Grieving Your Losses

As counselors, one of the phrases that rolls off our tongues easily is:

“You have to grieve your losses.”

“Great” says a lot of clients “How do I do that?”

I really had to think about that for a while. I mean I know how to feel sad, but I am aware that it’s more than that. So I started at the beginning of the grief process as theorized by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying.

The first stage according to Kubler-Ross is denial. I found it interesting that the first step in the “twelve step program of recovery” is breaking denial. But it makes sense – grief is the process of recovery from loss.

When death is the loss, it is pretty easy to identify. It is just so up front and in your face. But there are so many other kinds of losses that we experience, and it may be that we don’t recognize the need to identify them as losses and grieve.

I would ask the question “What loss(es) might you be denying?

Dig deep – go into you history, your past. What do you regret? What things have passed you by? What relationships are unfinished because they didn’t end well, or you said too much or too little and wish you could have a “do-over”?

I know that I have rationalized some of my bad decisions so that I wouldn’t have to admit them as losses – but they really are. Other decisions were made for me and the reality of my powerlessness in those situations is a loss.

Truth be told, I don’t want to grieve my losses. I would rather stay in denial or avoid them. I don’t want to feel sad, or scared or angry. But the problem is that it is highly likely that I will either shut off all my feelings, or I will redirect them into an addiction of some sort. I might not even recognize it as an addiction if the pursuit seems positive, like focusing on a career, or volunteerism, or mastering a musical instrument or acquiring some other skill.

So what is the goal? For me, I would say freedom. Like releasing the air pressure that builds up in a balloon, the grief process releases the stored up pain and allows us to keep moving forward. Women often talk about the relief they feel after a “good cry”.  Guys not so much, but I’ll bet it is still true. But I do know that the first step toward freedom is “owning” our losses, no matter what they might be. Then it is likely that some of the other stages of grief will follow.

The Bible clearly tells us that there is a time for mourning as well as a time for rejoicing. Perhaps it is not possible to do one without making room for the other.

Psalm 30:11 - You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy.

Embracing Confusion

Right now I am going through a major transition in my life – and it’s a good thing. Everyone around me is happy for me. It’s one of the goals I have had my heart set on for quite a while. But in the midst of this seemingly joyous time, I have some really perplexing feelings: loss, aloneness, anxiety and sadness along with relief, excitement and awareness of the expanded opportunities.

What in the world in going on in my head?

The word “confused” shows up so often in counseling. Although it may mean “I don’t understand”, more often it means I am in a dilemma and I don’t know what to choose. I must take a position but I am afraid to make the wrong decision. It can also mean that there are two seemingly opposite beliefs in play.

“He says he loves me but he keeps saying or doing stupid things that hurt me. What’s up with that?”

“She says she wants to support me, but all she does is criticize or blame me and I feel anything besides supported. Which one is it?”

The truth is probably that in both cases there is no intentional ill will. He does love you, but he fails to see how unloving some of his behavior can be. She does want to support you, but old habits die hard. It’s probably a family of origin issue. From a spiritual standpoint, the flesh can be pretty strong and difficult to manage.  

Confusion often gets us stuck. There does not seem to be a “right” answer. Am I happy or am I sad? Can I be both at the same time? How can I be a friend of God in my spiritual self, but an enemy of God in my sinfulness?

The truth is that peace may only come as we are able to hold both positions at the same time, knowing that we are complicated beings and capable of dealing with complexity. I am feeling a loss of a former career even as I am excited about what lies ahead. What do I need to let go of in order to not be held back? Are there things I have missed that are important, or am I worrying too much? The truth is that I probably have missed things along the way, and I am too anxious about it too.

What really helps is to take myself out of the center of all these issues. Frustration and confusion makes it all about me and I need to shift my perspective and try to see things differently. Do I consider other people? Can I rejoice and be grateful in all things, not for the pain but because I am loved by God?

Losses and Limitations

About a week ago my back gave out. That hasn’t happened for quite a while, but every time it does it gets my attention. It’s like adding 30 years to my age – bad years. All of a sudden my 6 foot height turns into 5’ 6”. Also, my normally cheery attitude loses some height. And it’s not just the pain that bothers me – it’s the loss of control. The things that I regularly do become difficult or impossible. The plans that I have made are unexpectedly put on hold and I become more dependent on Nan – and it bugs me.

However I discovered that it wasn’t all bad.

Eventually it taught me to embrace reality and surrender what I couldn’t change. And when I did that my attitude changed back to something a lot more peaceful. Acceptance is a powerful antidepressant.

There are things that we must fight back against. Sometimes people put limitations on us that we shouldn’t accept. And when those are simply the opinion of an uninformed or harsh critic, we should resist. I had a friend who was told that as a result of a car accident, he would never walk again and be forever confined to a wheelchair. This man, a U.S. Marine, found that he was being grouped with people who “typically” don’t recover from his situation. Through persistence, he made a full recovery.  

But when reality is the critic, we do well to embrace her warnings.

I had a friend who blew out his finances from bad investments. Instead of accepting the bad decisions and loss that resulted, he began gambling with further “investments” using borrowed money. His goal was to get back the lost money before his wedding day. He lost that too and in the first year of marriage the unhappy couple (and unknowing bride) had to declare bankruptcy.

I also heard a woman on the radio tell of her journey from multimillionaire to living on Social Security alone. When her husband passed away, she was unable to manage their assets and eventually lost everything. But what surprised me was that she said she had never been more at peace. The result was a simple life that left her free to experience God in a whole new way, unencumbered by the complexities and anxieties of managing wealth, a large home and an overflowing schedule.   

Accepting losses and limitations can be really hard. It means we have to face our fragility and powerlessness. It means that we have to be dependent on our Creator and trust that He is good, even when we do not understand why bad things are happening in our life.

It might be that you are facing an insurmountable obstacle right now. It could be a marriage partner unwilling to get help or a health problem that you cannot change. It could be adult children that are making horrible choices or a job situation that can only get worse. Whatever it might be, the degree to which you accept what you cannot control will be the degree of peace that you will be able to experience.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (NIV)

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. ”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

DABDA

When we think about grief and grieving, we often think of the death of someone close to us. But that is not the only kind of grief that we experience. As a matter of fact we can go through grief when we experience any kind of loss – and the more significant the loss, the deeper the grief.

Some of the losses are tangible, as in the death of a person or pet or the loss of a job or relationship. But other losses are less tangible, like the loss of security, or our youth, or our mental sharpness. All of these losses matter, and if not dealt with, they can build up in us and take their toll.

Sometimes we think we shouldn’t feel these losses as deeply as we do, or feel them at all. But this is not a helpful attitude. Neither minimizing nor denying their existence will offer release. Only in admitting the pain and moving through it will you be able to be free of the hold it may have over your life.   

Grief must be shared. It cannot be released in isolation. You must seek a safe, compassionate person or group of persons who are willing to walk with you through the pain. Walking with a person means doing more listening and less talking. It takes maturity to do that well, but what a gift it is. James 1:19 says to be quick to listen and slow to speak (and slow to anger). How appropriate that is when applied to grief.

The traditional steps of grief are: Denial(of the loss), Anger(at the loss), Bargaining(to restore the loss), Depression(at the weight of the loss) and Acceptance(of the loss) – mostly in that order and mostly applicable to all forms of loss. Hence, the acronym DABDA. 

I have found that many people will often cycle between anger and depression. The cycle goes something like this: the inability to reverse the loss leads to anger which leads to a feeling of powerlessness that results in depression. Then a person may become angry at the depression until the powerlessness over the loss once again overtakes them and returns them to a state of depression. 

If we grieve in a healthy way, we eventually accept the loss and move on. If we do not, we may find ourselves stuck. At this point it might be wise to seek additional help.

All of us experience losses of different magnitudes. If we haven’t yet experienced a significant loss, rest assured it will happen if we live long enough. The goal is to be prepared to accept and give comfort as needed, and to develop resiliency by grieving well.