1.Don’t feel bad. “Pull yourself together.”
2.Replace the loss. “Let’s go to the pet store tomorrow. I’ll buy you a new puppy.”
3.Grieve alone. “She just needs her space. She’ll get over it.”
4.Just give it time. “Time heals all wounds.”
5.Be strong for others. “Gotta keep a stiff upper lip for your mother and your sister.”
6.Keep busy. “If you wallow in here, you’ll never get over it. Get back out there. Find something to do.”
The problem with each of these myths is that they involve a form of repression and disregard of painful feelings that otherwise become stuck in the body, which can lead to significant diagnoses, such as anxiety and depression. This might also leave us feeling deeply disconnected from our inner life and vitality, resulting in a feeling of numbness, emptiness, and purposelessness. While it may be contrary to popular belief, I suggest the following instead:
1.Feel as bad as you do.
2.Don’t replace the loss.
3.Find someone who shares your pain.
4.Take all the time you need to acknowledge the loss and take stock of its meaning.
5.Let others take care of themselves and/or know your limits.
6.Don’t burn out on distractions.
Grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss of any kind, though we have been socialized to believe that these feelings are unattractive and disruptive to others. More than that, to be willing to grieve properly is to be willing to feel pain. The irony is that in an avoidance of pain, we only compound it. So why do we do it?
Somewhere along the line, these patterns of avoidance served a protective function. Through various interactions with his parents, a child learns certain thoughts and feelings are unacceptable and should be eliminated. Through the upheavals of grief, those repressed creative parts of the self are unearthed, offering an opportunity to finally express their contents, in order to become a whole person. An understanding of the relationship between creativity and paradox helps illuminate this process. This is explored in more depth in the body of this text.
The nature of unfinished business: A bio–psycho–social–spiritual perspective
Life is full of losses. Some might be “little losses,” as Kübler-Ross (1969) described them, while others make your whole life feel like the Titanic. And loss can take on many forms, such as the death of a loved one, a major transition, a romantic heartbreak, divorce, loss of a job, estrangement from a family member, loss of a friend, death of a pet, and so on. One might assume the nature of the loss defines the depth of your grief, and recent studies regarding violent death would support that assumption (see Chapter 3). But why might a mourner suffering the loss of a long-anticipated death of a family member caused by a slow-moving cancer display complicated grief symptoms, while the mourner of a violent and deadly attack on her spouse is able to pick herself up and move on after a “normal” period of grief?
It is the thesis of this text that the underlying mechanisms of grief are uniquely related to our earliest attachment models. Thus, often it is the nature of your unfinished business that defines the despair, qualifying each individual’s grief as a distinctive experience, one that cannot be neatly tucked into specific stages or lumped into a population of mourners with a special type of loss.
James and Friedman (2009) describe grief as “the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior” (p.3). Unfinished business can be thought of as “unfinished emotions attached to a living person with whom you have a less than fulfilling relationship” (p.9). If grief is like reaching out for someone who has always been there, and they are no longer there, then unfinished business is like reaching out for someone who has never been there for you, and still isn’t—be he dead or alive.
To begin, let us examine four dimensions of experience including the physical, mental and emotional, social, and spiritual realms. Please keep in mind, these dimensions are inextricably intertwined, but sometimes it helps to consider the color of each woven thread in its own right when examining the larger tapestry.
What happens to us biologically when we grieve?
In its earliest forms, loss was sensed before it was articulated, defined by those awful moments of unbearable hunger, before your mother was able to feed and soothe you. It was also inevitably quelled by her smiling, cooing and caressing embrace, which assured you all was well with the world. In the present, loss rips open those pangs of our initial blissful fantasies and violent deprivations, shining a light on the nuances of those original attachment and bonding dynamics. It is a cell memory—as is the lost object of our affections—a part of our very bodily existence.
For example, according to neuro-psychiatrist Dr. Amen (2007), there are four phases of romantic attachment—attraction, infatuation, commitment, and detachment—each phase with its own chemical trigger. When we love someone, eventually, he will become imbedded in the limbic part of our brains (his smell, the touch of his skin, the sound of his voice, the beat of his heart, etc.). When we cannot interact with our love object as we are used to, that part of the brain becomes inflamed, looking for him. This inflammation is associated with low serotonin levels, which leads to depression, trouble sleeping, feeling obsessed, loss of appetite, and wanting to isolate ourselves. Additionally, a deficit in endorphins, which modulates pain and pleasure pathways in the brain, may be responsible for why we feel physical pain during a breakup. Your heart literally aches. The pathways in the brain associated with non-romantic attachments function in much the same way (Hass-Cohen and Findlay, 2015).
We attach ourselves to the relics of our partners because they function as “transitional objects.” These physical items are popularly understood to be a stand-in for the missing loved one, like a teddy bear for a child who misses his or her mother. But they are symbols for not only the absent person, but your version of the absent person—the image you have of him in your head. The actual person was likely a close approximation, but your fantasies for the relationship were probably founded on whatever image of him you still cling to in your mind (Winnicott, 1970).
HOW DO PHYSICAL EXPERIENCES COMPLICATE UNFINISHED BUSINESS?
Our physical needs are a powerful force that demands immediate attention. Often, the pain of grief is unbearable and so we seek short-term escapes from it. These escapes are usually effective distractions because they are characterized by their ability to alter our physical experience of pain. Perhaps they simply numb the pain, or they might replicate the feeling of “oneness” that our love object provided, be it sex, affection, food, medication, drugs, alcohol, excessive exercise, mind-altering meditation practices, and the like (Fromm, 1956; Viorst, 1986). Such distractions only serve to perpetuate unfinished business because they prevent an acknowledgement of its existence. Like putting a Band-Aid on an infected wound and expecting it to heal.
It is also important to be aware of the physiological changes that occur in our bodies if the lost love object was a sexual partner. Both men and women experience chemical changes in their bodies that have a calming and stabilizing effect on mood through repeated sexual intercourse with the same person, which promotes healthy physiological function (in fact, having sex a minimum of three times per week can make you look ten years younger). Hormonal balance also plays a role, particularly for women (Amen, 2007). All of these physiological experiences serve to complicate our experience of grief.
What happens to us mentally and emotionally when we grieve?
I purposely did not divide “mental” aspects from “emotional” aspects