We have all lost something. We are all grieving. We need to address that.
I don’t know about you but this was my first quarantine. If I am honest I am not doing well and I don’t think I am alone. We are all grieving something right now and I think we need to take a moment to reflect on how that is affecting us before we race into the “new normal.”
Personally I have already lost people I know to this virus. I also have lost any semblance of a balanced life now that my 1200 square foot home has turned into a project management office, a counseling office, preschool, elementary school, and full-time bunker for a family of 4. I have lost time with my friends, shifted my life online, and had to say goodbye to local businesses I love.
I am grieving these losses and you are probably grieving too. You might even have it much worse than me. Grief is a funny thing and makes us do things that we would not normally do. Even if we don’t feel like we are grieving it can still affect our lives.
Psychologists Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler have done extensive research into death and grief and have developed 5 stages if the grieving process. Most of us are at least vaguely familiar with them and I contend that all of us are in them right now to varying degrees.
Briefly the stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance and even just reading them you might start to notice behaviors of yours that fit those descriptions. It is worth noting that the grieving process is different for everyone. These stages aren’t experienced as perfectly linear and you can go in and out of them over the course of minutes, hours, days or weeks.
This is a good thing. The grieving process is our body’s way of helping us process our pain in a way that won’t overwhelm us. Think of it like your digestive track. You have a mouth, esophagus, stomach, and intestines to serve different functions in breaking down your food into manageable chunks. You can’t do it all at once. Some food moves through really fast and other foods stick with you for days. The grieving process is our mind’s way of breaking down pain into manageable pieces. It isn’t weakness to face it bit by bit. It is normal.
My hope is that as we go through them in detail you can see where you might be on this spectrum and gain a little more self awareness and self acceptance. We are all in this process together and I think if we can make space for ourselves and others to experience this grief we will get through this pandemic with a better understanding of ourselves.
Denial
In denial we go numb. Denial can sound like it is a bad thing but it really isn’t. It is just the body’s way of dealing with the loss and helping you survive. For reference this was the part of the quarantine where we all watched Tiger King thinking this would be over soon and we would all go back to normal in a few weeks. It wasn’t true but it was what we needed at the time.
When we are in the denial phase of grief we aren’t really in reality. We are just trying to get through the day. If this where you find yourself this isn’t a failure on your part. You don’t get extra points for skipping denial and grieving faster. There is no shame in a certain level of denial right now.
To use a pandemic term, denial helps us flatten the curve of grief and deal with its effects over time instead of all at once. It is a gift but it is a gift we also need to be aware of because it can have a dark side. While denial can look like watching too much Schitt’s Creek it can also look like defiance and scapegoating. We might refuse to comply with health orders because we can’t process that we are hosts for a disease that might kill others. We might become fixated on one solution to the problem and deny any data that doesn’t support the reality we wish was true. Denial can look like a lot of things; the important thing is to be gentle with yourself and others as you notice this.
Anger
Anger is a necessary stage in the grieving process. Once the reality of the situation starts to set in it is completely normal to be angry. I think this is the stage a lot of us are in right now and because it is one of the more socially acceptable and empowering phases to be in (at least for men) we tend to hang out here a lot.
Because we are all online venting anger is easier than ever. More than once I have noticed myself looking for a target to take my anger out on instead of feeling other less pleasant emotions. If you find yourself looking for someone to blame online or arming yourself to go scream at police officers at a state capital; you might need to realize you aren’t angry because they are evil you are angry because you are sad. You are grieving and you need to find a better way to deal with it.
Anger isn’t bad. It can give you incredible focus and a target to help you get out of the morass that is denial. I spent more hours than I care to admit angrily fact checking the Plandemic documentary (its a pile of lies and junk science by the way) and while there were better uses of my time it did give me something to channel my anger at. Was it my best moment? No. Could I have handled that better? Yes. Did it help me process some grief? Absolutely.
In this stage we need to recognize that our higher functions like love and empathy aren’t firing on all cylinders. We aren’t going to be our best selves. Rather than take it out on your uncle online try to allow yourself to feel the anger in a safe space. Write it out in a journal, destroy something in a way that won’t frighten your quarantine mates, spend your energy in a workout or furiously wash the dishes.
We have a choice here. We can feel our anger unconsciously and risk our mental health and relationships in the process or we can feel it in a safer space. You aren’t going to escape anger but you do have some agency here. Use it well.
Bargaining
This stage, like all the stages, will look different for everyone. For me it looks like resolutions to “be better” once this thing is over. If I can just make this a productive time then it will all be worth it. If I have to be stuck here I am going to make it better than it actually is. This phase is also often accompanied by guilt when I fail or can’t seem to get out of denial long enough to put on my pants for the day.
It can also look like turning to God for favor. You might beg God to protect your family and promise to be more fully dedicated in return. You say you will go to church, volunteer, or whatever as long as you get through this. When we do this we are mentally trying to do something, anything, to make this more bearable and for it to have a larger meaning.
When we are bargaining we also can look back and think about how we might have done things differently. If you have lost a loved one or a livelihood to this virus this will probably be much stronger for you. We run through a list of “If only…” thinking that if we had done something different in the past our present wouldn’t be what it is. In bargaining we come to face our very real human limits.
You can’t go back and change things. You cannot know what the future holds. You will never make yourself 100% safe. You only have so much time and emotional energy to “win the day.” Sitting with that isn’t easy in the best of times. Be good to yourself and notice when you are in a bargaining spiral and try to center yourself back in the here and now.
Depression
So far all the stages are about getting our attention away from the present. We numb in denial, project in anger, and intellectualize in bargaining. Depression is what happens when we finally square our attention on the present moment we are in. In this stage we start to really feel the feelings of our grief and escaping them isn’t possible anymore. I submit that as we begin to reopen and the reality of what has happened hits this is where many of us will find ourselves.
Depression has a certain stigma in capitalist societies, you can’t be very productive when you are dealing with pain, but depression from grief isn’t mental illness. It is the normal response to pain and loss. Our society might not make much space for it but there is no shame in feeling it. It is highly likely that at some point during this quarantine or as we reopen you are going to experience mild to severe depression. How do I know this? Because you are a human in an uncertain world. Depression isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you are paying attention.
In seasons where I have been depressed I usually want to get out of it as fast as possible and this isn’t helpful. It also isn’t helpful to try to get another depressed person out of depression as fast as possible. It is important to give yourself and the people around you permission to feel it. This is a depressing time and we are all grieving in various ways all at the same time. People are losing their jobs, lives, and way of life. Depression is a normal response. You are not ill if you feel it and please don’t make others feel ashamed because you are uncomfortable them feeling it. We need space and time. High levels of productivity can wait.
Acceptance
Acceptance if often confused with being ok with everything that has happened. This is not the case. Being ok with all of this fits more squarely in denial than acceptance. If you are reading this and find yourself perfectly ok with all that has happened you might want to question that a bit. Don’t engage in bypassing and pat yourself on the back for jumping through the stages of grief in record time. Collectively let’s accept that we have just begun.
So what is acceptance? This last stage is about accepting that change has happened and that things are not going to be the same again. It is fully understanding that we are in a new reality and we aren’t going back. I don’t think any of us are here yet, in a lot of ways we have no idea what the new world we going to accept is, but we can start getting ourselves ready in small ways with that we do know about acceptance.
Watch out for this; acceptance can feel like betrayal of your old life. For some of you accepting government guidance and assistance can feel like a betrayal of your deeply held beliefs. For others of you accepting that you can’t go to church will feel like a betrayal of your religious freedoms. For others accepting that there isn’t a perfect balance between shutting down and staying open will feel like a betrayal of your idealism. Acceptance betrays what you used to think before the thing happened. That is ok. Letting go of ideals that served us before the pandemic and embracing ones that help us deal with the pandemic is a part of the grieving process.
Productivity is going to look different now. School is going to look different now. Community is going to look different now. Faith is going to look different now. Economic prosperity is going to look different now. After moving through the stages of grief we can accept that life is going to be different now but it is going to take time.
We will find ourselves again but for right now we are in the messy middle. This is of course compounded by the fact that we are all experiencing varying levels of grief at the same time. It is a collective burden we share together.
Every person you deal with today is somewhere on this spectrum of grief. They may be in multiple stages over different things all at once. Be as kind and gracious as you can to them. You aren’t exactly your best either. Now might not be the time to go seven rounds with your cousin over how well the shutdown went. Your emotional bandwidth just isn’t what it was and you need to reserve it for the most important people in your life.
I get it, this is hard, but I hope that by seeing these phases laid out you can begin to notice where you might be at and allow yourself to move through them with a little more ease.
Be good to yourselves my friends. We are all we have.
