Month: May 2018

I have recently had reason to look at how we face bereavement. Both societally and personally.

Our family suffered a sudden and unexpected loss of a figure head. Naturally it has been a sad process coming to terms with his death but the thing that has struck me has been the way people outside the family have responded.

Some have tried to claim the loss as their own, telling us how sad they are, somehow forcing our care on them, so we are left holding their grief and ignoring our own.

Some have imposed their own needs on the person most affected by the loss.

Some have told us how to grieve, or what to feel, asking us to follow their path instead of our own.

Some have forced jollity upon us, telling us to look on the bright side of his sudden death because he didn’t suffer, as though he would rather have left us without saying goodbye.

Some have disappeared all together and tell us they don’t want to impose.

Few have allowed us to sit with our pain, sadness, shock and anger at the abyss left by his death.

It has struck me over and over again that the society I live in seems allergic to death. That the phrase trotted out is ‘IF I die’ not ‘When I die’.

We shield people from death, through hospitals, morgues, undertakers and all the other forcefields under which secret death business happens. A body is sealed in a coffin and delivered to a church or crematorium to have words said over it. Occasionally the body is visited or laid out for viewing. Dressed in finery and made up to look as though it is sleeping.

Death is hidden. Spoken about in hushed words, feared as though contagious, as though somehow ‘it won’t happen to us’, because we’re immune to it. Somehow death will sneak up on us and surprise us when we least expect it and we are utterly unprepared for it.

As a result, grief is suppressed by many, and rushed in others, bystanders finding it hard to hold eye contact with it, to sit with it and hold it for the person suffering it.

But here’s the thing. Assuming mythical legends are just that; there’s not one of us on this planet who can escape death. Not one of us is going to live our lives unaffected by death. If you’re lucky you may not experience it close hand for a while.

So we HAVE to start talking about grief. About how natural it is. How it isn’t a linear process, how everyone does it their own way and takes their own time and walks their own path.

It is no one else’s job to tell someone how to walk that path. No one has the right to force a grief process on another. All we can do is walk the path with that person. Stopping where they stop, looking where they look, maybe sharing what we see too, but never ever imposing our path on them.

You will no doubt have heard of the grief model with 5 stages. Forget it. Forget it and it’s compatriots. Walk your own path and feel your own feelings.

Not a single one of them is wrong.

When we are small, we learn how the world works from the people around us. We learn what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t from parents, siblings, friends and teachers. We learn how to respond to a given set of circumstances or how to demonstrate emotion from those people.

Essentially, we learn to relate to the world from the messages we receive as children.

So for example, in your family, how was sadness received? Were you hugged and soothed? Were you tickled till you laughed? Were you told ‘don’t cry’? Were you told to ‘man up’?

If your answers are any apart from the first, the message you may have internalised is ‘sadness is bad’. The same can be said for every emotion. Understanding how our emotions were responded to can help us understand why we might feel shame or guilt around our emotional responses.

These patterns of relating shape how we view ourselves and others, and indeed the world. They also inform how we behave in relationships with others too, both romantic and platonic, not to mention authoritative (ie police, teachers, doctors etc).

It’s important to realise that we don’t necessarily repeat the patterns. For example, if you grew up in a home where people were homophobic, you don’t automatically become homophobic. It may be that you reject the view completely and become an advocate for LGBTQ rights.
If you were taught anger was bad, you may really struggle to know how to process anger. You may have shame and guilt around anger and attempt to bottle it up.
We all learn different messages and ways to respond from the same relational responses, even in the same families. If you grew up around anger it may be traumatic for you when people start arguing near you, but your sibling isn’t bothered at all, and may even get involved in the argument.
Thinking back to how our emotions were received, and how our parents related to both each other (if they were together) and us will help us understand where we struggle with relationships.

Many many clients will tell me they don’t ‘do confrontation’. That they would rather ignore insults, slights, or something that has caused them emotion, because the fear of confrontation is so high they would rather hold on to it themselves, and absolve the other person of any responsibility.

Often this is because we are taught arguing is bad. If you argued with a sibling or friend how often were you allowed to resolve it yourselves? How often did a parent/carer or teacher step in and ‘break it up’?
Because this is such a common response to children arguing, they never learn how to resolve conflict, and as adults see conflict as a terminal act. That by confronting someone about something they found difficult in the behaviour means that the relationship will end, and they will some how be worse off without the person causing them emotional injury in their lives.
Does that seem right? That we hold onto injury because we don’t want to lose the injurer?!

So think back to your childhood, how were your emotional responses received? Were you allowed to argue to resolution? Were you allowed to demonstrate anger or sadness? How was your happiness and joy received?
When we understand that everything we know about emotion is taught, we can make peace with our own emotional responses, and know where they are coming from, meaning we take responsibility for them, and as a result establish a healthy boundary around how we are emotionally triggered by others, and how we respond with that knowledge.

Knowing why we respond in certain ways to certain circumstances or behaviour allows us freedom from the affect of others, and to prevent the repeat of maladaptive relational patterns that might put us in danger of abusive relationships.

I hope that helps, please feel free to ask any questions!

Helen