Loss is the price of living: "The extraordinary rent that must be paid as long as you stay." (Annie Dillard)
As long as we live, we have to lose something. Our childhood, each passing year, the people we love, sometimes the things we love... The journey of life offers us a path where there are losses and we cannot escape from them. The most painful of these losses is undoubtedly death. Death is actually the only reality we know from the moment we are born. However, this one undoubted fact appears before us as an end that we try to ignore and have difficulty accepting. We are doomed to lose as long as we live. What matters is our reactions to losses. While losses can be a tool for acceptance and growth that will enable us to develop, they can also drag us into a never-ending grief throughout life.
Death is the most concrete and painful of losses. When we lose a loved one, we unknowingly add to the grief of our past unfinished affairs and hasty separations. Each loss triggers all the losses we have lost before but have not fully digested. Grieving is not just a reaction to death. We also experience grief in the face of any loss or change in our lives. The severity of the mourning process varies depending on the importance of the person, thing or experience we lost or separated from us. What is lost could be our child leaving home, losing a loved one, retiring, getting divorced, changing jobs, or even getting a promotion. Each of them includes the mourning process.
While grief describes a process we experience in response to all our losses in life, the grief that occurs with the death of the people to whom we have invested the most emotionally is one of the most difficult processes. The grieving process is as personal as our fingerprints. It is determined by the characteristics of our past loss stories and relationships. Everyone's grief is deeply personal, even within the same family. The course of mourning depends on the preparation for the loss, the characteristics of the person lost, the psychological strength of the mourner, and the capacity to grieve.
The ability to do the work of grief depends on our developmental history. Letting go of things from the day we were born We grow bigger. The baby accepts leaving the mother's breast to drink milk from the cup. When he starts walking, he loses the security of being carried. If these transitions occur in a safe environment, the child develops well and is more likely to become an adult with a psychological model for grieving. Healthy breakups build on each other. If there have been no healthy separations, the grieving process progresses very slowly. In order to make peace with the current loss, we are forced to confront past ungrieved losses.
If a person's early interactions are generally constant, reassuring, and loving, there are reservoirs to draw on in the face of change. Throughout life, our ability to give up is directly linked to our readiness to take the next step, the safety of the environment, the support of those around us, and our past record of letting go.
If we think of life as the construction of a large building, when the childhood years when the foundation of the building is laid are solid. Damage occurring on upper floors can be compensated more easily over time. However, if there is any rot in the foundation, the building is likely to collapse at the slightest damage. The possibility of experiencing the mourning process in a healthy way is directly related to going through the stages of separation and individuation in childhood in a healthy way and ensuring secure attachment.
There are two stages of grieving. The first is grief in crisis, which begins at the moment of loss or threat of loss (a terminal illness). Our bodies and minds resist. We move in and out of denial, division, bargaining, distress, and anger to avoid facing death. As we assimilate the painful truth, the crisis period ends. Many assume that grieving ends with accepting death. In fact, the second phase of mourning is just beginning. Only once we accept the reality of death can we begin the subtle and complex work of reconciliation to turn the relationship into a memory that will no longer haunt us.
The three basic points necessary for us to understand grief are:
p>1.Every loss drags us into inevitable grief.
2.Every loss revives all past losses.
3.Every loss if it has its full meaning. If it can be mourned with grief, it can be a tool for growth and renewal.
Even if many years have passed since an unresolved, postponed or covered-up mourning process affects our daily lives more than expected, it can lead to the experience of intense depression. may cause. If the grief process has become chronic and affects the person's daily life even after a long period of time, getting support from a specialist will help the mourning process to be experienced in a healthy way.
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