I once heard the spiritual teacher, Marianne Williamson say (I am paraphrasing) that if you have 17 tears to cry and you only cry 10 of them, you have 7 tears that you are holding onto and they will become toxic.  The chemical make-up of tears verifies this.  Emotional tears actually have a different chemical structure than reflexive tears (tears produced by eye irritation) and that emotional “tears appear to play a significant role in detoxification of the body and enhancement of mental well-being” (Fooladi, 2005,  p.250).  In addition, emotional crying can produce endorphins to actually relieve the pain we’re suffering.

I know people who come to me years after a death to work on their grief and I think about all the un-cried tears that have contributed to their carried pain.  We think that something is wrong with us when we cry – we want to stop it  – cut it off – get over it – move on with life – etc.  When we do that, we are asking ourselves to not be human.  Crying as a response to sadness is actually a gift that we have because it is almost exclusively a human trait.

Another reason we hold the tears back is that we think that if we start we won’t stop.  I know it’s hard to believe, but your tears have a beginning and they do have an end.  Crying helps us express the pain and what we don’t express, we will repress.  That repression may delay healing and interfere with adaptation of the loss, meaning making and continuing the bond with our loved ones who have died.  Crying also signals empathetic responses in others which can enable us to receive connection and comfort.  It is a way of asking for love and support without words.

Granted, whether alone or in the presence of a safe and trusted person, it is no picnic.  It hurts.  It’s messy.  It reveals our vulnerability.  For many of us, being that raw and vulnerable can be very difficult and can feel out of control, intimidating, uncomfortable and/or foreign.  Paradoxically, I see crying as a signal of strength.  I don’t like it either, but I get through it with the knowledge that on the other side is healing and growth.  For me, it is a small price to pay for love.

(*A note: There are some cultures who do not view emotional crying as an appropriate response to emotional pain and have not been socialized to react to emotional pain with tears.  Many people in our culture also may feel that crying is not appropriate for them either.  This article is written to give those who need or want to cry as a result of emotional pain (or who are crying, but wish not to be) the permission and encouragement to do so.  It is in no way suggesting that all people need to react to emotional pain with tears if that is not their authentic response.  If you know someone who isn’t crying, but you think they should be crying, that is YOUR issue and not theirs.  They are just having a different response to grief than yours.)

Fooladi, Marjaneh.  (2005).  The Healing Effects of Crying.  Holistic Nursing Practice, 19(6), 248-255.

I will agree that we need time to grieve and mourn, but it is not time that does the job of healing.   If we do not do the necessary grief work (accepting the reality of the loss, experiencing the pain, making the necessary adjustments and creating meaning from the loss), we will end up with what Alan Wolfelt calls “carried grief.”   Carried grief is when you do not mourn your loss and take the pain with you into everyday of your life.  I think of it like deciding to keep a splinter in your arm because you are afraid of the pain of digging it out, but imagine your life with this throbbing, dull ache forever.  That is why we have to mourn and grieve and that is why time alone simply cannot make that happen.

Think about it, grieving is a consequence of loving.And if you carry your grief with you for the rest of your life, that splinter you’ve decided to keep turns into a wall. Yes, this wall may prevent you from feeling pain right now, but guess what? It’s also preventing you from experiencing love.

I know it’s hard.  I really do, but you can do it.  Since grieving is a normal, natural process, you are completely capable of grieving on your own.  But, if you are having trouble with accepting the reality of the loss, experiencing the pain on your own (including feeling guilty and/or ashamed), making the physical, emotional and spiritual adjustments or finding meaning from your loss, I definitely recommend spending time with an skilled and compassionate grief counselor who gets it.

References:

Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy:  A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner 4th Edition.
Author:  J. William Worden

Living in the Shadow of The Ghosts of Grief
Author:  Alan D. Wolfelt

Actually that’s not true.  You can become less of who you are instead.  You can continue to diminish yourself.  You can continue in your mess, your misery, your drama, your addiction, and/or your unhealthy and damaging relationships. And the most dreadful part is – it will only get worse.  Like a terminal illness, it will progress and become more miserable and toxic if not treated.  You could just stay how you are and leave it to your children to do the work.  And, by the way, if you are not living fully, you are teaching your children not to live fully.  Remember, they do what you do, not what you say.  They will grow to live their own version of your and/or the other parent’s toxicity.  If you don’t break the cycle of dysfunction, it will be your ultimate legacy to your kids.  (That’s why you have to do the work because your parents did not do theirs).  This is not to make you feel guilty, it’s meant to give you that extra push to commit to do the work and to understand the choice that you are making by not doing the work.

Or you can get to work and become conscious.  Live the life you were meant to live.  Live your calling.  Live with actual love (you know the kind I mean – patient, kind, adoring, playful, fun, trusting etc.)  Live with integrity.  Experience joie de vivre – maybe for the very first time since you were an infant.  As they say, you can get bitter or you can get better.   It’s your choice.

You really can do this.  It is not some pie in the sky ideal.  If you do your personal growth work, you will become stronger, more aware, feel freer, feel whole and experience healthy relationships and true happiness.

Personal growth work can happen with or without counseling.  The benefit of counseling, however, is that you get to have the healing even faster and you you won’t have to do your work alone.  Plus, the counseling relationship in and of itself is a healing force in which you will experience what its like to be treated with kindness and respect without judgment with a genuine, authentic person.  And believe it or not, it can be fun.  And besides, how much luck are you having going it alone?  (Are you counting the unrealized promises of your self-help book collection?)

I know what I’m talking about because I have walked the road and work with amazing women who are walking the road.  Join us.

Many times I think we want so much to understand what is happening to us as we grieve that so we hold onto the stages as literal fact as opposed to what they are…

Yes, you probably will experience some of these feelings as you grieve, but these stages won’t instruct or really even guide you towards healing.  When you recognize that you may be bargaining or feeling angry, it may be comforting to say to yourself, “oh, this is one of the stages of grief,” but that’s pretty much where it ends…

Knowing the stages can provide you with some relief that you are not “losing it,” however, it may leave you wondering what to do with that knowledge.

In my work as a grief counselor, I have found that while many of my clients already know the stages of grief, it does not seem to be enough for them.  The stages are something that happens to you.  They aren’t something that can be controlled or predicted.  Most people find that not only do the stages not occur in the “right order,” but more than one can be experienced at the same time and it is likely that one or more of them are not experienced at all.

What is important to remember when applying the stages of grief to your life is that if they are helpful, use them. Learn more about them. And if they are not helpful, look for some other kind of comfort and understanding of your experience.  From what I know of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, she was so kind and loving and would have wanted her work to provide comfort and help.  She was a prolific author and has many books that help the reader move past just knowing the stages, but what do to next.

For a great article that basically refutes the 5 stages one by one, follow the link and read “The myth of the stages of dying, death and grief” by Russell Friedman and John W. James at grief.net/Articles/Myth%20of%20stages.pdf

The death of your child will hurt more than you could have imagined and your life will change on emotional, physical and spiritual levels.

You can get though it to the other side and still be able to live a meaningful life…but it will take time, patience and effort to heal your devastating loss.  I know it may not feel like that right now.

You are living out one of most people’s greatest fear.  This is why some of your closest friends or family might be acting standoffish or even disappear.  They don’t mean to be mean or neglectful, but it doesn’t hurt any less.  Many times they want to be there for you but simply don’t know how.  However, if you let them, there are people in your life who can be there for you, champion you, stand by you and will not be afraid to talk about this or go through this fully with you.

Making connections with those who have suffered the same loss you have and have come out on the other side can be especially helpful. This will help you know that you can survive this yourself. It will also give you the gift of freely sharing your experience with someone who you know will understand.

You will be stretched as a couple and grief will test your relationship in new ways.  One reason is that you will most likely grieve in different ways and the grief experience will be different for each of you.    Practice accepting each others styles of grieving and coping.  Avoid thinking the other person isn’t suffering because he/she doesn’t appear to be grieving.

One surprising feeling that parents of children who died feel is guilt for episodes of “not crying.”  Just because you enjoyed a conversation, a day, a moment, a comedian, your other children, your work, a friend, nature does not mean you are not grieving.  You can enjoy something or someone and still be grieving.  Allowing yourself to experience life alongside your grief is exactly what you need to balance the pain of grief.

It’s okay to have sex.  This relates to the point I just made about enjoying things. You need intimacy right now and making love is one way to fill that need.  And it’s okay not to have sex.  You may not feel like it right now and that is completely understandable.  One of you may want to have sex and one may not and that can change from day to day.  Even if you aren’t having sex, make sure to expression you affection through holding hands, hugs, putting your arm around the other or just sitting together.

Taking care of yourself and each other is a requirement during this time.  Consider it as important as brushing your teeth each day.  There is a lot of talk about self-care, but I encourage you to actually do at least one thing each day that promotes well-being (such as exercising and eating delicious, healthy food), helps you relax (such as practicing meditation, taking a nap, breathing deeply, and getting a massage) and even though you may resist this, do something that brings you pleasure (such a being around safe people who accept you unconditionally, going out to dinner, shopping, watching your favorite television show, dancing, or going to a game).   Encourage each others to do self care.  Remember, doing these things does not mean you are not grieving and it will help provide the stamina for the difficult times.

Reference: Worden, W. J. (2005).  Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy

I hope that just knowing that will help you to feel a little less lonely.

It makes perfect sense to feel lonely at times.  The one who you loved so much and the one who loved you so much is gone.  It is an awful feeling. You yearn for him. You want her back.  You miss him.  You need her.  And he is not there.  She is not there.  It’s not fair, it’s wrong, and yet it’s the truth you are living.  This is normal. And natural.  It comes with the territory.  You will be lonely for the person you lost.

Loneliness is part of your journey.

But there is another kind of loneliness that no one really talks about. I call it “insidious loneliness.”  Insidious loneliness is the kind of loneliness that makes you feel like you are alone in the world.  It’s the sensation of walking through your life, within your life and around your life without actually being part of your life.  It’s the odd experience of seeing people laughing and thinking “How can they be happy?  Don’t they know that my _____ is gone?”

Other people don’t even have to be laughing or smiling for you to experience this confusion. They could just be living their lives. But you’re not. You’re disconnected from them and disconnected even from your own feeling of being engaged in life.

Insidious loneliness is slowly and subtly harmful and doesn’t serve any good purpose…for you, for your grieving process, or for anyone else.

Insidious loneliness occurs because we think (it may or may not be true) that no one really gets how much we are suffering.  Most women I know are pleasers – we like making other people happy.  While we are grieving, we sometimes look and act like we’re fine.  We do this without trying or sometimes we know we’re hurting and we put on the happy face.  Some may even comment about how well we’re handling our loss.  We may even smile and agree, but inside we know the truth.  It hurts and it’s awful. We do this for a few reasons….see if any of these sound familiar:

“I don’t want to bring anybody down.”

“I don’t want to talk about this grief stuff again.”

“So and so can’t handle my pain.”

“They think I’m fine, why burden them.”

“They don’t want me to mention ________’s name.”

“I need to be strong for my family.”

 “Nobody wants to hear about this anymore.”

“It’s  _________ (insert holiday/family get-together or supposed to be fun activity) and it’s not right to be sad.”

“I simply don’t have time for being so sad!”

“So and so is handling this so well and I’m a mess.  I need to buck up.”

“If I talk about it, they’ll want to fix it or say well meaning, but very stupid things that don’t help.”

“______________________” (that’s for your own reason that I didn’t list)

The thing that seems to help the most with insidious loneliness is telling your truth to someone.  I’m talking about the real truth about what is actually going on with your grieving process.

Find one fabulous, kind, loving, nonjudgmental, smart, understanding person and tell that person your truth. Find someone who knows you and who accepts you for the wonderful person that you are. Tell them how lonely you feel. Tell them how disconnected you feel. Tell them how lost you feel.

Don’t assume they already know. Chances are, you’re probably doing a good job hiding it.

If you don’t feel like there is anyone else in your life that you can safely tell these things to, or if you don’t want to burden them, then think about finding a professional grief counselor. Most of them understand the loneliness you are feeling and can help you work through it.

Having at least one person on the planet that knows – that really knows – what you’re going through can relieve you of your insidious loneliness.

“No one can ever prepare for the feelings of anguish, vulnerability, fear and profound loneliness that come with the experience of loss. Indeed, there is no experience that can tap into our primitive, childlike terror than anticipating or experiencing the loss of someone or something we love and value….our ability to cope with life can feel utterly unmanageable. During these times, we may begin to question our sanity.” -Thelma Duffy

One of the feelings that I find difficult to explain to my clients is the sense of “feeling little” following a devastating loss. This is the “childlike terror” mentioned in the quote.  We feel lost and alone. We feel scared and overwhelmed.

It’s like our own existence is threatened and this is all very bizarre because we know we are not little and that we are not being threatened. But the feelings feel real and that is where knowing that what you are experiencing is common AND why you need a lot of support and nurturing right now.

The difficult part is accepting where you are, but if you do – really do accept that you feel like a mess, that you feel little, that you feel lost and allow your self to feel it; I have found that it does seem to lift. Remember the line: what you resist, persists.

As always, get the support you need for your difficult grief journey from people that get you or who are understanding and compassionate. This might be a family member, a friend or an experienced grief counselor.  Let yourself be nourished and cherished by those safe people in your life who love you during the times you “feel little.”

Source: Diversity and Development: Critical Contexts That Shape Our Lives and Relationships. Editor: Dana Comstock

See if any of these examples of disenfranchised grief ever applied to you:

Your relationship is not recognized by others because they didn’t know you had a close relationship.

This can occur when there is a miscarriage; a friendship not known to the family; caregivers such as a health professional when a patient dies; a former exchange student lived with you for awhile and when she went to her home country, she was killed; when you are extremely close with someone and someone they love is dying of has died; or the family knows about the relationship, but doesn’t know how close it was.  It could also occur because you had to give up a child for adoption or if you were given up for adoption.  Children can experience disenfranchised grief when they experience a loss and their grief is not acknowledged.

Your loss isn’t a person.

Examples that fall in this category are beloved animals, your failed marriage, your unfulfilled dreams, a financial loss or business loss, a loss of health, the loss of a loved one’s functioning (such as in the case of Alzheimer’s).

Your relationship was real, but the family (or members of society) would not or does not approve.

This can occur if there is a so-called non-traditional relationship such as a homosexual relationship, especially when the person who died wasn’t out or if there is discrimination in the family.  It can also occur if a family member is estranged.   A stigmatized relationship like an extra-marital affair or when a woman has an abortion are other examples of this.

Another example of this is when a relationship ends in divorce, but members of the grieving person’s church does not approve of the divorce or the divorce is against church doctrine.  This can be difficult because not only is your support group not supportive, but you may feel ashamed and afraid to connect with your religion or spirituality while grieving.  It can also happen when an engagement or marriage fails and you were connected to your family member’s partner or your family member’s family (aka your in-laws – whether official or not).

The way the person died is not as supported as other deaths.

This occurs when the death or the deceased person’s actions while alive are stigmatized by society as with deaths from suicide, a drug overdose, AIDS, a war, violence, or alcoholism. Sometimes a death of a person who had a long life is more discounted than someone younger.

You aren’t grieving how people expect.

This can happen when the way you are acting in your grief is unsettling or confusing to someone else. If you are “too upset” or “not upset enough” or the grief is “lasting too long” are only a few examples of this.

If you’re experiencing any of the above (or something similar), you need to know that you are entitled to your grief. Nobody has the right to take away your grief, and it is their failing — not yours — that makes your grief “unacceptable.”

Disenfranchised grief happens because your love and care for the object of your grief isn’t recognized. It happens because others don’t understand. It happens because you’re sure that others won’t understand. And it happens because you fear that everyone else will think that the grief you’re experiencing is somehow your fault.

And in certain situations you may be right — not the part about it being your fault (because it isn’t!) — but because there are certain situations where people try to turn their own pain and anguish outward at the nearest convenient target. Or they’re just super-judgmental people.

In any event, it is not your fault — it’s not like any of us can control who or what we care about — and you have a right to your grief, your style of grief or your reason for grief for one reason: because you are grieving.

If you feel grief, then it is your right as a human being to grieve and to grieve exactly how you need to as long as you are not hurting yourself or others.

It is also your right to be comforted, affirmed and validated.

Find someone who understands this and affirms your right to grieve and your right to grieve exactly as you need to. Tell yourself at least once each day as you live through your pain , that your love is real and that is why your grief is real. Find words of encouragement from others or books.

Enfranchise your grief. Shine the light on it and watch as the darkness begins to lessen.

[An important note from Elizabeth: If I have not listed the kind of relationship that you lost, but you have been disenfranchised, you may email me at elizabeth@expressivecounseling.com and let me know so I can add your contribution. You deserve to have your relationship listed here.]

Source: Attig, Thomas, 2004, Disenfranchised Grief Revisited: Discounting Hope and Love. OMEGA Vol. 49(3). (Based on Kenneth Doka’s books on disenfranchised grief)

For example, if we get cut, we all bleed and the body will go through the normal processes of attempting to stop the bleeding, prevent infection and heal the cut. However, where we were cut (was it the face or arm, our dominant hand or our non-dominant hand?), how we were cut (did you get cut by paper, glass, or saw?), how large the cut was (was it minimal or massive?), and the circumstances surrounding the cut (were we cut doing something we loved or did we get cut during a fight?) make the cut experience unique.

One of the things that can bring us comfort (i.e. help us know that we’re not going crazy) is that we humans can react in very similar ways after a death of a loved one.

One of the first studies of grief reactions was by Erich Lindemann who was the Chief of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1944. After a tragic fire in a nearby nightclub (The Coconut Grove) killed almost 500 people, Lindemann found that many of the 101 family members he worked with had similar reactions after a loss.

He found that many of them had:

• some kind of physical manifestation of their emotional pain

• ongoing thoughts or images of the deceased

• guilty feelings regarding the deceased or the circumstances surrounding the death

• hostility or anger

• a sharp decrease in functioning compared to before the loss

Any of these ring true for you? If so, hopefully you will find comfort that you are not alone.