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Friday July 30,2010

Does The Pain Go Away?

by Pamela Brewer, Dr.

There are many times when we can find ourselves in a grief state - it can be in response to a relationship lost, a treasured object lost, a profound change in the way you think about yourself or someone else. One can grieve the loss of a pet as profoundly as the loss of a person.

One can grieve the loss of a belief or view about someone/something as powerfully as the actual death of someone. The miscarriage can be as grief

provoking as the abortion. The chronic illness can be as difficult to grieve as the loss of job, status and future dreams.

A constant in all of these scenarios is that something or someone of great emotional significance is lost - forever gone, forever absent; never again to be experienced in the same way or with the same emotion or connection. What is uniquely different is the individual experiencing the loss and the way in which the loss is interpreted. What can be among the more difficult losses is the loss in which there is little ability to openly mourn (a relationship of which few are aware, a relationship of which others disapprove, etc.); or a relationship in which the loss is sudden and there is no-one willing/able to express genuine sorrow (e.g. Terrorist attacks, sudden violence, etc.). Perhaps the most difficult losses to grieve are those deemed "random" or "senseless". A terrorist attack, to all but the terrorists, is senseless and has no positive value. The school riddled with bullets, the office building demolished, the home burned to the ground can all be the acts of those who would justify or diminish the horror.

What often makes these experiences so painful is the absence of a genuine remorse on the part of the person (s) critical in creating the cause for the loss. In these cases as in all moments of loss - it is critical not to base healing and recovery on revenge or the words or absence of words of others. Healing is and must be self-initiated and self-directed. The pain of loss can not be avoided and should not be ignored. It is critical to allow the self to experience the pain and loss and work through the many complex feelings.

If you are grieving:

Accept that you have sustained a loss that is significant to you - no matter what others may say or understand.

You do yourself a disservice by trying to force yourself to "recover" too quickly. You also do yourself a disservice by trying to pretend the loss is not real.

You are likely to experience denial (it didn't happen or it isn't as big as others are saying); anger (how could this happen); bargaining ("I promise I'll do x just make this not true"); depression ("I can't survive this loss"); acceptance (I have experienced this loss and while it makes me very, very sad, I know that I can survive").