Having encountered a lot of grief throughout my life, personally and professionally, I have had ample opportunity to explore the philosophy of grief.
Grief is hard. It is stressful. It involves often months at least of emotions that are turbulent and disruptive. There is a lot of sadness and misery. There are also negative feelings such as anxiety, anger, even guilt. These are all well recognised as being present in grief.
HERE IS A CHALLENGE.
As part of my exploration of grief, I have read a lot of articles looking at grief philosophically.
From a philosophical perspective an exploration of grief and its purpose is not about looking at losing someone/thing we love but looking at how we perceive the grief we feel as a result of this.
Grief is horrible. It is devastating. It is intense. It is also stressful.
The tumultuous emotions of grief include sadness, sorrow, fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, anger and so on.
Here is the difficulty.
DEATH IS INEVITABLE.
You are unlikely to get through life without losing someone you love.
Grief is the inevitable result of the death of someone you love. You grieve because you love and that loved one has died.
Grief is not bad. It is inevitable.
What would your life be like if you didn’t grieve?
What if someone you loved died and you didn’t feel anything?
Isn’t that worse?
We live in a society that is uncomfortable with other people’s emotions. Talking to a grieving friend and having them cry is something most people find hard to handle.
On the one hand you feel at a loss to know what to do to help them. On the other hand you feel uncomfortable. You feel uncomfortable at your friend’s emotions, which you may not usually see. You feel uncomfortable at their pain. It is natural to want to alleviate their pain.
What usually happens is that the response to another person’s grief is to shut them down. To shame them into hiding their grief. You may tell them their loved one is in a better place. You may avoid any discussion of their loved one. You may make their loved one’s name taboo. You may tell them they should be over the grief by now.
Of course, these approaches do not help.
THE PARADOX OF GRIEF
The result is what I have often heard referred to as the paradox of grief. The paradox is the result of two conflicting facts around death:
• Grief feels bad so you should avoid it.
• Grief has a purpose and a value so you need to allow it and be grateful that you can grieve.
Being grateful for grief? How can you be grateful at your loss?
After all you grieve the deaths of the people whose presence in your life have been extremely important. Whose absence will cause you great pain. The loss of someone you built your life around. The loss of someone whose presence in your life gives you identity and fills you with a sense of great value in your life. The loss of someone whose value as part of your past and your projected future is infinite.
13 THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL TO GRIEF FOR.
• It allows you to honour the person who died.
Yes it hurts to feel grief. But if you love someone that much would you want it any other way? Would you want to just get up and get on with life without shedding a tear, or feeling sadness at their loss?
The emotions of grief such as sadness are inevitable. We have lost someone important. Feeling sad is important to honour that.
Likewise sorrow is important in honouring the one you have lost.
• It allows you to rebuild your lost identity.
Losing someone that important in your life also causes a loss of the identity you built around that relationship. So losing that person causes you to lose your identity, to lose part of yourself.
If you don’t grieve, how do you rebuild your identity? What push is there to cause you to seek and build a new identity? Grief supplies that push. Nothing else will.
• It allows you to identify what you have lost.
Sadness and sorrow give you important messages. They allow you to know what you have lost. That may not seem important but they are. It is part of understanding the place that person had in your life.
• It allows you to identify what you want to commemorate in that person.
Part of understanding the place a person had in your life is understanding the things you loved about them. Maybe they are things you admired and would love to emulate. Maybe they are about things they were passionate about. These might inform ways of commemorating them. Maybe that person was the reason you chose a particular path in life.
• It allows you to put your relationship to that person into perspective
Another part of understanding is being able to understand the things you didn’t like about them. Those are important to. They make your loved one human. They help to put them into perspective.
• It allows you to identify important values and ways to rebuild your life,
Fear and anxiety are useful to help us identity the things we value that we may lose. They highlight the areas of life that need to be reimagined.
• It allows you to identify what you need to resolve.
Guilt and shame highlight the unresolved issues that existed in that relationship or occurred around the time of death. They help identify what we need to resolve.
• It allows you to identify unresolved issues in the relationship or around the death.
Anger highlights the hurts and frustrations around that death. It helps you to explore the things that can trap you in your anger.
• It allows you to find a purpose in life.
Anger can also help you to find a new purpose and meaning in life. For example: if your loved one was killed by a driver who was speeding you may find new purpose in your life campaigning against speeding drivers.
• It allows you to understand your loss.
Without the pain of grief it would be virtually impossible to understand your loss.
• It motivates you to process your loss.
Without the pain your would less likely to strive to process what you have lost. You would not struggle to work out how you can continue living in light of that loss.
• It allows you to form a new relationship with the one you have lost.
Without the pain you find it extremely difficult to continue a relationship with the one you have loved.
• It allows you to find a way to live in the future
Without the pain you would find it hard to know how you want to live your life in the future. Grief helps you to understand your values around your loved one’s memory and allow you to make choices going forward. These choices start with decisions around which of their belongings to part with and which to keep, even where to live.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T AVOID GRIEF
Grief is devastating and horrifically painful. You will wish it could end and things could go back to the way they were. But your life will never be the same again. You will not return to the person you once were. Your life will always be tinged with the trace of sadness at who is physically missing from your life.
Despite this, life is possible. You can go on. You can find a way to live. You can be happy.
This terrible tangle of emotions contained in grief help you to recognise the things you value in your life. This allows you to rework your identity moving forward in life.
As a result of your grief you will develop a clearer understanding of who you are. It will give you the tools to live your life without your loved one.
Grief gives you the power that allows you to adapt to your loss.
SUPPORT IS OKAY TO SEEK
As you move through grief you sometimes you the support of a counsellor to help you with that process. You need someone who understands grief, does not pathologise it, and will listen.
If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your grief, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au
If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with interesting information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz