Grief As An Experiential Opportunity

Grief as an experiential opportunity appears the moment we lose something valuable. The duel is a goodbye, a goodbye to someone or something that until then generated positive emotions. Although it is a process that none of us want to experience, it can be extremely restorative at times.

Sadness and other associated emotions are necessary for our brain to process and assimilate the loss. In this sense, we cannot consider them negative or dysfunctional emotions that we have to deny or cover up in some way, but quite the opposite.

It is important that we do not view the grieving process as an enemy to avoid. This affliction is an inherent part of what it means to live and therefore, sooner or later, all of us will be forced to face this pain. Whether it is due to the loss of a loved one, a sentimental breakup or the news of an illness, grief will appear to help us adapt to the new situation.

That is why, when it appears, it would be useful to be prepared to make contact with all the feelings that are emerging. The wounds of the soul are not very different from the emotional ones. When we have an injury, after disinfecting and cleaning it, the doctor usually recommends that we leave it in the air; in this way, we accelerate healing. Obviously, these movements aimed at healing the wound are inescapably painful, but indispensable.

The stages of grief

From psychology, and depending on the author we consult, we can verify that the duel goes through different stages. It has been mentioned above all that in the early stages it is normal for a reaction of shock, disbelief or denial to occur. Later we would move on to more intense emotions, such as anger, depression or desolation. After all these phases, we reach the final stage of acceptance, in which we finally feel the necessary calm to continue with our day to day.

Also, in certain people, some phases last longer than others or are experienced in a different order. What is consensual is the fact that acceptance comes at the end of the entire process and once the individual has been willing to embrace all their feelings without exclusion.

In this sense, it is essential that we do not exhaust resources to try to cover up our emotions. Our society and culture is very prone to denying negative emotions. We do not usually cry in public, we do not usually talk about our feelings if they are not of joy. If we see someone grieving or desolate, we can even judge them as dramatic, weak, or exaggerated.

What happens when the duel takes hold?

If we have suffered in our life a situation of loss and we have covered it with plasters, without first cleaning it, it is likely that we will end up sabotaging its healing, conquering the mourning. In this way, the intensity increases and the process is prolonged in time.

It is a parajoda: sometimes, the more we do not try to avoid suffering, the more we sink into it. We are so afraid to move out of a position of indifference and begin to feel that we may go to desperate measures not to do so.

Doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs to prevent us from facing the flow of emotions, people around us recommend that we “turn the page and forget quickly” and we ourselves avoid talking about our loss or thinking about it.

Grief as an experiential opportunity allows us to find ourselves on another plane, in a full position of listening and understanding. Once this contact is resumed, the usual thing is that we go little by little recovering our life, ordering our values ​​and taking the paths that lead us to achieve them. In this journey, we will realize that there is a place for growth, that we can grow as people and that, among everything that travels with grief, there is also an opportunity for learning.

In conclusion, seeing the duel as an experiential opportunity contributes to not facing it as if it were the enemy, to not feeding the frustration that arises from what can no longer be changed. If we naturalize it, it will be easier for us to integrate it into our life history.

It will be easier to understand that important losses are rarely absolute losses, preserving reasons with which the vital spirit, damaged and resentful, can be recovered. Emotions are in us for the simple fact that we are alive. Accordingly, it is more appropriate to start accepting them in the absence of judgment and open to their message.