Coping with Grief and Loss

Understanding the Grieving Process

 

 

 Losing someone or something you love or care deeply about is very painful. You may experience all kinds of difficult emotions and it may feel like the pain and sadness you're experiencing will never let up. These are normal reactions to a significant loss. But while there is no right or wrong way to grieve, there are healthy ways to cope with the pain that, in time, can renew you and permit you to move on.

 

Grief is a natural response to loss. It’s the emotional suffering you feel when something or someone you love is taken away. The more significant the loss, the more intense the grief will be. You may associate grief with the death of a loved one—which is often the cause of the most intense type of grief—but any loss can cause grief, including:

 Grieving is a personal and highly individual experience. How you grieve depends on many factors, including your personality and coping style, your life experience, your faith, and the nature of the loss. The grieving process takes time. Healing happens gradually; it can’t be forced or hurried – and there is no “normal” timetable for grieving. Some people start to feel better in weeks or months. For others, the grieving process is measured in years. Whatever your grief experience, it’s important to be patient with yourself and allow the process to naturally unfold.

In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced what became known as the “five stages of grief.” These stages of grief were based on her studies of the feelings of patients facing terminal illness, but many people have generalized them to other types of negative life changes and losses, such as the death of a loved one or a break-up.

The five stages of grief:

• Denial: “This can’t be happening to me.”
  
• Anger: “Why is this happening? Who is to blame?”
  
• Bargaining: “Make this not happen, and in return I will ____.”
  
• Depression: “I’m too sad to do anything.”
  
• Acceptance: “I’m at peace with what happened.”
  

If you are experiencing any of these emotions following a loss, it may help to know that your reaction is natural and that you’ll heal in time. However, not everyone who grieves goes through all of these stages – and that’s okay. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to go through each stage in order to heal. In fact, some people resolve their grief without going through any of these stages. And if you do go through these stages of grief, you probably won’t experience them in a neat, sequential order, so don’t worry about what you “should” be feeling or which stage you’re supposed to be in.
Kübler-Ross herself never intended for these stages to be a rigid framework that applies to everyone who mourns. In her last book before her death in 2004, she said of the five stages of grief: “They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss, as there is no typical loss. Our grieving is as individual as our lives.”
 

Finding support after a loss

• Turn to friends and family members – Now is the time to lean on the people who care about you, even if you take pride in being strong and self-sufficient. Draw loved ones close, rather than avoiding them, and accept the assistance that’s offered. Oftentimes, people want to help but don’t know how, so tell them what you need – whether it’s a shoulder to cry on or help with funeral arrangements.
  
• Draw comfort from your faith – If you follow a religious tradition, embrace the comfort its mourning rituals can provide. Spiritual activities that are meaningful to you – such as praying, meditating, or going to church – can offer solace. If you’re questioning your faith in the wake of the loss, talk to a clergy member or others in your religious community.
  
• Join a support group – Grief can feel very lonely, even when you have loved ones around. Sharing your sorrow with others who have experienced similar losses can help. To find a bereavement support group in your area, contact local hospitals, hospices, funeral homes, and counseling centers.
  
• Talk to a therapist or grief counselor – If your grief feels like too much to bear, call a mental health professional with experience in grief counseling. An experienced therapist can help you work through intense emotions and overcome obstacles to your grieving.

 

FAMILY SECRETS: The ties that bind – or devastate  

By Titia Ellis, PhD

Never underestimate the power of secrets in a family. One of the most common reasons people justify keeping secrets is the need to “protect” someone. Secrets also originate from fear that actions within the family will be discovered and judged. Some secrets are generations old; others newly created. All have the ability to tear the fabric of the family system apart.

 

Healthy families don’t need to keep secrets. These people can discuss whatever goes on inside the home while also respecting the need for privacy around such issues as marital intimacy or a teenager moving towards autonomy and sharing more with his peers than with parents. No one needs to be protected; no one is fearful of anyone else. The rules are clear: people are encouraged to say what’s on their mind and in their heart, and have learned how to listen to one another. Parents set ground rules which assure all concerned that honest conversations will be safe and without reprisals. If a major roadblock does come along, family members are comfortable to go outside the system to seek help from a teacher, therapist, trusted friend, pastor or support group.

 

Skeptics may ask, “Do these ‘healthy families’ really feel safe sharing their feelings with each other? That’s not what happens in our family.” Many come from a background in which secrets flourish and rules are unspoken but heavily enforced. They don’t feel comfortable speaking honestly about what is going on inside the family, so the old secrets continue to simmer in their psyches.

 

Secrets can also cause shame. If someone has or is forced to carry a secret, that person may feel he or she is bad. Others in the family who either don’t know or can’t talk about the secret are caught up in this unhealthy mix. The shame is compounded if someone tries to tell the secret to another person in the family and is met with denial, silence, or even retribution for breaking the family rules about keeping secrets.

 

In my family growing up, the big secret revolved around adoption and the corollaries to that of infertility and illegitimacy. This was back in the 1930s and 1940s, when most adoption professionals and the laws of the land decreed that adoptions should be closed. In the interest of protecting all parties, no information was ever to be exchanged between the members of the adoption triad: the birth mother, adoptive parents, and the adopted child.

 

Why was it mandated that everyone needed protection? An unmarried woman who became pregnant was looked upon as a fallen woman who could be redeemed only if she gave up her baby to a happily married couple. She must always keep her disgrace a secret. The baby’s background must be kept a secret because others might view him or her as having inherited flawed genes. This resulted in the adopted person’s original birth record being sealed away. An amended document was created, listing the people who adopted him as the legal parents. The adoptive parents most likely were dealing with the secret of infertility. People who couldn’t have children were considered “less than” by the rest of society. Thus each member of the adoption triangle was struggling with shame over secrets that our culture and society forced them to keep.

 

 

When I was five, my adoptive mother told my older sister and me that we had not come out of her tummy the way our little brother had. She added that our first parents had died in a terrible accident. When my sister wanted to know more, my mother began to cry. At that moment my father announced that we were never to talk about adoption again. Later I learned from a cousin that those other parents hadn’t died after all. Instead my first mother had given me up. All I could think was that I must have been a bad baby. What shame I felt. It would have made a huge difference if I could have talked about my fears with my adoptive mother. Yet I remained silent, determined to be very good so this mother wouldn’t leave me.

 

But life has a way of getting our attention. During a mid-life crisis the urge to find my birth mother hit me with the force of a tidal wave. My adoptive parents were threatened; terrified they would lose me to my other parents. I felt guilty about causing them pain and feared my transgressions might cause me to lose their love. Yet my need to discover the truth overrode my fear of abandonment. I persisted in my search, a 15-year process that began with fear, betrayal and heartache and transformed into healing and joy. I was supported by unforeseen wisdom coming from within me and synchronistic happenings on the outside. By the end of my quest I had discovered my own self. When I didn’t receive what I was hoping for, I had to learn to let go of my expectations and become open to other outcomes. As a result I found new relatives who welcomed me into my birth family. At the same time my adoptive parents and I grew closer than we had ever been because we kept talking together and becoming more authentic.
 

 

The secrets that once held such power dissolved and the truth really did set us free.