Domains of Grief: Emotions
A person wearing a jean jacket, brown pants, red shirt, brown scarf, brown back pack, and brown hat sitting on teh edge of a bridge. The backgroun is of a street with cars, people, lights, and buildings all blurred.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
C.S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis wrote the above in A Grief Observed. Grief brings up so many emotions at different times and in unique ways and combinations. Emotions serve many different purposes. Here are just a few examples (Brackett, 2019; Šimić, 2021):
Motivate us to take action
Help us survive, thrive, and avoid danger
Can help us make decisions
Enable other people to understand us
Enable us to understand others
Emotions serve a purpose in our lives. Some people have learned to embrace their feelings while others have been taught to stuff them away. There is also a continuum within embracing and stuffing emotions away. These lessons are learned via our culture, family culture, and from individuals, consciously or unconsciously. To provide a quick example, in the dominant culture in the US, people are often told that protest emotions like anger, frustration, rage, or similar, are bad and we should not bring those emotions up. Thus, some people internalize this lesson and strive to show only what are considered positive emotions, like happiness or joy. While other people who have access to additional influences like family, friends, counselors, etc. internalize something different, such as the importance of being able to experience and express the range of emotions that humans can experience. For those of you who have seen Inside Out, Joy learns that Sadness is important and has a role in Riley's life. Sadness is what alerted her parents that Riley needed support and help.
The Emotions of Grief
In the previous post the following list of emotions was provided as potential emotions that can arise after a loss.
Sadness
Anger
Guilt
Fear
Anxiety
Loneliness
Numbness
Disbelief
Yearning
Shock
Denial
Helplessness
Despair
Happiness
Relief
Joy
There may have been some of the list that many people associate with grief and loss, like sadness, and others that may have come with some surprise, like joy or relief. Let us look at the ones that people do not as often associate with grief. Why might someone experience relief, joy, or happiness? Let’s look at relief first. There are many caregivers in this world who devote so much of themselves to taking care of people. For this example, think about caregivers who are taking care of someone who has battled cancer for a long time or has watched a loved one lose their memories to Alzheimer’s. When their loved one dies, the caregiver may experience relief that the person they love is no longer suffering. Now let’s look at joy and happiness. One thing that people often do is look back on memories of a person while they are dying or after they have died. This is part of the Needs of Mourning, but that will be discussed in a future post. These moments of looking back can elicit joy and happiness or sadness, depending. Either experience is welcome.
The overall point is that people who are grieving a loss can experience a variety of emotions, sometimes in combination, and all emotions are welcome. We can engage with our emotions to learn from them to find out what we need to help us or someone else along their journey. They allow us to have empathy and compassion for others, as well as ourselves. Emotions alert us to something we may need to attend to in our lives. So, as you think about the role of emotions in grief, honor their role and hold them with care, and be present to them for they are vital to finding new meaning in the world around us.
take action today moment:
Take some time to explore your own thoughts and experiences about emotions and their role in your life or if you have experienced a loss, in loss. How were they important to you? What did you learn? What lessons have you internalized about the role of emotions in your life and in grief?
Learn More About grief and Emotions:
Exploring Your Feelings of Loss
References
Brackett, M. (2019). Permission to feel: Unlock the power of emotions to help yourself and your children thrive. Celadon Books.
Šimić, G., Tkalčić, M., Vukić, V., Mulc, D., Španić, E., Šagud, M., ... & R. Hof, P. (2021). Understanding emotions: origins and roles of the amygdala. Biomolecules, 11(6), 823. https://doi.org/10.3390/biom11060823