C.S. Lewis said "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
I see patients every day who are sad, anxious or angry but hardly anyone ever mentions grief, fear, being scared or being afraid. I don't seem to get those emotions out easily from them, hence many of them remain unaware of their grief and the fear that comes with it.
Grief is tricky, grief is sneaky and grief is scary. I say it is tricky and sneaky because we generally don't think of grief when we see people for therapy. The most common feelings we hear are sad or anxious. I tend to think there is always grief that lurks in the corners of their minds, sometimes obvious, mostly not. Rage and anger to me are directly proportional to the grief people carry around.
Children need security of consistency, affection, love and care to thrive and become self sufficient, adequately attached adults. No matter what your inclination is theory wise, an overwhelming majority of professionals do believe in importance of the early year bonds we as humans need. When these bonds are dysfunctional or absent a perfect storm simmers. How unfortunate it would be to come to this world and question the reason for being here not because of pure existential concerns but because no one ever made a big deal about you being here? I wonder how many of us can relate to this feeling conveyed by any number of patients?
My guess; probably most.
I always wonder about the people growing up with feeling unwanted, unloved, uncared for or all of the above. How it shapes them and their relationships? What is it like to live in a perpetual state of being irrelevant? It makes people angry, sad, enraged, anxious, worried, doubtful and so on and so forth. But come to think of it, would all of these feelings not be linked to the feeling of grief?
Grief for not having what seems so natural and right for us to have when we are born. It's the sort of grief that lies so deep and is so intense that it almost demands to be acknowledged yet is so intolerable that it's almost always ignored because how can you grieve something you never had.
But why can't you grieve not having something at all? Wouldn't deprivation lead to indulgence but without gratification? Adults with early attachment challenges mostly keep looking for what they never got. Sometimes in form of one after another dysfunctional relationship, sometimes in substance use and many times in both ways. The early age deprivations drive people to indulge in relationships with people and/or drugs in such self destructive ways but seldom result in gratification of what they need. A bottomless pit of despair that always seem to be wanting more.
I wonder if the grief of deprivation is so immense and scary that people can't seem to face it? It must be very scary to never know what is it like to trust that one is worth anything. It must be terrifying to ever think that your being in this world would ever matter to someone else. May be it's the fear that realizing one's grief would mean staring the deepest darkest moments of despair in their face while at the same time acknowledging the hard work that it will take to own it and learn to live with it. Grief isn't like sadness because sadness fades away but grief never leaves. It etches permanently and it always have fear close by.
To live with grief is to live with fear but to not respect and acknowledge grief; is to live in a constant storm that always simmer, is consuming and unpredictable because the more it is denied, the stronger and scarier it becomes.
As C.S. Lewis says it's a process not a state,
“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
I see patients every day who are sad, anxious or angry but hardly anyone ever mentions grief, fear, being scared or being afraid. I don't seem to get those emotions out easily from them, hence many of them remain unaware of their grief and the fear that comes with it.
Grief is tricky, grief is sneaky and grief is scary. I say it is tricky and sneaky because we generally don't think of grief when we see people for therapy. The most common feelings we hear are sad or anxious. I tend to think there is always grief that lurks in the corners of their minds, sometimes obvious, mostly not. Rage and anger to me are directly proportional to the grief people carry around.
Children need security of consistency, affection, love and care to thrive and become self sufficient, adequately attached adults. No matter what your inclination is theory wise, an overwhelming majority of professionals do believe in importance of the early year bonds we as humans need. When these bonds are dysfunctional or absent a perfect storm simmers. How unfortunate it would be to come to this world and question the reason for being here not because of pure existential concerns but because no one ever made a big deal about you being here? I wonder how many of us can relate to this feeling conveyed by any number of patients?
My guess; probably most.
I always wonder about the people growing up with feeling unwanted, unloved, uncared for or all of the above. How it shapes them and their relationships? What is it like to live in a perpetual state of being irrelevant? It makes people angry, sad, enraged, anxious, worried, doubtful and so on and so forth. But come to think of it, would all of these feelings not be linked to the feeling of grief?
Grief for not having what seems so natural and right for us to have when we are born. It's the sort of grief that lies so deep and is so intense that it almost demands to be acknowledged yet is so intolerable that it's almost always ignored because how can you grieve something you never had.
But why can't you grieve not having something at all? Wouldn't deprivation lead to indulgence but without gratification? Adults with early attachment challenges mostly keep looking for what they never got. Sometimes in form of one after another dysfunctional relationship, sometimes in substance use and many times in both ways. The early age deprivations drive people to indulge in relationships with people and/or drugs in such self destructive ways but seldom result in gratification of what they need. A bottomless pit of despair that always seem to be wanting more.
I wonder if the grief of deprivation is so immense and scary that people can't seem to face it? It must be very scary to never know what is it like to trust that one is worth anything. It must be terrifying to ever think that your being in this world would ever matter to someone else. May be it's the fear that realizing one's grief would mean staring the deepest darkest moments of despair in their face while at the same time acknowledging the hard work that it will take to own it and learn to live with it. Grief isn't like sadness because sadness fades away but grief never leaves. It etches permanently and it always have fear close by.
To live with grief is to live with fear but to not respect and acknowledge grief; is to live in a constant storm that always simmer, is consuming and unpredictable because the more it is denied, the stronger and scarier it becomes.
As C.S. Lewis says it's a process not a state,
“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
