Tag: Grief

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Bob Dylan crying grieving

Bob Dylan’s “Baby, Stop Crying”

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today, we discuss Bob Dylan’s song, “Baby, Stop Crying.”

According to Wikipedia, it was released in the summer of 1978 as a single and in a longer album version on Street Legal. The song charted at #13 in the UK and was a top-ten song in much of Europe, although it failed to chart in the United States. It features a strong saxophone solo, and a trio of female backup singers, providing a delightful counterpoint to Dylan’s raspy vocal performance.

For our purpose, the song provides excellent emotional jumping off points to discuss crying, and how to deal with it in a respectful manner. The first lines tell us,

You been down to the bottom with a bad man, babeBut you’re back where you belong
Go get me my pistol, babeHoney, I’d ain’t tell right from wrong
Baby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop cryingBaby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop cryingBaby, please stop crying

Here, as I interpret the song, the narrator is in a relationship with a woman. He calls her “babe” and “honey,” indicating affectionate feelings. He sees she has been brought to tears as a result of a relationship with a “bad” man. Although the man is labeled “bad,” the narrator hastens to say he’s not someone who really can tell right from wrong.

I’m not sure why the narrator suddenly is asking for the woman to get his pistol, but Dylan tends to throw into his songs a few inscrutable lyrics. My three guesses of what he is seeking to imply are: it’s meant to heighten the drama of the storyline; that he so can’t stand her crying he’s getting ready to shoot her; or he’s going to shoot the guy who has upset her. In any case, the narrator seeks to reassure his honey that she is now in a place where she belongs. At the same time, he’s pleading with her to please stop crying. Hmmm.

The next set of lines are,

You know, I know, the sun will always shineBut baby, please stop crying ’cause it’s tearing up my mind
Go down to the river, babeHoney, I will meet you there
Go down to the river, babeHoney, I will pay your fare
Baby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop cryingBaby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop cryingBaby, please stop cryingYou know, I know, the sun will always shineBut baby, please stop crying ’cause it’s tearing up my mind
Here, the narrator appears to be trying to cheer up the woman, noting the sun always
shines and he offers to pay for a trip to go down to the river. In literature, references to rivers often suggest a place that can take you to freedom, as is the case for Mark Twain’s story about Huck Finn and his friend Jim who is seeking to escape slavery.
Such efforts to cheer someone up often is well intentioned, but is it always wise? One of my readers, Sonia Perez, when I discussed a similar topic about crying a few years back, wrote:

“The worst thing people do is to try to cheer you up! When we are hurting, sad, lonely etc and we are crying all we need is someone that allows us to have our feelings and show they care…. I need to express what I am experiencing. I don’t need someone to determine when I have cried enough.”
In Bob’s song, the next few lines attempt to capture some of what Sonia is driving at.

If you’re looking for assistance, babeOr if you just want some company
Or if you just want a friend you can talk toHoney, call me and see about me
But then, the narrator again pleads with the woman to please stop crying. I understand that many folks in our society feel uncomfortable when they see someone they care about crying. In our society the pharmaceutical industry is spending millions to convince people that to be sad is some pathological condition requiring medication. One of my readers, Luc Thibaud, expressed some views that sit more comfortably in my heart:

“It’s OK baby, cry if that cry is in you.
Cry as long as you need to.
I won’t interrupt you; As you cry, I cry with you.
Crying won’t hurt, not crying will.
Your eyes are sore, your throat is so full of tears and you choke.
Take your time, blow your nose.
Your tears are holy and magic.
I love you and I understand you perfectly.”
The next several lines of Dylan’s song continue with the narrator pleading for his baby to stop crying and reminding her that the sun will always shine; and then he goes on to say,

You been hurt so many timesAnd I know what you’re thinking of
Well, I don’t have to be no doctor, babeTo see that you’re madly in love
Here, we see what this incident of deep sadness is about, unrequited love. It’s easy for most of us to sympathize with someone going through such an experience. The song’s narrator has it in his heart to do just that, but his honey’s crying is tearing up his mind.

For me, it feels natural to remain present and to communicate that I care when someone I care about is crying. But the fact is, some good, well meaning people find crying begins to wear on their nerves to such an extent that they just can’t bear it any longer. If you are in a relationship with someone and you find that at some point you can’t stand the crying any more, how best to respectfully handle this?

Dr. Jeffrey Rubin

If it was me, I don’t think I would ask her or him to please stop crying. What about saying, instead, something like, “I’m going to take a walk for a few minutes to deal with some feelings that are coming up within me regarding what you are going through.” Then, just before leaving, going over to the person crying, and give a tender kiss on the cheek and a gentle loving touch on the back of the shoulder.

I wonder how others feel about this. I invite your thoughts and expressions of your emotional reactions.

My Best,

Jeff

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Categories
conflict resolution madness mental breakdown mental disorders Mental Illness responsibility

Can Mental Illness Be An Escape From Responsibility?

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we take a close look at one reason some folks have a low level of respect for people who are viewed as having a mental illness–the belief that such people are avoiding responsibilities.

There are two other main reasons for the stigma associated with being labelled mentally ill that we won’t dive into today, but I’ll just briefly mention. One has to do with the fact that some people at a gut level look down upon anyone who acts a little different than the norm. The other is the belief that people labelled mentally ill are prone to be violent. In actuality, the vast number of these people are not any more violent than the average Joe or Jill (see HERE for a review of the research). The misperception about this type of violence is fed by a media that has learned it has an increased viewership whenever it provides stories of particularly gruesome killings by people presumed to be mentally ill.

So, recognizing that acting differently and perceptions about an increased risk of violence are significant reasons for the stigmatizing of those labelled mentally ill, let’s now put them aside, so we can more thoroughly focus on the responsibility issue.

An Early Incident Of Someone Bringing Up The Responsibility Issue

William James

William James, during his youth, and well before his amazing career as a psychologist and philosopher, experienced what he viewed as a mental disorder. He initially felt it was hopeless to do anything about it because he believed all mental disorders are completely due to some biological defect. Then, after coming upon some ideas that suggested will and effort can be helpful, James changed his mind, and managed to overcome his turmoil by taking on the responsibility of actively making some significant changes in his life.

Shortly afterwards, James discovered that despite his own success in reacting positively to suggestions about taking some responsibility for handling one’s psychological concerns, other people responded dramatically different. We vividly see this in an 1865 letter that James wrote to his younger brother, Henry, that reads in part:

To suggest personal will and effort to one “all sicklied o’er” with the sense of weakness, of helpless failure, and of fear, is to suggest the most horrible of things to him. What he craves is to be consoled in his very impotence, to feel the Powers of the Universe recognize and secure him, all passive and failing as he is.

Many years have gone by since James wrote that letter, and yet I have found it just as relevant in our own time. In recent years I have become acquainted with many who become angry at any suggestion regarding the value of seeking within, and to be open from others, for suggestions on how they may actively deal with these types of concerns. Rather, they choose to passively respond to what they view as a mental illness, while insisting that something like the “Powers of the Universe” is the only thing that could secure them. Although “The Powers of the Universe” sometimes is viewed by them as some religious figure, more and more in today’s world, filling this role are often psychiatrists prescribing drugs.

Another Situation In Which People Bring Up the Responsibility Issue

Approximately 2 million individuals classified as having a mental illness manage to receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Some find this infuriating. I have personally heard many folks make remarks such as, “These recipients should go to work like the rest of us, damn it!”

This attitude is a simplification of a very complicated issue and causes, in my opinion, far more harm than good. Although there is little doubt that there are some SSDI recipients out in our society who are deliberately scamming taxpayers, others are not. Unless those criticizing the SSDI recipients have some specific suggestion on how to identify the cheaters, then the criticism unfairly tarnishes the respect of many who are doing the best they can under deeply trying circumstances.

The only reasonable proposal that I have heard to address this type of attack on responsibility is “Universal Basic Income” (see HERE). Under this proposal, everyone would get a check from the federal government that is sufficient to meet a person’s basic needs, and without a work requirement. Thus, it eliminates the giant, costly bureaucracies that run social security, unemployment benefits, and SSDI. Moreover, everyone gets these checks, so it can ameliorate the resentment that comes from thoughts that there are folks scamming the SSDI system

And Yet Another Situation In Which People Bring Up the Responsibility Issue

Anxiety is typically experienced as a type of fear about something that might occur in the future. Grief is a feeling of sadness about a loss of something or someone we value.

In our society, many folks are taught, and come to accept, the idea that experiencing fear or sadness are signs of weakness and cowardliness. This leads to feelings of guilt whenever such experiences arise. All of this occur despite the fact that pretty much all of us regularly experience anxiety and grief, including folks who act in the most courageous manner. Moreover, anxiety and grief experiences are actually enormously helpful, for they are an essential part of the process that helps us to avoid or minimize danger and to figure out how to best move forward after a significant loss.

Now many people think that feeling guilty can provoke people to act responsibly. Confusion abounds on this point. There are indeed instances in which people report that upon feeling guilty about something, it did lead to making a useful change. But, when they say this, often they are confusing feeling guilty with experiencing a sense of responsibility.

People who feel guilty typically seek to punish themselves by either throwing insults at themselves, or actually physically hurting themselves. In contrast, taking responsibility for one’s anxiety and grief, in my opinion, involves welcoming these two experiences, kind of like you might a friend, for these experiences enrich our lives if handled responsibly. If you have something more pressing to take care of for a short period of time, it can make sense to gently delay your interaction with whatever anxiety and grief you have to deal with until a more convenient time. However, the responsible thing to do is to soon invite these experiences back so you can spend some time to work through these types of concerns. Daily meditation, quiet walks, and journal writing, are ideal ways to do this.

During these times of responsibly working through experiences of anxiety and grief, you recognize you have an important job to do. This job involves allowing yourself to fully experience the physical sensations that come, not as something awful, but as something useful and containing even some aspects of great beauty. It is like listening in a caring way to a good friend who is going through an anxiety or grief experience, and empathizing on a physical level with what he or she is experiencing. This experiencing leads naturally to seeking ways to address the concerns that bring about anxiety and grief.

 

Even if no immediate promising ideas come from a particular episode of spending time in this way, taking responsibility involves keeping hope alive. This means that you recognize that with particularly challenging situations, it takes an extended time to fully address such concerns. In the coming days, new, fresh ideas may yet come your way, or the situations that brought about the concerns may change in unexpected ways to your advantage. In contrast to acting responsibly, experiencing guilt when feeling anxious or grief becomes an aversive experience, and one way to avoid such negative experiences is by finding or creating distractions.

These distractions, when used too often are far from ideal. It is analogous to sleep. When people try to distract themselves from their sleepiness for too long, say by watching exciting TV shows, their sleepiness becomes stronger and stronger and more and more intense. If they continue to press on, avoiding getting enough sleep with various distractions, their functioning becomes compromised. A similar process happens when we keep avoiding providing sufficient time to work through our anxiety and grief concerns.

This deterioration of functioning can be observed with a variety of experiences that get labelled as mental illnesses. For example, John Neale, working out of the State University of New York, presents a fairly good case that people who are vulnerable to manic episodes are actively avoiding their fears and grief. According to Neale’s account, when events lead to increasing perceptions of anxiety and fear, mania is triggered either by the experience of the perceived negative mood, or perhaps the threat of negative mood.

Thus, mania may, in some cases, be a way to avoid responding responsibly to anxiety and grief because of the guilt that occurs over misunderstanding the nature of these useful experiences. This misunderstanding, along with not knowing how to respond responsibly when these experiences occur, may lead to reaching a point at which the person becomes overwhelmed by unprocessed concerns. It is at this point that creating grandiose ideas manage to further distract these folks from the distressing thoughts spinning out of control. It has been estimated that 47 per cent of people who experience what mental health professionals often refer to as psychotic delusions during their manic phase claim they have grandiose abilities. This often leads to friends, family, and community members, concluding such folks are behaving irresponsibly.

Conclusion

We have just surveyed the three main reasons people may come to believe someone labelled as having a mental illness is escaping responsibility. First discussed was the belief that some labelled people, rather than taking responsibility for their experience, prefer to be consoled because of what they have come to believe is their impotence to deal constructively with their sense of weakness, helpless failure, and fear. We then discussed people who resent mentally ill labelled folks collecting SSDI benefits, believing they are irresponsibly scamming the system. And finally, we looked at the theory that some mentally ill labelled people have not learned how to responsibly deal with the experiences of anxiety and grief, instead feel guilty when they have such experiences, and consequently seek to avoid these feeling with the use of various distractions.

Now, having surveyed these main reasons, some may therefore jump to the conclusion that people labelled as mentally ill should be blamed for not acting responsibly. Blame, in my estimation, is typically counterproductive. Too often, it will provoke horror, total rejection of the blamer, and a hardening of whatever position the person who is being blamed holds.

Permit me to suggest an alternative. First, assess whether or not the person is capable, for a period of time, or even over a  course of a lifetime, to process any suggestions from anyone. If not, blaming is not going to help. Just showing a little kindness from time to time, I think, is the best approach, and for lifting your own sense of being a person worthy of respect.

What about those people whom you assess as capable of making some meaningful changes? Perhaps most helpful is telling them a story from time to time about individuals who have learned the difference between guilt and responsibility when dealing with their anxiety and grief. The story would then go on to illustrate how this person, when practicing responsible behavior, discovered dramatic benefits. After telling the story, ask for their reaction, and then listen in an empathetic manner to what they have to say. Although you might be tempted to make counterarguments to what is being said, often it is better to stick to just listening in a caring manner.

My posts on Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, and Joni Mitchell can be helpful in setting you along this path (see HERE, HERE, and HERE). For a more in-depth story of this kind, I recommend my novel, Fights In The Streets, Tears In The Sand (see HERE). It provides a heart warming tale of a young boy who has a particularly difficult time wrestling with his anxiety and grief. When his mother is pressured by a psychiatrist to have him involuntarily treated with psychiatric drugs known to have a number of severe side effects, family and friends fight in court to be permitted to seek an alternative, more humanistic approach.

Well, there you have it, a few of my ideas on this very challenging topic. I hope it provides some useful ideas.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Categories
anxiety conflict resolution Emotional pain Grief

Anxiety and Grief as Emotional Pain

Welcome to From Insults To Respect. Today we explore the question, Is it helpful or harmful to view our anxiety and grief experiences as painful?

Let’s begin this exploration with a diary entry from a mental patient that appears on page 224 in Richard P. Bentall’s fine book, Madness Explained:

Rhoda [a friend] asked me if I were spoiled and I angrily said no, but feel hurt, as if I was born for a purpose I hide from, covering myself with warm blankets. Go to hell, World! I cannot die in peace and safety. I cannot face the slightest breath of real life or death or ugliness. But I hurt for being a coward. I was always a coward – socially, physically, mentally, sexually, emotionally. If I go insane, am I brave? I will, because then, and only then, I am brave, not a coward. I hate people. They compete and want stimulation. I hate them all, all. None loves, none cares, none understands or ever will understand. I am dead, dead – very, very limited, afraid and hurt. Go to hell, World!

There is a lot we might wish to unpack in this quote, but for today, let’s focus on the fact that the patient mentions three times that what he is experiencing hurts.

In our society, many of us are taught, beginning in our earliest years, that to experience anxiety and grief is cowardly and symptoms of mental illness. From such teachings, many come to believe people who don’t have such feelings are brave and viewed with great respect. All of this occurs despite the fact that pretty much all of us regularly experience anxiety and grief, even those who act in the most courageous manner. The swirling emotions that come about from this misunderstanding is often experienced as painful.

Once we, in our modern society, come to associate anxiety and grief as painful, this leads many of us right into the idea that we best manage it as we do when we experience physical pain, that is, by distracting our minds to something pleasant and washing the feelings away by consuming alcohol and other drugs. And yet, even when dealing with physical pain, these two approaches are often far from optimal.

In research studies, when distracting oneself from pain was compared to a “sensory focus” approach, sensory focus came out distinctly better even for when dealing with the particularly challenging pain that occurs while giving birth (see HERE for a review of this scientific research).

Sensory focus involves turning your attention to observing the painful physical sensations. If the sensations bring forth words such as pain, or awful agony, you accept this without judgment. You very gently, when you feel ready, return your focus to the physical sensations as if you are tasting, for the first time, some fresh mountain water from a tropical island. You just observe the sensations as they wash over and through you.

As for using alcohol and other drugs to deal with physical pain, the problems that can occur are no doubt already known to most of you. Nevertheless, I will bring to your attention a few of them.

Millions of people who turn to alcohol to relieve pain end up with a serious addiction and liver damage. For those who turned to prescription opioids to manage their pain in 2018, there were nearly 15,000 deaths from overdoses. Drugs that contain acetaminophen, like Tylenol, are the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, and some studies indicate that it can be harmful to kidneys as well. Each year, the side effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which are commonly used for pain, cause nearly 103,000 hospitalizations and 16,500 deaths. More people die each year from NSAIDs-related complications than from AIDS and cervical cancer in the United States. Common over the counter NSAIDs include ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) and naproxen (Aleve).

So, because of the common tendency to deal with pain by distracting and taking drugs, conceptualizing the experiences that come with anxiety and grief as pain may not be ideal. So, today, let’s take a few minutes to consider another approach, and then we’ll compare it to the pain approach.

An Alternative Approach to Experiencing Anxiety and Grief

Let’s begin here with a series of studies indicating that how we conceptualize emotional arousing experiences can dramatically alter the experience.

These studies began in earnest back in 1964 when a team of researchers presented a film showing primitive adolescent “subincision” rites to their subjects and found that it produced marked stress reactions. However, when some subjects were coached to view the film as if they were objective scientists, their stress reaction was markedly reduced. The findings supported the conclusion that the same visual stimulus varies in the amount of stress produced depending upon the nature of the cognitive appraisal the person makes.

Subsequent studies replicated this study by using a series of films that showed horrific workplace accidents, and again, altering the cognitive appraisal strategy of the subjects, altered the level of stress experienced. So, perhaps altering how we appraise our experience with anxiety and grief might alter our level of stress for the better.

What might a better alternative to how people in modern society typically view anxiety and grief? Let’s try this one on for size.

We have, for over two million years, been evolving ways to address our concerns so we have a better chance to survive and to pass our genes on to subsequent generations. Two of our most common concerns involve perceiving a risk of future danger, which we experience as anxiety, and perceiving we have lost something or someone important to us, which we experience as grief. Recognizing these types of concerns is the first step in a more complete process of finding ways to minimize the risk of danger and to successfully move forward despite our losses.

These types of concerns are a type of memory that brings to our attention that we have some processing to take care of. One of the characteristics of dealing with these concerns is that we often can delay attending to them for a limited period of time so we can engage in other tasks viewed by us as having higher priorities. When we put off dealing with these types of concerns, they don’t just go away; they come back again and again reminding us that we have to adequately address them. Despite our efforts at putting them off, as our concerns begin to accumulate without being fully addressed, it becomes harder and harder to delay dealing with them. Our memory begins to remind us of them more frequently and more intensely until we reach a point at which we must attend to them, like it or not. If we put off taking time to process our concerns for too long, our functioning for dealing with many aspects of life can begin to deteriorate, and at some point, we may end up having what some people refer to as a mental breakdown.

So, with this understanding, anxiety and grief are part of a wonderful process, rather than a sign of mental illness that we need to distract ourselves from or to take drugs to manage. Part of this process requires that we devote enough time to process these concerns or the level of intensity is liable to become more and more challenging.

When we are reminded of our perceived dangers and grief, rather than automatically perceiving such experiences as painful, we can allow ourselves to observe the physical sensations that come with it. If words such as, “Man, this is painful,” “Man, this is hurting,” or, “I can’t stand this suffering,” we can observe them without automatically accepting them as accurate. What is accurate is the physical sensations, and the specific concern to be addressed as best as you can fathom. Once the sensations go through us, we naturally begin to spend some time thinking about some ideas to address the concerns.

An Example of Someone’s Personal Experience Dealing with These Types of Experiences

Kerin Jervert

In a recent Mad In America post titled, “Can We Allow Suffering,” Karin Jervert tells us how she was treated by psychiatry over a 20-year period. She found that the entire industry is based on this very human, very common, reaction to suffering, the inability to allow it—the inability to hold it with nonjudgmental compassion—whatever its manifestation. When those in psychiatry perceived that she was suffering, they drugged her without consent, leading to some awful side effects. They also isolated her and involuntarily committed her. The terms they used were “disease” and “a broken brain.”

As Karin so eloquently put it,

For years, I never thought of my suffering as something that deserved anything but force in response: suppression, drugs, hospitalization. Until I started to look back on all this and it all seemed like punishment for suffering too greatly, too powerfully; that I was not allowed to suffer this way. So, I began to broaden my idea of what was acceptable suffering, and my healing began. My fears of my own and others’ suffering lessened. What before was something to pounce on, to solve, to fix, became something to witness, to honor, to allow.

So, there you have it, some thoughts about conceptualizing anxiety and grief as emotional pain, and what might be a better alternative. I hope you give this some thought, and please join us again soon right here at From Insults to Respect.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Categories
conflict resolution Good Grief support group Grief

Good Grief?

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we’ll be taking an interesting look at the grief process.

Picture from tinybuddha.com

When we experience a major loss, such as the death of a loved one, financial ruin, losses from a natural disaster, or learning of a serious personal medical illness, our emotions can become pretty intense. Common reactions are waves of deep sadness, rumination about the loss, sleep difficulties, and reduced appetite.

A popular model of this process is known as the, “Seven Stages of Grieving.” They are:

– Shock or Disbelief
– Denial
– Anger
– Bargaining
– Guilt
– Depression
– Acceptance and Hope

Sometimes, rather than seven stages, five are used to capture the same basic model. This is accomplished by combining shock, disbelief, and denial into a single stage, and combining bargaining and guilt into a single stage.

These stages do not occur in the same sequence for all people, and they can last for a brief period or quite a bit longer; and during the process, more than one stage may occur at the same time. So, for example, someone may feel shock, anger, and waves of guilt all within a few seconds of one another, or they may all seem to merge together into one combined experience.

Beliefs that we learn from cultural norms can complicate the experience, making us feel at such times that we are acting in a manner that people may not respect. If we start to cry in front of others, will we be perceived as a weakling? If our bereavement lasts longer than what others may think is proper, will we be viewed as having some type of pathological condition?

In an extraordinary Feeling Deeply podcast, Emily Whyte Rubin, my daughter-in-law, interviews Jack Baxter, a guy from London who, having struggled with these issues, started a program to help others who are dealing with similar challenges. Called, “Good Grief,” the program essentially assists people to come together in small groups to share their experiences and to support one another. Let’s take a few minutes to look at some of that interview, and then I’ll express my views on this topic, and then invite those of you who are reading this post to weigh in.

The Feeling Deeply Podcast

This episode of Emily’s podcast can be listened to for free HERE. In introducing the interview, Emily explains that she chose to interview Jack Baxter because, “the human experience of grief is so prevalent, and something I believe many of us can use some more support around.”

After introducing Jack, she asks him what brought him to creating “Good Grief.” Jack’s reply, slightly abbreviated, follows:

“Sure. I’ll tell you a little bit about my story. It started with sadness, unfortunately. It started when I lost my father, Dave. He was 48. He was my best friend. You know, people talk about soulmates; I don’t believe you only have one soulmate, because, you know, I met someone else that I can label that. I’ve since met another soulmate, and I hope to continue to meet more, but my dad was very much my first soulmate; he connected with me in ways that I never connected with anyone. He was my best friend. I could tell him anything, and likewise, he would tell me anything–his advice, his wisdom, and I was lucky enough to have that man for twenty-two years.

“Sadly, he passed September 13th. He had skin cancer, which was, you know, tough for anyone to deal with, as you can imagine. I was only twenty-two at the time. It was like the center of my world had fallen out. It was a very tough time for me to deal with. I no longer had that support, and of course I had some friends and family, but no one like my dad who was, you know, who was there for me at times when I needed him most, and to be honest, I need him even now. You know, a young man needs his dad. And, well, we went on a journey of self discovery and I believe he was with me all that way as well. I made mistakes, ups and down, left and right, and, but, you know, I eventually sought some direction in “Good Grief” which, um, is a support group that I launched with some friends, Ben and James, and we offer support and advice for young people, in London at the moment, but we hope to venture out wider then that, for young people who have lost love ones, much like myself, and Ben, whose father died recently of brain cancer….

“To be honest with you, Emily, it was those people that I met whilst grieving, who understood my pain most. Ben was certainly one of those. I had two or three other friends who had all lost fathers themselves before, or shortly after mine, and they were the support group that I needed. I had lots of people telling me, ‘it will be OK and it will be all right, but it was those who experienced the same grief as me, they were the precious few who I really could listen to and I took strength from. And the group has been going from strength to strength ever since we launched in May, 2018.”

After Jack describes a little more of his grieving experiences, Emily asks him to describe in more detail what happens at these Good Grief meetings.

 “We first like to point out that it is not professional help, because, first off, there is professional help out there….But I think what we offer is, you know, just a group of understanding, empathetic young people. So we sit in a circle, or at least around a table. It’s all very informal; there are biscuits and cookies in the middle. We offer people to snack on them if they want to. Drinks are available, and it’s just a relaxed format. We sort of ask, that just by being there, you are acknowledging that you want to live a life with grief. You never beat grief, you know, you live with it. And just by being around that table, you are admitting to yourself that, well, enough is enough and I want to move forward carrying this weight with me. So we ask people to just introduce themselves. We go around the table clockwise, and we say, you don’t have to say anything tonight if you don’t wish, because this is a big do, it’s absolutely a big deal to sit in a room of strangers and to talk. You know, that’s hard enough. But to talk about some personal issues, that’s very hard. So we stress that you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but, at the very least, just say hello, and who it is that you miss…. And then, the person to the right of me would say, hello and it would go from there. And you find, Emily, that once people start saying their hellos, and start introducing themselves, questions just organically are asked by other participants, and there is this whole range of grief that at least one other person can identify with, be it a death from cancer, or a death from suicide, or a car accident. There will be someone else in that room that can identify. And that’s where the questions are asks, and that’s where the support is grown. And it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.

Emily, then expresses how touched she is about how organic the process is, how simple, and yet, also, how vulnerable it is in its simplicity, to open up this space, and to go directly into that conversation.

Jack replies,

“It’s an amazing thing. You are right. It is so organic. There is no seminar leading up to it. This is what you can expect. You just jump in at the deep end, as they say. You know, you sit around the table and  there’s a brief hello, and…my name is Jack, this is Ben…. And then we just start a conversation…. It’s normalizing the grief, the confusion, and everything else that can come with death at a young age.”

At one point, Emily responds,

“Yes, and that reminder about not having to fix it, you never will be able to beat grief….That grief is something that we move in and out of our whole life. And to be able to have a space where that is welcome. It’s not like, ‘Well it’s okay, I’ll listen to you, but it’s welcoming you, that aspect.”

To this, Jack replies.

“That’s exactly right, Emily. You never complete grief. You never conquer it. It just becomes your new normal. You wake up one day and you realize my dad is not here anymore. But I will, to the day I die, carry that badge of honor that I miss my dad every day. But I got a new normal, a new focus, new responsibilities, new excitements. Also, new sadness. You know, other things have happened in my life since losing my dad that makes me sad, besides, so its acknowledging that you are normal feeling the way you do, and also continuing to feel that way whilst feeling happy, and whilst feeling sad. You don’t have to feel guilty about having a good day. It’s a safe space to be able to sit around with other people that could confirm that you are not a bad person for having a good day, or you are certainly not a bad person for having a bad day. It’s an incredible thing that I take no credit for, because it’s something so natural to me to facilitate a conversation about this.”

Well, there is so much more to this interview worth listening to, and I encourage my readers to take some time to give it a good listen to. But for now, let’s pause here and consider what was said up to this point in the conversation.

Some Thoughts

For me, personally, I tend to grieve internally, letting the experience flow through me, and I don’t feel a need to reach for a supplemental support group. In the past, when someone close to me died, I went to the funeral, spent a few days with people close to me, and then I processed the most challenging aspects of the experience that was, and is still, running through me mostly on my own. I have a supportive wife, and my children are a great source of comfort to me.

When my mom died, I had extended feelings of waves of guilt over whether I could have been more helpful to her when she was alive. I still do have these feeling from time to time, but I feel that I can deal with them without a special support group to help me through it, though I still miss her.

Although my personal approach is working for me, over the years I have met people who, it seems to me, really would benefit with the type of group Jack has put together. For example, a friend of mine whose wife died suddenly is now in his house all alone. It has been very rough on him. What a wonderful resource it would be for him if he could share what he has been going through, and offer support to others in a Good Grief type group. And I know others who, within their family structure, would meet with disrespect when showing any signs of tearfulness. “Man-up!” would be the demand they would face, or, “Don’t cry, it will all be okay.” For these folks, a more supportive group could be an enormous help.

Grief is a process that helps us to prepare for life after a serious loss. I respect that Jack is trying to be helpful and kind as he seeks a way to create something to honor his father’s life. In listening to the whole interview with Jack, I was left wondering if it makes sense to view grief as good, bad, it just is, some mixture of all three, or even something entirely different?

How do those of you who are reading this feel about what Jack has been doing, and grief in general? I’d love to hear from you.

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.