ASK DR. BAUGHAN                                             February 27, 1998

A TIME TO GRIEVE

“When is grief normal, or when is it an abnormal depression?”

Grief at the loss of a loved one is a universal human response.  The loss of love, companionship, humor and all the aspects of personality that created delight and beauty from the person’s presence cause a vacuum that is painful.  Grief is the painful  awareness of that vacuum, that empty space.  To avoid that pain of emptiness is to disavow the fullness that person provided to your life.  Therefore, grief is normal and inevitable when there was love and friendship.

Grief is a physical experience.  We have measured how men’s immune systems do not work as well after the loss of a spouse.  A man is more likely to die in the first year after a wife’s death than in the year before.  The point here is that grief is as real a physical experience as a heart attack or a broken bone.  Some people try to deny grief by seeking comfort that the loved one “has gone to their reward,” or by focusing on the joy the person gave while alive.  A period of grief does not mean continuous sadness.  A person may experience thankfulness and spiritual peacefulness at times, and then at other times they are forlorn, angry or numb.  It is not selfish to feel a whole range of emotions; it is normal, natural and healthy to do so.  One of the values of loving someone is to be aware of the honesty, beauty and power of our own feelings.  To deny the painful feelings would be to deny the reality and intensity of the good feelings.

Grief at the loss of a spouse may last a year or more.  Well-meaning friends or relatives may encourage a person to “get over it” after a couple of months because they feel uncomfortable in the presence of pain.  Time is not a very reliable indicator of whether a person is healing their grief or not.  We have to look to the emotional states with more attention.

Certainly if the survivor becomes suicidal in thought or action, grief has changed into depression.  If after several months, the person feels only continuous sadness, with no intervals of other emotions, this can indicate their emotional and mental patterns have become stuck and can signal a chemical imbalance of depression that may require treatment.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  Allowing time to observe and contemplate emptiness can be the space needed to create new life, life that grows from the qualities lost.  If the person feels month after month that they cannot go on, then it may signal that they were so dependent on the lost loved one that they do not know how to grow within themselves.  Professional help may then be necessary.  If the person continues to refuse to allow anyone to share in their grief, they may be lost in an emotional well.

Treatment of depression resulting from grief does not take away grief.  If anything, it allows the person to return to the grief process.  This means the person experiences an evolution in their thoughts and feelings.  Sadness and pain may return, even years later, but the person’s heart and spirit allow other experiences, other emotions to be present, where previously there was felt to be only emptiness.