When you suffer an identity-changing loss or one that prevents you from reaching a significant goal, grief can envelop you like a damp fog.
You lose a loved one and believe your life is over. Your health deteriorates, and you feel transformed from a person who exudes vibrancy to someone whose life is defined by a disability. Your love is rejected, and you wonder if life is worth living.
The depth of your grief is determined by how central it is to your identity. A client with limited interactive skills always depended on his wife for even the most basic daily living requirements. For 50 years, she did everything for him, from selecting which operas they would attend to choosing the condiments for the Christmas dinner. Overnight, his identity changed when she died.
Everyone who lives long enough will experience grief. For some, it will come from the loss of a partner; for others, it is related to a health issue that prevents them from doing something that is an integral part of their identity.
Grief visited me when I could no longer do solo wilderness fly-fishing. While not as important as being a “father,” “husband,” or “brother,” it was significant enough that it left what I thought was an unfillable hole in my heart. Instead of trekking several times yearly to fish remote locations, epic battles with wild trout became memories.
When catastrophic losses occur, you face a choice: living with constant grief or regaining control of your life. Some people choose “talk-based” therapy, while others, because of finances, circumstances, or preferences, search for quicker and more direct methods. For this latter group—those who prefer self-therapy—here are four effective steps for easing the pain.
How often have compassionate people tried to reduce your grief by saying something like, “You’ll see; time will help you heal.” And how often have you cringed at the advice? Years after a good friend lost her son to violence, I asked her if time healed the pain. “No,” she said. “It just transforms it into something else. Instead of being happy when I hear of someone’s good fortune, I wonder how well my son would be doing in the same situation if he was alive.”
She paused, then said, “My grief throws a cloak over everything I experience or do.”
For many people, there isn’t enough time left in the universe to wait until their grief spontaneously vanishes. It is the rare person whose grief dissipates just by waiting.
For simple losses, like a treasured object, a direct replacement makes sense. You crash your classic “muscle car,” and you can usually find an identical one online. But, a life-long partner is not a “muscle car.” They shared your life when you were searching for meaning in your 20s, stood by you when facing financial difficulties in your 30s, supported you through a midlife crisis in your 40s, and helped you confront health challenges in your 50s and 60s. Finding an identical replacement is impossible. Searching for one will prime you for disappointment.
Assume most significant losses are complicated and cannot be replaced exactly. Far from being depressing, this knowledge provides greater opportunities for eliminating grief.
When someone asked me why I was grieving when I could not do my wilderness trips, I initially replied, “Because I miss standing in the middle of a stream stalking wild trout.” It took me several years to realize that I was not grieving the act of selecting an appropriate bait pattern, stalking a fish, presenting the fly, and gently unhooking my prey. Still, rather, I was grieving the emotion the event created—serenity.
Not everyone who grieves grieves the same lost emotion. But anyone who grieves grieves an emotion that is no longer felt.
You are better positioned to replace the lost emotion when you identify it. You no longer search for a specific “thing” or person identical to what you lost; you have a “Costco list” of opportunities available to replicate or come close to recreating the lost emotion. Given my health-related limitations, nothing in the fishing/backpacking world could have substituted directly for solo wilderness fishing.
Sitting on a folding lawn chair under a bridge with a beer cooler and throwing worms to lazy fish is not quite the same as standing in the middle of a pristine river trying to outwit smart trout. I learned, however, that “serenity” could be achieved through various activities, such as crafting flutes, sculpting, and playing musical instruments. Is it the same as wadding the McCloud River on a crisp morning?
No, but it’s a lot better than confining myself to pictures of what I lost.
We are constantly faced with choices—choices for goals and paths to achieve them. Less discussed are the choices we have about our emotions, like grief. Although it can be argued that we do not choose to be grief-stricken, we can choose behaviors that will lead us to grief and, conversely, away from it.[1] By using the four steps, you are choosing happiness—or a close approximation of it—rather than waiting for a magical anecdote to grief.
References
Stan Goldberg, Preventing Senior Moments: How to Stay Alert Into Your 90s and Beyond (Lanham, MD, Roman & Littlefield, 2023).
Can You Choose Not to Grieve? 4 Surprising Steps to Yes
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27.01.2024
When you suffer an identity-changing loss or one that prevents you from reaching a significant goal, grief can envelop you like a damp fog.
You lose a loved one and believe your life is over. Your health deteriorates, and you feel transformed from a person who exudes vibrancy to someone whose life is defined by a disability. Your love is rejected, and you wonder if life is worth living.
The depth of your grief is determined by how central it is to your identity. A client with limited interactive skills always depended on his wife for even the most basic daily living requirements. For 50 years, she did everything for him, from selecting which operas they would attend to choosing the condiments for the Christmas dinner. Overnight, his identity changed when she died.
Everyone who lives long enough will experience grief. For some, it will come from the loss of a partner; for others, it is related to a health issue that prevents them from doing something that is an integral part of their identity.
Grief visited me when I could no longer do solo wilderness fly-fishing. While not as important as being a “father,” “husband,” or “brother,” it was significant enough that it left what I thought was an unfillable hole in my heart. Instead of trekking several times yearly to fish remote locations,........
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