BEYOND GRIEF
A GUIDE TO RECONCILING LIFE AFTER LOSS
This article appeared in the PREVENTION magazine, August 1994.
by Sharon Stocker
For Kay Ferguson Bechtel, grieving started long before her
father's death, during the 3 and 1/2 years of his illness. "It
was a time when grieving seemed traitorous," she recalls, "like a
failure of hope." When the end came, Kay was more sad and
exhausted than she had ever been in her life. And the emotional
road back was neither smooth nor predictable.
"Grief doesn't proceed in a linear fashion," she explains,
"it circles. You feel better. You feel yourself heal. And then,
WHAM! - your back on your emotional knees. Still, as the days
pass, the circles widen. When grief returns again, it finds you
stronger."
Anyone who has ever lost someone dear understands the
healing process Kay describes. But, while there's no one road map
for grief, certain paths can help facilitate and quicken our
journey through it.
"Someday that passage of time is the great emotional healer.
In fact, it's what you do with that time that is important. In
the initial phase of grief time is necessary to acknowledge and
assimilate the emotions," says Daniel Dworkin, PH.D., affiliate
professor of psychology at Colorado State University and
co-author of HELPING THE BEREAVED.
"Perhaps the most important step we can take toward healing
is to grant ourselves time and permission to grieve. One of the
major roadblocks to grieving is that many of us have abandoned
the traditions that in the past gave us the opportunity to
publicly share our grief," explains Dr. Dworkin. "As a result,
we've had less and less permission to express it and be supported
by the community."
In some cultures and religions, for example, the bereaved
aren't supposed to do anything at all for a week or two, or even
longer.
"In the Jewish religion, you sit shivah for a week and
everyone else brings food in," Dr. Dworkin explains. "You don't
have to worry about the mundane, day-to-day kinds of things, and
it's socially sanctioned, so it takes a lot of pressure off. In
modern corporate settings, by contrast, employees are typically
given just three days leave, even if it's a spouse or other close
relative who died. Then, employees are expected to go right back
to work. Of course you're not functioning anywhere near 100
percent, but the expectation is that you should be," says Dr.
Dworkin.
Judy Tantelbaum, M.S.W. author of the classic, THE COURAGE
TO GRIEVE (Harper Collins) agrees. "Culturally, we place high
value on maintaining an image of strength and fortitude in the
face of hard times," she says. "The most effective way is to
really let go and allow our feelings."
ACCEPTING THE PAIN OF HEALING
"Grief feelings are the hardest kind for us to deal with
because they're very intense, and it's not usually to have just
one feeling but many all at the same time," Tantelbuam explains.
"After the initial shock wears off, the emotional flood-gates
burst, releasing a torrent of feelings that can range from anger,
guilt, anxiety and self-blame to longing, loneliness, sadness and
even relief in the case of long illness. This deluge can be
overwhelming and frightening - especially if we don't know that
all of these reactions are normal. It's so much at once, it makes
you feel out of control," says Tantelbaum. "The fear of loosing
control permanently can lead us to shut down, suppressing the
emotions to avoid feeling them. In fact, feeling our emotions is
crucial to moving forward through the grief process."
Dr. Dworkin agrees. "If we cut our emotions off, we don't
heal" he says. "In this society, we often assume that if there's
pain that's bad and we should get rid of it as quickly as
possible. We don't accept that part of the grief process normally
includes a lot of pain, and we have to allow it."
"At first, it may seem like one step forward and 10 steps
back because when someone starts to feel emotional pain, the
natural tendency is to withdraw into depression or get really,
really busy in a manic sense to avoid feeling altogether,"
explains Susan Kavaler-Adler, Ph.D., founding executive director
of the Object Relation Institute for Psychotherapy and
Psychoanalysis, in New York City.
"In order to tolerate the pain, you need supportive
environment in which you can feel safe expressing your emotions,"
she adds. "Over time, as you are able to speak your feelings, the
pain gets converted into a tolerable sadness and a renewed sense
of loss for the lost person.
SEEKING A SUPPORTIVE LISTENER
Finding listeners with whom to talk can be difficult. Often,
friends withdraw, paralyzed by the fear of doing or saying the
wrong thing. Or, to avoid the discomfort of not knowing what to
say, they may jump in and take the role of advice giver.
"People think they have to have answers, but what answer can
you honestly have for somebody who's dealing with death?" asks
Tantelbaum. "People back off if they feel they haven't any good
advice to give. It"s not that friends are unwilling to help, it's
more often that they're clueless as to what to do."
"As the bereaved, you are really in the best position to
tell people how they can help" explains Dr. Dworkin. "If you can
ask specifically by saying, 'I need you to sit with me and just
let me cry,' or 'could you come and have dinner with me on
Saturday night?' Most people will rise to the occasion."
What's most often the biggest help to a grieving person is
very simple: just listening. "It's the most wonderful, generous
gift anyone can give to a griever." says Tantelbaum.
But sometimes, listening is too painful or disturbing for
friends or family who may be grief stricken too. "You may really
need to vent your anger at your deceased spouse for leaving you
right in the prime of life, for example," says Roberta Temes,
Ph.D. author of LIVING WITH AN EMPTY CHAIR (New Horizon
Press,1992). "Your furious for the unfulfilled dream of his
promise to share the golden years together and for now having
to be alone and sleep in the big empty house by yourself. You
can't automatically expect friends and family to understand that
personal fury when they're upset and trying to sort out their own
emotions," she says.
Often, it's people who aren't quite as close to the
situation who can listen and really be there. That's why support
groups serve specific grief situations, like the death of a child
or a suicide, and create a highly resonant community of members.
"One of the hardest parts of the grief process is feeling like
you're alone with your emotions," says Dr. Dworkin. "If you can
connect emotionally with other people and feel like they
understand what you're going through, it really can help you."
Not only that, but fellow support group members are
potentially more supportive than friends or family of a griever's
need to rehash the same material over and over.
"There's a lot of repetition built into the emotional
catharsis phase in terms of talking about and experiencing
feelings," says Dr. Dworkin. "That's normal and healthy.
A healing transformation takes place internally through that
repetition."
THE HEALING POWER OF NATURE
Sometimes, even with support and understanding, our thoughts
still get stuck on "why?" - why me? why now? The mental
frustration is, "I used to be able to explain to myself what was
happening but now I'm at a loss for words." The intellectual mind
does not have a way to grasp it. But it attempts to grasp it - to
make life coherent again.
When life feels out of control, spending time in the natural
world gives a palpable sense of coherency. "Even though your life
has felt chaotic, in nature, you begin to see yourself as orderly
within the larger order," says Mel S. Bucholtz, a psychotherapist
and director of the Returning to Earth Institute, which host
wilderness trips. "There is an order, but it's not the limited
one of the humanly imposed environment. It's on a much grander
scale that you fit into. In this context, you see that death is
not wrong, it's not bad," explains Bucholtz. "Neither is it
wonderful. It's simply part of a natural process that happens
during life, and we see our own experience reflected in that."
"Most of us who live in or around cities are so cut off from
nature that we've forgotten the way the life cycle works," adds
Dr.Dworkin. "And the way it really works has become a kind of
affront to us. How dare this end! Nature permits the process, it
makes loss acceptable. Instead of being angry at the reality of
the loss all the time, we can focus on healing."
"We begin to see that we are analogous to life forms of the
natural world," says Bucholtz. "Seeing this we begin to feel that
we are a part of a much larger event that is like our own, and we
feel embraced by it. Each of our experiences is no longer
separate; we no longer feel so isolated."
RECONCILIATION.
"Once the bulk of emotion has been worked through, there's a
cognitive shift that takes place," says Dr. Dworkin. "It's not
actually recovering from grief. It's reconciling to the new
reality, because when someone close to you dies, you'll never be
the same as you were before. You also begin to have more energy
to put back into the world and your daily activities. You start
reaching out a little more in terms of your social contacts and
caring about other people again."
"By mourning, you get to a place where you have a sense of
the lost relationship and can start to retain the positive and
loving aspects of it" says Dr. Kaveler-Adler.
"Anytime you encounter one of these major life transitions,
you have the opportunity to come out stronger if you embrace the
process." agrees Dr. Dworkin. "The grief process naturally
stimulates the development of emotional coping skills and a new
awareness of life's priorities. It has the potential to make you
stronger. That's not to say that you'll never feel grief again;
that's not the measure of strength," he continues. "But you'll be
able to move through it without losing your psychological and
emotional bearings to such a great degree. It's painful, but at
least you have a measuring stick for it. The next time it comes
around - and it will - you can move through it instead of
avoiding it out of fear."
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