by Nathan Chua
If there is one facet of our internal lives that can be quite a puzzle to many, it could be grieving. This is a part of life that can be difficult to understand. It’s one of life’s mysteries. Many faiths have come about in order to explain the reality of our own finitude. In therapy, there are millions out there seeking help for this process that has so often been misunderstood. Frequently, much of the struggles come from how the grieving process is supposed to happen. Here are some examples of the puzzlement in question form: There must be something wrong with me for not “grieving” the loss as much as others I know. Why can’t I get rid of the guilt so easily just as everyone around me has been advising me to do? Of course, there is also that most common difficulty of all, why can’t I seem to get over it as quickly as some of the people I know? Will this pain last forever?
Some of the misconceptions about grieving is that all of us have to go through a series of stages in order to qualify our process as “normal grief.” As with many other areas in life, we tend to compare ourselves with the people we share moments with. As a consequence of this inevitable mental process of comparing, it is understandable that we would feel guilt whether we go through the stages more or less quickly than others. Or if we have reached complete acceptance or not, which is what most construe to be the final stage of grieving.
Another misconception about grieving is that it involves just one feeling, which is what is expected, sadness. Many can question themselves if they don’t feel as much sadness as expected. Grieving involves multiple emotions and not just sadness. Depending on your relationship with the person you had lost, you can feel anything from a longing for the departed one or a sense of relief that the person is no longer there. And of course, everything in between. It is not a sign of being abnormal for you to think that the loss provided some relief from the past abuses that a close member of the family had brought. Feelings are not there for us to command. You and I can’t just will ourselves to feel a certain way. However our problem-solving, comfort-seeking, overeager and logical minds believe that to be true. Our minds are very good tools for eliminating discomfort. But our feelings are not an inconvenience or like mosquitoes that we can just kill off with a slap of our hands. Our feelings tell us that we have lost someone we cared for very deeply, or on the other extreme, someone who might have caused much pain in our life,
Another thing our minds do is comparing. One thing that we fail to do when we focus on comparisons as we rush ourselves out of the process, or when we rant about the what if’s, is what I indicated in the title of this article. In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we frequently help move people to look inside their pain just as we do for our own. Within our pain, there could be a gift that we don’t see. The gift of really loving and caring for another. I often ask my grieving clients to shift their perspective by imagining someone who comes to them with a similar loss and says that the experience is of no consequence to them emotionally. Would you be more or less worried about this person?
And what do I mean about going inside our grief? As I had indicated earlier in this piece, it is learning more about what is behind the pain. This is part of our humanity. The pain is part of what makes us deeply love and care while a person walks among us.
Finally, there is probably something about the departed one that you treasure most. Something that this loved one has taught you through their life, Here’s one exercise you can do. Write down all the wonderful things you experienced and learned from this person, and imagine this person sitting there beside you and you were reading this out loud to them. What do you think this person would feel or say about what you just wrote or read for them? And then ask yourself another important question. Must this be that person’s legacy? If your answer is yes, then what can you do to honor that?
And then look through what you have done in the past weeks, months or days, do these things that you do reflect a sense of honoring the life of this person who meant so much to you? If not, then maybe it’s time to do something else that will. You may end up doing something that involves either getting out of the pain, or carrying your pain with you while you live out a life worthy of your loved one’s legacy.