survive grief

For several weeks in a row, 36-year-old Marina cried at night in the bathroom, burying her face in a towel to muffle her sobs. “I didn’t want to disturb my husband and disturb our seven-year-old daughter, who was also very sad when her uncle died,” she says. Marina lost her adored older brother: two years ago he died in a car accident. For more than six months, she tried not to let suffering take over her entirely, hiding her pain from others.

She continues: “Shortly after my brother’s death, my boss suggested, in the best of spirits, ‘Don’t be shy, take a vacation to rest, recover.’ And then I suddenly felt what a huge abyss separates those who have lost a loved one from everyone else. Grief is not a disease, it cannot be cured, like a cold, you cannot rest.

Sooner or later, each of us has to console and support grieving people and grieve ourselves, losing loved ones. “Therefore, it is so important to understand how a person, devastated by loss, fills life with meaning again,” emphasizes psychotherapist Fedor Vasilyuk. “How, confident that he has lost the joy of living forever, he restores peace of mind, feels the colors and taste of life.”¹.

Don’t rush yourself

Russian culture dictates restraint in behavior and does not approve of the manifestation of strong feelings. Therefore, it is so difficult to cry and even remember who was dear to us in the presence of other people. And they often do not know how to react, feel helpless. And the mourner is embarrassed because he unwittingly puts them in such a position. He tries to “pull himself together” as soon as possible so as not to create inconvenience and not to remind others of what is not customary to talk about – about death.

“However, “mourning is a long process,” emphasizes body-oriented psychotherapist Vladimir Baskakov. – And it is impossible to speed it up: such attempts only lead to the fact that a person is exhausted, loses strength. Grief must be lived step by step. When a child is born, relatives first count weeks, months, then they start celebrating anniversaries – something similar happens when we lose someone.”

Fedor Vasilyuk clarifies: “The time of greatest suffering and acute mental pain lasts approximately 6-7 weeks from the moment of the tragic event. And only then the person begins to gradually return to life. The anniversary of death is the last date in this series. Perhaps it is no coincidence that most religions set aside one year for mourning.

Between life and death

When we love someone, a special contact arises between us, we spiritually, and often physically, follow those who are dear to us. “And if this person dies, the one who remains may unwittingly regard his life as a betrayal,” explains Vladimir Baskakov. “After all, he “should” have followed the deceased, as he had followed him in life.” Maria, 46, who lost her three-month-old baby twelve years ago, says this: “On the day of the funeral, I physically felt something pulling out of my stomach and leaving after my son. Then I lived like a zombie for a few more months, I was no longer in this life.

Losing a loved one, many find themselves between life and death. Shock and numbness – the first reaction to loss – is replaced by an unrealistic desire to return the deceased and the impossibility of admitting that what happened, happened forever. Fyodor Vasilyuk describes the state of acute grief in this way: “a person is psychologically absent from the present, he does not hear, does not feel, does not turn on the present, it seems to pass him by, while he himself is somewhere in another space and time … He could respond to those who condole with him about the fact that the deceased is not with him: I am not with you, I am there, or rather here, with him.

The work of grief is to be able to separate your fate from the fate of the departed, to build a new relationship with him. “Experiencing this moment and returning to life does not mean abandoning or forgetting the one we have lost,” explains psychoanalyst Marie-Frédéric Baquet, vice president of the French Thanatology Society. “It means giving him a new place in himself in such a way that he can continue to live, love and act.”

express sorrow

Having survived a loved one, a person still continues to experience the same feelings for him as during life. And they are often ambiguous: resentment and disappointment are mixed with love. Often, the grieving person reproaches himself for not loving or protecting the departed enough. “By the power of his grief, he seems to “get” the insufficient strength of his love,” continues Vladimir Baskakov. At the same time, he may feel angry, unconsciously blaming the loved one for leaving him. It is important to allow yourself to live through all these feelings, talk about them, remember, cry.

“Locking his pain, a person freezes, becomes inanimate,” emphasizes the psychotherapist. – The one who expresses it comes to life, feels. Just as a full breath can be taken only after finishing the exhalation, so a new relationship can begin only after the grief has been lived to the end. A person must grieve in order to return to life.

In traditional cultures, mourners performed lamentations and lamentations, helping the mourners to express their feelings. In Western culture, relatives and friends support each other: “Petting, hugging, hugging, just touching is a way to help a person feel his body,” says Vladimir Baskakov. “This is important, because in grief the feeling of oneself is lost, and touches return to the body, to oneself, to life.” The therapist adds that it makes sense to offer to be involved even when the bereaved strongly rejects the offer: “This is drawing attention to himself, and most likely there is a request for help behind it.

Sometimes it’s important to just be there, to be present. Do not flicker, maybe go about your business in the next room – but so that a person knows: if he becomes hard and wants someone to hug him, then he will have such an opportunity. If the bereaved feel that they are incapable of doing so, the bereaved may be advised to see a psychologist or psychotherapist.

Create a memory

Grief is a purely human experience. “To bury is, therefore, to be a man,” emphasizes Fedor Vasilyuk. “But to bury is not to discard, but to hide and preserve. Human grief is not destructive (to forget, tear off, separate), but constructive: it is called upon not to scatter, but to collect, not to destroy, but to create – to create memory. Memory at first manifests itself as a feeling of the presence of a departed loved one: the doorbell makes you think for a moment that it is he, or his voice is heard, or it suddenly appears on the street: his coat flashed ahead!

Then it comes in the form of scenes from the past – and it hurts a lot. But, paradoxically, this pain is caused by the grieving person himself: it is not the deceased who leaves us, but we ourselves break away from him or push him away from us. This gap makes us suffer. But “this is also the pain of the birth of a new one,” the psychotherapist believes: a new image of a loved one is gradually born in us, we free him from the pragmatics of relationships, demands and desires that we previously experienced in relation to him. This image acquires a different value and new, symbolic meanings: for example, it can become for us the personification of kindness and tenderness.

At the same time, our new “I” is born, capable of continuing to live, containing this tragic experience. Marie-Frederic Baquet notes that at this time, “close people, relatives or friends often avoid the grief-stricken person because they don’t know what to say to him. But there is little to say here, and the best gift they can give him is to listen. And avoid worldly advice, because he still does not hear them or, even worse, perceives them as a denial of his grief.

38-year-old Oksana lost her grandmother, who raised her from the age of three. “Believing that they are helping me with this, my friends repeated: “86 years is a long life, this is quite enough, at this age it is already, in general, normal to die.” They did not understand that my whole childhood was dying with her, and I was not at all consoled by the fact that she was already old. Only my best friend understood this. She gave me a bottle of the cologne that my grandmother used, and wrote a beautiful letter about the “eternal presence near.”

Five stages of grief

American psychotherapist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004) helped the dying and their loved ones all her life. She was the first to notice and describe the five stages that a person goes through after learning about his terminal diagnosis. The person who has lost someone close also goes through these stages.².

• DENIAL: “That’s not true, that’s just not possible!” A person is not able to believe in the reality of what happened.
• ANGER: Why him? It’s not fair!” At this stage, there is irritation, hostility towards others, anger at those who reported the sad news.
• TORG: “I (not) will do such and such, only let him be alive!” There is an irrational desire to return to the previous state, when everything was fine, and to make a retrospective deal with fate or with higher powers.
• DEPRESSION: “All is lost, nothing else matters.” Despair and horror, loss of interest in life.
• ACCEPTANCE: “I understand and accept that this is so.” Feeling of peace. It is during this period that you can reevaluate life and find new meaning in it.

These stages can sometimes be experienced in a different order. It is also possible that only some of them will be experienced (for example, anger, depression, and acceptance). It often happens that a person, having already passed some stage, suddenly returns to it for some time. It depends on individual characteristics how strong, deep and long the experience of grief will be.

¹ F. Vasilyuk “Survive grief” in the book “Psychology of motivation and emotions” (AST, Astrel, 2009).

² E. Kubler-Ross “About life after death” (Ves, 2010).