Grief is Properly Experienced Alone
When we lose a loved one to death or a severe brain injury, it is normal to expect to experience the “five stages of grief”: anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, everyone experiences the stages of grief differently, for different lengths of time, and to varying degrees of severity. It only gets more complicated from there.
It is impossible to be fully prepared to process grief for a loved one because this storm has no forecast. From the initial feeling of persistent sadness, we do our best to battle proceeding emotions like guilt, anger, frustration, and regret, but there is no telling how long the storm will last. The reality of grief is far more overwhelming than we can anticipate.
As much as friends and family attempt to aid and console us, there are limitations to their support. We don’t want to burden them by overthinking and oversharing. We don’t want them to adopt our turbulent feelings. We don’t want to inconvenience their time. So we continue to navigate the emotion on our own until we eventually hit a point of emotional exhaustion. At this point, the influx of complex emotions can cloud our judgement and we naturally seclude ourselves from the public to prevent from being perceived as socially inept. This defensive cue is a signal that we must do the work that is necessary to properly process grief.
Grief requires that we fully and honestly examine the entire relationship between ourselves and the separated loved one — from the exact moment of separation all the way back to our first memories with that individual, and every iteration of that relationship in between. The ups and downs. The love and the hate. The intimacy and distances. Everything. And if we don’t make an honest effort to make sense of and reconcile any differences or if we decide to take any shortcuts, grief will know and grief will keep coming back.
Grief will not let us be at peace with acceptance unless we put in the time to reflect on the lost relationship on our own terms. This can mean setting aside an hour or longer in our daily routine to process different segments of the relationship. It can mean looking through old photos and videos to relive great memories we shared together. Apathy, however, is to avoided at all costs. It may feel fine to put off difficult emotions, but bottling it all up is unhealthy. Those buried emotions will come out subconsciously in the form of unintentional aggression towards those that care about us the most.
As with almost all good things, it takes effort. If done right the first time, the period of grief will allow us to move on quicker. Otherwise, the grieving process can take years to get over. Eventually, I hope we can all find peace and understanding after grief as more resilient and empathetic individuals.
