During my time as a bereavement therapist this was one of the most common issues that people came to me with. There is a misconception in our society that when someone we are close to dies there is a certain way that we “should” grieve and the emotion that we “should” show is sadness and the physical sign that “should” show that we are grieving is tears – but this is very often not someone’s experience of grief. The first time someone experiences grief and it doesn’t fit the stereotypical blueprint for how a grieving person should appear it can be concerning. Not just for the people observing this “alternative grief” but for the person experiencing it. They are fully prepared to feel sad and for the tears to flow because that’s what expected but when this doesn’t happen it brings about additional worries – “what’s wrong with me? Why aren’t I grieving? Am I devoid of emotion?” The answers to these questions are 1) nothing is wrong with you 2) you are grieving and 3) you aren’t devoid of emotion, your mind is protecting you at this moment in time.
The conscious and the unconscious
The mind is a powerful tool divided into conscious and unconscious activity. What might surprise you to know is that the vast amount of our brain activity is carried out in the unconscious with only around 5% of what we do coming from our conscious mind. This means that there are a plethora of actions, decisions, emotions etc being controlled by our unconscious and this is where the numbness of grief can be understood.
Freud, one of the most well-known psychoanalysts, spent a lot of his time trying to explore the unconscious, deriving several techniques in the hope of exploring its depths. As part of his theory, he suggested that the human brain uses defence mechanisms (unconsciously) to help a person cope with any uncomfortable or painful situation. Freud’s defence mechanisms are;
Denial – refusal to accept reality because it is unpleasant
Example: Making dinner for a loved one who has died
Displacement – taking your emotions out on someone else unrelated to the situation
Example: Not confronting someone at work for something they have done but coming home and shouting at your partner
Projection – doing or saying something because you assume a situation to be a certain way that isn’t necessarily true
Example – Having an affair because you think your partner is
Rationalisation – finding acceptable reasons for unacceptable behaviours
Example: Being stood up on a date but saying “I didn’t really like them anyway”
Reaction formation – agreeing with behaviours that you don’t believe in
Example: Laughing at a distasteful joke to alleviate the anxiety of confrontation or rejection
Regression – using coping strategies from earlier periods of your life to cope with current situations
Example: Hearing bad news and curling up into the foetal position rather than confronting the problem
Repression – suppressing memories of trauma/stress
Example: Witnessing a fatal car accident and having no memory of it
Sublimation – redirecting unacceptable thoughts into acceptable actions
Example: Having thoughts about hurting the person who killed a loved one but channeling those thoughts in to setting up a trust in their honour.
When considering grief and the loss of feelings/emotions the two most obvious defence mechanisms are denial and repression. Our unconscious recognises that we are not able to cope with our day-to-day responsibilities as well as our explicit feelings of grief, so instead our unconscious protects us, allowing us the space to continue with life. Sometimes these feelings of numbness or “not grieving” can last longer than is considered the “norm” but the most important thing to remember when it comes to grieving is that there is no set time limit on when it ends. Your journey through grief is personal and potentially different to anyone else’s – be kind to yourself and know that this is your grief and no-one can tell you how you “should” feel.
The Grief Wheel
Whenever I begin working with a bereaved client, I always introduce them to the grief wheel.
They are often surprised by the number of stages and emotions that are represented in it. The idea is that a person enters the wheel when they experience a loss and they have to travel through all of the stages in order to exit the wheel into recovery. What must be avoided is spinning off the wheel into deterioration as this brings with it other complex issues. Most importantly to notice in relation to the subject of this article is the inclusion of denial and numbness in the first section of the wheel. The presence of denial attributes to the feeling of numbness; our mind’s way of protecting us from accepting reality because it is too painful a concept to deal with in its current state. It could be argued that the presence of denial so early on in the wheel is what stops some people from spinning off into deterioration allowing them time to adjust to where they are in their grief. The unconscious mind is working without us knowing it, protecting us and helping us to continue with life. When the time is right the unconscious mind will begin to allow the denial barrier to be lowered so that we can begin to process the reality, to move through the grief wheel, eventually exiting the wheel on the path to recovery.
When it comes to emotion, it is important that we don’t stay in a state of denial or repression forever because if we do, we don’t process our emotions in a healthy way. They stay dormant (remember this is all in our unconscious) and if they remain this way, unprocessed and ignored, we run the risk of allowing these emotions to spill out into other areas of our life in other ways i.e. displacement. Defence mechanisms are there to protect us at our most vulnerable but they are not barriers that we should hide behind all our lives. If we do, we run the risk of never being authentic or connecting with our true emotions.
