5 Myths About Grief You Should Know
We all experience grief at some point in our lives.
Even though grief is one of the few guarantees in life, we are often underprepared for its impact. Death is a topic we avoid in our culture. Think of how the focus of so many industries is on maintaining youth! We try very hard to ignore grief as much as we can, but this can lead to serious misconceptions about how the grieving process works.
Grief is painful, and it makes sense that we try to avoid painful things. It doesn’t feel good to experience pain! However, grief is unavoidable for us all. We will all have periods of our lives that are consumed by grief. Learning what you can about grief can help you feel less lost when it’s your turn to grieve.
What is grief, anyway?
There are many different definitions of grief, such as this one from the American Psychological Association: “Grief is the anguish experienced after significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person. Grief often includes physiological distress, separation anxiety, confusion, yearning, obsessive dwelling on the past, and apprehension about the future.”
This definition is absolutely correct that grief is accompanied by psychological distress, though that can take different forms for different people. However, grief can encompass much more than just death or loss. Grief can be felt for all kinds of things, like moving, changing jobs, trauma, graduating. For this reason, we also appreciate the definition from the Grief Recovery Method: “Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.”
Anything that causes a major change in your life can start the grieving process, which is often misunderstood.
Here are 5 common myths you should know about grief (and the truth):
Myth 1: Grief is a sign of weakness
There’s a common idea that grief is a sign of mental weakness, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. This myth may be associated with the idea that crying is also a weakness (which is also not true). People who are grieving often cry, but that doesn’t make you weak. It’s also okay to not cry when you grieve - remember that everyone grieves differently.
There’s nothing weak about grieving. It’s an incredibly overwhelming process, and it takes a lot of mental strength to move through grief. Grief is a sign that something mattered to you. Even though it’s distressing, grieving can be a transformational experience. It can give you a unique perspective, and it might even change what you feel is important in life.
Myth 2: The stages of grief are linear
You may have heard of the stages of grief. These 5 stages, first identified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, describe the emotional process that people go through when experiencing loss. The stages she identified were actually describing the emotional stages that dying people experience as they process their impending death, but they can be broadly translated to the grieving process as well. These stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Keep in mind though that the emotional process of grieving is not linear. You may experience anger and acceptance right in a row. You might go from bargaining back to denial. You might skip certain stages entirely. All of these are normal, because no two people grieve the same way. Whatever comes up for you as you grieve, don’t give yourself a hard time about it. You’re doing the best you can.
Myth 3: Ignoring grief helps it go away
Like all emotions, grief needs to be felt to move through it. It’s tempting to push away upsetting feelings, and grief is about as upsetting as it gets. Pushing painful emotions away might help in the short term, but in the long run, it always backfires. The only way to move through grief is to feel it. There’s no cheat code, no shortcut, no life hack that can get you around it. Grief is awful, and it needs to be felt.
If you do find yourself trying to push your grief away, don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s natural! Just try to notice when it’s happening, and if you’re able to, sit in the grief. Keep in mind that no feeling lasts forever. Emotions are like waves. The build, they crest, and then they break. Riding out the wave of emotion can help you realize that eventually, all feelings pass. Rely on your coping skills to help you get through the wave of emotion.
Myth 4: Grief has an end point
Grief is one of the life experiences that changes you. There’s a common saying, “time heals all wounds,” which we take to mean that eventually, our grief will be over. While there are some things that cause grief that eventually might not feel as painful after a while, others will last longer than you may expect. For major grief triggers, like death, loss, or traumatic experiences, the feeling of grief might never fully go away.
This doesn’t mean that there’s no point in processing grief. In fact, getting to a point where you feel occasional grief over something major that happened to you is basically the goal of grief. Eventually, the grief won’t feel as all consuming as it does in the immediate aftermath. While it may never fully go away, your life will eventually expand around the grief, so that you feel like you’re living again. It’s still there, but there is room for other things as well.
Myth 5: There’s nothing that can help with grief
Grief is a normal part of life, but that doesn’t mean that nothing can help you when you experience it. Everyone grieves differently, so finding what helps you as you grieve might take some trial and error. It’s important to remember that you don’t need to go through grief alone. Whether you need to lean on your support system, find a grief support group, or even work with a therapist as you move through grief, you deserve help as you navigate grieving.
There are also many resources out there that are designed to support you through grief. You can find books, podcasts, and videos from people who have gone through something similar, which can help you find coping strategies that have worked for others.
