Sometimes Grief Is Asking Us to Finish a Conversation

It’s widely considered to be one of the most painful human experiences…
Eventually, everyone grieves.
There’s no getting around it.

Because if we live long enough, we're going to lose people we love, animals we adore, relationships we thought would last, and pieces of a life we assumed would always be there.

And grief isn't restricted to death. We can grieve the end of a marriage or friendship, the sale of the family home, the loss of a career, our physical abilities, independence, community, or even a future we were absolutely certain was going to happen.

At its simplest, grief is the psychological response to significant loss, but I think there's an even better way to describe it.

Grief is what happens to the mind and body when we've formed a powerful attachment to someone or something, and suddenly we have to live in a world where that attachment can no longer operate in the way it once did. That's one of the reasons grief can be so unbelievably painful.

I've had my own encounters with grief over the years, and one thing I've learned is that it doesn't behave in a nice, orderly fashion. It comes in waves, often when you least expect it. You can be doing remarkably well and getting on with your life when a piece of music plays, you find an old photograph, or you hear somebody use a particular expression. Suddenly, the grief that seemed to be fading is standing right in front of you again.

New grief also tends to get bundled together with old grief, the stuff you thought you were over but that was still lurking below the surface. My own opinion is that some grief never completely disappears, but that certainly doesn't mean we have to remain trapped in it.

Grief can affect virtually everything. It can bring sadness, loneliness, anger, guilt, anxiety and numbness, along with mental fog, poor concentration and repetitive thoughts.

It affects the body too, causing fatigue, disrupted sleep, appetite changes and physical tension. We may withdraw, lose interest in things we enjoy, avoid painful reminders, or find ourselves preoccupied with the person or situation we've lost.

Grief can even mess with our sense of identity, especially when we lose someone who has been part of our life for many years. It can leave us facing the unsettling question, Who am I now that this person is gone?

So what can we actually do about it?

I think the first thing is to recognize that grief isn't a problem to be solved. It's a process to be facilitated, and ultimately you cannot go over it, around it, or under it. You have to go through it.

That doesn't mean wallowing in misery or spending the rest of your life talking about your loss. It means allowing the process to happen without forcing it, ignoring it, or pretending you're fine when you're anything but.

Ritual can help enormously. Something meaningful that connects us with what we've lost can give the grief somewhere to go. A listening ear can be just as valuable. Not someone telling us to cheer up or look on the bright side, but someone willing to simply shut up and listen.

It's also worth resisting the urge to immediately fill the hole with another spouse, another best friend, another dog or cat. There's nothing wrong with eventually forming new relationships or loving another animal, but immediately trying to replace what was lost can become another way of avoiding the grief itself.

And self-medication is a lousy strategy. Alcohol and drugs may temporarily blunt emotional pain, but numbing grief is not the same thing as processing it.

You need to take care of the obvious physical stuff too. Eat properly, get the sleep you need, and get up and move. Walking can be remarkably helpful, particularly if you can get outside and into nature. You don't have to turn it into some elaborate exercise program. Moving your body, getting some fresh air and changing your surroundings can make a difference.

And if you need professional help, get it. There's no prize for suffering unnecessarily. Most people gradually find themselves able to get on with their lives, even though traces of grief may remain. If a long time has passed and you're still stuck in the same painful thoughts and conversations, it may be time to get some help.

There are also some very simple techniques I've found useful for helping people work with the emotional intensity of grief. A good place to begin is by getting a SUDs level, which stands for Subjective Units of Distress. Simply ask yourself, on a scale from zero to ten, how strong is this feeling right now?

Rather than trying to measure something enormous called "my grief," make it specific. It might be the empty chair, the last conversation, a particular memory, or the thing you desperately wish you'd said. Get the number, do some work, and then check the number again. Even a movement from an eight to a six tells you that something has changed.

Hypnosis and guided imagery can be extremely useful here. Sometimes an imagined conversation, or an opportunity to say goodbye in the theatre of the mind, can allow something unfinished to finally move.

Jin Shin Jyutsu is another beautifully simple tool. Holding the ring finger, or working through the points on the hands, can be done whenever the emotional pain appears. It requires no special equipment and can be repeated throughout the day.

Freespotting is another simple but effective technique worth experimenting with. Let your eyes wander and allow your unconscious mind to find the place where they naturally want to settle. Stay there for about five minutes, feeling the emotions as you stare at that spot without trying to force anything to happen. Simply notice what changes and shifts.

The important thing to understand is that none of these techniques is intended to erase the person, the event, or the memory. We're not trying to become indifferent to someone we loved. We're helping the nervous system process what happened so we can remember without continually experiencing the same overwhelming emotional response.

I've also recommended the Bach Flower Remedy - Star of Bethlehem to friends who were grieving, and they found it helpful. I'm not telling you to take it, but you might want to look into it and decide for yourself. You'll find it in a good health food store.

And that brings me to one of the most beautiful grief rituals I've ever encountered, called the Wind Telephone.

The idea began in Japan in 2010 with a man named Itaru Sasaki, who had lost his cousin. He placed an old telephone booth in his garden containing a disconnected telephone and would pick up the receiver and talk to his cousin. There was nobody on the other end, of course, but that wasn't the point.

Following the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011, other grieving people began using the telephone too, and since then Wind Telephones have appeared in other parts of the world.

The concept is incredibly simple. You pick up the telephone and say whatever you still need to say. Maybe it's "I miss you" or "I'm sorry." Perhaps it's "I forgive you," "I love you," or simply "Goodbye."

There's something psychologically powerful about taking a conversation that has been endlessly repeating inside your head and finally speaking it out loud. An internal conversation becomes an external one, and sometimes that seems to be exactly what was needed.

So here's an interesting question to consider. If you could pick up a telephone right now and speak to someone you've lost, what is the one thing you most need to say?

You might be surprised by the answer.

And if someone you care about is grieving, remember that you don't necessarily have to fix anything. Listen to them, walk with them, sit with them, and let them tell the same story again if they need to. When appropriate, perhaps show them some of the tools that can help reduce the emotional intensity while allowing the memories and love to remain.

Because sometimes grief isn't asking us to get over something. Sometimes it's asking us to finish a conversation.

Perhaps grief dredges the heart. It deepens the places where sorrow lives, but perhaps those deeper places can someday hold more love and joy as well.

We're all in this together.

- Mike Mandel