Five Things We Should Know About Grief
As I write this, I am not in the greatest of moods. In fact, I’m mad and frustrated. What has prompted this?
Well, it was a very recent decision by the APA or American Psychiatric Association to include something called Prolonged Grief Disorder in the newest version of the DSM, which stands for the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The DSM is what healthcare providers, including mental health professionals like me, use to recognize, diagnose and treat mental conditions.
According to the APA, the diagnosis of Prolonged Grief Disorder can be attached to someone after they experience grief symptoms for longer than a year. I won’t get into their list of “symptoms” because that word implies pathology. Let’s call the signs of grief what they really are – outward expressions of an internal, dynamic cognitive and emotional process that occurs after a loss. Those signs are normal and there’s nothing pathological about them.
What is important to know here is by creating this “disorder,” we further pathologize grief. We further make grief more difficult to discuss. We further increase the silence and the stigma. And those are the very last things we should be doing. So, I thought it’d be appropriate to list what I think are the Five Things We Should Know About Grief.
1. Grief is not a disorder. Period. Full Stop. It is the normal internal process you undergo after you’ve lost someone or something you’ve loved or have become attached to. Grief is the price we pay for being human. At some point, all of us will have a loss.
2. Grief is not something you just get over, and certainly not in a year’s time. In fact, you never get over it and it’s not fixable. To fix it would be to never have the loss in the first place. You learn to integrate your grief experience into your life. It becomes a part of you. What I’m saying here flies in the face of capitalism and patriarchy because grief gets in the way of both of those things. Capitalism and patriarchy say we can’t be productive members of society if we’re feeling hopeless and can’t get out of bed or go to work. We are told to pick ourselves up, keep a stiff upper lip and move on. That, my friends, is not resolution. Avoiding grief is like avoiding life because grief is a life experience.
3. Grief is not linear. There are no steps that you follow or stages you undergo. When Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross developed her Five Stages of Grief model – you know, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, & Acceptance – she was referring to the stages the dying undergo as they come to terms with the end of their lives. It was never meant to be applied to the grievers. While elements of your grief process may include those five stages, it does not mean that on Day 1 you will experience Denial and then on Day 2 you will have Anger etc. What you will find is that you will vacillate between a mixed bag of emotions, thoughts and experiences. One day you will feel amazing. The next day you will feel like you’re at Day 1. Each day brings with it a different outlook and perspective and one never knows how one will feel at any given moment until it happens. I call this process the “Grief Cha-Cha.”
4. Grief looks different for everybody. We each are uniquely, beautifully and wonderfully made - all 8 billion of us. How we experience life and loss is as unique as each one of us. We each grieve differently. Nobody but you get to decide how you grieve. NOBODY! Not your doctor, your partner, your family, your friends, not even the damn APA. There is no manual on how to “do” grief. Referring back to the APA’s recent decision, I fear putting a label on something that is a natural and normal process will further stigmatize grief.
5. Grief needs to be discussed. We need to talk about grief if we are ever to process it and navigate a way through it. We as a society are so afraid of death and talking about death – I mean really talk about it. When was the last time you and your friends talked about death? We just don’t discuss it or anything associated with it, so it’s no wonder that we don’t want to discuss grief, which is a reminder that something or someone has been lost. It’s normal human instinct not to want to be reminded of things that make us feel uncomfortable. But, if we are ever to find some sense of peace or healing, we need to reveal what we are feeling and thinking and doing. We need to bring things out into the light. Silence is not our friend here, folks. Opening up about our grief can give us the emotional support we need to face the days ahead. When we talk to others who are grieving, we find a huge comfort in knowing we are not alone in loss. Not being silent about our grief can lead to discovery of reserves/facets about yourself you never knew you had. If you ask me, the true disorder here is silence – society is forcing us to be silent about grief – and it’s killing us.
Please feel free to share this information with people in your circle. Knowledge is power and freedom, and maybe we can change some minds out there when it comes to grief.
