[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to Grieve?
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Ask HN: How to Grieve?
my account is only psuedo-anonymous so i won't reveal too much
about the situation but someone very important in my life just
passed away. i've never been in this situation and i'm berating
myself for not being broken. i'm with family and assuming the role
of keeping everyone calm, but mostly because i am calm, not because
i am someone they typically rely on. i am sad. i have cried. yet, i
am not broken like them. i can't tell if i'm feeling numb or if i
am some sort of sociopath. is it normal to feel so still and empty
in the midst of something so calamitous? i feel ashamed. i don't
think this is absent grief. i loved this person with my entire
being. i'm worried that there's something wrong with me. is this my
way of grieving? is my coping mechanism letting go of all sentiment
and walking through the motions? i feel so out of place; they keep
asking me if i'm okay; i'm thinking of putting on the act of being
completely distraught so that everyone else will leave me alone.
i'm so drained and i think it's mostly this anxiety over my
reaction. i'm hungry and exhausted and i really just want to know
what to do? are any of you who have experience in this department
willing to give me some advice? i can't talk to my family, most of
them are in an incurable state. the wound is still very fresh.
Author : dwmbt
Score : 16 points
Date : 2022-01-18 20:44 UTC (2 hours ago)
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Most of the time you know someone is going to die well in
| advance. A lot of people seem to avoid thinking about death, but
| I've found myself already into the acceptance phase by the time
| someone passes.
|
| This was particularly true with my grandmother who slowly faded
| due to Alzheimer's. She was effectively gone for some time. I
| still got upset of course, but it was mostly when I was chatting
| with other family and recalling past events.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| When my dad died people said I did not cry enough. I think
| different people are different and resent being told how I am
| supposed to react.
|
| I have been watching a lot of Chinese TV set in ancient times
| (e.g. _Three Kingdoms_ ) and it is interesting to see the
| expectations that tough men, warriors, are supposed to cry. If
| you go to a funeral and don't cry in that culture that would have
| been a serious breach of expectations and I think your commitment
| to the norms would be questioned.
|
| In the last six months I have been working on a personal
| transformation of sorts and one of the discoveries is the
| cultivation of sadness to defeat hostility. I was in a situation
| where I had to eliminate rage against any possible provocation
| and i would flood myself with sadness sometimes based on my own
| personal losses, sometimes from fantasy and if all else failed I
| would go to the war memorial and start reading names.
|
| I could not find the practice talked about in the western
| literature but found Chinese people knew about it hundreds of
| years ago. It sounds beyond the pale but I am astonished at the
| effect my tears can have on people, how it gets me much better
| results than getting angry.
| meristohm wrote:
| I've known the feeling, of pressure to grieve, since I was a
| teen, and from The Blindboy Podcast I have some more words around
| it: solemnity (by its nature performative, and maybe there's a
| social benefit but I don't feel it). I see funeral gatherings as
| a celebration of the life of the deceased and all the
| relationships they has to bring this group together. Not very
| Midwestern US of me. Privately I am more-able to cry and grieve,
| but in public maybe I'm performing? I find being around people
| exhausting.
|
| My dad drank himself to death a few years ago (well, over a
| lifetime) and after about a year The guilt of not reaching out to
| him more often finally faded. I mostly actively remember the good
| now, while acknowledging all the trauma.
|
| If you don't already have a mental-health counselor
| (disinterested third-party, a "helper" in Fred Rogers
| terminology) I recommend it, at least to offload all your
| thoughts and feelings so you don't trouble your family or friends
| who can't handle it or would rather not (as others have noted in
| other discussions, some people have family and friends who will
| gladly listen and support---good for them! I'm not so lucky, as
| much of my family is also dealing with a lot of trauma and I'd
| rather have professional, not-entangled advice). You're not
| alone.
| focus2020 wrote:
| From my personal observation people with responsibiltes grieve at
| a later time and don't like most at the the of the incicent. It
| takes about 3 months to grieve some cases about a year later.
| enduser wrote:
| Our minds have something like a circuit breaker that kicks in
| when our capacity to integrate our experience is overwhelmed.
|
| You might want to take some time alone to be with your experience
| and not need to process the experience and behavior of others.
|
| With time you can adapt to what happened and reclaim your full
| experience. For now there is dullness and fatigue while your mind
| tries to hold together your old way of being.
|
| It will get better--if you let it. You must learn to feel.
| soueuls wrote:
| I lost my father and my dog. For some reasons the only time I
| cried was when my dog passed away.
|
| Did I hate my father? Absolutely not, but that's what happened.
| Sometimes it's not too logical, trust what's inside your mind,
| you don't need to break down to mourn.
| postalrat wrote:
| I lost my dad thanksgiving weekend and lost my dog right after
| new years. It could be I'm still grieving for my dad but losing
| the dog has really hurt.
|
| It's a different type of guilt and loss when you were the one
| who raised them and ultimately had to made the choice to put
| them down. I think losing a pet might have more in common with
| losing a child than losing a parent.
| elmerfud wrote:
| Everyone process is grief differently and in my opinion there's
| no wrong way to do it. The only wrong way would be to avoid it.
| It doesn't seem like you are avoiding the grief it's just that
| you process it differently than those around you. Do not feel bad
| or think that your experience is less than theirs simply because
| of the way you process it differently. Some people make very
| outward signs because that's how they process their grief or
| maybe they are in fact putting on a show because they believe
| that's how one processes grief. You can never really know what's
| in the heart of another. For yourself and your description of
| things my opinion is you are processing it differently but you
| are still processing your grief and acknowledging that it's
| there. You are still going through the healthy stages of
| understanding what's going on don't feel bad because others do it
| in different ways.
|
| I process grief very much in the same way that I think you do. I
| do not express a lot of outward emotions or outward crying but I
| do it through quiet contemplation.
|
| Just so you can understand my direct experiences I've had
| grandparents and other elderly family pass but I've also had my
| son die. It was about 6 to 7 years ago now he was in his early
| twenties and was in a car accident and I was the only person in
| the hospital room at the time that he passed even though my
| entire family was there. My wife and oldest daughter very much
| had the outward displays of grief like you describe. They saw
| counseling and they went to various programs that help you deal
| with grief counseling and group sessions and it was all very
| helpful for them. It allowed them to process their grief in a way
| but I didn't avail myself to any of that and I don't think that
| my grief was any less than theirs or that I handled it in a worse
| way than theirs. I do think that they did perceive me as a bit
| cold but I have always been more emotionally distanced then they
| are to anything.
|
| I also had my one of best friends pass away in my house. This was
| shortly before she was 30 years old she moved back from the other
| side of the country to stay with me for a while because she was
| having problems with addiction and so forth and I didn't realize
| how bad it was until I found her passed away in her bed of a
| heroin overdose. This was a very long time friend I knew her
| mother or sisters and some of her extended family and I processed
| the grief in much the same way.
|
| Everyone's different and sometimes we can put on a show to act as
| if we fit in to try and make others feel comfortable. That works
| for certain things, works especially well in my job, but for this
| my advice would be don't do it. Your grief is yours process it
| how you need you don't need to put on a show at this time in your
| life to attempt to make others comfortable. If they're your
| friends or family and they truly care about you they will
| understand you and understand you are grieving in your own way
| and accept you for it just like you accept them.
| jascination wrote:
| I've been in a similar position recently - uncle died from a
| quite sudden bout of MND, we were close.
|
| When I found out I didn't cry, nor did I really feel _anything_.
| Just the absence of feeling. Oddly enough, when my cousin called
| to tell me, I hung up, told my partner (who was very sad), then I
| went outside and fixed the broken clothesline out back. My uncle
| was a very handy man, and I figured fixing something was a good
| homage to him.
|
| I felt weird and guilty about not really having any emotions, but
| I genuinely didn't feel sad or really any different.
|
| Then my family did a little memorial thing over Zoom (our country
| was in a hard lockdown). We each shared a bit about my uncle,
| and.... I fucking lost it. I've never cried in front of my family
| like that before. And then as quick as it came on, it left. Now
| when I think about him I do feel sad and I miss him; I think my
| lack of feeling was a bit of a defence mechanism, and I needed an
| appropriate venue to let it out.
|
| A gentle suggestion: Maybe you're not feeling anything because
| you're making yourself and your (lack of) feelings the centre of
| this. Grieving isn't about feeling bad, it's about honouring the
| person you lost and your relationship with them. The end goal
| isn't to cry or feel awful, that's not some pinnacle you reach or
| checkbox you get to tick as "GRIEVING: DONE".
|
| I'd try talking to a psychologist about it, and just have a good
| chat. Talk about how you're frustrated that you're not feeling
| sad or grieving, and how that's making you feel guilty. Talk
| about why you feel like you SHOULD feel heavy emotions, because
| this person meant so much to you. Then focus on the person, on
| the impact they had on you, on the things you love about them and
| the things you think they loved about you. Move the conversation
| to being about the person you lost, not your lack of emotion -
| realise that this isn't about you, it's about the person you lost
| and your relationship with them, which is gone now.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| First, let me just say that I'm so sorry for your loss. Few
| things are likely to affect us as deeply over time as losing
| someone. You have my sympathy.
|
| Like others will tell you, everyone grieves differently, and that
| applies to all aspects: timing, depth, breadth, mode -- all of
| it.
|
| There's no "right" way to grieve, and there's no "wrong" way to
| grieve.
|
| It sounds like your own response is concerning to you, but it
| doesn't have to be.
|
| In various crises in my own life I've followed a pattern that
| sounds similar to what you've described: I tend to hold my
| emotions at arms length, leaning heavily on my rational thinking
| to attempt to work through the immediate problem until the storm
| clears. I am usually very calm in the moment. That doesn't mean
| there _no_ emotional response in the moment, but I tend to be a
| very slow burn on the emotional side.
|
| What has helped me, and what I would encourage you to do, is find
| someone you can actually feel comfortable opening up to. Doesn't
| mean you need to dump everything all at once, but being able to
| have someone help walk through feelings over time can be
| tremendously helping in processing grief (and many other parts of
| life). If that's a friend, family member, or therapist, it's
| worth trying to find.
|
| My guess is that eventually this acute crisis will pass, and the
| waves will find you. Having an outlet for that can be a
| lifesaver.
|
| tl;dr -- There's nothing wrong with you, but find someone to talk
| to so that you can work through the feelings when they arrive,
| which they will, in some way, at some time.
| ss48 wrote:
| I don't think it's sociopathic in any way. There is no 'normal'
| way to feel about a calamity because it is so out-of-place from
| everything else, and everybody copes differently and expresses it
| differently, at different times. Each person close to the person
| who passed away is experiencing a range of sentiments and complex
| feelings that are so different from one another, which can
| include an absence of feeling, so it's perfectly normal to feel
| abnormal because everyone is going to be feeling abnormal in an
| unexpected situation. Sometimes, they might just be asking how
| you're feeling or coping because they are not sure how they are
| feeling about it and trying to experience it with someone else to
| recover, because they are concerned for every other person close
| to that person who passed, or because they don't know how to
| process what they are experiencing and just looking for ideas.
|
| It might help to hear others express the grief they experience
| because hearing what they are feeling or doing afterwards might
| help give you some ideas of what to do next or think about this
| person who passed differently. I don't think they would feel that
| you have an obligation to express grief to them when you talk to
| them because not everyone grieves by expressing it or has a way
| to express it. At the very least, you know how much you loved
| this person who is now gone, and that much can always be
| conveyed, not just by how bad a feeling it is to have lost that
| person, but also by how positively and greatly you felt when you
| were around that person when he or she was with you.
|
| Also, very sorry to hear about your loss.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Oh wow, really sorry to hear about it. I remember back when I
| lost my twin daughters I felt very similar. I even had people
| invite me to cry with them but I knew that wasn't me. Since that
| time I confirmed my thinking with a lot of my professional
| mentors and coaches over the years.
|
| IMO the response you described is totally normal and likely the
| best fit for your personal psychology, especially if you have a
| personal history of similar responses to trauma. Your body-mind
| system is going to respond in its own way, and it really doesn't
| care about any other grieving stereotypes.
|
| You can tell others--"look, I'm not OK, but I also know I have to
| process this my way. And I may need to process things at a much
| deeper level at first, a level of complex meanings that just
| don't easily reflect on the outside."
|
| In the meantime I hope you will do the best you can for your
| personal care on an hour-by-hour basis. Feeding yourself
| properly, changing your clothes every day, making decisions to be
| active, getting any help you may need, will all have to feel like
| you're forcing it to some degree. That's normal in the
| circumstances. But if neglected they can add up to some regrets
| eventually, so hopefully there's at least a way to start putting
| some of those daily building blocks back together for yourself.
|
| Hang in there, use the reflection time to soak up the big picture
| implications for your future and bring all of that life-changing,
| learning energy forward if you can. Good luck.
| FroshKiller wrote:
| When my mother's parents died, I really only cried once, and that
| was on the way home from what turned out to be the last time I
| saw my grandfather alive.
|
| I loved them both immensely, so it troubled me that I didn't seem
| more hurt. I felt very self-conscious when one of the people
| providing hospice care to my grandfather commented that I seemed
| to be taking things well.
|
| After a few years, I realized I wasn't more broken up about their
| deaths because I had already made peace with the fact that people
| die before I lost them. People have different relationships with
| mortality. It's okay if you cry, and it's okay if you don't. It
| doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with you, and
| there is no right way to grieve.
|
| Since you aren't broken by the pain right now, use that composure
| to provide comfort to your family.
| olegious wrote:
| No one can tell you how to grieve. You feel what you feel, no one
| can argue with that. FWIW, I've always been closer to your end of
| the spectrum, not too visibly distraught even if I loved the
| person deeply.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| For me grief is a sudden pang for something I can't have any
| more. Being pulled aside in a hallway by my grandfather so he can
| tell me a dirty joke. The bland taste of my grandmother's
| 'Chicken a la king'.
|
| The first time i felt these was often months, even years after
| their passing. And in moments of vulnerability they can cut quite
| deep.
|
| The crying you do in the moment has very little to do with grief
| in my opinion. Grief isn't being upset at a sudden change in the
| status quo of your life, it's the ongoing losses that you deal
| with as you move on.
|
| I can't remember any of my Grandfather's jokes now. I went years
| without thinking about them once. Now it bothers me whenever I
| think of him.
|
| To quote Gordon Lightfoot, "the feeling is gone and I just can't
| get it back".
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(page generated 2022-01-18 23:02 UTC)