Grief is an experience common to us all. In grief, we feel that things are too difficult; we’ll never make it; we are unloving and unlovable. We have thoughts such as, “All the years I’ve wasted.” It is a feeling of sadness and loss. Loneliness. The feeling of “if only.” Regret. Feelings of abandonment, pain, helplessness, and hopelessness. Nostalgia. Melancholy. Depression. Longing. Irretrievable loss. Heartbrokenness. Anguish. Disappointment. Pessimism.
Grief can be precipitated by the loss of a belief system, a relationship, a capacity or role, a hope about ourselves, or an overall attitude toward our life, external circumstances, or institutions. It’s the feeling: “I’ll never get over this. This one is too difficult. I tried, but nothing helps.” There is a feeling of vulnerability to pain and suffering, and so we see a great deal of it in the external world to reinforce and justify our own inner feeling. There is a crying for someone to help because we can’t do anything about it, and we feel that maybe someone else can do it for us. This is in contradistinction to apathy, where there is a feeling that no one can help.
Most of us carry a great deal of suppressed grief. Men especially are prone to hide that particular feeling, as it is considered unmanly and un-masculine to cry. Most people are afraid of the amount of grief they have suppressed; they are terrified that they will be swamped and overwhelmed by it. People will say, “If I were ever to start crying, I would never stop”; “There is so much grief in the world, grief in my life, grief in my family and friends”; “O, the untold tragedies of life! All of the disappointments and smashed hopes!” Suppressed grief is responsible for many psychosomatic conditions and health-related complaints.
Instead of suppressing the feeling, if it is allowed to come up and be relinquished, we can quickly jump from grief to acceptance. The continuing grief over a loss is due to the resistance to accepting that state and allowing the grief to expend itself. The persistence of a feeling is due to the resistance to allowing it to be relinquished (e.g., “Cry me a river”). Once we accept the fact that we can handle grief, we are already up into pride. The feeling of “I can do it” and “I can handle it” brings us to courage. With the courage to face our inner feelings and let them go, we thus move on to the levels of acceptance and eventually peace. When we let go of a lot of grief we have been holding over the years, our friends and family will notice a change in our facial expression. Our step will be lighter and we will look younger.
Grief is time-limited. This fact gives us the courage and willingness to face grief. If we don’t resist the feeling of grief and totally surrender to it, it will run out in about 10–20 minutes; then it will stop for variable lengths of time. If we keep surrendering to it every time it comes up, then it will eventually run out. We just allow ourselves to experience it fully. We only have to tolerate an overwhelming grief for 10–20 minutes, and then all of a sudden it will disappear. If we resist the grief, then it will go on and on. Suppressed grief can go on for years.
In facing grief, we often have to acknowledge and let go of our shame and embarrassment about having the feeling in the first place. For men this is especially so. We have to relinquish our fear of the feeling and our fear of being swamped and overwhelmed by it. It helps to realize that letting go of the resistance to the feeling moves us quickly through it. Traditionally, women have said out of their own experience and wisdom: “A good cry makes me feel better.” Many a man has been surprised when he learned the truth of this.
Experientially, there was the surprising and almost immediate relief from a pounding headache as soon as the grief about a past situation was allowed to come up. As the grief surfaced, there was the sentence, “Men don’t cry.” After letting go of the masculine pride about crying, then up came a fear that the crying would never stop once it was allowed to start. As soon as that fear was gone, then there was anger. It was anger at a society that forces men to suppress their feelings, and anger at the notion that men are not even supposed to have feelings. With the letting go of that anger, the level of courage was reached, and then the needed crying could be allowed. Not only was there relief from the headache but, when the torrent of sobs subsided, a profound peacefulness settled. Henceforth, the subject did not have to be avoided.
Once a man has fully let the grief come up and totally freed himself from that suppressed energy, he is peaceful and his view of his own masculinity changes. He realizes that his masculinity is now more complete. He is still just as much of a man, but now he is a man who can also be in touch with and handle his own feelings. Consequently, he is more adequate, more capable, more well-rounded, more understanding, more mature, more capable of relating to and understanding others, more compassionate, and more loving.
The psychological basis of all grief and mourning is attachment. Attachment and dependence occur because we feel incomplete within ourselves; therefore, we seek objects, people, relationships, places, and concepts to fulfill inner needs. Because they are unconsciously utilized to fulfill an inner need, they come to be identified as “mine.” As more energy is poured into them, there is a transition from identifying with the external objects as “mine” to being an actual extension of “me.” Loss of the object or person is experienced as a loss of our own self and an important part of our emotional economy. Loss is experienced as a diminution of the quality of ourselves, which the object or person represented. The more emotional energy invested in the object or person, the greater will be the feeling of loss and the greater the pain associated with the undoing of the bonds of dependence. Attachment creates a dependency, and dependency, because of its nature, intrinsically carries with it a fear of loss.
Within each person, there is the child, parent, and adult. When grief comes up, it is rewarding to ask, “Within myself, is it the child, parent, or adult that is the source of this feeling?” For example, the “child” within a person is scared that something will happen to a beloved dog. It wonders, “How will I make it?” The inner adult also feels grief, but the adult accepts the inevitable. The little kitty or doggie is not immortal. The adult in us regretfully accepts that impermanency is a reality of life. We accept that our youth is not permanent, that many romantic relationships are not life-long, and that our dog will one day die.
Because of the nature of attachment, the first state preceding the actual experiencing of loss is that of fear of loss. This is usually defended in one of two ways. One is to increase the intensity of the attachment by ever-persistent attempts to strengthen the bonds. This approach is based on the fantasy that “the greater the bond, the less likelihood of loss.” However, this is the very maneuver that often precipitates loss in personal relationships, because the other person struggles to be free of the possessive attachment and the amount of restrictive control they feel being placed upon them. Thus, because what we hold in mind tends to manifest, the fear of a loss can, paradoxically, be the mechanism of bringing about that loss.
The second way that fear of loss is handled is by the psychological mechanism of denial which is, in common language, called “playing ostrich.” We see this around us every day in its various forms of refusing to face the inevitable. All the warning signs are there, but the person does not take heed. Thus, the man who is obviously in the process of losing his job tends not to notice. The partners in a marriage that is going down the drain take no corrective action. The person with a serious disease ignores all of the symptoms and avoids medical attention. The politicians fail to look at social problems, hoping they will go away. Whole countries are oblivious to the precarious state of existence (e.g., 9-11 attack). The motorist ignores the ominous warning signals of a misbehaving engine. We have all experienced regret that we didn’t pay attention to the warning signals of trouble ahead.
To handle the fear of loss, we have to look at what purpose the external person or object serves in our life. What emotional need is being fulfilled? What emotions would arise were we to lose the object or the person? Loss can be anticipated, and we can handle the various fears associated with the sense of loss by disassembling the emotional complexes that they represent, and letting go of the individual component feelings.
Let’s say, for example, that you have a pet dog to which you have been attached for many years. It is obvious that old Rover is getting older. You find that you don’t like to think about his advanced age, feeling uncomfortable at the prospect of his death and putting it out of mind. As you catch yourself doing this, you realize that these feelings are warning signals and that you are not handling the emotional situation. And so, you ask yourself, “What purpose is the dog serving in my life? What is his emotional service to me?” Love, companionship, devotion, amusement, and diversion. “Will losing the dog leave these personal emotional needs unfulfilled?” In looking at this, some of the fear can be acknowledged and relinquished. Once the fear is let go, you don’t have to resort to denial and pretend to yourself that Rover will live forever.
Another emotion associated with grief and mourning is that of anger. The loss of that which is important frequently brings up a feeling of rage, which may be projected onto the world, society, individuals and, ultimately, God, who is held to be responsible for the nature of the universe. Anger results from prior refusal to accept the fact that all relationships and possessions in this life are transitory. Even the physical body, which is our biggest attachment, eventually has to be relinquished, as everyone is aware.
We feel that what has become important or comforting to us is a permanent attachment. Consequently, when that illusion is threatened, there is anger, resentment, and self-pity, feelings which can result in chronic bitterness. “Impotent rage” is associated with the desire to change the nature of the world and the impossibility of doing so. In facing this fact of existence, a major loss can therefore bring about a shift in our philosophical position. One major loss can awaken us to the nature of all attachments and all relationships, or we may again deny the obvious fact that all relationships are transitory and furiously re-intensify existing bonds to compensate for the loss.
A part of handling denial of the inevitability of loss is seeing through attempts at manipulation. In fantasy, the mind tries to develop tactics so as to avoid the loss. This may take the form of becoming “gooder” or more hard-working, more honest, more persevering, or more loyal. In religious persons, this may take the form of trying to manipulate God by promises and bargains. In relationships, it may take the form of over-compensatory behavior. The spouse becomes ever more dutiful, loving, and attentive in an attempt to prevent a breakup. The inattentive husband suddenly starts bringing home gifts and flowers instead of getting to the root cause of the problem.
When the denial breaks down, the manipulations have not worked, and the fear has been passed through, then the depression itself, the actual process of mourning and grief, takes place. All of these emotional stages can be worked through much more rapidly by the process of letting go, in which the inevitability of the emotion of grief is surrendered to and replaced by a willingness to let go of resistance and let the process pass through and complete itself. There can be a decision to let go of resisting the grief. Instead of denial and resistance, you plunge into it and get over it. You have a “good cry” over old Rover or the lost relationship.
Associated with the feeling of grief is always a variable amount of guilt. This is based on the fantasy that the loss represents a punishment or that a different attitude or behavior would have prevented it from happening. Unless it is relinquished, the guilt can then recycle and refuel the anger and rage. The unacknowledged and unrelinquished rage may be projected onto others in the environment in the form of blame. Blame projected onto other relationships may, then, compound the loss by bringing about further loss.
This happens frequently between marital partners as a result of the death of a child. It has been reported that the divorce rate among parents who have lost children is as high as 90%. Because of the projection of blame, a severe loss is then compounded by another severe loss—that of a marital partner. An example of this type of reaction is the case of a forty-year-old woman. She had an excellent marriage for twenty years with an attentive, dutiful husband. Her youngest son developed leukemia. When he died, she went into grief and mourning and, more importantly, developed a rage reaction. It took the form of hatred. She hated the doctors; she hated the hospital; she hated God; she hated her husband and the existing children. Her rage became so uncontrollable that she became physically violent and threatening. Several times the police had to be called to control her violent behavior. Finally the other children left home out of fear of the chaos, physical abuse, and menacing emotional states. Her husband left no stone unturned in trying to help her with the rage, but she vented her fury upon him as well, violently attacking him on several occasions. Finally, in desperation and despair, he was driven from the home. The chaotic situation ultimately ended in a divorce in which the woman lost her home. It was almost five years before the rage subsided, at which time the woman had destroyed her whole life and now had to start over from scratch, rebuilding a new life.
When all the negative emotions have been worked through, surrendered to and let go of, relief finally occurs, and the former suffering is replaced by acceptance. Acceptance is different from resignation. In resignation there are still residuals of the previous emotion left. There is reluctance and a delaying of the true recognition of the facts. Resignation says, “I don’t like it, but I have to put up with it.”
With acceptance, resistance to the true nature of the facts has been relinquished; thus, one of the signs of acceptance is serenity. With acceptance, the struggle is over and life begins anew. The energies that were bound up in the previous negative emotion are now freed up, so that the healthier aspects of the personality are now re-energized. The creative aspects of the mind develop opportunities for new life situations and further options for growth and experience, accompanied by a new sense of aliveness. A well-known and widely-practiced teaching is the Serenity Prayer of the 12-Step groups:
God, Grant me the
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
Courage to change the things I can, and the
Wisdom to know the difference.
Failure to work through any of the various emotions associated with mourning and loss can result in chronic stuckness in any of its components. Thus, it can result in prolonged depression, and prolonged states of denial in which the death of the person is actually denied. Chronic guilt or refusal to work through the emotions associated with loss can result in delayed grief reaction and physical disease. The mechanisms behind this process are explained in a later chapter on the relationship between mind and body. The suppressed energy of the unrelinquished emotions reemerges through the body’s endocrine and nervous system as an energetic imbalance, which impairs the flow of life energy through the body’s acupuncture meridians. This results in pathologic changes in various organs. It is a well-known fact that the death rate among the bereaved is much higher than that of the general population, especially in the first year or two following the death of a spouse.
One source of grief-related guilt is anger at the loved one for departing. This is often suppressed because it seems irrational to the conscious mind. The virtues of the departed loved one are enhanced and exaggerated in fantasy, and this discrepancy compounds the guilt. How could we be angry at such a wonderful person? There is guilt about being angry at God, the author of the universe, for having allowed the tragic event to take place.
A sixty-year-old woman came into the office with multiple physical complaints. She had asthma attacks, allergies, bronchitis, frequent episodes of pneumonia, and all kinds of breathing difficulties. During psychotherapy, it was revealed that her mother had died 22 years previously, and she stated that, curiously, she had had no reaction to her mother’s death. Oddly, although it was her responsibility, she had not ordered a head stone to be placed on her mother’s grave. From information given, it was obvious that she had had an extremely dependent relationship with her mother, about whom she was ambivalent because of the mother’s refusal to fill all of her dependency needs.
It took many months for her to work through her massive denial, which was associated with guilt over her anger at her mother for leaving her. That anger was directed inwardly at herself in the form of disease, which also expressed her helplessness and her wish to cry out for her mother. The suppressed desire to cry for the mother-loss led to a constant feeling that she could not breathe. She hated herself for the love/hate feelings for her mother, and the sum total of all her repressed emotions had reemerged in the form of her multiple respiratory symptoms and complaints (“psychosomatic” illness). As she worked through the delayed mourning, the reaction to grief and loss began to surface. The extent of her resistance to working through these emotions and how that resistance had resulted in her physical symptoms became very clear to her. Eventually, she went for additional professional training to become a therapist working with the dying in a hospice program.
From the nature of the processes we have described, it becomes apparent that severe mourning, loss, and the pathological reactions that may ensue can be prevented by early recognition, and by preemptive surrender of the associated feelings while they are still mild and can be handled without excessive suffering.
As we have seen, the basis of all mourning and loss is attachment, plus the denial of the transitory nature of all relationships. We can begin by looking at our lives, identifying those areas of attachment, and asking ourselves: “What internal needs are they satisfying? What feeling would come up if I were to lose them? How can my inner emotional life be balanced so as to decrease the extent, degree, and number of attachments on external objects and people?” The greater our attachment to that which is outside of ourselves, the greater is our overall level of fear and vulnerability to loss. We can ask ourselves why we feel so incomplete. “Why am I so empty within myself that I have to search for solutions in the form of attachment and dependency on others?”
We can begin to look at our own inner areas of immaturity. Specifically, we need to examine: “Where am I looking to get love rather than to give it?” The more loving we are, the less vulnerable we are to grief and loss, and the less we need to seek attachments. When we have acknowledged and let go of all negative feelings, and we have graduated from smallness to the recognition of our greatness so that our internal joy comes from the pleasure of giving and loving, then we are really invulnerable to loss. When the source of happiness is found within, we are immune to the losses of the world.
When we take a critical look at our life, we see all of the attachments and escapes into which we have fallen. Each one represents a potential future source of pain and suffering. The really important areas should be closely examined. Let’s take, for example, the failure to face these issues in the commonly seen, so-called retirement syndrome. Traditionally, this may occur in women when the job of raising young children comes to an end with their maturity and leaving home (“empty nest syndrome”), and with a man when he reaches retirement age or loses his job, or through some physical disablement is unable to carry on his previous work. The reaction that typically occurs in middle age is due to the many years of pre-existing denial. There is often a lack of facing the inevitable and making plans for other life activities that would gratify the same inner needs which, in these cases, are feelings of self-esteem, importance, the wanting to feel needed and significant, and the need to make a contribution and be productive.
Anticipation of the inevitable and preparing for it now bring relatively minor discomfort compared to traumatic grief and loss at a later date. We can look at our major love relationships and honestly examine them. To what degree do they subserve our selfish inner needs? To what degree are we really using the other person to exploit them for our own gain? To what degree are they merely subserving our happiness? To find out, all we need to do is ask ourselves: “If their happiness were best served by leaving me, how would I feel about it?” This reveals the degree to which we are trying to restrict and control the other person—which is attachment and not love.
Over two thousand years ago, the Buddha made the observation that the basis of all human suffering was due to desire and attachment, and human history has merely proven the truth of his teaching. What is the solution to that dilemma? As we can see, it is only the small aspect of oneself that becomes attached. The smaller self buys into the frightened, inadequate set of programs that we have unwittingly allowed to run us. The purpose of letting go is to de-energize these programs so that they no longer run us; then, we are free to expand into the greater awareness of our Higher Self.
That part of us to which we refer as our “greater Self” loves rather than seeks love. Consequently, there comes the awareness that we are at all times surrounded by love, which is unlimited. Love is automatically attracted to the person who is loving.
By constantly letting go of our negative feelings, we thus cure present pain and prophylactically prevent the occurrence of future pain. Fear is replaced by trust and with it comes a profound sense of wellbeing. Immunity to grief of loss occurs when we replace dependence on the small self (the personality) with dependence on the Self (the Divinity within). We look for security to the Self, which is eternal, instead of to the small self, which is transitory.