Grief and how to go through it.- Girlsplained.
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A couple of days ago, the father of two of my best friends passed away due to COVID. I met my best friend in elementary school and grew up visiting their house. Feeling that his father will never be again in that place where I was so happy has kept me sad all week.
While I was growing up, his family grew up with me. I went from staying up all night singing American Idol on my friend's Nintendo Wii, to having a few drinks and getting drunk with their parents.
It has always been difficult to accept that someone is gone. From that need to have closure and to be able to face grief, rituals were born. This Sunday's Girlsplaining is dedicated to all those people who have lost someone. I hope this helps you feel a little bit better.
What is grief?
According to Freud, it is "the reaction to the loss of a loved one or an abstraction that takes its place, such as the homeland, freedom, an ideal, etc."
Basically, it is our response to the absence of someone or something that we considered positive. Mourning is expected and natural. Nobody teaches us to feel. We learn to repress what we feel, but it is inevitable to feel the way we know, and that feeling can be accompanied by many emotions - expected or not.
I'm the daughter of two psychologists, which has made me understand that there is no single way to grieve. Again, Freud explains grief as the reaction to a loss. He doesn't say, it is sadness, or anger, or happiness in the face of loss, but, the reaction, and that can be any of the above or all at the same time. And that's okay.
Ever since we are kids, we know that we are born to live, but also to die. If we know it, then why does it hurt when someone leaves? I asked Cesar Contreras, a friend, who also happens to be a psychologist, and he replied that once we have a bond, we invest psychic and emotional energy in it, even though we know that at some point that bond is going to break (for whatever reason), it still hurts. “The idea of not being able to see the person anymore hurts, not being able to keep generating memories together, hurts. It hurts the loss of that energy that had been put into the relationship. And it's always going to hurt, even if we know it's going to happen,” Cesar explained.
One of the reasons it hurts more or less has to do with the way we have been taught to mourn in the western culture.
Death and culture.
We are used to seeing death as something sad because it represents the end of life. Laura Yoffe explains in her paper "The mourning for the death of a loved one: cultural and spiritual beliefs", that "in the Judeo-Christian culture, death has been considered as something painful, the reason for which it has been denied, also, it's also become a topic that is definitely not talked about. In this way, 'death tends to be expelled, separated, covered; since it represents the antithesis of what it responds to and represents the idea of progress.'"
When we are kids, no one tells us about death. Perhaps because of the very idea that it is painful and we will not be able to bear it, or perhaps because children ask many questions that adults will not be able to answer.
Cesar believes that “the taboo with death has a lot to do with not knowing what is going to happen next. We are afraid of the unknown and death is something that no one can tell us exactly what it is because no one comes back." And since no one returns, there is no way to know if our loved ones are okay, if they reached heaven, if they really live to transcend to a better place, or if - as I told in the previous article - we live in a simulation.
In Eastern culture, death is experienced somewhat differently. According to the Navas Funeral Home, “it is not taboo but it is part of everyday life. The spiritual guide Osho affirms that the only way to lose the fear of death is by visiting it. That is, to think about it in a profound way, in the same way, that one thinks in detail about vacations, work, or personal relationships, and thus recreate the sensations that it awakens in us. With meditations, people discover that death is not something terrible, but a part of life that must be faced with courage, wisdom, and hope."
Especially in societies that practice Buddhism, it is believed that life does not end with death and although it is painful to stop having someone on the physical plane, life is celebrated because it is the previous step to continue existing in other ways, in other bodies and live other lives.
Something that these and all cultures have in common is the fact of creating rituals around death.
What are rituals?
All those activities that allow us to say goodbye to the person who is no longer with us. Rituals are very important because they help us understand and process that what we are experiencing is real.
Cesar explains it in the following way, “rituals help us make the loss real. They help us to give space to that absence in our psyche. They help us finish taking out what we have inside regarding the situation, and redirect the energy that was invested in the bond with the person while they were alive. They give order and structure to a very complex process that can be very dizzying. They also help us define how the relationship with that person who died is going to be now."
Some of the most common rituals in the west are the wake, masses, burial or cremation, scattering of the ashes.
According to the Mario Losanto del Campo Foundation, “Farewell is not an act that implies forgetting, nor should it be imposed by oneself or by others. It implies an act of deep acceptance of what has happened, it is not only accepted on a rational level but also an emotional level.”
For this reason, "proposing some kind of symbolic farewell rite may represent an advance in the elaboration of the duel." Explained the same foundation. It is not mandatory, but it is important to hear what you need in the process of overcoming grief.
Stages of grief.
It is very common to hear that grief has stages to overcome it, some people say that it has seven stages, I asked another psychologist friend and she believes more in the theory that there are only five stages, so that is the one we are going to explore.
According to the Swiss psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, we all go through the five stages of grief in one way or another:
Denial: It is a reaction that occurs regularly when we experience a loss. It is normal not to want to accept that this happened and to believe that it is a lie. However, it is important to explore that feeling and get past it to prevent the grief from turning into pathological grief.
“When grief is experienced as a state and not as a process, the most likely thing that can happen is that the person mourns pathologically. If the person cannot develop the tools to overcome this stage, it becomes a pathology and another type of intervention is necessary to overcome it. Be careful, although it is a process, it is not a system of stereotyped and linear steps. It is a process that has twists and turns. Several things are experienced at the same time. Sometimes it improves and other times it "regresses" and has a particular time for each person." Cesar explained.
Anger: It is very common for denial to become or be accompanied by anger. Wanting to get a culprit or looking for a justification based on anger, is something that can happen.
Negotiation: At this moment, we begin, in a certain way, to negotiate with our own emotions. We begin to accept the loss, but at the same time, we seek ways to reverse the situation. Although that is not possible.
Depression: As you continue to go through the grief, and it becomes more and more real, we begin to connect with what that loss implies on an emotional level. "This pain manifests itself in various ways: grief, nostalgia, a tendency to social isolation and loss of interest in everyday life." The psychiatrist explained. Although it is called "depression" it is seen more from a sad point of view and not necessarily as something pathological.
Acceptance: This stage is presented as the last when it is accepted that what happened is real and there is no way to avoid it. It is a compression, not only rational but also emotional. It feels like the wound is healing. Maybe you will always live with the scar, but over time it will hurt less.
There is no perfect recipe for feeling good, there is no way to get out of the early stages more or less quickly, but some things that can help you feel a little better. I leave you with a few words from Cesar that I hope will be useful to you. “I would dare to say that if there is a "recipe," it is to allow oneself to feel all the emotions that come with a loss. They are human and honest. Those will help a lot to understand the situation and to assimilate this new version of your life without the person who is no longer there. Some things can be taken into accounts, such as trying to maintain a routine (routines are key to maintaining sanity) and doing activities such as personal care and rest. Letting yourself be accompanied in the way you want to be accompanied and in which the other person can do it."
I hope that in case you are going through a similar situation, this helps you understand that what you are living in is normal, and although it may not seem like it now, the pain will pass.
I send you a big hug,
Camila.
This Girlsplaining is dedicated to Nela, Ire, Adri, and Isa. I love you so much.
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