Grief is like a fingerprint: a unique, individual experience that we also share universally.
When talking to patients about loss, holding and reflecting those contradictions as part of the grieving process is encouraged, said Mandy Doria, MS, LPC, a licensed professional counselor, trauma sensitive yoga facilitator, and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
“There’s this quote I really like,” Doria said: “‘Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and the hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.’”
On this episode of Health Science Radio, Doria walks through some of the common misconceptions about grief while making the case that embracing the emotional depth after a loss doesn’t need to be rushed.
“We (sometimes) want to deal with our grief and move on,” Doria said. “It’s not that simple, right? It can’t always be put in a box, and there's a lot more existential depth to these experiences that we have as humans.”
For Doria, the conversation starts with defining grief as something that can go beyond the loss of a loved one – it can also encompass change or transitions in life. “Typically, anyone you ask about the most impactful time in their life, it likely is going to have something to do with grief or some big significant change in their life.”
Doria also works with patients dealing with prolonged grief disorder – which has a newer set of criteria as described in the DSM-IV-TR. Prolonged grief disorder is characterized by avoidance of reminders of the deceased, not believing their loved one has died, loss of meaning and life’s purpose, intense loneliness, a feeling as though part of oneself has died, difficulty reintegrating into their new life, and emotional numbness. The loss had to have occurred at least one year prior to diagnosis, and symptoms cause impairment nearly every day for one month.
The rush of emotions following a loss or change necessitates that we contextualize grief individually, while working to ensure we bring a wider discussion on how grief impacts us to a national conversation, Doria said. One big step to achieve that, would be to expand our collective “grief education" – and that starts with addressing grief as an elephant in the room at a time when U.S. society struggles with building connections around the harder topics, she said.
“I think the best education we can provide is normalizing it, talking more about grief as a part of the human experience, and not being afraid to lean into hard conversations and be there for people who are grieving or going through something tough.”
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