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Healthy vs. Unhealthy Grieving


The Buddha taught that we live surrounded by "mountains that are moving in on us from all sides, crushing all in its path…" such are the inevitable experiences of aging, sickness, separation from the loved and death. He continues in the sutta by noting that "troops can hold no ground, nor wealth win out" against these forces. Yet, aware of our fragility amidst such unsparing outcomes, we seek false refuges, attempts to deny and avoid our disappointments, to live life without truly opening to the emotional cost of loss. Alas, there is no inoculation from pain, even in spiritual practice.

It should go without noting that life is not only loss: Sadness and delight, separation and connection, easeful and challenging states are intertwined and braided throughout our days. Just as we cannot outrun the darkness that arrives after a beautiful day, if we try to bypass disappointment and depression, we cannot truly relax and appreciate times of excitement and joy.

When the great psychologist John Bowlby studied the effects of children separated from maternal care during lengthy hospital stays—in the aftermath of World War II and predated the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross—he demonstrated that grief and mourning are natural human responses to separation. Amidst many observations, he revealed that some types of grieving allow us to move on and enjoy life, while other approaches leave us a maladapted and emotionally shut down in its wake of deprivation.

Let's examine the phases of healthy mourning: When we are separated from an important relationship figure, our innate, human process of mourning is to 1) first protest and deny the loss, then 2) search for the loved one and attempt anything possible to regain access to them. As these responses fail, we 3) fall into the important and healing experiences of sorrow and despair. It is only through mourning that the bereavement that we can 4) wipe away their old 'emotional map' of the world, and replace it with a new map that allows us to return to normal activities and interpersonal relationships. So when a child in a hospital mourns and grieves separation, her or his trust in others is slowly restored; suitable replacement figures—such as nurses and other caring figures—are eventually located. In adults, its when we lament our broken relationships that we can move on.

Alas, mourning and depression are not enjoyable experiences, and rather than allowing them to occur, it is tempting to avoid these essential processes by bouncing back and forth between the first two stages of 1) protest and denial and 2) searching to be reunited with the lost figure.

The longer this vacillation continues, the greater the likelihood that essential grieving will be cut off. The underlying map of the world remains unchanged, and the individual doesn't find new, satisfying relationships to repair the loss. Very often children who fail to emotionally acknowledge loss through mourning will turn to toys and objects as substitutes to the lost caretaker, rather than risking attachment to other people, for in allowing themselves to emotionally connect activates the repressed feelings of sadness.

The underlying message of these profound studies is clear: when we find ourselves in the trials of estrangement and disconnection, our tendency to greet such overwhelming events with stories of unfairness and victimization, or endless attempts to understand why such losses occur, are just versions of denial, keeping us from the real work. To heal we must put aside the desire to cognitively understand what has occurred, and turn instead to the emotional body and mind, feeling the trembling lips, heaving sighs, hollowness of the chest, the shadows that frame awareness, the heaviness of life. Understanding will only arise over time, in the early stages of bereavement it is not a true, secure refuge.

By opening to grief instead of shield ourselves with the false refuges of outrage and intellectualization, we can begin the healing process. While grief does not go fully away, our losses recede to unconscious regions of the mind, where they continues to arise at times and seek attendance. And if we continue to grant these feelings an audience, we can continue to open to the positive and nurturing connections that are available to us.

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