How to cope with loss?
Loss is a topic that most people try to avoid. This is understandable, because it often involves big emotions such as stress, pain, and sadness, and above all the loss of security, and that is what people try to protect themselves from. Coping with loss is experienced differently and at different lengths for each person.
Our psychologist Jiří Vander has prepared a supporting text on this topic. Together with his colleague Sofia Berezka, he has also added some recommendations on how to cope with loss better.
Experiencing difficult situations in life is a challenge for every person.
It is important what attitude we take towards such a situation. This is what Viktor Frankl, the founder of the psychotherapeutic direction of logotherapy – a direction dealing with the search for the meaning of life, talks about. I recommend that people in crisis read his book Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything. The book is about the experience of a concentration camp, about the fact that those who do not give up, who do not resign, who keep hope and the ability to rejoice in small things, will survive. On the one hand, we experience pain and suffering, but on the other hand, according to Frankl, we have the freedom to take a stance on the situation – we can either resign, or a difficult and painful situation can be a challenge for us, we can say to ourselves, "They won't get me", "I am strong enough to handle the situation." It is important that we have that freedom and try to be proactive and believe that we can and can handle a difficult situation. It is not easy, but it is possible.
In the case of the loss of a loved one (most often a death, but also a breakup), or any other suffering (a job failure, a failure in an exam), a person experiences certain phases of coping with this loss – a model created by Elizabeth Kübler Ross, a researcher working with dying clients. This model has been applied to other difficult situations, such as coping with death, and the dying of loved ones, and has the following stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and reconciliation.
Denial and anger
At first one does not want to believe that the negative has happened, then one feels anger with questions, "Why me? Why did this have to happen to me? It's so unfair!" When working with grieving people, I encounter feelings of guilt when these people feel anger towards the deceased person. This anger is a very natural reaction to loss; it is the flip side of grief. It often happens that people who scream start crying within moments - screaming is a manifestation of strong emotions of pain and helplessness. It is part of the grieving process that one is angry at the deceased for abandoning them, angry at the situation that has arisen. It is important to be able to accept these feelings and emotions as well, not to suppress them, not to try to avoid them.
Bargaining
One tries to delay the negative situation through this thought process. For example, you say to yourself, "If a loved one recovers, I will never treat them negatively again." It is a false hope to persuade "fate" to avoid experiencing pain, suffering.
Depression
The individual withdraws completely, does not communicate, does not enjoy anything, nothing is meaningful to them, they may even wish that they too would die. Here the support and closeness of other family members or friends is important. But this is a problem because death is very taboo in the Czech Republic. Clients often hear their loved ones say things like "You have to pull yourself together", "Don't think about it." or "Try to relax." Remarks like that do not help, in fact, they throw the person into isolation and a feeling of misunderstanding. Constructive social support is remarks like: "I will always be there for you and you can turn to me anytime." That is, a listening ear, a caress, a hug, and the knowledge that everyone experiences and processes loss differently and at a different pace. I talked to a client who, even after a year, was very sad about her grandmother's death and was not getting understanding from her family and was hearing things like, "Don't worry so much.", "You have to live.", etc. The client, on the other hand, felt that it was unfair, an injustice, that everyone, in her opinion, quickly forgot about her grandmother. But it wasn't like that, it's just that – as I wrote above - everyone has a different time in which to deal with loss.
Acceptance
This is a crucial stage, and it is important to be clear about what it means. It is a person's ability to cope with the loss, to accept that the other person is no longer with us, to decide how to live on, how to reconfigure one's life so that it makes sense and fulfils the person under new conditions. But it is certainly not a loss of feeling the pain. In this regard, we recommend psychologist Alexander Levy's excellent book Goodbye Mom, Goodbye Dad: Coping with the Death of a Parent. It can also be used in coping with the death of a grandparent. The author writes about a client who, in the coping phase of dealing with the death of her parents, says, "I have been feeling the pain of my parents' deaths for 20 years, tell me what is wrong with me?" and Levy answers her: "Welcome to the world of bereavement." and adds that the pain of loss never goes away, it's just important that it doesn't paralyze us and make it impossible to go on living.
Continue the "relay"
There is another intervention that has helped many of my clients cope with the loss of a loved one. I suggest that they imagine that after the other person, there is a kind of imaginary white space here on earth, and that now the "baton" is on them to begin and continue the interest that the deceased person pursued. If he or she liked photography, they can begin to take pictures and then believe that we are the continuators of what the person left behind. For example, a client who had a close relationship with her grandmother began baking after her death, even though she had never engaged in this activity herself before, only occasionally with her grandmother – and it was this activity that helped her come to terms with her grandmother's death. She felt that she was continuing something that her grandmother had left behind, and it gave her a deep sense of meaning and a certain comfort.
Post-traumatic growth
Returning to Frankl, the meaning of life and the fact that we can take a stand on a difficult situation in life, the difficult situation can also strengthen us. Scientists use the term "post-traumatic growth". Often, when I work with clients with schizophrenia or clients who have recovered from addiction, they report that, even though it was a painful experience, the experience also enriched them and brought them some insights, they reassessed their priorities and instead of chasing money or fame, they began to value more contact with other people or to pursue different interests that they had been putting off. They say, "I guess I had to go through this painful experience to realize certain things."
In conclusion, we can take difficult situations, the pain of loss and our own failures as a challenge, as a question that life poses to us and to which we can try to give an answer. It is also important to remember that it is darkest just before dawn, that a dead tree without leaves may look sad during the day, but at night, we can see the stars through it.
Recommendations for those coping with loss:
1. Allow yourself to grieve, do not suppress the pain or the expression of emotions (crying, anger). Do not hesitate to talk about your feelings.
2. Go through the "ritual" of saying goodbye. For example, you can write a letter expressing all your emotions (positive and negative).
3. Choose and allow yourself time to cope with the loss. Don't run away from the pain with work, play, addictive substances (it's always temporary and you will have to face the pain one day anyway).
4. Listen to your needs and allow yourself to relax (go to nature, play sports or other interests). Coping with a loss is very energetically demanding, so it is also important to have activities, routines, and relationships where you draw your energy.
5. Change the direction of your thoughts, think about the good times you had with the person and how they enriched you, rather than the loss itself.
6. Continue activities in which you can build on the person you have lost.
7. Notice the little nice things and think about the meaning of life, about what is important to us. Take loss as a challenge to personal growth.
8. Deal with guilt. Realize that death and life do not depend on your will. Guilt is always aggression directed against yourself. You can record why you are angry with yourself and what conclusions you can draw from it.
9. When making a decision, you can imagine how the deceased person would have behaved and have an imaginary inner dialogue with them.
10. Realize that death is not the end of the relationship on our part, that we still carry the person in our hearts and can live from their legacy and message.
11. If you feel that you can't cope and the pain is just getting worse, paralysing you and you can't live your normal life - don't hesitate to contact a qualified professional. A psychologist will not relieve you of the loss but will help you to survive the grief and get rid of the compulsive thoughts.
The Counselling Centre offers free psychological consultations to students. More information can be found here. If you have any questions, you can contact psycholog@muni.cz.
Used and recommended literature
- Frankl, V. E. 2016. And yet saying yes to life: a psychologist experiences a concentration camp. Kostelní Vydří: Karmelitánské nakladatelství.
- CALLS FROM THE ROPES. 1996. [online]. [cited 18 February 2018]. Available from World Wide Web: https://archive.vaclavhavel-library.org/Archive/Detail/2072?q=hovory from the ropes
- Kübler-Ross, E. 2015. On death and dying: what people should learn from the dying. Prague: Portal.
- Levy, A. 2021. Goodbye Mom, goodbye Dad: coping with the death of a parent. Prague: Portal.
- Lukas, E. 2006. Even your suffering has meaning: logotherapeutic comfort in crisis. Brno: Cesta.
- Slezáčková, A. 2009. Posttraumatic personality development in the context of positive psychology. Brno: FF MU. Available on the World Wide Web: pdf (muni.cz)