The Paradox of Grief
Psychotherapist Julia Samuel discusses grief, emphasizing that suppressing painful emotions is ineffective. She advocates allowing grief to "storm through" as a natural agent of change, challenging cultural death denial and offering strategies to process loss.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction to Grief and Suppressing Emotions
Julia Samuel's Personal Experience with Grief and Princess Diana
Oscillation Between Loss and Restoration Orientation
Modern vs. Past Generations' Views on Grief
Defining Bereavement and Grief
Cultural Death Denial and Its Impact
Importance of Communication When Facing Terminal Illness
Critique of the Five Stages of Grief Model
Physiology and Embodiment of Grief
The Paradox of Grief: Embracing Pain for Liberation
Reframing Emotions: Grief as an Important Process
Consequences of Suppressing Grief
Strategies for Processing Grief Incrementally
Post-Traumatic Growth from Grief
5 Key Concepts
Bereavement
Bereavement occurs when a significant loss happens, such as the death of a loved one or a 'living loss' like losing a job, a relationship, or moving country. It is the event of loss itself.
Grief
Grief is the subjective, uniquely personal, messy, chaotic, and unpredictable emotional experience that arises as a result of a loss. It often brings forth a mix of competing and conflicting feelings like anger, sadness, rage, fear, and despair.
Loss and Restoration Orientation
This model describes how grieving individuals typically oscillate between two states: a 'loss orientation' where they connect to the person who died, remember shared times, and feel associated emotions, and a 'restoration orientation' where they focus on getting on with their daily life and activities.
Paradox of Grief
The paradox of grief is that to effectively move through and process the pain, one must courageously face and embrace the difficult feelings rather than trying to avoid or suppress them. This act of confronting what is most feared ultimately leads to liberation and a deeper engagement with the life one has.
Post-Traumatic Growth
This concept describes the internal growth experienced by individuals who have survived profound loss and suffering. It acknowledges the depth of pain but highlights how facing and enduring what they thought was unsurvivable can expand their perception of themselves, their resilience, and what truly matters in life.
6 Questions Answered
Bereavement refers to the event of a significant loss, such as a death or a 'living loss' like a job or relationship, while grief is the unique, subjective, and often messy emotional experience that results from that loss.
Facing the reality of death, both in ourselves and for those we love, is vital for mental health and allows for important conversations that can bring peace to the dying and provide a bedrock of memories for survivors.
While the stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) represent important aspects of grief, the model can be misleading if people believe they must progress through them in a strict, linear order, rather than experiencing all these feelings interchangeably, even within a short period.
Grief triggers the autonomic nervous system into a fight, flight, or freeze response, leading to symptoms like shortness of breath, appetite loss, sleep disturbances, and a feeling of fear. It also increases the risk of heart attack in the initial weeks and causes emotional pain that hits the same neurotransmitters as physical pain.
Suppressing grief is like putting a lid on a pressure cooker; the emotions, which are wired to signal that something significant has happened, remain powerful and will fight against suppression, making the process more complex and potentially leading to prolonged grief.
Awareness is the first step, recognizing that busyness or other distractions are anesthetics. It's important to acknowledge the sadness in the moment and then log it to be processed later in a safe space, perhaps by setting aside dedicated time to engage with memories or feelings.
11 Actionable Insights
1. Allow Grief to Come Through
Allow grief to come through you in its chaotic and messy way, as blocking this natural process can cause harm and pain is the agent of change, forcing you to face reality.
2. Surrender to and Express Emotions
Surrender to and face the intense emotions of grief (like sadness, fear, or anger) by allowing them to come through your system and expressing them, which helps you incrementally adapt and shift.
3. Have Vital Conversations Before Death
Engage in vital and tender conversations with loved ones facing death about fears, beliefs, and practical wishes (e.g., cremation/burial) to resolve unanswered questions and create a bedrock of memories for survivors.
4. Physically Move and Calm Yourself
Combat the ’locked, terrorized state’ of grief by taking exercise, moving your body, and getting outside, then intentionally calm yourself with soothing activities like a cup of tea, a hug, or journaling to release tightness and connect your mind and body.
5. Oscillate Between Loss and Restoration
Actively switch between a ’loss orientation’ (connecting with the deceased and feeling sadness) and a ‘restoration orientation’ (getting on with your day and living life) to navigate the grieving process effectively.
6. Allocate Dedicated Time for Grief
Set aside a specific ‘cut out time,’ perhaps half an hour daily, to intentionally engage with memories, photos, or feelings related to the deceased, preventing emotions from hijacking you unexpectedly in other situations.
7. Acknowledge and Process Emotions Later
If strong emotions arise in a public place, acknowledge them (e.g., ‘I feel really sad’) and take a breath, but then log them to process in a safe place later, rather than suppressing them all day, which allows the emotion to grow in force.
8. Reframe Sadness as Natural
View sadness not as a negative or bad emotion, but as a natural, expressive, and wired-in process that, when allowed, can lead to release and a feeling of being better, supporting your emotional experience.
9. Use Touchstones to Connect
Utilize ’touchstones’ like looking at photos or writing postcards to the deceased to actively move into connection with their memory and feel love, which helps maintain the relationship through love.
10. Avoid Self-Attack During Grief
Do not turn on yourself or attack yourself for how you are feeling during grief, as this makes the process much more complex and can lead to complicated or prolonged grief.
11. Use Direct Language for Death
Avoid euphemisms like ‘passed away’ and use direct language such as ‘died’ to acknowledge the reality of death, as softening words can deny the truth and protect against the reality of the loss.
7 Key Quotes
We need to allow the grief to come through us, storm its way and change us and sort of come through in this kind of often very chaotic and messy way.
Julia Samuel
The love for the person never dies. And what I kind of recognize is that the relationship continues through the love, although the person is no longer present.
Julia Samuel
The purpose of grief is that pain is the agent of change.
Julia Samuel
The task of mourning is to face the reality of the death.
Julia Samuel
Grief often feels like fear. So you feel like, you know, there's this gun or as people talk about this tiger that's just about to come and get you.
Julia Samuel
The more you give yourself the courage to face and think about these things and find it kind of embrace what you most fear, then it's actually liberating.
Julia Samuel
Your emotion is evolutionarily, they're wired to tell you something is up. Oy, something has happened.
Julia Samuel
1 Protocols
Self-Support During Grief
Julia Samuel- Acknowledge the feeling (e.g., 'I feel really sad') to yourself and take a breath, especially in public.
- Log the feeling and find a way to acknowledge and express it later in a safe place.
- Set aside a 'cut out time' (e.g., half an hour) in your day to go to your memory box, look at photos, or reflect on the person who died.
- Allow yourself to feel and express the sadness, fear, or anger in a safe environment.
- Take exercise and move your body around to shift from a locked, terrorized state.
- Get outside wherever you live.
- Do something that intentionally calms or soothes you (e.g., a cup of tea, a hug, journaling).
- Journal or write down what you're feeling to release tightness and connect your head and heart with your body.