Am I Grieving Right?

It's a question I get asked all the time. Am I doing it right? Is there a way to determine which feelings are "right" and how often you should be experiencing them? I wish there was. But unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it!), there is no one right way. I guess that means we are all doing it right then, because grief is unique to each of us.

Sometimes, what happens is the griever may have a moment of happiness or find themselves enjoying some time with friends, or laughing at a TV show. And then, often, an immediate sense of guilt accompanies this experience because they felt OK, or even better than OK, for a moment. How could they feel that way when their person died? It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like they are honoring their person.

If you know anything about grief, you've probably heard of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. She was a pioneer in the field and created the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Depression, Bargaining and Acceptance. These stages have been used for grief although she never intended them to be. She actually created them to explain the experience of the dying person. But it's become engrained in our brains, so when we feel OK or better, we may think that means we aren't going through the stages correctly. Or that we have gotten to acceptance too quickly and we don't care or love the person that died enough to be grieving.

This theory assumed that healthy mourning would lead to some sort of detachment from the deceased and then new connections would be made to the living. But what if worked from a model that says we need to create a different, but also dynamic, relationship with the deceased? It's OK to continue the bond and relationship with them while also attending to current relationships and environments? If you are interested in learning more, check out the work of Phyllis Silverman and her theory of Continuing Bonds. It removes the idea of grieving in a linear fashion and focuses on the normality of the grief experience. Check out a brief summary of some of the most popular theories of grief here.