Notes on Grief
By Peter Hunsberger
PEV Bass Peter Hunsberger is a psychologist who specializes in grief therapy. Peter was consulted as a resource when Ash and the programming committee were planning the "Son to Mother" program, which focuses centrally on experiences of loss and grieving and working through grief. Ash powerfully related his own grief journey in a previous post. Here, Peter shares a piece he wrote for the choir as food for thought, in preparation for singing the powerful works in this concert.
Loss is an unavoidable part of life. From the baby's loss of the warm, secure environment of the womb at childbirth, to the inevitable declines in health and functioning in old age as we face death, none of us can escape experiencing major losses. Grief is how we respond to these losses - emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually. How we grieve our losses and recover from them - or not - can determine the entire course of our life arc and how we experience it.
I have had a 40-year career as a counseling psychologist, with a specialty working with people struggling with grief. I've counseled people dealing with losses from infertility, pregnancy loss, and the death of a child; and on the other end of the life span, those in hospice and doing hospice work with the dying, and their bereaved family members. I've also helped people deal with the range of traumatic losses in between, such as relationship breakups, job loss, and major accidents and illnesses.
Here are the three most important lessons I have learned from my professional grief work and my own personal grief experiences:
First: There is no set formula for how to grieve well. Fifty-four years ago, in 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book entitled On Death and Dying, outlining the five stages of grief experienced by her dying patients: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. While there is much wisdom in her "stages" formulation, it has been over-generalized and taken much too rigidly by the general public. People have come to me looking for the key to successful grieving, worried that they are not grieving properly because they aren't going through all the stages, or doing them in the right way or the right order. The messy truth is that we all grieve differently, even after what appear to be similar losses.
Second: Work with what you've got. In order to deal with any painful loss, one must focus not outward on a cookbook-type recipe of stages of proper grieving, but inward on what they are experiencing, and attend to that. Sometimes this means just giving a safe expression to sadness or anger, such as taking a half-hour each day to let oneself cry, scream at God, journal, do a heavy workout at the gym, talk with a trusted friend, or have a hot bath or other comforting experience. At other times, the help of a therapist may be needed, to understand and safely work through intense guilt, crippling depression, violent anger, suicidal feelings, or just feeling stuck in dealing with the loss. Finding a support group can also be helpful.
Some people have a surprisingly mild response to a major loss, others a surprisingly intense and prolonged grieving period. And if uncomfortable emotions are bottled up rather than being recognized and dealt with, it can look to the outside world like resolved grief, until later - perhaps even years later - when a memory or other trigger can unleash a powerful surge of suppressed emotion. The best guide as to how one deals with a major loss is not what symptoms are experienced, or now intensely, but how well the person is able, over time, to accept the loss, adjust to it, and successfully reinvest their energies in living a meaningful and satisfying life.
Third: How to be the partner, friend, colleague or family member of a person who has suffered a major loss.
What to do: BRING IT UP. The standard reaction of someone in the community of a bereaved person is to avoid talking to them about their loss. The justification is often, "It's been a few weeks now since she lost her husband, and she looks like she is getting over it, so I won't mention that depressing topic to her." Or the opposite: "He must already be feeling so bad about his failed surgical operation that I wouldn't want to make him feel even worse by asking him how he's doing with it." These reactions are often self-protective rationalizations, to avoid having to share the grieving person's pain. What the grieving person almost always needs instead is a gentle, kind comment of caring and connection, such as, "I'm thinking of you and what you are going through with your loss." Even if someone has absolutely no idea what it would be like to have that person's loss, rather than just avoiding the topic, it is more helpful to be honest and simply say, "I have no idea what it must be like for you to be dealing with your loss." It can be an especially welcome gesture to reach out when two or three weeks have passed after a funeral or memorial service, and the initial outpouring of support from a person's community has died down. It is also helpful to connect on or after the 1-year anniversary of a death, when the bereaved person may have intensified feelings of grief but our cultural message is, "You've done your grieving - now put it out of your mind and get on with your life!"
What not to do: DON'T TRY TO FIX IT. My grieving clients constantly tell me of well-meaning but hurtful comments they have heard after a death, such as, "Look on the bright side - at least you have a surviving child, unlike our friends who couldn't have any kids," or, "God takes the best for himself." Or, after a fatal accident that happened to other family members, "Think how lucky you are that you were spared!" Such comments tend to deny the grieving person's feelings and make them feel criticized that they're doing it wrong, rather than feeling supported. The job is not to snap them out of their grief, or to offer any fix, but to recognize it and BE WITH THEM in their grief journey. This is much harder to do, because it means wading into their grief with them and sharing their pain, but it is a much greater gift to the grieving person, and will go much farther to help them.
One final note: If you or a loved one are experiencing grief and feel you could use more support and a caring listening ear, there are many resources available to connect with. Consider reaching out to your state's psychology association or social work chapter, and/or take a look at some of the resources listed on this page. Many people stand ready to offer you help! I wish each of us all the best in navigating grief, a necessary part of this journey we call life.