Healthline: Why the Death of Celebrities and World Leaders Like Queen Elizabeth II Can Affect Us Deeply

““It’s very easy to be judgmental and claim that crying about someone you’ve never met is nonsense,” says Maria Bailey, founder of Grief Specialists, a collective of grief coaches and therapists. “I know some people have felt too embarrassed to talk about how deep their feelings are when someone in the public eye has died. However, these feelings are absolutely real and personal.”

While you might not have ever held a conversation with this person or even been in their presence, Bailey says there can still be a bond there. In some small way, they were still a part of your life. “While our relationships with them aren’t the same as someone who is physically part of our lives, our bond forms more with the idea of that person,” she explains. “You might have listened to their music for years, or watched them on TV every day, creating a feeling that they have been by our sides throughout our lives.” After Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, for example, many people said she represented stability and calm in their lives. She was a familiar symbol of dependability.

Adrienne Kirk, a psychotherapist who specializes in grief, points to a concept known as ‘sedimented belief’ and the illusion of permanence. “A sedimented belief is a belief that we have absorbed through our childhood, one we don’t really consciously think about, and when it’s ‘disproved’ (in this case, by a death) that can be really destabilizing for us,” she explains.

For example, if a celebrity has always been a part of our life, we may, on some level believe that they will always be around. It can be devastating to realize this isn’t the case. A feeling of shared experience can also compound feelings of grief.

“We can gravitate towards a particular celebrity because we find traits in them that resonate with our own lives and experiences,” says Bailey. “They might also remind you of someone you’re close to,” she adds.

When a well-known person passes, their death can be hard to escape with rolling news cycles and the ceaseless nature of social media. “In the aftermath of a celebrity death, media coverage can increase your emotional involvement, as the amount of information about a celebrity increases,” Bailey explains. “Sometimes there are programs documenting their lives and you can find out even more about them, such as unseen footage.” Bailey says this can deepen our connection with that person and compound our feelings of grief even further. For some though, the death of a celebrity serves as a painful reminder of the people close to them they have lost.

“For many of my clients, the death of the queen has triggered their own grief about the loss of their mother or grandmother,” Kirk notes. “One of my clients said, ‘it’s stirred the pot of my grief’ and I think that’s quite profound.””

Some Insights From This Article

• As the queen had passed this past week, many people around the world grieved her passing and processed the idea of living in a world without Britain's longest active monarch. For many this grief may have come as a surprise given that for some of us our connection to the queen is quite distant.

• Yet psychologists and researchers posit that our sudden grief may be a reflection of a disruption of permanence in our lives. It’s easy to become settled in our lives through living our daily lives and listening to constancy such as listening to our favorite celebrities and world leaders live their lives.

• When changes like these happen it can subtly remind us of the transience of life and the continuous forward movement of time.

How has the passing of Queen Elizabeth affected you?

Full article is here!

#Celebrity #Grief