NO. No, it’s not “just grief”- its PROFOUNDLY grief.
Nothing triggers me more than the lack of regard shown to grieving people. Worse still, is the number of times people sit with me to share story after story of people minimising their loss, as a way of ensuring they get to feel ok in that brief moment. Why do we place this ridiculous pressure on the grieving to make the rest of us feel ok? As a psychologist, I would like to think that my profession would be full of empathic, insightful therapists who have a grasp on the human experience of loss – but sadly this isn’t always the case. “It’s just grief, it’s not a mental illness, you just need time” - No.
Grief is an overwhelming emotion that can rock us to our core. Grief can have someone trembling and unable to enter a room, leaving them gasping for breath. Grief can stop people being able to engage with their normal social support system – because that system is full of cultural myths that you can just “get over it”, “let go”, that surely you should have “moved on”.
For many of us that have experienced grief, we will know that this is not the case. People don’t “get over it”. Grief morphs, it hides, it lingers, it waits for the unexpected trigger to set it free once again, unyielding, and unpredictable, grief can be all consuming. But this is often experienced in private, out of sight of people who haven’t yet had this experience. Away from those that can’t grapple with the simplest act of being alongside someone in their grief. You can’t make it better, but you can make is bearable.
Grief is complex. Grief lies in our anticipated future, our longed for past and the all too painful present. It taps into our attachment systems, our belief systems, and sits not just in our cognitions but within our bodies. The ache and tiredness of grief is a felt sense, its visceral, its anxious and its heavy. Often the body will alert us to our grief even before our minds are ready to show us what’s there, and that alone can be confronting.
So here is my advice: Stop telling people it’s just grief and make space for the profound experience that is loss.