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What does healing look like, in unruly and unpredictable grief?
Processing grief isn’t about losing the pain; it’s about being able to sit with it. What is a good way to reach out to someone who is bereaved? Take a look.
So much has changed when it comes to how we grieve.
It used to be tangible things we clung to – letters, photographs, belongings. Then came virtual memorial pages and Twitter threads.
AI chatbots can now be paid to impersonate loved ones in written and verbal conversations. Interactive memory apps such as HereAfter AI and StoryFile offer to create virtual avatars that resemble the departed person, and can be preloaded with stories from their life. These options are available, but not widespread.
So how does a population that grew up with the digital world use it in times of such loss? “The one thing that stands out about Millennials and Gen Z (roughly those aged 11 to 42 today) is that they have learned to walk with grief, using whatever means they have,” says life coach Chetna Chakravarthy.
One of those ways is to broadcast it. For many in their 40s and older, it can still feel jarring to see an announcement of death posted online by a loved one of the deceased. (Perhaps it was so when these first began to appear in newspapers).
There are, apparently, a few primary reasons the young do this.
It’s the quickest way to let their scattered tribe know of their loss, respondents aged 19 to 24 told psychologists from Birmingham City University, UK. (Their study, Exploring Young Millennials’ Motivations for Grieving Death through Social Media, was published in the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science in 2022).
It also allows them to find a degree of catharsis and community, by allowing them access to others who have experienced similar grief. Comments invariably fill up with stories of other people’s own experiences, and this is helpful and comforting, respondents said.
A third reason cited was that it was simply less emotionally gruelling to tell people via tweet than in person. “I just find it hard to say my feeling to people and so social media was easier because I didn’t need to actually tell people face to face how I felt […] it was easier to post because you are behind a screen type thing,” as one participant put it.
A rather sinister reason emerged too: some respondents said they felt compelled to make some form of online statement, for fear that if they did not, it would be taken as a sign that they didn’t care very much about the deceased.
Interestingly, most of the respondents also said that they posted online about a death as a way to preserve a bond with the deceased person, through pictures, memories and videos — all of which mirror traditional memorial practices.
The risk, with the broadcast approach, is that responses may be unkind or unwittingly harmful. “Anything that trivialises the experience, including toxic positivity, can affect the grieving process,” says trauma-focused counselling psychologist Anusree Menon.
Milestones
So what is a good thing to say, whether online or in person? We’ve touched upon this before, in HT Wknd, but since this is such a universal stumbling block, a quick recap.
Tongue-tied in the face of death, many veer into advice — “be strong” is a common and grievous error.
“Any unsolicited advice can feel invasive and judgemental,” Chakravarthy says. Instead, keep to one of three approaches. Simple and sincere: “I am so very sorry.”
Gently involved: “I’d like to help. Could I ______ (do the dishes; walk the pet; check in with the florist?).”
Kind and complimentary: “They were so wonderful. I remember ____ (assuming that either this is true; or that the person you are speaking to believes it to be true).”
Keep the questions to a minimum. Even “How are you doing” can be a difficult one to answer.
Given that grief doesn’t unfold in linear fashion, how is a person to know where they are in the arc of potential healing? A marker of adaptation is when one begins to deal with triggers better, psychologists say. When you no longer react to old photographs, treasured belongings of the deceased person, a birthday, anniversary or family holiday with an intense fight-or-flight response, that indicates healing, says Chakravarthy. “It tells you that you are moving forward, even though you are carrying the grief.”
Processing grief isn’t about losing the pain, Menon adds. “It is about being able to sit with one’s new reality, deciphering ways to return to things one did before, and eventually finding a way back to enjoying those things again.”
Look for indications of healing in the way you think about the person who is gone. “When you move from feeling the numbing pain of loss to being able to celebrate the life of the deceased, for the first time,” Chakravarthy says, “you can count that as a key triumph.”
