About the benefits of grief and a little about life | Quality of life, Self-development

Our life does not consist only of white stripes and joyful events. We are not always able to retain and preserve what is dear to us - losses and inevitable difficult emotions are part of our life. It is cyclical, something comes into our lives, something dies, something goes away as unnecessary, by an absurd accident, by the nature of things. A process called grief helps us adapt to a situation of loss.

Loss is the price we pay for being alive.

Annie Dillard

At first glance, the term “grief” reeks of hopelessness. In fact, grief is a natural process that accompanies any loss, loss, separation, or death of a loved one. This is a natural reaction to the loss of an important object, part of one’s identity or expected future. And the reaction of grief is a normal response of our psyche to any significant loss.

What are the benefits of grieving?

There is such a thing as grief work .

This is an adaptive natural process of our psyche, a reaction to a traumatic event. Like any process that ensures our mental activity, grief also has its own tasks to preserve our mental health.

It is very important that these tasks are resolved, then we can talk about “normal grief,” but if a failure occurs and natural sadness turns into depression, we can talk about “pathological grief,” which only aggravates the traumatic situation.

Grief work is the mental labor of processing traumatic events. The task of this work is to remove the emotional energy of connection with the lost object and transfer it to the present. Emotionally break away from the departed object and return to the present, allow yourself to live. This does not mean forgetting a person, but preserving bright memories and at the same time the opportunity to build new relationships with the world without the object of loss.

How grief works

Every loss causes us sadness and sorrow.
Each loss brings back memories of all previous losses, and this is normal. This means that if a person has not experienced grief, then any subsequent loss will be more acute for him.
Every loss, if it is fully experienced and completed, that is, the work of grief has been completed, can become a springboard for renewal and rethinking.

The main tasks of grief

Accept the reality of loss with your mind and feelings.
Experience the pain of loss, the reaction stage (tears, screaming, emotions).
Find a new place in the world where there is already acceptance of the fact of loss. Reorganization of the environment.
Engage in a new aspect of life, accept that life goes on, transform the emotional connection so that it does not interfere with living a quality life.

Very often, difficulties arise when implementing the second task - responding. A person is busy dealing with the consequences of what happened, and he has no time for emotions. Often emotions are restrained, we hear “get yourself together, control yourself,” etc.

Often it’s hard for us to watch a loved one’s tears, but this is an important stage in processing the loss. Unlived pain and unexpressed emotions do not go away - they are contained within us, leading to psychosomatic diseases, neuroses and other problem areas.

The main obstacle in the normal course of grief is the unconscious desire to avoid severe suffering and prohibiting oneself from strong emotions. Mental pain gives us a resource, energy to start the work of grief.

Therapy

What should we do with all this disgrace described above? What will we do in the project?

Our main task is to facilitate the work of grief, to remove obstacles to its passage . To do this, we will not study the usual ways of coping with grief, we will not give standard advice and perform familiar exercises; you can get acquainted with them in any other place.

What we will NOT do, what you can find on the Internet (for example, on the Memoriam website)
Find out about funeral arrangements
Share your story of loss, express your feelings and receive support from others
Ask for advice on physical support, coping with grief and settling into life after a loss
Understand the important topic of religious understanding of life and death
Learn how to express empathy and support those who are grieving
Learn more about the stages and symptoms of grief as they apply to you personally.
Get expert advice about taking medications
Find support groups and psychological help
Find answers to the rest of your questions

will NOT all these issues in our project. We will explore internal psychological mechanisms and techniques to ease the inner workings of grief.

Here's a rough outline of what we'll do:

How to Ease Grief - We will look at several of the most pressing problems and symptoms that a griever faces: shock, difficult feelings, unpleasant sensations, painful memories, etc.
Restoring losses - let's see how to return and compensate for losses associated with loss, how to gain independence and independence from the deceased.
Guilt, resentment, anger - let's work through the emotions that accompany grief.
Motivation and resistance - let's look at the beliefs that prevent grief from working.
Complicating factors – we learn new scary words like ambivalence and identification.
Farewell and the past - let's end and close past relationships.
New life – let’s discover and plan a new future life.
Additional 1. Metaphors – the use of metaphors and symbols when working with grief.
Additional 2. How to let go of a person - how to survive a breakup with your loved one.
Extra 3. Book Treatment of Bereavement - handouts from the book Treatment of Bereavement.

Notes

Again, while I am committed to a rigid sequential structure of therapy, you don't have to follow it, use the techniques as you see fit, do what you can, in the sequence that feels closest to your heart.
This is not a perfect framework that will perfectly guide you through grief, nor is it an encyclopedia of everything-about-grief. I tried to show new non-standard approaches to working with grief.
Everything that will be told here is not the ultimate truth. You have the right to disagree with any opinion of the author and not to follow any advice that you consider inappropriate for you. This is fine.
For example, I am of the opinion that the attachment with a dead person should still be broken (this applies to the topics of codependency, meaningful things, goodbye and many others that we will look at). But there is another point of view that many people, on the contrary, are helped by maintaining a connection with the deceased for a long time. You can choose this way.
Avoidance and denial of loss also play a huge role in the grief process. We will fight them with all our might, but in fact they are useful in many ways and help soften the blow. Therefore, the grieving person often holds on to them very tightly and slows down the process of getting out of grief. This is fine. And you also have the right not to blame yourself for this, but to do what you can and move at the speed at which you can.

And next time our first topic is alleviating the symptoms of grief, this is the pain reliever that is most needed at first, we will explore several ways to cope with the initial shock, pain, suffering and physical sensations.

How to help a person in the first stages of grief?

1. Give the opportunity to express your emotions, speak out, cry. There is no need to reassure on purpose. Sedatives at this stage can suppress the initiation of the grief process.
2. Information and psychological support. A person must understand what is happening to him. Understand that everything he experiences is the norm in this situation. Create conditions for a calm discussion of what happened.
3. Maintain tactile contact, you can hold hands, hug, stroke. At this stage, an unconscious regression into childhood occurs; contact gives a feeling of security and comfort.
4. Rituals, that is, certain actions that give a person the opportunity to say goodbye. There are many cultural traditions, and you can also come up with your own farewell ritual.
5. Support group - an environment that can support, listen, understand, perhaps people in a similar situation.

Properly completed grief work not only helps to maintain the integrity of the psyche after traumatic events, but also becomes the starting point for self-awareness and growth.

griefgriefcourage to live

Grief

Film "Chocolate"

The death of a husband is a blow, but to mourn for more than twenty years requires additional motivation.

Film "The Iron Lady"

Margaret Thatcher lived her entire life with her beloved husband, but after his death she was not inclined to experience grief and grief.

Grief is a difficult, dark, bitter, sometimes extremely painful experience with a feeling of irrevocable loss.

Children do not know what grief is; children master and learn this experience, adopting it as a model of social behavior. At the same time, grief as an experience is not very close to small children. By mastering negative emotions, feelings and experiences, children first learn to be angry, offended and upset, and master grief later. Grief is not a natural, but a social reaction, and adults usually grieve as much as they are used to and as accepted.

However, psychotherapists have their own view of grief, according to which grief is a natural reaction of the psyche to loss, and this reaction lasts a certain period and has its own stages. Among Russian authors, F.E. Vasilyuk writes first about this. (Read Vasilyuk F.E. Surviving grief and Vasilyuk F.E. Psychology of experience).

In the synton approach, grief is viewed as a learned behavior and a learned experience that is accepted in society and has its own internal benefits for the person. Grief falls on an adult, but grief is done by a child. Dropped shoulders, a sideways glance, sad eyes, knitted eyebrows - this is not only a reflection of grief, these are the actions that form it. The internal picture is a gray world, that is, crossing out the colors of the previously colored world with gray (or even black).

If a person has learned and considers it possible to experience grief, he will experience it in the same way and for as long as is customary in a given society. If a person grew up in a culture where it is not customary to experience grief, then the loss of loved ones and other events are not accompanied by grief. If a person has obligations to life and people, his experiences of grief will be short-lived - he has no right to this. If a person has the opportunity to worry, if this support is supported by loved ones, the experience of grief will be deeper and longer lasting.

It is also necessary to take into account that the experience of grief usually has not only causes, but also benefits. What are the benefits of grief, why do people experience it? It is quite obvious that the one who cries is not crying about the departed - the departed is not doing badly. The one who cries cries - about himself, about his own loss, and crying is a manifestation of fear,

It would be interesting to study whether the duration and depth of grief are related to a person’s overall level of anxiety (level of fears). There is a hypothesis that the connection is directly proportional and, most importantly, strong.

Crying is primarily a way of self-defense. From what? From accusations. If a person does not suffer, they will say about him - heartless, did not love (did not love). If she didn’t love you, then maybe she’s to blame for what happened? In our culture, the extent to which a person values what is lost is determined by the power of experience. The more intense the grief, the more valuable the lost. If he grieves, it means he appreciated it, but if he doesn’t worry, it means it didn’t matter.

This cultural stereotype is nothing more than a myth. In Buddhist culture, the death of a loved one, in principle, is not experienced as grief, but is perceived as an absolutely normal event, in some ways even positive: the person dear to you has freed himself from the wheel of samsara, has left the world of suffering.

In addition to cultural characteristics, there have always been and are personal characteristics. Grief occurs in different ways for different people, some are affected only by small things, others are affected by serious things. It happens that grief is adequate to reality: it is really difficult for a person, it hurts - he grieves. But there is also exaggerated grief - then it is only a means of attracting attention and receiving a portion of strokes. There are people who are very worried about losses, but care little about not losing. And there are caring people who tend to care rather than worry. Wise people say: “Appreciate me while I’m alive...”

Strong people teach themselves not to fall into grief because they know that other people need them: those they love and for whom they are responsible. How to learn not to fall into grief? 1) Practice the Technique of Mental Insurance 2) Remember about fairy tales and reality, be able to distinguish one from the other. 3) Practice calm presence, learn not to stir up unnecessary emotions. 4) Teach yourself to live in the future: what has passed has already passed, but there is always life ahead, there are plans and there are those people who need you.

The first stage of grief is the stage of denial

This can't be true!

Tell me it's not true!

I don't believe!

Let everything be as before!

Shock from the news, denial of what happened, numbness, seeming indifference, less often - tears, fuss, excessive activity - all these reactions are very necessary for a person at the first moment. This state helps the person’s psyche prepare for the realization of what happened. Typically this can last from several hours to several days.

It should be borne in mind that men and women, as in any other area of life, have different reactions to the news of grief. Women may scream or cry and blame themselves. The men are silent, hiding their tears, getting angry, biting their lips, and furiously punching the wall.

At this time it is good to have someone nearby. Most often, there is no need for any conversations, conversations, or soothing words - they won’t hear you anyway. You need to let the person accept the news and feel that he is not alone in his grief.

Of course, like any of the stages, the stage of denial will differ in its manifestations depending on the grief that has occurred. It is clear that events such as death, betrayal or illness entail different consequences, and therefore the reaction of a person and the people around him. However, the first stage - the denial stage - will be present. For some, it can go completely unnoticed, taking only a few minutes. Other people do not want to believe in loss for a long time.

An alarming symptom is the prolongation of denial for several weeks. In this case, a person needs the help of a doctor or psychologist who works with acute grief. After all, delaying any stage of grief prevents the next stage from occurring, which means it delays a person’s ability to return to a normal state and causes irreparable harm to health.

For example, one mother denied her child’s illness for a long time, although the disease was not fatal. She refused to learn how to manage her daughter’s illness, hid from everyone that her daughter was sick, and stopped giving medications at home.

All the time, after the news of the girl’s diagnosis, the husband and mother-in-law reassured the woman that “it’s nothing to worry about,” “and you can live with it,” asking, “Why are you crying all the time, because everything is fine?” None of the relatives paid attention to the fact that the mother did not believe in the child’s illness. More precisely, they didn’t think that there was anything wrong with mom.

As a result, the girl went to the hospital again, and her mother went to a psychologist, who helped her understand what had happened and go through the remaining stages of accepting the disease.