls that can stall or short-circuit your recovery.
Many people are familiar with the pioneering work of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who identified five emotional stages that a dying person may go through after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. She identified those stages as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
One result of Dr. Kubler-Ross’s work is that many people now tend to apply the concept of stages to other aspects of human emotion. Grief, which follows death, divorce, and other losses, should not, however, be regarded in terms of stages. The nature and intensity of feelings caused by a loss relate to the individuality and uniqueness of the relationship.
While Dr. Kubler-Ross’s contributions brought heightened awareness about the process of dying, her work has been accompanied by some unfortunate collateral damage. Many people, professionals and the general public alike, have attempted to apply her stages to the emotions that arise after a loss. She identified denial as the first stage that follows notification of a terminal illness. Absent other helpful information, her work has often been misinterpreted to imply that denial is also a stage that a person experiences following a death or divorce.
In all our years working with grievers, we have yet to be approached by someone who is in “denial” that a loss had occurred. The very first thing they say to us is, “My mother died,” or, “My dog died,” or, “My wife divorced me.” These statements reflect absolutely no denial that a loss has occurred. If you are reading this book, you are not in denial that you have experienced a loss.
Much of the literature about grief contends that anger is always a factor in loss. Respectfully, we disagree. Anger is sometimes associated with the circumstances of a loss. It is often a factor in our difficult relationships with less than loved ones. Yet the presumption of anger is both incorrect and dangerous. A death often involves no anger at all. One brief account illustrates the point.
“My ninety-two-year-old grandmother, with whom I had a wonderful relationship, became ill and died. Blessedly, it happened quickly, so she did not suffer very much. I am pleased about that. I had just spent time with her and told her how much I cared about her. I am very happy about that. There was a funeral ceremony that accurately portrayed her. Many people came and talked about her. I loved that. At the funeral, a helpful friend reminded me to say good-bye. I did and am glad. I am not angry.”
This is a true story. If the story had been different, it would have created different feelings. If the grandson had not been able to talk to his grandmother before she died, he might have been angry at the circumstances that prevented him from doing so. If she had been a less than loved one, he might have been angry that she died before he had a chance to repair the relationship.
Please do not believe that anger is an automatic part of unresolved grief. Some grievers will be angry, and others won’t. But if anger is there, we will find it and complete it.
While there are no stages of grief, many grievers do experience some very common responses.
Reduced concentration. A griever is in the bedroom. He has an idea about getting something from the kitchen. Upon arrival in the kitchen, he has no earthly idea why he is there or what he went there to get. A preoccupation with the emotions of loss and an inability to concentrate seem to be universal responses to grief.
A sense of numbness. Grievers typically report to us that the first reaction they experience after notification of a loss is a sense of numbness. This numbness can be physical, emotional, or both. The numbness lasts a different length of time for each person. Rarely have we seen this sense of numbness last more than several hours. This reaction is often mislabeled as denial.
Disrupted sleep patterns. Grievers report either not being able to sleep or sleeping too much—or both, alternately.
Changed eating habits. Grievers tell us that they have no appetite or that they eat nonstop—or both, alternately.
Roller coaster of emotional energy. Grievers talk about going up and down and in and out of feelings. As a direct result of these emotional highs and lows, grievers often feel emotionally and physically drained. This reaction will be discussed in depth later in the book.
These are all normal and natural responses to loss. Their duration is unique to every individual. We will not predict for you how long they should last. They do not always occur. They are not stages.
There are no stages of grief. But people will always try to fit themselves into a defined category if one is offered to them. Sadly, this is particularly true if the offer comes from a powerful authority such as a therapist, clergyperson, or doctor.
Do not allow anyone to create any time frames or stages for you.
There are no absolutes in grief. There are no reactions so universal that all, or even most, people will experience them. There is only one unalterable truth: All relationships are unique.
GETTING OVER OR GETTING COMPLETE
One of the most damaging pieces of misinformation is the idea that you can “never get over” the death of a child. This absolutely incorrect claim is made to parents whose child has died, but it is also made in connection with other losses. Grieving parents and others then seek out information and emotions to match the untruth.
It is more accurate to ask, “Is it possible to forget your child or, for that matter, your spouse or parent?” Clearly the answer is no! “Not forgetting” becomes incorrectly entangled with the idea of “not getting over.” This crippling idea keeps the griever’s heart eternally broken, does not allow for recovery of any kind, and, more often than not, severely limits any fond memories associated with the relationship.
Last January we were talking with a woman whose daughter had committed suicide in the month of February several years earlier. As we talked, she told us that as February approached, she thought about her daughter more and more. Many of her thoughts and feelings were painful. We acknowledged the truth of her feelings and the logic of the renewed intensity as the painful anniversary date neared. Her eyes welled up with tears as she talked about her relationship with her daughter. She said, “My heart is permanently broken.”
Most people would accept her comment and move on. But we didn’t. Instead, we asked her whether she often had fond memories of her daughter. She said yes. We asked how she felt when those fond and pleasant memories came to mind. She said they felt good. So we asked, “When you are having pleasant memories, does your heart feel broken?” “No,” she said, “it doesn’t.”
We then suggested that she not use the phrase “permanently broken heart” to describe herself. We recommended that she say instead, “Sometimes when I am reminded of her struggles and her death, my heart feels broken. Other times, remembering her wonderful qualities, I feel happy and pleased to share my memories about her.”
There is a common and false picture created by grievers, by professionals, and by the literature: “Because I haven’t forgotten her and still sometimes have feelings about her, I am not over the pain of the loss.” This tragic setup is guaranteed to restrict and deflate the life of the griever.
WHEN IS IT TIME TO BEGIN TO RECOVER?
Earlier we mentioned that a sense of numbness and a reduced ability to concentrate are typical for grievers. In spite of those responses, grievers are willing to talk about the circumstances of the loss and to review the relationship they had. (This review occurs with all losses.) Consequently, effective grief recovery can begin almost immediately. It is very easy to tap into that review and discover a multitude of undelivered emotional communications. Even the most loving and complete of relationships will end with some incompleteness.
The accuracy of our memories is heightened by the loss itself. This can be an ideal opportunity to harvest an incredible collection of memories. Grievers need and want to talk about their losses. It is typical for a family to talk immediately afterwards about the family member who died. It is equally common following a divorce, retirement, pet loss, job loss, or physical change to talk about the good and bad experiences within those relationships or events.
Talking about loss and about relationships is wonderful and good, but it is generally not enough to allow us to feel complete. We need to take additional actions to help complete the pain we discover as we talk about our relationships.
One of our saddest experiences involves people who have signed up to participate in a Grief Recovery Seminar or a Grief Recovery Outreach Program but don’t appear at the session. Occasionally, they call to cancel saying, “My therapist said I’m not ready to do my grief work yet.”
Here is a little two-part quiz that graphically answers the question, “When do I begin to recover?”
- If you fell down and gashed your leg and blood was pouring out, would you immediately seek medical attention? The obvious answer is yes.
- If circumstances and events conspired to break your heart, would you seek attention immediately, or would you allow yourself to bleed to death emotionally? Pick one!
Is it ever too soon to begin to recover? No. The first ten years of our grief recovery careers were devoted to helping funeral directors, cemeterians, and clergy better assist grieving people. Clearly, those professionals are helping grievers in the hours and days immediately following a death. It is never too soon to address your grief.
SUICIDE, MURDER, AIDS, AND OTHER TRAGIC CIRCUMSTANCES
Emotional isolation is a major problem for grievers. Focusing on the cause of a loss, such as suicide, murder, AIDS, or another tragic circumstance, tends to increase this isolation.
Grief is by definition emotional. That is not to say that the cause of death does not generate emotion. Clearly, if someone we love dies in tragic circumstances, we will have volumes of feeling about the unfairness of it all. After acknowledging that we have been affected by the circumstances of a death, we must move immediately toward two larger truths.
The first is a painful question. Would you miss your loved one any less if he or she had died some other way? The answer is always no.
And second, what is left emotionally unfinished for you as the result of this death?
Earlier we talked about anger and denial not being helpful words for grievers. Closure is another unhelpful and inaccurate word. Following jury verdicts, the media rush in, thrusting cameras and microphones in grievers’ faces. They ask whether the decision has brought “closure.” The answer is always no.
Lawsuits may or may not serve justice. When the suit is over, however, you are still left with what is emotionally unfinished between yourself and your loved one who has died. At best, the lawsuit completes the crime or the infraction. A lawsuit cannot help you become emotionally complete.
We have seen people make a life cause out of the circumstances that took their loved one. We find nothing wrong with that. All of us in society benefit from heightened awareness and increased oversight regarding the law, medicine, and other issues. Our lives are enhanced by the tireless efforts of these reformers. Sadly, though, most of them remain incomplete with their loved one who died. Their tremendous expenditure of energy keeps them constantly distracted from the primary issue, their own unresolved grief.
Some of you will have cause to pursue lawsuits, either civil or criminal, relating to the death or mistreatment of a loved one. We encourage you to do the actions of grief recovery first. Completion will make you a better advocate. You will have more energy. Most important, you will not operate under the illusion that a lawsuit or judgment will heal your broken heart.
An often misused word applied to grief is guilt. At the Grief Recovery Institute, we call it the “G” word. We almost never introduce that word to grievers, because it is rarely the right word.
A standard painful interaction at the Grief Recovery Institute sounds like this:
GRIEVER: My son committed suicide. I feel so guilty.
INSTITUTE: Did you ever do anything with intent to harm your son?
GRIEVER: No. (This is an almost universal response.)
INSTITUTE: The dictionary definition of guilt implies intent to harm. Since you had no intent to harm, can you put the “G” word back in the dictionary? You are probably devastated enough by the death of your son, you don’t need to add to it by hurting yourself with an incorrect word that distorts your feelings.
GRIEVER: Really? I never thought of it that way.
INSTITUTE: Are there some things that you wish had ended different, better, or more?
GRIEVER: Oh, yes.
And then the floodgates open.
In rare instances, people have done things with intent to harm. When that is true, an apology helps to remove any obstacles to completion.
SURVIVOR: ANOTHER INACCURATE WORD
You may have noticed that throughout this book, you have not seen the word survivor: This is intentional. Survivor is intellectually accurate. It implies that the griever has outlived someone else. But we have discovered that the word survivor tends to act as both a definition and a diagnosis and often keeps people stuck in a dangerous and painful rut. For example, you don’t survive someone else’s suicide. You may survive if someone tries to murder you, but not when they attempt or commit suicide.
More important, the word survivor defines the griever and causes him or her to constantly revisit the circumstances about the loss. Being a survivor often becomes an identity. The strong, habituated identification with pain can become who the griever is. It is not uncommon for grievers to get more caught up in defining themselves and their pain than in completing the unfinished emotional aspects of the relationship. All the while, they are liable to remain incomplete with the person who died.
We know there are groups organized around and limited to those who have experienced specific losses, such as suicide, murder, AIDS, death of a child, and even divorce. Since we believe that grievers are already isolated in our society, we also believe that segregating grievers by type of loss adds to that isolation. However, we recognize that meeting together with others who have had a similar experience is not without its comforts.
Our beliefs, confirmed by twenty years of hands-on experience, are that:
All relationships are unique; therefore all recovery is individual.
Focusing on the shared intellectual truth (type of loss) does nothing to promote the process of recovery.
Isolation by type of loss may have short-term value but does not encourage long-term solutions.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU
Major losses resulting from death, divorce, and other causes are usually not common occurrences. Therefore, we are generally not familiar with the thoughts and feelings we experience following losses. It is inevitable that we fall back on whatever information we have learned in the past to try to deal with our responses to the conflicting feelings caused by a loss event. Throughout this book, we refer to the fact that most of us were socialized incorrectly on the topic of grief. However, nothing we say here is intended in any way to condemn society, anyone’s parents, or any institutions. We do not believe that one generation intentionally hands down misinformation to the next. We believe that people teach what they know, which is most likely what they were taught.
If you have found that the available information and support have not been adequate in helping you recover from loss, it is not because of what’s wrong with you—it’s because there is a lack of correct information. If you’re reading this book, it means you’re open to your grief. It means you’re open to beginning a process of recovery that will enhance your life rather than limit it. If you’re reading this book, it’s because of what’s right with you, not what’s wrong.