Is there a right way to grieve?
Loss and grieving doesn't feel like a process when you're suffering it. The pain, often overwhelming, feels like it's with you forever.
And to some extent, it is. Everything that happens to us in life – both positive and negative – becomes yet another part of our psychological tapestry: the web of experience and learned factors that makes up who we are beyond our genes.
What is grief?
Grief is the multi-faceted response to loss. It could be loss of a person, loss of an animal, loss of a home, of loss of anything else we are emotionally and/or physically attached to. In short, it's the emotional suffering we are forced to endure when something is taken away from us.
An often-studied psychological process, grief is complicated. In renowned psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's 1969 book On Death and Dying, it was proposed there were five stages of grief that everybody goes through when somebody dies.
Known as the Kubler-Ross model, these stages are denial (refusing to accept what has happened); anger; bargaining (the internal negotiating stage in which one goes through a series of "if only" questions), depression; and acceptance.
In the early days of this theory, it was largely believed that this five-pronged process was linear, i.e. a person going through grief sequentially moved from one stage to the other. In Kubler-Ross' later life, she noted that the stages were non-linear – somebody who's grieving can experience stages in any order, can go back to stages they thought were over, or may not experience all stages.
Many other mental health professionals have suggested alternative processes, including psychologist John Bowlby's model which pinpoints the phases a person may follow after another's death in more practical terms.
His theory stated that we first experience numbness (a sense of disbelief of what has happened); yearning (characterised by that "I just want them back" feeling); disorganisation and disrepair (a sense of helplessness); and reorganisation (the process by which a person regains some control and hope, and begins to move forward.
Though there are many other models of grief, these two are well-positioned to contrast with each other. Anybody who's been through – or is going through – grief may identify with one psychotherapeutic framework much more than the other.
What stops you grieving?
Adrenaline can stop a person from grieving. Some people become very competent after a loss and throw themselves into logistics whilst running at an emotional "boiling point", but never flowing over.
Most people when grieving will understand it comes an uncomfortable, if not painful, sense of regret. It's as if you think you shouldn't be feeling the way that you are, and that grieving is somehow wrong or weak.
In fighting against grief because you have some sort of stigma against it, grieving can be even more painful. Not only may you be (consciously or subconsciously) experiencing certain stages of grief as outlined in the Kubler-Ross, Bowlby, or other models, but you're also using up so much of your energy trying "not to" feel. Such efforts can wreak havoc on your mental health.
Many people find that when faced with loss, they feel there's only one option: to be strong. This, too, can put off the grieving process, and often happens when we see ourselves as supporters or carers of others. We believe we "can't fall apart" for their sake; whether it's because we must care of children, keep a household or business running, be the "rock" for somebody else who is grieving, and so on.
Is there a right way to grieve?
In Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's new book Option B, Sandberg – whose husband died suddenly at 47 – uses psychologist Martin Seligman's "3 P's" approach to explain the importance of grieving.
It' proposed that personalisation (finding blame for one's loss); pervasiveness (how a loss is perceived to affect your life); and permanence (how long you think negative feelings will last) are key in the human ability to deal with grief.
This can mean realising that a death or loss couldn't have been prevented by you, it won't always impinge on all areas of your life and that pain won't last forever at the same level of intensity.
There is no "right" way to grieve – every individual will have their own experience – but this "3 P's" approach can be key in the ultimate goal of loss or death: accepting that what's happened has happened.
Written by Lee Suckling. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
Image: Getty