On the Many Flavors of Grief - Part 2

I once heard the phrase, “anger is a lazy form of grief.”

This phrase is striking. One reason being that anger doesn’t seem lazy at all: it usually involves action and lots of energy. But to think of what it’s covering makes me stop in my tracks.

What is the loss that I am trying to avoid by not feeling this grief? Feeling the grief would make it real.

I have learned from Dr. Joan Rosenberg that words and feelings that signal disguised grief are these: cynicism, pessimism, grudges, resentment, envy, jealousy, bitterness, anger. All these point to things not working out as we had hoped. Grief around what we got but did not deserve, what we did not get and deserved, what never was, what is not now, and what may never be. According to Dr. Rosenberg, these are the makings of disguised grief.

It could be the job you didn’t get. It could be the validation you didn’t receive from your parents. It could be the abuse from a lover or a marriage that ended. It could be an unfulfilled dream of a home of your own or the child you wanted but couldn’t have. It could be that your close friend betrayed you. It could be seemingly small, like not having it recognized when you put hard work into something or not being chosen for the team long ago. All these are the makings of quiet grief.

And grief buried has an effect in some way or another. It shuts a part of us down. When we shut parts of ourselves down, we lose access to joy, and we lose access to our health. Our bodies store the grief. That sore shoulder that just won’t heal, the stiff hips, the lower energy in the morning, could very well be stuck grief.

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” – Jamie Anderson

The good news is that there are ways to move the grief through, to get unstuck. You can “name it to tame it.” You can give that love someplace to go, first of all to yourself, to the parts that hurt.

If there is disguised grief you would like to heal, I recommend listening to and following the beautiful framework that Dr. Joan Rosenberg offers in this podcast. This may be all you need. If you find you want someone to walk alongside you and offer guidance in this release process, I would be honored to be that person.

The best thing we can do for the people we love is to heal ourselves, and often this means recognizing, naming, and moving through grief. This way we can show them who we truly are, a person who is free to feel both joy and sorrow.  This frees them to do the same, to be fully human, to be fully seen. And this, in turn, allows us to thrive in our relationships together.

Here. Now. In the land of the living.

If you have comments, deep thoughts, shallow thoughts, questions, anything you’d like to share in response to this blog, I would love to hear them. Please send a message to me, Deb, at honeycreekhealing@gmail.com.

If you are currently experiencing a mental health crisis, this is outside the scope of my expertise. Please pursue immediate support from your primary mental health clinician or dial 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.