Page 22 - 2017 Autumn-Winter Issue
P. 22
© crazymedia / stock.adobe.com Does Grief Really
Go Away?
by Bob Baugher, PhD
Of course you know the answer to the question in the
title. In this article I want to review many of the ways
that grief does not go away. When you approach people
who’ve not experienced a significant death in their life,
especially the death of a child, grandchild or sibling,
and ask, “How can you tell if someone is in grief?”
you often get answers such as, “They are crying, they
look sad, they talk about their loved one, they aren’t
themselves, they seem out of it.” OK, fair enough. But,
what do these same people think when these symptoms
are not visible? For many people, they breathe a sigh of
relief that the bereaved person is “over” their grief or has
“moved one” with their life. Several years ago I did an
analysis of the media (radio, TV, newspapers) and found
that journalists like to use terms like closure, healed,
accept, or recover when talking about a person who has
experienced a death. However, these are not terms that
bereaved people typically use. The media use of these
words only adds to the myth that we “get over” a death.
Because grief is such a complicated array of reactions,
it would be amazing if any bereaved person someday
totally “had closure, healed, accepted, and recovered.”
Several years ago, with input from bereaved people, I put
together a beginning list of grief reactions by classifying
them into five categories:
Mind
Heart
Spiritual
Other People
Physical
In this article we will look at the Mind category and see
how some of these grief reactions can last a lifetime. In
future articles we’ll examine the other four categories.
See if you have found yourself experiencing any of the
reactions listed below. If so, well, then—that’s grief.
2 2 |We Need Not Walk Alone