Why everyone grieves differently

One of the commonest experiences in loss is being misunderstood.  People can foolishly think they’ve got the market cornered on another person’s grief when they really have no idea.  Everyone grieves differently, and these are the reasons why.

This is just a start.  These factors at the very least individualise grief responses in loss:

Personality Variables

The first variable that makes our response to grief unique is that, while we can be similar to each other, we’re all absolutely unique.  Every single one of us is different.  Some of us are introverted and some of us are extraverted.

Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) as a rule, some are more inclined to sense their way through grief, and others are more inclined to use their intuition.  Some are cerebral and think deeply or not so much, while others feel their way through the torment of loss.  Thinkers can be immobilised in seasons of numbness and overwhelm.  Equally thinkers can be blessed not to make much ado about nothing.  Feelers can also be either overwhelmed or tempted not to go there and remain in denial.

The MBTI categorises 16 personality types, yet truly we’re all a mishmash of several of those types because nobody is classically one type and one type alone.  Personality differentiates our grief response a huge amount, but there’s more than personality that sets our responses apart as unique.

Situational Variables

If personality is a massive differentiator when it comes to grieving loss, situational variables add a huge set of distinctives to make the scenarios of our losses absolutely matchless.

There are the types of losses we experience from deaths of loved ones and friends to shattered dreams to betrayals to expectations that aren’t met.  The error we make is comparing losses when the grief in one loss doesn’t equate with the grief in another.

Then there’s the frame of our own mental health at any given time, where at times we’re stronger than we usually are, and times when we’re average, and equally there are times when we’re weaker than we normally are.

It’s best not to pathologise our mental health.

We all have times when we’re either weaker or stronger; that’s what it is to be human.

Then there’s the stresses we’re under when losses come, or perhaps the loss comes when there are fewer stresses, just like there are seasons in loss that are harder when stress abounds.

Then there’s the situational factor of what cultural environments we’re in, some highly supportive and some truly toxic and many in between.  If we have support through grief the experience can be easier, yet if we feel alone it can feel excruciating.  Then there’s the faith dynamic—if we feel God present with us in our grief it’s a game-changer.

Of course, there are many other nuances of situational variables.

5 Stages of Grief

This is where the situations of our losses are further differentiated and the stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—come to be magnified throughout the grief journey which can often last several months if not years.

To add a further variable, some of our personality factors impress themselves over our responses, depending also on the circumstances we’re facing.

Some situations of loss, like when there’s injustice, like betrayal, or the loss of a loved one in unjust circumstances, the character of our grief can be marked by great surges of anger and even rage.  Anger complicates grief when guilt and shame follow it, but if we can only validate our own experience of the injustice of our circumstance, and endeavouring not to harm anyone, we can justify our anger at least as understandable.

Other situations are just so incredibly dreadful that sorrow marks the character of our grief, and it can feel impossible to procure any hope.  In these seasons of grief all we can do is trust that if we face our sorrow, we will ultimately be healed into the deeper place of being, and a joy that transcends the cosmic sadness that envelopes us.

Denial commonly marks many grief experiences when the circumstances are so unbelievably unprecedented or unpalatable.  There are many realities of loss that mark our grief as unable to be accepted.  Equally, bargaining fits the form of realities of loss where we feel we must be able to influence our situations when much of the time we cannot.

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Everyone’s experience of loss is unique, and therefore everyone grieves differently.  A person’s experience of grief is to be honoured, and they’re to be respected for simply bearing their unenviable position.

Depression’s source in the exhaustion of true grief

Finality is the sense of doom a person experiences in the moment they feel they’ve got nothing left.  Though it can be an enormous catalyst on the journey of true recovery, such a burgeoning reality of dread leaves us devoid of response, and we feel worse than death.

Even though it’s acknowledged there’s depression in grief, I’ve often wondered how much grief is in depression.  Or, how much our depression is grief—which is a normal process of adjusting to life that’s gone south so rapidly we’re caught in a sinkhole.

How much do our losses propel us toward depression?

And how many of our depressions are situational—take us out of the reality that grinds us into an emotional paste, and we’re left with a real positive sense for recovery.

Depression’s source is very often in the exhaustion of true grief—when all hope was long ago vanquished because we were too exhausted to care or fight for our mental health.

Depression often feels like a giving up.  
A sense of resignation and a recognition 
of, “how on earth did I get here?”

Those tell-tale signs of depression are so distinct: little motivation where doing even simple things seems impossible; chronic sadness or emptiness or dark night of soul; the unravelling of self-image where perhaps once a solid figure stood.

But it’s the ups and downs that characterise the grief process and help us to understand that our depression is sourced in the exhaustion of true grief—and there’s that threat that beckons where we consider how bad or worse this could get.

Having identified where our depression is sourced more truly in grief—and perhaps not so much in classical depressive disorder—finding our way through seems possible... at some point.  We have cause for hope and belief in recovery and healing.

We need to reconcile that if our situation needs to change to give us more hope, well then, our situation needs to change to give us more hope.  And still, we need to contemplate HOW we can make the best of our energies moving forward.  Sometimes goals move us further toward the acceptance piece in grief—paving the way for a rise from the ashes.

There’s a resolve we make to patiently bear the grief-laden season, even as we picture how the situation might change, and even as we imagine WHAT the experience may be teaching us.

Without dwelling on it, we hope, and allow ourselves to dream a little—without it causing us the torment of a hope delayed, because that just makes our hearts sick (Proverbs 13:12).

When we see the ups and downs in the process of our depression, we may find we can see the depression in our grief.  This is because the ups of acceptance are glimmers of recovery.

It may truly be circumstantial, and therefore it’s the stages of grief we’re dealing with.

This helps us believe that better times will return; to where they were before maybe, or to something even better.

I hope you can see the real hope in identifying that depression is in grief, and that grief is perfectly comprehensible and therefore understandable as a response when we’re depressed.

In all these experiences of brokenness, we also have the opportunity to recognise where we’re also being resurrected to a new hope.  If only we can see the faithfulness of God to get us through our most depressed moments, to give us back insight of our joy, then we’re grateful, even if for a moment.

It’s not a weakness to struggle 
to bear the cruel realities of loss.

It requires massive strength
to bear grief that makes us weak.

It requires massive strength, that in our weakness we can only see the weakness.  But it takes massive strength to just keep going when we’re assailed every which way, and it’s that massive strength once it’s seen that’s a game changer.

Something we must accept, COVID is thwarting everyone

The coronavirus isn’t yet endemic, but there is something that is.  There are so many experts, and every one of them thinks they’re right.  What’s endemic is COVID is thwarting everyone.

I truly feel for any leader currently where the only true and helpful sight is hindsight.

The divisions in our society more aptly reflect the dis-ease, which is an inside job.

COVID forces all of us into taking a corner of the sandbox, and from there it’s not long until we start pitching the sand.

How useful and helpful is the paroxysm of vitriol?  It’s so destructive on many levels.  But the most important thing to remember is, whenever we choose a side, we neglect other differential truths.

The only way we respect the truth is by holding our peace.

But with social media playing such a central role in life these days, there’s not much of a chance of peace and respect.

If we truly want peace, we don’t endorse war.  But there seems to be so many people these days itching for a fight.

Those who accept what they cannot change—like situations that thwart us—sow in peace.  Those who sow in peace reap a harvest of blessing.

Those who are most blessed are those who can quickly surrender to the fact—COVID is thwarting everyone.

This may not seem to offer much hope, but think about the test here.  We must learn to lose our insistence that we can control everything or even most things.  Do this, accept what we cannot change, and we’re at peace.

The wisdom of a life of making amends

The latter steps (10-12) of the Twelve Steps are those of maintenance, and where we agree that life must be a day-at-a-time proposition we continue on our journey of recovery.

Preceding those maintenance steps are the steps of making amends—Steps 8 and 9.  Everything about the steps is deliberate, planned, structured, done with detailed reflection and unstinting commitment. The more serious we take the process, the more embedded is recovery.

But it’s not just Steps 8 and 9 that are about making amends.  The whole program of recovery is about the practice of a life of making amends.  It’s about learning to hold short account, knowing that the more responsibility we take for our attitudes and behaviour, the more we control our peace, our hope, our joy, and the more people experience the transformation that’s occurring in us.

This is the truth of life: the more we look inward and understand our impact on our world, the more we have control over our inner world and the better we take our external world.  And the more we live a life of amends, the less we’re susceptible to those who continue to live a life of making excuses.  The less we’re affected by those who haven’t grown.

Having seen the fruit of change in our own life, having experienced the power that comes from taking our responsibility, it bemuses us when others continue blaming others, losing the power they could very well have.

A life of making amends is the wisest way of living life because it’s the right way to live.

When we get life wrong, hurt people, don’t consider others, or mess up in any way, there ought to be a commitment and continual practice of making amends.

Being committed to living at peace with our world and all the people we relate with is the way to inner peace.

In seeking forgiveness, we receive forgiveness, and earn forgiveness.  And where we’re not forgiven, we grow in grace in forgiving the person who cannot forgive because we feel a pity for them that their heart is not geared to grace.  Of course, it’s incumbent on us to apologise so sincerely that we mend the brokenness between us and the other person—as far as it depends on us.

Importantly, making amends is always about the other person we’re to make amends to.  Sometimes it would put them in a tenuous or even hurtful position.  A true life of making amends is about empathising with others, feeling what it would be like for THEM to experience our amends.  To make amends without thinking about how it will affect the other person is potentially quite a selfish act.

When we come at life from the context of others—to value others above ourselves (Philippians 2:3)—we find it’s the very design of life.  This is not to say we don’t value ourselves; on the contrary, the more we value others, the more we value ourselves.  By valuing others we’re saying all humanity has value.

When we esteem everyone, nobody has power over us.  See how a commitment to loving everyone as much as we can is a commitment to the wisest way of life, the overcoming life.  The life that takes and takes and takes thwarts itself.  A life that refuses to make amends ends up being the misguided and regrettable life.

Remembering well in response to grief

Inevitably life teaches its most salient lessons through hard things, like failure and grief.  Failure highlights better ways and these object lessons often prove pivotal.  With grief, I think it’s different.  Our grief invites us to remember well.

Our family are on a trip to a small town in the upper great southern of Western Australia in honour of a young person who was tragically taken 25 years ago.  My wife, a youth leader at the time, was right next to her when a rock fell and struck the girl (K) who was nearly 16 at the time.  We laid flowers at her grave and remembered her.  We considered how much her dying must have affected her family, how much it must continue to affect them, and how a life cut so tragically short might otherwise have taken shape.  It was a solemn time.

We love honouring those who are no longer here.  For us, to remember K who had her whole life before her is the least we could do.  We love it whenever someone surprises us by remembering Nathanael.  It’s never awkward for us.  It always blesses us.

It has me thinking about the value of remembering well.  To remember well serves at least three objectives.

To remember well honours those we have lost; their memory, their legacy, what they meant to us, and the significance of their lives.  When I’m gone, I don’t want people to studiously avoid talking about me, who I was, etc.  Every life lost is a significant loss.  Every life is and was important.  The more we remember them, the more we exercise our memory and the less we forget.

Remembering well also helps us process our losses.  Avoiding talking about it, however, staves off opportunities to grieve well.  There is a place, I can tell you, for when the pain of grief is gone, and sadness makes way for thankfulness, not least through how our hearts are touched in expressing whatever emotions come up for us.  Don’t be afraid to grieve!  Please don’t.  So many I find delayed their grief process and therefore complicated it.  To honour the truth of how we feel about loss is right, just, and fair.

If you feel safer to do it with others, feel your feelings with others around.  If you can only grieve alone, that’s understandable, so make enough time to honour your loss with tears and whatever other visceral response comes up by yourself.  Everyone has the right to grieve as THEY feel it’s right.

Remembering well heals us.  That’s it.  There’s nothing to be afraid of in remembering well.

Finally, to remember well is to honour the person we lost as if they were still here.  They’re not forgotten.  And if remembering someone we lost causes others aggravation, that’s not our fault.  There should always be space for those who are no longer here.

There is no need to feel guilty for remembering those we lost, just as it’s inappropriate for anyone to make us feel guilty for remembering those we lost.

~

It may seem bizarre to say this, but our grief is our possession.  It’s ours and ours alone, and that which feels painful is actually more beautiful than we could ever realise—if only we’ll go there.  There is nothing to fear in facing our brokenness for our grief.

Numbness in grief, and the thud when the emotions land

There are more, but I recall three poignant times where loss swept down from out of nowhere and trounced me.  The first periods of one to two days in those losses overwhelmed my ability to absorb fully what was happening.

The first loss, September 22, 2003, I was advised by my then-wife at 8pm on that Monday evening, on the same day I’d contracted a mild influenza and had received bad news on the career front, that our marriage was over and that I was required to move out.  The second loss, July 1, 2014, we’d received news you never prepare for—at our prenatal ultrasound scan we were told our baby would not survive.  The third loss, October 31, 2014, was at the other end of the second loss, 24-hours after Nathanael had been stillborn full-term, and we had him there with us on Sarah’s hospital bed.

At the time of the first loss, I drove around our city for most of the night thoroughly confused for what or how to feel, and yet I felt the fullness of the glimpse of a whole range of emotion.  I was in utter disbelief.  I was angry with myself, bargaining with my then-wife in my mind.  I was feeling things I’d NEVER felt before, like a regret of “it’s too late”.  My entire life was flashing before my eyes, as if I was to say goodbye to it, as I would be required to do.  The thing was, I couldn’t ground my emotionality in any one emotion.  Outright betwixt and between.

At the time of the second loss, we were completely blindsided.  As all couples probably do, we went along to the 20-week ultrasound to get some pretty baby photos to later post to Facebook.  When the doctor took us to his room to break the news with watery eyes, leaving those rooms, driving home, advising family, and existing for the next day or two was a complete blur.  I’m sure writing about our journey helped me ground the grief experience in a reality I learned to bear one day at a time.

At the time of the third loss, the gravitas of our plight with Nathanael had come full circle—we were in the inescapable reality of loss having borne the burden of the ambiguity of grief for the previous four months.  Having been blessed with support of our family and closest friends who visited us with Nathanael, 24-hours after his stillbirth we were finally alone and therefore unable to escape the enormity that finally he was gone.  Even though we were together, it was one of the loneliest moments of my life.

Within each of these one-to-two-day periods after loss, there were moments of disbelief such that even though you know what’s happening, the soul reels with what is incomprehensible.  These burgeoning “realities” are far too big to absorb.

Once these moments of numbness were over, however, the gravity truly hit hard.

Without agreeing to the transaction, you swap the confusion of not knowing what or how to feel with a rollercoaster, feeling more grounded in the depths of shock, anger, denial, bargaining, depression, even acceptance.  What’s worse, feeling more grounded in such devastating emotions, or feeling utterly befuddled in how to respond emotionally?

But, being what loss is, the non-negotiable entrance to the journey of grief, you continue to step each day, not knowing what emotional stage you’ll appear on.  What’s most disconcerting about that is the idea that there is both numbness and gravitas about each and every emotional reality known to grief.

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As I reflect about the objectives of loss, I know that loss has taught me so much.  What’s most noteworthy is how loss informs how we’re to live in the present and future.

Because there’s so much fear in loss, I think that being in fear so much, we resolve ourselves to living more fearlessly than ever, we have less time for regret, and therefore we have fewer regrets.  We become revenants, having died, and therefore have much less then to lose and much more to gain in simply living.

Within the enormity of grief is the witness of that which feels as if it should and will kill us but that which makes us stronger in the long haul when we find we’ve survived it.

Wherever you’re at in your loss and grief journey, know that you’re not alone, that you’re strong for simply being, no matter how weak you will often feel.  Your future self will thank you for doing what you’re doing right now, so keep the faith, keep it simple, go gently.

Bottling tears, the honouring of the truth of your grief

I truly doubt that there’s been a time in most our living memories where there has been so much justified sadness and fear due to compound loss and chronic uncertainty.  There is a societal layer to this, just as there’s a personal layer.

A comment was made by a dear friend on a recent article I wrote on Lament.  She made reference to the ancient tradition of Lacrymatory, which is actually referred to in King David’s fifty-sixth psalm.  In verse 8 the differing translations say that God takes account of all our tears, that our tears are kept in his bottle.

The tradition of Lacrymatory is apparently what the ancients did in crying their tears into personal ceramic bottles that resemble the shape of bulbus beakers used in science; a bottle with a long thin spout, but a bulbus bottle that is designed to retain fluid.

Why did people keep their tears?  Perhaps as a requiem or as evidence of the process of losing, that in possessing evidence of the cost of loss there’s the testimony of truth written all over the saline fluid.  It said something about the personal value of those tears, especially when those tears are all they had, and especially that those tears are the essence of what feels worst about life.

For us in our day, whether you’re a parent or a grandparent, or your concerned for your parents of vulnerable loved ones or others, or that you just can’t see the end in sight, or for a plethora of other reasons, not to leave out overwhelm, you’re understood for your tears.

Your tears are the validity of your loss and grief you’ve experienced, and that which exhausts you, and for the fear and dread that fills you for the uncertainty that abounds.

Each time we’re in those bouts of sorrow for which nothing attends but tears, we’re granted peace in the presence of a God who keeps our tears on the record of our life.

The purest empathy is what God has for us in those times, no matter how irrational we may feel, because many times there’s a tinge of self-judgement and frustration in those tears, especially if we’ve been there, going around the mountain, stuck in the circle, many times.

But there’s no judgement in God for our tears—just the deepest of understanding.

The tears we cry often seem like such a waste, and so often in our deepest sobbing and wailing we feel as if we should die, but in all this the faithfulness of God shines forth and through—tears provide some sense of temporary relief, if none other through exhaustion, and we do live another day.  Indeed, often there’s a semblance of joy in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

We don’t die of our tears, indeed they bring forth life and a portion of hope.

I know as a man and as a pastor and counsellor, there have been so many times when I’ve been so confounded emotionally and spiritually, that tears have been my food.  They positively nourished my soul that was otherwise pent up with frustration, anger, dread, concern, etc.

I know it’s not a sin to experience worry, fear, sadness, overwhelm—these are all very human experiences that are never to be judged and condemned—and indeed, these are the portents of God, as in them is the portal to healing.  Further, they’re to be celebrated in tears, not that tears feel like any source of celebration, but in giving truth the final word, because how we feel is the truth, THIS is cause for great celebration in the heavenlies, if not here on earth.

Our tears are important, important enough to be eternal.  They’re never a waste.  The process itself is psychological and physiological healing combined.

Grief expressed is honoured because it honours truth.

Of the wisdom that is hard-won

The very best of wisdom, they say, is hard-earned.  This is such a great encouragement for all those who have often wondered whether what they suffered was all just a big waste.

With hard-won wisdom, we ponder something that often takes years (not weeks) to procure.  And that’s because this kind of wisdom humbles us in failure time and time again.  It can feel humiliating to miss the mark so repetitively, but the very point of hard-won wisdom is we NEEDED to make all those mistakes to draw out of the scenario all there was to learn.

In the exercise of humility enough to bear the pain of being out of sorts for such a length of time, THERE, right in that most horrible of spaces, is the very conditioning that expunges pride—that detestable quality that sticks to those who exalt power and fall for Hubris Syndrome.

Humility is exemplified in wisdom, 
as folly finds itself in full array in pride.

In the winning of the wisdom that makes us and keeps us humble, there is growth and life—yes, out of the torment of getting life wrong for so long.  There are moments in this whole process, and very many of them I’m here to tell you, where you feel as if there are people laughing at you and treating you with disdain.

Well, once you have hard-won wisdom, nobody laughs at us then.

This is why I always encourage those I counsel to hold on and be patient and gentle with themselves when they’re assailed by the impossible.  God, we know, works especially in the realm of the impossible.  This is why faith seems so ridiculous.  And yet it’s why faith is an integral part of gleaning this hard-won wisdom.

I’d venture to say there are few exceptions to the general rule that hard-won wisdom is the only true wisdom.  There are people, however, who are wise simply for whom they are—they didn’t need to learn it the hard way.  But these are rarities.

You know what this reminds me of?  What Paul says about human wisdom in First Corinthians.  Human wisdom—let’s call it success, or the projection of success for image-sake—is folly.  And in this social media age we’re all tempted to fake it to make it.

The only wisdom that works for humanity is that which is hard-won, that has made us humble, that has kept us grounded, that has made us not only wise, but that has made us a truly kind and personable human beings—deeply capable of empathy, won to compassion—people who are just lovely to know.  That’s a wise person who has enrolled in, stayed, and graduated from, the School of Brokenness.

Truest faith amid existential grief of the moment’s affliction

Every human being if they’re honest has faced the existential grief of the moment’s affliction.  To suffer it is to be human.  It is the microcosm of Psalm 88.  It is every case and situation of a doubting and a blow to one’s confidence that cannot be explained, except that it is harrowing the emptiness of it.

This is humanity’s lowest common denominator, and it’s not just those with bipolar disorder and depressive disorders who suffer it.  Everyone has been afflicted in that moment when they’ve experienced what comes with a trauma, a betrayal, a triggering for what undoes you, when you feel abandoned, etc.

It doesn’t matter who you are, everyone experiences times in their life when they feel existentially alone, and for believers, when they feel God’s abandoned them.  This is precisely why we have reminders in the Bible that God never leaves us nor forsakes us; but this is not our reality, for which the psalms like Psalm 88 faithfully attest.  So, while God never does leave us nor forsake us, we do experience the opposite.

The person who denies the concept of the dark night of the soul, where God’s presence is apparently completely annulled in our consciousness, misses out of on a vital component of their humanity.  They don’t see that reality that Paul spoke about in Philippians 1 where ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain’.  While we’re here, we’re far from home, because much of life doesn’t make sense.

The person who doubts and struggles and admits their anxiousness and depressed thoughts is a person who does not struggle with their human condition.  They’re at peace as much as they can be about the existential grief of the moment’s affliction.

That moment may be a moment, or a series of moments, lasting minutes, an hour or more, or a day or more.  Such a continuous series can last and last, or it may simply be the fleeting nature of a thought that causes their hope to crash.

There’s nothing a Christian or anyone else should feel inadequate about.  Reading the Bible more or praying more won’t remove from them the risk of such grief occurring.

What puts us closer in touch with this spiritual phenomenon is loss itself—the loss of a relationship, a loved one, a hope, a dream, etc.

Suffering loss and being connected with the phenomenon of grief is mere human parlance, and sadly no faith or belief system will prevent it, that is at least we’ve truly loved and lived.

To love is to lose, just as it is to live is to die.  So faith is no protection against loss but those who venture forward in their faith through their grief—particularly when they cannot ‘feel’ God—are the true heroes of the faith, for they believe in and follow God even when it feels like God’s not there.  Their compensation is a deeper and mightier faith.

The truest faith on earth is when you face spiritual desolation and still look up for God’s help.  Especially when your eyes are worn out from crying, in sheer exhaustion, your heart aches and it hurts to think, but then you still cannot help but continue to hope in God, now that’s the realest faith there is.