Everyday Grief: Coping with the Continuous Impact of Loss

Grief can take many different forms and be present in our daily lives.

We usually associate grief with the loss of a loved one, and it is true that this is perhaps the most visible and eloquent way of feeling and defining this stage.

However, we do not we do not realize that, in the course of a normal day, we may go through certain moments of griefprobably not as intense or as deep as the difficult moment of saying goodbye to someone forever.

Understanding everyday grief

We do not give excessive importance nor define as grief aspects like: a sentimental rupture, the loss of a work, an injury that incapacitates us to take a normal life, a suspense of our children, a rapapololvo of some superior... Everyday moments that, when they occur, make us go through the 5 stages of grief, one of the most used ways to delimit the problem and derived from the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, namely:

• Denial
• Anger
• Negotiation
• Depression
• Acceptance

The first thing to take into consideration is that a grief, whether more or less painful, involves a break in the personal process of existence, supposes a rupture of the personal process of existenceThis entails the entry into a world of emotions, feelings and behaviors that were not foreseen and that are related to the problem (grief) in question.

According to Eriksson, a stage of mourning involves an accidental crisis leading to a more or less acute psychological disturbance which is nothing more than an adjustment and adaptation to an apparently unsolvable problem.. This means that when these periods of daily grief occur, we feel helpless in the face of events for which we are not prepared and for which it is very possible that we do not have adequate strategies to cope.

All this is increased in the specific case of the loss of a loved one, and even more so if it occurs unexpectedly, but it also happens frequently in other less striking but highly influential griefs in our daily lives.

One of the great problems of grief, regardless of its depth, is that we often face the problem alone, we face the problem alone, and although we need the help of others, we are not alone.. The reality is that it is a crisis that is faced mainly in solitude.

Therefore, the way or attitude of dealing with grief has much to do with personal factors, how we frame the situation at the moment of life in which it occurs, how we are in health and well-being at the precise moment in which it occurs, and above all, how we face our daily existence, and how we deal with it. how we face our daily existence..

What to do?

As a society, we are going through a time of mourning. This long-lasting pandemic has brought about a change in the way we act, think and live. And it has produced, individually and collectively, losses of different types: professional, emotional, family, experiential, etc.

We have had to say goodbye to a more or less structured, more or less secure way of life, to move on to an almost daily shock, which forces us to change habits, customs, thoughts, attitudes, actions, which are causing us a continuous uneasiness; it is almost a daily mourning.

A situation that affects all aspects of our life and that forces us to make a series of decisions, both internal and external, to overcome the situation.It is a situation that affects all aspects of our lives and that forces us to make a series of decisions, both internal and external, to successfully overcome the situation by going through the phases of a "normal" mourning.

It is necessary to strengthen our resiliencewhich is nothing more than the capacity we have as human beings to face our adversities. We have within us qualities that allow us to face these current moments of tension and uneasiness, we must implement a new individual and social discipline.

We are vulnerable, but that is precisely why we can improve and adapt to the situation from our own resources. Therefore, we must develop efficient and effective strategies that allow us to have a minimum control of the situation.

There will be aspects that escape us, but we must have a great confidence in ourselves and in our society, take advantage of the ancestral wisdom and use it as a support and base to face the present time with guarantees.

A mourning is nothing more than a stage of our life in which our capacity to adapt, to make an effort, to live the present time with sense and strength to propose a more promising future is put into play. The scars remain, they are part of our Self, there is no need to hide them, only to seek in them the experience that we need.We should not hide them, but seek in them the experience that will make us grow and mature.

As Charles Darwin said, it is not the biggest or the strongest that survive, but those who are able to adapt and learn to see new possibilities.

And if things get really complicated and we are not able to find the way by ourselves, ask for help, do not stay isolated, rely on a professional who allows us to look at situations differently, to show us another perspective and make us understand that the solution is within us, that we have in us. To be the necessary resources to overcome any difficulty, any grief.