Psychology Today: How We Grieve Changes, Endings, and Unfulfilled Goals

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“Many experiences may not be regarded as grief-worthy, even though they activate emotional responses similar to those who grieve the death of a loved one. Death is a conspicuous loss. If a loss doesn’t involve death, a person may dismiss or judge what they feel, concluding they are not entitled to mourn their misfortune, their sorrow, or the shattering of their illusions. Yet grief occurs in many forms. We grieve because we remember when things were different; when we perceive our former circumstances were better than they are now.

The circumvention of social goals and values, including unfulfilled goals or the ending of a purpose, can be emotionally painful. Emotional responses to the outcome of our pursuits are influenced by our personal history, the culture in which we were raised, the ways we have learned to express emotion, and how others have responded to our emotional expressions. All of our experiences in which emotions were triggered, and how we responded to them, are compiled in our brain and contribute to forming the set of rules by which we live (Tomkins, 1995). Thus, the emotions we experience in the present have past histories that have been compressed into mini-theories that help us make sense of regularity and change in our lives and provide information concerning ways of living in the world (Tomkins, 1995). The sense of disappointment, disillusionment, and dejection are greatly influenced by our emotional responses that, over time, have become scripted. These scripted responses can either help or hinder us as we interpret, evaluate, and make predictions in our present life and as we anticipate the future.

Humans adapt differently. In any kind of grief experience, we must psychically reorganize because we are dealing with the absence of an emotional connection with someone or disconnection from something we valued. The only remedy is to make a commitment to what we can do, to give ourselves time to recover from the pain. If we focus only on what is wrong, we enter a world of disillusionment, disappointment, and dejection. Thus, our inability to metabolize a feeling may come from our sense that we have to get away from it rather than learn.

The capacity to learn enables us to have hope that we will get through a tough time, even if that hope is merely a glimmer. Hope does not extinguish grief, but it can take our memories with us to better or different future places (Lamia, 2022). We may focus on the past—upon memories when things were different. However, memory is also an adaptive mechanism that informs our present and future. Anger or fear may represent an expression of protest over the changes taking place, but rather than getting over or recovering from loss, we must adapt to it. Memory enables us to use the past to imagine new possibilities. The integration of past and present involves adjusting our identity to changed circumstances so that we may grow into new personal roles and find new meanings in life, along with any meaning we derive from our losses.

Summary

• Disappointment, disillusionment, and dejection may accompany the grief of changed circumstances, endings, and unfulfilled goals.
• The emotions that create the experience of grief involve distress and, in its extreme, anguish.
• Many symptoms of grief-related depression directly involve coping responses to shame.“

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#Grief #Loss #Adaptation

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