Grief is reaching out for someone you’ve always loved, only to find that when you need her one more time, she’s gone. Death, divorce and other losses catch most people totally unprepared. Most of us simply are not trained how to handle loss.
“We’re taught to acquire stuff, not what to do when we lose anything,” said Jeff Zhorne, a grief counselor and director of The Grief Program. Many people as children were given no skills or tools on how to cope with painful emotions.
“As adults we wind up faking it and acting like everything is all right,” Zhorne explained. “We put on our happy face because society gives us about three days to grieve and we’d better be back to work on the fourth day. Later, we hear things like, ‘It’s been a year, aren’t you over it by now?’”
He believes that one of the greatest myths to recovery is just give it time. “I ask people who have experienced a loss more than 25 years ago: ‘If it just takes time were true, wouldn’t 25 years be enough?’ And, of course, it’s not.” He likens this myth to having a flat tire and waiting for air to come into the tire all by itself, with no one having called a tow truck or gotten out a jack to repair it.
According to Zhorne, the buried pain of unresolved loss is very real, has energy and doesn’t go away on its own. “Unresolved grief affects you negatively, sooner or later,” he said, adding that it will make itself known when you least expect it. “Reactions become disproportionate to circumstances. Someone cuts you off on the freeway and you want to break their neck.”
One of the most common symptoms of unresolved grief is isolation. “People get tired of hearing about our pain, so we stay home, turn down the blinds, pop in a DVD and order out so we don’t have to see anybody.”
Zhorne continued: “From earliest childhood we learn to hide our feelings and bury them. Feelings are not okay out there, so we look for relief through distractions.” People can continue to stuff the feelings, shove them away or numb themselves until the losses become an ever-growing weight being carried around. “Life becomes like running an Olympic race with 500 pounds on your neck. Then we wonder why we’re not winning and life isn’t the happy, joy-filled experience we had always envisioned.”
Zhorne is acquainted with loss himself. Twenty years ago his two children, ages 4 and 2, died in a tragic auto accident in England. “It was horrifying, I was utterly helpless, I didn’t know where to turn,” he recounted. “My personal life spiraled down with the loss of my marriage, loss of my job and loss of myself. I came to the point where I had to recover or die.”
He related how people tried to help by offering phrases of supposed comfort like, “You’re young enough to start again,” “It could’ve been worse” and “You just have to let go and move on.”
Let go of what? Move on to where? Zhorne asked.
What he found in grief recovery was a way to finish the unfinished emotional pain and end the isolation and loneliness. Zhorne said recovery starts by being able to freely express all the thoughts and emotions connected with loss. “Maybe it’s regret, which is often associated with loss – wishing things had been different, better or more. Or maybe it’s grieving the loss of unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations. If these losses are not resolved appropriately, pain and melancholy begin to eat away at our mental and physical health and the lives of those around us.”
Rebecca Wesson, a program participant who had lost her father to cancer, related: “If you are tired of temporary pain relief, tired of quenching in, and want to expand your life and relationships, the program provides a way to finish unfinished emotional business and move beyond loss. It provides the correct tools. I think the best benefit is being able to cherish fond memories, because I’m now able to remember my father for the way he lived.”
The Grief Program is offering a free community presentation on the tools and skills needed for working through significant emotional loss of any kind at 7 p.m., Thursday, June 23, at the Education Center, Christ Lutheran Church, 25816 N. Tournament Road.
For more information, call The Grief Program at 661-733-0692 or visit www.TheGriefProgram.com.